Lanka Citizen

By Ron Moreau

The election’s two front runners, both Sinhalese Buddhists, present sharply differing visions. Current Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapakse is the more charismatic candidate, but his platform is more modest. He wants to proceed cautiously on the peace front, looking only to renegotiate a shaky ceasefire that ended major combat in 2002. He is skeptical of proposals to grant sweeping autonomy to the Tamil-dominated north and east as the price for peace. Before re-entering peace talks with the Tigers, he wants the Sinhalese Buddhist majority in the south, which makes up about 75 percent of the population, to reach a consensus negotiating position—a process that could take months, if not years. Rajapakse is also more of a populist economically. He opposes further privatization of state assets, and talks about hiring more civil servants to solve the problem of unemployed high-school graduates.

His opponent, Ranil Wickremesinghe, successfully negotiated the 2002 ceasefire and began Norwegian-brokered peace talks with the LTTE while he was prime minister between 2001 and 2004. He’s a colorless campaigner, but his proposals are ambitious: an economic liberal whom one Western diplomat in Colombo calls a “neo-Thatcherite,” he favors the privatization of ailing state companies. Most important, he strongly believes in a rapid return to talks with the Tigers and advocates a federalist solution—devolving substantial self-governing powers to the Tamil-dominated strongholds. In a recent campaign appearance he promised to negotiate a “permanent peace” with the LTTE in two to three years. Responding to such talk, Rajapakse’s economic adviser, Ajith Cabraal, says Wickremesinghe “would give anything and everything to achieve peace.”

After years of war, so would many Sri Lankans. (Recent polls show Wickremesinghe with a slight lead.) The country desperately needs to upgrade its roads and seaports, and to exponentially increase agricultural and manufactured exports. Peace would allow the defense budget to be slashed, freeing up funds for development and education. Outsourcing is a potential growth area. The one bright spot is the garment industry, which continues to attract high-end contracts from companies like the Gap and Victoria’s Secret. The industry has become the nation’s leading foreign-exchange earner, with $2.5 billion in exports last year, and is the main reason the economy will grow by over 5 percent this year. “Sri Lanka has enormous potential,” says U.S. Ambassador Jeffrey Lunstead.

Courtesy Newsweek International