Chandrika seeks mandate for war as campaigning ends

By Nirupama Subramanian

COLOMBO, OCT. 7. Campaigning in the bloody run-up to the October 10 parliamentary elections in Sri Lanka ended today after public meetings by all the major contesting parties. The final rallies of the big three in this election - the ruling People's Alliance (PA), the opposition United National Party (UNP) and the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP) - continued late into the evening.

While the JVP, the acknowledged ``third force'', hopes to tap into voter disillusionment with the two main parties, the main plank of the UNP throughout the campaign has been the increase in the cost of living under the PA Government.

For its part, the PA, in the last few days, went on an all-out offensive against the UNP, accusing its leader, Mr. Ranil Wickremsinghe, of having entered into a ``memorandum of understanding'' with the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE).

The President, Ms. Chandrika Kumaratunga, said at a news conference on Friday that though the contest was between the PA, UNP and JVP, the LTTE had emerged as the ``insidious fourth force'' in the election.

``There is another force that is participating in this campaign in a bizarre way and that is the LTTE,'' she told reporters. Ms. Kumaratunga hinted at the alleged link between the UNP and the LTTE by emphasising that the separatist group had singled out her party and its candidates for attacks in the run- up to the election.

Ms. Kumaratunga, whose PA rode to power in the 1994 general elections on a peace plank, is hoping that voters will hand her coalition a second term to wage war against the LTTE. ``We now believe there is no alternative that the LTTE leaves for the Government but that of concluding the war successfully,'' she said.

Mr. Wickremsinghe, has dismissed assertions by PA members that he had a ``secret'' agreement with the LTTE as election gimmicks to put off Sinhala voters from supporting him. ``This force is not involved in what we know as elections, which is the very essence of democracy. It is obviously engaged in trying to sabotage the democratic process,'' she said.

In Jaffna, Government troops thwarted yet another attempt by the LTTE to break through defence lines in Nagarkovil, according to a Government statement.

Campaigning in the peninsula, which picked up in the last few days, is reported to have quietened down after a grenade attack on Thursday on a van carrying supporters of the Eelam People's Democratic Party at Kokkuvil. Three civilians were wounded in another grenade attack on a military ambulance in Jaffna town on the same day.

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