Polls predict narrow win for Fonseka

[TamilNet, Monday, 18 January 2010, 02:13 GMT]
"A secret poll taken by parliamentary researchers earlier this month and seen by The Sunday Telegraph forecast 5,373,751 votes for the [Sri Lanka's] president (48.3 per cent) and 5.493,809 for the general [Sarath Fonseka] (49.4 per cent)," the Telegraph said in its Sunday edition, adding that, while the ruling party insists its support is solid in village areas, Sri Lanka's voters are talking of momentum building up for General Fonseka.

As the Sinhala vote is split in the middle, "the votes of Sri Lanka’s 2.5 million Tamils — about 12.5 per cent of the population — are now being wooed by both men, and could prove decisive," the paper says.

The paper also notes that "[i]n the past few weeks, as their [Tamils'] political importance has become clearer, treatment of Tamils has undergone a remarkable transformation.... Internment camps enclosed with barbed wire have emptied of most of their 300,000 occupants, and the pace of rebuilding the war-ravaged north has been stepped up considerably."

However, Tamils haven't failed to recognize the irony of it all the paper remarks. “The choice was between the man who did the killing and the man who gave the orders,” the Telegraph quotes newspaper editor Eswarapatham Saravanapavan, a Tamil from the northern town of Jaffna.

Saravanapavan believes Gen Fonseka, the man who did the killing, was the preferred choice of most Tamils — being seen as the lesser of two evils, Telegraph says.

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Sri Lankan warrior has president in his sights