Word: sri
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...tight electoral contest predicted between President Mahinda Rajapaksa and retired Army commander Gen. Sarath Fonseka failed to materialize when Sri Lanka went to the polls on Tuesday. Instead, Rajapaksa won easily - with 57.9% of the vote, by official count, 1.8 million more votes than Fonseka, who received around 40%. But Fonseka immediately rejected the result, alleging vote-rigging, prompting a tense standoff...
...government is behaving like murderers," Fonseka said. Asked whether he was planning to leave the country, he said, "I have no intention of leaving the country, but if my security is under threat, I would have go to out temporarily." (See a TIME video on Civilians Caught in the Sri Lankan Civil...
...Despite the overwhelming victory reflected in the official tally, Rajapaksa did not fare well in the north and the east, home to most of the island's Tamil population. Their votes went to Fonseka, a sign of Rajapaksa's most serious task: winning the confidence of Sri Lanka's Tamil minority. During the height of the Tamil separatist insurgency, the LTTE controlled much of that territory, and Tamils there are still anxious and fearful about how they will be treated by the man who crushed the dream of a Tamil homeland. Rajapaksa sounded a conciliatory tone after results were announced...
...deal effectively with burning Tamil grievances that led to over two and a half decades of bloodshed, Rajapaksa needs "to do something that no president has done so far," says Terrence Purasinghe, a senior lecturer at the Sri Jayawardenapura University in Colombo. "He will have to bring the minority Tamils into a position of political power, where they have some sense of control and not controlled by the center." Rajapaksa pledged to look at power sharing during the campaign, and Sri Lanka's Tamils are waiting to see whether those promises will be fulfilled. And the standoff outside the Cinnamon...
...Read "Under Global Pressure, Sri Lanka Opens Camps...