A convincing majority, surveys reveal:

President assured of a comfortable victory

Chandrika’s praise for ‘Mr. Prabhakaran’ distances voters :

by our political correspondent

President Mahinda Rajapaksa is confident of a comfortable victory at Thursday’s Presidential election. Almost all surveys conducted by academics, intelligence sources and other organisations have disclosed that President Rajapaksa would secure a record third term in office by a convincing majority.

Surveys have revealed that the New Democratic Front Candidate Maithripala Sirisena would not secure more than 36 percent of the votes.

President Rajapaksa said that building a disciplined society and grooming people to face challenges would be his prime target during the third term in office, a feat no other President had achieved.

“During my first term in office after winning the 2005 Presidential election, my target was to restore peace by defeating LTTE terrorism. Having accomplished that gigantic task which barely anybody thought could be possible, we embarked on a massive development drive during my second term in office to gain economic prosperity. Now that the economy is heading in the right direction, our next target is to reach the world level,” the President said. Maithripala’s election campaign suffered a huge setback after his mentor and former President Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga benignly referred to the late bloodthirsty LTTE terrorist leader, megalomaniac Velupillai Prabhakaran as ‘Mr Prabhakaran’ several times at a Presidential election rally held in Jaffna last Wednesday.

She told the rally in English, that lands under the High Security Zones in the North would be returned to the people, if Maithripala is elected President. The Tiger sympathisers welcomed Kumaratunga’s lavish praise for Prabhakaran by cheering wildly.

While referring to the late LTTE leader as ‘Mr Prabhakaran’ on several occasions, she said that the new administration would give full powers to the Northern Provincial Council. She said that although she tried to bring about greater devolution of powers during her tenure as President, she could not do so as she did not have the political support from other parties.

Kumaratunga said that the future President Maithripala would legislate for greater devolution of powers. Though Kumaratunga had ‘saluted’ Prabhakaran with a sinister motive of woo the votes of the Tamils in the North and the East, it had boomeranged with the majority of Sinhalese rejecting Maithripala in toto. Most UNPers who had supported him had now deserted him after Kumaratunga’s controversial speech, saying that they could not betray the nation for political reasons.