By Sudha Ramachandran
An invigorated opposition presents a challenge for Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa.
Mahinda Rajapaksa’s plans to return to power as Sri Lanka’s president for a third successive term has run into trouble. With less than a month to go before the vote, Rajapaksa is ahead of his rivals but joint opposition candidate Maithripala Sirisena is closing in and could unseat him in a free and fair election.
Until recently, Sirisena was Health Minister in the Rajapaksa government and General-Secretary of the Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP), the party Rajapaksa heads and which leads the ruling United Peoples Freedom Alliance (UPFA). Sirisena’s defection from the government on November 21 to be named the joint opposition candidate took the government by surprise.
The opposition’s decision to pit Sirisena against the president is a political masterstroke. Both appeal to the same constituency – nationalists among the island’s ethnic majority, the Sinhalese-Buddhists.
Sirisena can “eat into the Sinhala-Buddhist vote, which is Rajapaksa’s main constituency as well as draw support from the SLFP,” Paikiasothy Saravanamuttu, executive director of the Colombo-based Centre for Policy Alternatives told The Diplomat. Besides splitting Rajapaksa’s core support base, Sirisena is expected to win the votes of the island’s minorities, who account for roughly 30 percent of the island’s population. Tamils and Muslims in particular are “unlikely” to vote for Rajapaksa given his regime’s “human rights record [vis-à-vis Tamils), including religious violence “targeting Muslims.”
Read the full story at The Diplomat