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Wickremesinghe visits high security zone

V.S. Sambandan

PALALI (Sri Lanka): As the race for the Sri Lankan Presidency entered its last two weeks, the Opposition Leader and Presidential candidate, Ranil Wickremesinghe, on Thursday met a cross section of the island-nation's security forces deployed in the sensitive northern High Security Zone (HSZ) spread across the militarily significant Palali air base and the Kankesanthurai naval base.

Accompanied by a team of print and electronic media journalists, Mr. Wickremesinghe spoke to troopers and officers from the four wings of the island-nation's security apparatus — the Army, the Air Force, the Navy and the Police. The Opposition Leader adopted his popular campaign mode — chatty conversations and interactive sessions — with the soldiers inside the northern High Security Zone.

As Mr. Wickremesinghe landed in the northern Palali airbase, and a convoy comprising armed guards from the security forces wound its way inside the sprawling HSZ, it was obvious that security concerns weigh high in the election campaign. It was also obvious that the target audience through his visit to the northern HSZ was the undecided voters across the island, which according to a recent estimate by the Colombo-based Centre for Policy Alternatives, stands at 15 per cent.

No visit to Jaffna

"I have been advised not to visit Jaffna," Mr. Wickremesinghe told journalists. Jaffna town — the cultural and symbolic heartland of Sri Lanka's separatist conflict — is about 20 km south of Palali. Though entirely under Government control, the town remains restive, evident through acts of sustained low-intensity violence including individual killings and grenade attacks by suspected cadres of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) and in some cases mob violence following civilian fracas involving sections of the security forces. Critics of the LTTE see the invisible role of the Tigers in these scuffles.

That Jaffna remains porous was obvious when Mr. Wickremesinghe's campaign managers did not schedule a visit to the town for security reasons.

Mr. Wickremesinghe did not visit Jaffna, but he said he was aware of its needs.

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