COLOMBO • Sri Lankan President Gotabaya Rajapaksa hopes to tighten his hold on the nation’s fractious politics in an election tomorrow that could elevate his brother and allow them to change the Constitution if they prevail.
Mr Rajapaksa, who claims credit for controlling the spread of the coronavirus in the island nation, hopes to install his elder brother and former president – current caretaker Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa – in the post formally with an outright election victory.
Voters in the tiny Indian Ocean nation of 21 million people will wear masks, carry their own pens to mark ballot papers and maintain physical distancing for parliamentary polling that has twice been postponed because of the Covid-19 pandemic. Votes will be counted on Thursday.
Sri Lanka has reported 2,824 cases of the coronavirus and 11 deaths as of yesterday. The total figures are lower than in neighbouring South Asian countries, having been held in check by a strict lockdown since March.
“We will make it safe for you to vote,” said chief election commissioner Mahinda Deshapriya, urging people to vote without fear.
The Rajapaksa brothers, who built their political careers as Sinhalese Buddhist nationalists, are best known for crushing Tamil separatists fighting for a separate homeland for their ethnic minority. The 26-year civil war ended under the elder Rajapaksa’s presidency. Mr Gotabaya Rajapaksa, who won the presidency in November, is not up for re-election in the parliamentary polls.
Given the support the brothers enjoy among the Sinhalese majority, Mahinda is favoured to become prime minister over Mr Sajith Premadasa, analysts say.
Sri Lanka does not have a tradition of conducting political opinion polls.
The opposition candidate is the son of Mr Ranasinghe Premadasa, who was assassinated by a Tamil suicide bomber in 1993 when he was president.
The Rajapaksas want to return to the presidency powers that were diluted by previous governments as part of reforms to prevent abuses of power.
“The majority community in Sri Lanka have (shown) that they have already decided they want the Rajapaksas back by voting Gotabaya Rajapaksa into the presidency,” said Mr Jayadeva Uyangoda, an independent political commentator.
The question, he said, is whether they will get a big majority to make sweeping changes.
President Rajapaksa has said he cannot implement his agenda of economic growth because of the curbs on his power.
“It is impossible to make any meaningful changes and implement the agenda that I presented to the people,” he said last week.
Restoring those powers would require amending the Constitution which, in turn, requires a two-thirds majority in Parliament.
REUTERS
