A presidential election in Sri Lanka next month will see two former allies from the country’s bitter civil war slugging it out, but their record on corruption, not the battlefield, might swing the final vote.
President Mahinda Rajapakse and his former army chief Sarath Fonseka are set to face each other at the ballot box on Jan. 26 in the first national elections since the end of Sri Lanka’s 37-year-long ethnic conflict in May.
Official campaigning opened on Friday in what promises to be a bitter and highly personal battle between the two architects of the victory over Tamil Tiger rebels that ended a war the UN estimates cost up to 100,000 lives.
Rajapakse, 64, told his first campaign rally on Friday evening that he will “wage war” against corruption and triumph in the same way as he finished off the Tigers, who were fighting for a Tamil homeland in the north of the island.
In a similar vein, Fonseka has promised to stamp out the pervasive graft that both candidates agree is stalling post-war economic recovery.
For Fonseka, the root of corruption is the president’s family. The former general and his backers have made much of a pledge to oust what they call the “family oligarchy” of Rajapakse. This “oligarchy” sees one of the president’s brothers as the ports and aviation minister, another handling post-war reconstruction and the third being the all-powerful defense secretary. Rajapakse’s eldest son controls a national youth movement.
“The corruption stems from the family rule of the Rajapakses,” Fonseka said while launching his campaign on Friday evening. “I will end the culture of corruption and jail those responsible.”
Rajapakse, who refutes corruption allegations, called the election two years ahead of schedule, hoping to benefit from his popularity after the end of Asia’s longest running ethnic conflict. He has since sought to shift his popular image, ordering posters of himself on the battlefield with military top brass and army commandos to be replaced by larger-than-life cut-outs of him dressed in squeaky clean white national dress.
The recently-won war has caused international problems for Rajapakse, who has resisted demands from Western nations for a war crimes probe into the final stages of the conflict with the Tigers following UN reports that 7,000 Tamil civilians died in the first few months of this year alone.
He has since turned to China, Iran, Libya, Myanmar and Pakistan for support.
In contrast, Fonseka, who says he would gladly submit his wartime behavior to scrutiny, has the backing of Sri Lanka’s right-wing United National Party, which in turn has close ties with the West and Japan. He is also strongly supported by a Marxist party that has connections with China.
Both men are seen as nationalists drawing support from the majority Sinhalese community. It is unknown how the minority Tamil population, which makes up 12.5 percent of the country, will vote next month.
Archeologists in Peru on Thursday said they found the 5,000-year-old remains of a noblewoman at the sacred city of Caral, revealing the important role played by women in the oldest center of civilization in the Americas. “What has been discovered corresponds to a woman who apparently had elevated status, an elite woman,” archeologist David Palomino said. The mummy was found in Aspero, a sacred site within the city of Caral that was a garbage dump for more than 30 years until becoming an archeological site in the 1990s. Palomino said the carefully preserved remains, dating to 3,000BC, contained skin, part of the
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to
TRUMP EFFECT: The win capped one of the most dramatic turnarounds in Canadian political history after the Conservatives had led the Liberals by more than 20 points Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney yesterday pledged to win US President Donald Trump’s trade war after winning Canada’s election and leading his Liberal Party to another term in power. Following a campaign dominated by Trump’s tariffs and annexation threats, Carney promised to chart “a new path forward” in a world “fundamentally changed” by a US that is newly hostile to free trade. “We are over the shock of the American betrayal, but we should never forget the lessons,” said Carney, who led the central banks of Canada and the UK before entering politics earlier this year. “We will win this trade war and
Armed with 4,000 eggs and a truckload of sugar and cream, French pastry chefs on Wednesday completed a 121.8m-long strawberry cake that they have claimed is the world’s longest ever made. Youssef El Gatou brought together 20 chefs to make the 1.2 tonne masterpiece that took a week to complete and was set out on tables in an ice rink in the Paris suburb town of Argenteuil for residents to inspect. The effort overtook a 100.48m-long strawberry cake made in the Italian town of San Mauro Torinese in 2019. El Gatou’s cake also used 350kg of strawberries, 150kg of sugar and 415kg of
RSS