Just six years after he crushed the Tamil Tigers in a brutal war that also left thousands of innocent Tamils dead, the Tamil community finally had its revenge. If Mahinda Rajapakse is no more the president of Sri Lanka, it is primarily because Tamils overwhelmingly voted against him.
This is ironic because it is the same Tamil community which, by boycotting the 2005 presidential election on the orders of the then powerful Tamil Tigers, helped Rajapakse score a wafer-thin victory over Ranil Wickremesinghe, now the prime minister.
An analysis of the voting pattern in the 22 electoral districts that make up Sri Lanka show that but for the Tamil areas of the north and east and the “Indian Tamils” living in the central plantations, Rajapakse may have overcome the challenge of Maithripala Sirisena.
There are only three districts — Jaffna, Wanni (which includes former LTTE hub Kilinochchi) and Batticaloa — where the Tamils are the dominant community. Tamils as well as Muslims, who too had been increasingly disenchanted with Rajapakse, live in large numbers in the cosmopolitan Colombo district. The Muslim community also has a significant presence in the nearby Puttalam and Digamadulla districts in the east.
Of the 18 electoral districts dominated by the Sinhalese, the majority community to which both Rajapakse and Sirisena belong, the outgoing president got more votes in as many as 10, the highest in his stronghold Hambantota (63.02 per cent).
Rajapakse was also the clear winner in Kalutara, Matale, Galle, Matara, Kurunegala, Anuradhapura, Moneragala, Ratnapura and Kegalle — all overwhelmingly Sinhalese and where the outgoing president garnered four to as high as 24 per cent more votes than Sirisena.
In two Sinhalese-majority districts, Gampaha and Badulla, Rajapakse and Sirisena broke even (49 per cent each).
In Sirisena’s home turf Polonnaruwa, the new president decisively defeated Rajapakse (57.80 to 41.27 per cent). The other exception was Mahanuwara, where Sirisena got 54 per cent of all votes.
Colombo also voted for Sirisena (55.93 per cent). So did Puttalam but narrowly (50.04). Sirisena swept the electorate in the Tamil majority districts of Jaffna (74.42 per cent), Wanni (78.47) and Batticaloa (81.62). In Trincomalee, where Tamils, Muslims and Sinhalese live in fairly equal numbers, a whopping 71.84 per cent elected Sirisena.
Jaffna, Batticaloa, Wanni and Trincomalee were Sri Lanka’s former war zone where the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) once held sway. The LTTE’s last ditch battle was fought in the Wanni region.This is also where Sri Lanka’s war machinery killed tens of thousands of unarmed Tamils, simply because they happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Digamadulla, home to thousands of Tamil-speaking Muslims, also went the Sirisena way (65.22 per cent). So did Nuwara Eliya, home to Tamils of Indian origin in the tea plantations where Sirisena got 63.88 per cent of the votes.
Tamil tsunami
In retrospect, it is clear that Rajapakse, having read the Sinhalese vote, called for an early presidential election because he felt he had a fair chance of winning.
Had Rajapakse been pitted against the urbane Wickremesinghe, he would have polled many more votes in Sinhalese areas and thus nullified the Tamil tsunami.
Unlike Wickremesinghe, Sirisena is as hardline a Sinhalese-Buddhist as Rajapakse. Thus, he undercut Rajapakse’s Sinhalese base.
The outcome of the presidential election can only reinforce the ethnic differences that still plague Sri Lanka. Many in the majority community are bound to ponder over the mass voting by the Tamil minority — and what it achieved.
With the support Rajapakse has retained in Sinhalese areas, despite the charges of corruption and nepotism against him and his family, Sirisena is unlikely to find the going easy.
He may also not be able to reach out to the disgruntled Tamils — something Rajapakse could have in the immediate aftermath of the war in 2009. Nor is Sirisena likely to abolish the presidency within 100 days as he promised unless he can command a decisive parliamentary majority.
— IANS
M.R. Narayan Swamy is a long-time Sri Lanka observer and the author of three books on the LTTE.
