The Conflict in Sri Lanka: Ground Realities - Ilankai Tamil Sangam

inception of the CFA, they laid out conditions for Rajapakse in
return for their support. Knowing that, without their support,
he could not think of winning, although Rajapakse is a realist
with pragmatic political ideas, he decided to agree to all these
conditions.
The most important of these conditions that affect the future
prospect of peace in Sri Lanka are:
• Any political solution will be within the unitary type of
constitution only
• The concept of self government or separate homeland
for Tamils is not acceptable
• A revision of the CFA
• No tsunami aid sharing deal (P-TOMS) with the LTTE
which has been encouraged by the donors
• No major role for Norwegian peace brokers.
For the JVP and JHU, preventing Wickramasinghe from becoming
the next president was more important than electing Rajapakse
as the next President. The JHU considers Wickramasinghe more
conciliatory towards Tamils and, for the JVP, if Wickramasinghe
becomes the president, where to hide will be a worry.
The Tamils, who usually do not actively participate in Presidential
elections, (in the Dec. 2000 Presidential elections only 19% of
the Tamils voted in the Jaffna peninsula), realised the futility of
supporting one or the other of the candidate vis-à-vis the peace
process, due to the experience of the last 4 years. Thus, they
decided to keep away from participating in the voting and let the
Singhalese choose their leader. As a result, only 1-2 % voted in
the North and less than half the Tamil people in the government
controlled areas in the east voted. Therefore, Wickramasinghe,
who was expected to win comfortably with the support of the
Tamil votes, was defeated narrowly by Rajapakse, who received
the support of the nationalist Singhalese voters.
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