Word: tamils
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...victory on Jan. 27 in the country's first election since the end of its 26-year civil war. Upending predictions that the contest would be a close fight, Rajapaksa easily beat his challenger, General Sarath Fonseka - a former ally in Sri Lanka's military victory over the separatist Tamil Tigers - with 57.9% of the vote. Though he was hailed by many members of Sri Lanka's ethnic Sinhalese majority for emerging victorious from the decades-long conflict with the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, Rajapaksa's reputation was dented by international criticism of his headlong rush into...
...Fonseka, once a key ally in Rajapaksa's military victory against the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, told reporters that he refused to accept the results. He wrote to the elections commissioner, Dayananda Dissanyake, requesting him not to release the final tally until legal proceedings initiated to challenge the results were concluded. That request was ignored, and officials announced the results Wednesday afternoon. (See the top 10 magazine covers...
...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...
...other important voting bloc is Sri Lanka's Tamil minority. With Rajapaksa and Fonseka expected to split the vote of the Sinhalese Buddhist majority, Tamils could become kingmakers. But election monitors have serious concerns about their access to the polls. There are about 170,000 recently resettled war refugees, and another 108,000 displaced people who are still held in camps. The Rajapaksa administration has repeatedly said they will all have a chance to vote, but only 35,000 of the displaced have been registered according to officials at People's Action for Free and Fair Elections, the country...