Mahinda Rajapaksa, a populist leader who trounced his former ally-turned-foe Sarath Fonseka in the Sri Lankan presidential elections, is proving to be a man with a Midas touch and has enjoyed good rapport with India in his first four years in office.
With only a few days to go for the election, indications are that President Mahinda Rajapakse may even lose the election. His rival, the war-winning army commander, General Sarath Fonseka, has come from behind and is peaking now. He may even pip the president at the post, many analysts predict.
With barely five days to go for the crucial Presidential elections in Sri Lanka, incumbent Mahinda Rajapaksa has vowed not to allow re-emergence of the LTTE that was defeated in May last year.
With the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam out of its way, Sri Lanka on Thursday assured India that it will implement a law for devolving powers to Tamil-dominated areas, as both the countries agreed on the need for a lasting political solution to the ethnic conflict. The assurance was contained in a joint statement issued after National Security Adviser M K Narayanan and Foreign Secretary Shivshankar Menon met President Mahinda Rajapaksa in Colombo.
Narayanan, who will be accompanied by Foreign Secretary Shiv Shankar Menon, is expected to take up issues like devolution of powers to Tamils in the island and their immediate rehabilitation in view of their sufferings undergone during the current war.
With the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam wiped out, Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa on Tuesday offered equal rights for Tamils through a political solution, but stressed that it won't be 'imported'. He said the government does not accept the military solution as final and that his aim was to provide equal rights to all communities. Rajapaksa said it was necessary to give the Tamil people the freedoms that are the right of people in all other parts of the country.
Expressing that he was "very fond" of India, Fonseka, who is being endorsed as the joint opposition candidate to challenge the incumbent Mahinda Rajapaksa, said he was looking forward to support from India during his future plans.
The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Elam led by its supremo V Prabhakaran had aspired to carve out a big Tamil elam state extending from near Colombo to the southern part of Sri Lanka, the island nation's top defence official has said.
US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has asked Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa to devise a political solution to the ongoing ethnic conflict in the country.
Sri Lankan Chief of Defence Staff Sarath Fonseka, the architect of the military offensive that led to the annihilation of the Liberation Tigers of the Tamil Eelam, quit his post on Thursday and is widely tipped to be the opposition candidate for the presidential elections next year.
Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa has decided to cut short his visit to Nepal in the wake of Tuesday's terror attack on his country's cricketers in Pakistan, after inking two agreements with the country
Within days of his appointment as International Advisor on Information Technology to Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa, IT czar N R Narayana Murthy on Wednesday quit from the post citing personal reasons.
Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa has promised the United Nations that his forces would protect Tamil civilians as it pushes ahead with its offensive to defeat the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam. Rajapaksa gave this assurance over telephone to UN Secretary General Ban ki Moon, as his forces overran the last base of the sea Tigers near Mulaittivu, cutting off all their escape routes.
In a no-holds barred address, Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa has dared Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam chief Velupillai Prabhakaran to a one-on-one clash with him. He said that he would challenge Prabhakaran to clash with him directly to avoid a killing spree targeting innocent civilians, Parliamentarians and Ministers.
The ex-president returned to Sri Lanka on a Singapore Airlines flight.
A Pakistani probe team has arrived in Sri Lanka to investigate whether there were any local links, including the possibility of the role of Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, on the attack on the Lankan cricket team in Lahore in March.
In the wake of the visit of India Foreign Minister Pranab Mukherjee, to Colombo for talks with the Sri Lankan President, Mahinda Rajapaksa, Tamilnet, the English language web site associated with the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, has disseminated on January 30, 2009, an article attributed to "a political analyst in Vanni," which has accused "the present Indian establishment run by Congress of waging its own proxy war in the island of Sri Lanka, concurrent to Colombo's war
Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa on Wednesday said that the government's fight was only against terrorism and that democracy will soon be restored in the embattled north of the country. Rajapaksa also said that the state was not against the Tamil people but against terrorists.
"It is important that they feel that they're going to be able to live a future of hope and of opportunity, that the internally displaced people that are now in camps -- there are still approximately 100,000 of them -- that they be allowed to go back to their homes," US Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asia, Robert Blake said.
Dubbing ex-army chief Sarath Fonseka as a 'fool', Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa has ruled out an early pardon for the General, who is being court-martialed on charges of engaging in politics while in uniform and defence procurement irregularities."He is a fool. On November 16 (2009) he was sitting right here (the President's office in Colombo) and I asked him if he was interested in contesting (the presidential election) and he said, No, sir."
Claiming that rebels of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam were 'receiving an unprecedented defeat,' Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa on Monday vowed that government troops would flush out the Tigers from their Wanni heartlands in the north.
Doctors treating displaced Tamils in the government-run welfare camps in Sri Lanka's north have written a letter to Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa complaining about the inadequate facilities and shortage of medical staff.
Sri Lanka's new government on Sunday said it will probe whether longtime president Mahinda Rajapaksa sought military help to cling to power after he realised that he had lost the closely contested election.
Seeking to address New Delhi's concerns over the worsening conflict in Sri Lanka and its impact on Tamil civilians, Colombo on Friday said it would send a high-level delegation to India to keep it abreast on the prevailing situation in the strife-torn island nation.
The first presidential elections in Sri Lanka in the post-LTTE era evoked enthusiastic response on Tuesday from the voters who turned up in large numbers to decide the fate of incumbent Mahinda Rajapaksa and his ex-army chief Sarath Fonseka amid blasts in Tamil heartland of Jaffna. People started lining up even before the beginning of the polls, which opened across the country at 7:00 am. Voting will close at 4:00 pm.
After the announcement of the death of Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam chief V Prabhakaran, the Congress on Monday said the Sri Lankan issue is a sensitive one and External Affairs minister Pranab Mukherjee will meet Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to discuss the matter. "Sri Lanka is a sensitive issue, our foreign minister is meeting the prime minister. The government of India will contact the Sri Lankan government to ascertain the facts,"said a Congress leader.
Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa on Friday appealed to the Tamil civilians, still trapped in the No-fire Zone, to come over to the "cleared areas" and assured that the government will ensure their safety.
More than 35,000 trapped Tamil civilians on Monday made a dramatic breakout from the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam-controlled areas in Sri Lanka's embattled north, with President Mahinda Rajapaksa handing out a last 24-hour deadline for Tiger supremo V Prabhakaran and his top aides to surrender. Proclaiming that the mass exodus indicated that a 'complete defeat' of the Tigers was imminent, Rajapaksa warned that after this, his forces would make an 'all out' bid.
It is not advisable for India to be seen by large sections of the Sri Lankan Tamils as not only anti-LTTE -- rightly so -- but also as anti-Tamil.
Wickremesinghe will resign after an all-party government is established and the majority is secured in Parliament.
Maithripala Sirisena, who scored a stunning victory, was on Friday sworn-in as Sri Lankan president, bringing the curtains down on the 10-year rule of Mahinda Rajapaksa, marking a smooth transition of power.
Sri Lanka on Friday decided to go ahead with its cricket tour of Pakistan to fill in for a cancelled Indian trip, putting an end to the uncertainty on the fate of the series.
Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa has said that he had never met slain Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam supremo Velupillai Prabhakaran and would have preferred to chat with him."I would have preferred to bring him here and have a chat with him. I have never seen this man," Rajapaksa said. The President also said he was not at all interested in knowing how the LTTE chief had been killed.
The cooperation of the two main parties will be useful to pass required laws in parliament if required to implement any decisions taken at the negotiating table.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi held a meeting with officials on Monday night soon after taking over.
On January 27, B Muralidhar Reddy, a distinguished journalist with The Hindu was taken to the war zone of Mullaithivu, along with other Sri Lankan journalists by the Sri Lankan defence ministry.
Sri Lanka's former spinner Muttiah Muralitharan requested Tamil actor Vijay Sethupathi to opt out of his biopic '800' considering opposition and the star acceded saying 'thanks.'
Over 15 million voters are eligible to vote in the election being held under electoral districts-based proportional representation system.
The Sri Lankan President appreciated India's gesture and thanked it for the support and solidarity shown, the statement said.
The dialogue must be open and the world at large told of the issues involved. But the first step for the process to begin is for both sides to accept that they are in a no win situation. If the world and India fails to convince the Sri Lankans, then we are looking at a fire next door with China gleefully fishing in troubled waters!
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