- President Mahinda Rajapaksa said he’ll hold elections for the provincial council in Sri Lanka’s mainly Tamil northern region after ending almost 30 years of civil war with separatist rebels.
The ballot will be held after the Jan. 26 presidential election and the resettlement of Tamil civilians living in camps since the conflict ended in May, Rajapaksa told reporters in the capital, Colombo, today.
“The ordinary people in the north just want to live in peace,” Rajapaksa said. “I want to show them that the freedom and benefits for the people of the south will also be for them.”
Rajapaksa, 64, called the election two years before his term ends in a bid to capitalize on his government defeating the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam. He has pledged to establish a united country and expand the $41 billion economy through infrastructure development and investment.
The president said $4 billion had been earmarked this year for building roads, railways and electricity generation, with the help of funding from the World Bank, Asian Development Bank, and the government of India and China, among others.
He said government soldiers are helping rebuild the infrastructure of the war-torn north and the reconstruction is drawing “tremendous interest for further investment.”
Jaffna Visit
Rajapaksa this week traveled to the northern city of Jaffna in the first visit by a Sri Lankan head of state after the conflict.
Rajapaksa’s main challenger in this month’s vote is opposition candidate General Sarath Fonseka, the former army chief who led the battle against the LTTE’s fight for a separate Tamil homeland in the island’s north and east.
The Tamil National Alliance, the main group of Tamil parties that holds 22 seats in the 225-member parliament, has backed Fonseka.
A majority of TNA lawmakers consider the “only meaningful way” to defeat Rajapaksa in the election is to call on people to vote for Fonseka, TamilNet, a Web site that gives reports from the Tamil perspective, cited Rajavarothayam Sampanthan, the parliamentary group leader, as saying.
Fonseka and the TNA reached a “conditional agreement,” raising the question whether he accepts the alliance’s call for the north and east to be merged, according to media reports cited on the government’s Web site last week.
Second Chamber
Rajapaksa said he was “thinking of setting up a senate, as a second chamber, that would give the provinces a greater say.”
He said he plans to submit his own set of proposals for a political solution and discuss them among all parties.
The president will strive to make Sri Lanka a “unitary state, not to be divided” and build road networks and transport systems, according to his election manifesto released yesterday.
The World Bank said last month it will provide $182 million in loans to help rebuild the Northern Province. The assistance includes $77 million for the settlement of 100,000 displaced people and $105 million to build roads.
India yesterday extended a $185 million line of credit for the construction of a northern railway line.
“India remains committed to continuing its assistance to Sri Lanka as it undertakes the important and challenging task of reconstructing the Northern Province,” the High Commission of India said in a statement.
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