New Delhi, Jan 28 (Inditop.com) Quietly happy over Sri Lanka’s electoral outcome, India hopes that the victory of President Mahinda Rajapaksa will lead to political stability in a country still seemingly ethnically divided.
Indian officials who had long ago predicted that Rajapaksa would preside over the island nation for two terms say New Delhi knows him well and he too understands India’s worries and concerns.
This is the biggest plus of not having to deal with a new occupant in the presidential palace.
President Rajapaksa is aware of the covert aid India provided to Sri Lanka during the final stages of a decades-old separatist war that saw the defeat of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) last year.
There is a meeting of minds between the Indian and Sri Lankan leaderships. Diplomatically too, there are no hiccups.
India views Sri Lanka strategically, more so because of the inroads made by Pakistan and China in recent years.
Officials here say Sri Lanka knows where to draw the red line vis-�-vis Indian strategic concerns even as it pursues economic and military ties with other countries, not all of them friendly to New Delhi.
Sri Lanka has also made repeated promises to the Indian government to carry out meaningful political reforms so that the minorities, the Tamils in particular, feel empowered.
Wednesday’s results of the presidential election – which saw Rajapaksa trounce former army chief Sarath Fonseka – underlined the need for steps to reach out to the Tamil minority.
While Rajapaksa nationally secured 57 percent of all votes compared to Fonseka’s 40 percent, almost all Tamil areas voted heavily in favour of the former army chief, indicating strong disaffection with the president.
Jaffna, the Tamil heartland, saw 63 percent votes go to Fonseka (Rajapaksa 24), in the Wanni district (the war zone) 66 percent voted for Fonseka (Rajapaksa 27), and the Tamil-majority Batticaloa province in the east gave almost 69 percent votes to Fonseka, compared to 26 percent to Rajapaksa.
The Fonseka-Rajapaksa voting percentages for Muslim-majority Amparai district in the east were a close 50 and 48 percent respectively and it was 54 and 43 percent respectively in multi-racial Trincomalee district.
This is a cause for worry for the Rajapaksa administration and shows the gulf between the northeastern Tamils, who suffered the worst in the war, and the dominant Sinhalese community elsewhere in Sri Lanka.
President Rajapaksa’s brother and advisor, Basil Rajapaksa, admitted to IANS that the government would look into the reasons and try again to win over the disaffected Tamils.
The northeastern results boiled down to proxy war between pro-government Tamil politicians and the pro-LTTE Tamil National Alliance (TNA).
India would be happy if Tamil concerns are addressed speedily, if not overnight, and with sincerity so that Sri Lanka gets to enjoy genuine political stability so vital for the war-scarred nation.
On this issue, New Delhi would quietly lean on Colombo.
In India’s eyes, the election has also shown the ineffectiveness of main opposition leader Ranil Wickremesinghe, who has suffered the third political defeat since April 2004.
Former prime minister Wickremesinghe, who heads the United National Party (UNP), was the main backer of Fonseka. With parliamentary elections only months away, the UNP may have to look for a more charismatic leader to take on the might of the Rajapaksa brothers.
