Sri Lanka President Rajapaksa visits Tamil city Jaffna

Posted on Wednesday, March 31, 2010

Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa is due to make a rare visit to the cultural capital of the country's Tamil minority, the northern city of Jaffna.

It comes a week before parliamentary elections which the president's ruling coalition is widely expected to win.

But the signs are that in Jaffna the president, who belongs to the Sinhalese majority, is not popular.

This is a follow-up to his historic visit in January - his first since defeating the Tamil Tiger insurgency.

Reunification

For five years in the early 90s, the Tigers had made Jaffna the capital of a breakaway Tamil-ruled statelet.

With the rebels vanquished, Mr Rajapaksa's visits symbolise the reunification of the island.

He will again be addressing the public in a big gathering and hoping the government attracts their votes in the legislative election.

But in the presidential election, he himself was soundly defeated in Jaffna and other Tamil-dominated areas in the north and east, despite winning in the rest of the country.

Those districts voted for his main rival, Gen Sarath Fonseka, although turnout was low, apparently because of both intimidation and a sense of disillusionment with both candidates.

Gen Fonseka is now imprisoned and on trial for plotting against the government.

But he is standing for parliament, as are candidates from a range of groupings, including one very close to the defeated rebels.

President Rajapaksa dismisses the notion of a federal solution which many Tamils would like, and seems unlikely to find a ready audience for his message on Thursday.