Tsunami survivors turn out in force to vote

by Bryan Pearson TANGALLE, Thursday

Tsunami survivors turned out in force Thursday to elect a new president of Sri Lanka in this wave-battered southern town, where voters' lists separated the dead from the living with a simple "DS" (Dead-Tsunami).

"The lists were prepared in April, before anyone had a full idea of who had been killed in the tsunami," explained K. Premadasa, returning officer of a voting station at the Wijaya Sundara Ramaya Buddhist temple in Tangalle.

"Once we received proper information we couldn't make the lists all over again - so we have written DS next to the names of people known to have died in the tsunami."

A "D" is marked next to the names of those known to have died of other causes. On his list of around 2,200 voters, he said, 44 had "DS" next to their names.

"None of those whose names are marked with a DS will be voting," said Premadasa. "They are dead."

Most in the long queue waiting to cast their ballots for a new president said they had been affected in one way or another by the December 26 tsunami, which killed more than 33,000 people along Sri Lanka's coast and left a million people homeless.

But they said they were determined to vote.

"We may have lost our homes, our boats and some of our relatives in the tsunami but we still have a right to vote," said fisherman Rohana Munaweera, whose home was smashed and boat destroyed in the devastation.

He had travelled some 40 kilometres Thursday to vote in Tangalle from the town of Matara, where he and his family of four have been staying with a relative since the disaster.

A supporter of Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapakse, whose home village of Weeraketiya is not far from Tangalle, 47-year-old Munaweera dismissed criticism by other survivors that the Government had not done enough in the wake of the island's worst-known natural disaster.

"The Government has given me money and is helping me build a house. It has looked after me. I voted for Mahinda."

Ranjanee Gamhewa, also 47, however, said she had decided to change her allegiance from Rajapakse's Freedom Alliance because of what she said was the Government's poor response to the disaster.

"They have not looked after me at all," she said. "I lost two daughters in the tsunami. The Government did not do enough to help us. I did not vote for them."

While she declined to say who she in fact did vote for, she indicated by pointing to a green cloth - the party colour of Rajapakse's rival Ranil Wickremesinghe - that her ballot had gone the opposition's way.

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

For survivors staying in one-roomed wood-and-iron houses in the nearby Pinwatta camp, the main issue for the election however is somehow getting their houses and livelihoods back.

"My house and furniture and boat were all washed away in the tsunami," said M.B.P. Nevil, whose wooden shack is a far cry from the four-roomed house near the beach he once owned.

"We have problems here of flies and lack of water. It also gets very hot in these huts," he said.

His destroyed house falls within the 100 metre zone the Government has declared to be a building-free buffer.

The declaration of the buffer zone has angered many survivors, although Rajapakse says he will review it completely if he is elected.

Wickremesinghe has vowed to do away with it altogether should he win.

AFP