Presidential Poll:

Focus on ethnic conflict, economy

Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapakse	Opposition Leader Ranil Wickremesinghe

Sri Lanka's Presidential Election this week has turned into a vote on the country's economy and the peace process, with the two main contenders diverging sharply on the major issues.

Some 13.3 million eligible voters will effectively be choosing on Thursday between the current and former prime ministers, who have different views on how to save the nation from economic and ethnic implosion.

Opinion polls say the two issues have emerged as the key points of debate in the vote, largely overshadowing the destruction caused by last year's tsunami which killed over 31,000 people in the country.

"I am for peace and I will go the extra mile for it," Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapakse told AFP in a recent interview while rejecting LTTE charges that he was trying to take the country back to war after his alliance with hardline nationalists.

"I am not a 'war candidate'," Rajapakse said. "I want peace. I want an honourable peace, a durable peace. I will talk to all, including the Tigers."

Rajapakse, who turns 60 the day after the vote, made common cause with the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP) in a bid to challenge the right-wing Opposition Leader Ranil Wickremesinghe, 56. He wants a complete overhaul of the Oslo-backed initiative and a renegotiation of a truce that has been in place since February 2002.

Rajapakse is seen as a go-getter and connects with voters from the majority Sinhalese community as someone who was not raised in the Western-oriented ways of most previous Sri Lankan leaders. Rajapakse studied at a local school and qualified as a lawyer.

He championed populist measures as the country's Labour Minister in 1994 and later became the Fisheries Minister.

Rajapakse, born on November 18, 1945, to Sinhalese parents turned from law to politics at the age of 24, and was elected to Parliament from Hambantota.

His father had also been a legislator from the same constituency between 1947 and 1960.Former premier Ranil Wickremesinghe claims credit for freezing a decades-long ethnic war but that has not translated into deep support among the Sinhalese majority crucial to victory. Wickremesinghe says he will revive talks with the LTTE and cut a peace deal "within two to three years" to end the ethnic conflict.

Wickremesinghe has told voters that he is the "peace candidate".

However, it is the early success of his peace efforts, which brought a ceasefire in an ethnic conflict that probably led to his defeat in April 2004 elections.

In 2002, Wickremesinghe entered into a truce with the LTTE and moved quickly to reform the country's economy.

But later in his term, many voters took the ceasefire for granted and focused more on painful economic reforms that did not create new employment opportunities. A nephew of Sri Lanka's first executive president, Junius Richard Jayewardene, Wickremesinghe wooed the West as well as neighbouring India and won support for ending bloodshed on the island.

The international dividend came in June 2003 when countries promised US$ 4.5 billion to support the peace drive and rebuild the war-ravaged country. But it did not translate into domestic support because much of the money remains unused.

Wickremesinghe told AFP in a recent interview that he wants to unite the main majority Sinhalese parties while pursing peace with the LTTE.

Wickremesinghe entered the political arena in the 70s and rose through the ranks to become Prime Minister in May 1993 when a suicide bomber assassinated President Ranasinghe Premadasa.

The frontrunners are also poles apart on how to turn around Sri Lanka's battered economy.

While Wickremesinghe wants to push ahead with market-friendly reforms and woo foreign investments, Rajapakse is seeking a socialist system.