The Tamil Tigers invented the suicide belt. They are accused of being complicit in the May 1991 assassination of former Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi at a campaign rally in India. In a harrowing attack for travelers, Tamil Tiger rebels armed with mortars stormed Sri Lanka's only international airport in July, 2001. Since 1976 the Tamils have vexed successive Sri Lankan governments - until now.
As the last days of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam as a regular fighting force may be upon us, we thought we'd revisit a bit of our stay in Sri Lanka's tea country during a national election campaign ten years ago:
- Over the front seat, Tyrone was explaining how buffalo milk mixed with honey is the local equivalent of yogurt, when up came two signs, one explaining we’d achieved 6187 feet, the next, over the road, read “Welcome to the Salubrious Climes of Nuwara Eliya.”
Straight through the scramble to the far side of town stood the old British Grand Hotel. You wonder what it was doing here. Nuwara Eliya (pronounced “Noo-relia”) is an old British hill station, full of well-tended proper English gardens and lingering British built structures like the Grand Hotel – dark, wooden, rambling, musty and old.
The story goes that the Sinhalese preceded the Tamils to Ceylon and when the British arrived, the Sinhalese were unwilling to work for the slave wages the Brits wanted to pay. So the Brits recruited the Tamils and brought them up here to pick tea.
The good Tamils, as Tyrone called them, (not the trouble-causing ones agitating for independence in the north) got housing, a stipend, a garden and a quota. After that they got a premium for the tea they picked, per kilo.
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A little after six o’clock on election day morning, two loudspeakers chanted the call to Allah just beside a glass-enclosed Buddha statue just by the traffic circle. The sun hadn’t cleared the hills but it was set to be a glorious morning, birds and dew run riot.
At this hour, the town served mostly as a staging area for the bus station. People queued and a few stores lumbered open. At a milk bar (that’s a name for convenience store used from here to New Zealand) I bought toothpaste and remarked how it would be a nice day.
Dazzling smile: “It is election day, sir!”
Election posters covered the buildings. Tyrone claimed 99% literacy in Sri Lanka, but even so they used a system like in the much less literate Nepal, in which each party was represented by a symbol, so that the illiterate could recognize their party and vote, in this case, it appeared, for “chair” or “elephant” or “table” or “bell.”
The main parties were the ruling Sri Lanka Freedom Party, in power for the last five years and represented by posters of the president, Chandrika Kumaratunga holding her hand high in the air, and the opposition United National Party, which had held power the previous seventeen years.
Thin plastic flags flew over the road like over a used car lot. Blue flags marked the incumbent party’s territory, green the challengers’. Judging by the plastic flag test, it would be the Freedom Party in a romp.
There was a tradition of pre-election violence. A couple of weeks ago a woman blew herself up in Colombo. And a few years ago, days before a visit by Prince Charles, eight were similarly killed near the Buddha’s tooth shrine in Kandy, the second city and seat of power under the kings.
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Voters walked to polling stations. They get time off, though voting is not mandatory. Tyrone was expecting a curfew tonight but we wouldn’t find out until later.
Still, Tyrone said all the drivers thought (they all stay at a drivers’ compound next to the hotel, like they do on East African safaris) that when the announcement was made, they’d all just go down to the police station in Nywara Eliya town - just a few hundred meters - and get travel permits.
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Over a beer at the St. Andrews Inn, another British respite (where there was no sign of guests), early afternoon clouds closed over the hills that had just been gleaming in the sun, and before you knew it mist creeped into town.
Back the length of town, we stopped and shopped for a mango and a bag of tiny peanuts (Mirja says they’re far better than the big ones back home, the way Roma tomatoes are tastier than the big round ones) that the guy made from a folded sheet of newspaper. He scooped it full for thirty rupees.
A beaming boy, sleeves of his button-down shirt rolled up to his forearms, stood before a videotape and chocolate store chopping garlic and spring onions on an ancient stovetop. Smelled delicious!
We fired up the heater mid-afternoon. I turned on the shortwave to hear NATO’s version of the thirteenth night of bombing Serbia.
It was a real vacation day, way out on a trip, not coming or going, no travel, no agenda, no problem. Except this: Very few people I know wear a tool belt into the shower. So what’s up with the designers of SunSilk Shampoo in the individual, impenetrable package that you open when you climb into the shower, with the little picture of scissors on the back and no other &%#$* way to open it!?
*****
Chair won. The ruling alliance represented by the chair symbol gained ground, although they lost seats in Colombo and its suburbs. Tyrone made it official but I thought so, because I saw a newsman behind a desk on morning TV, then they showed a clip of a chair doing a little jig. Later, the BBC World Service called it a muddle, no clear victor, no mandate for either side.
There was some violence, in the city of Matale, north of Kandy, but the curfew the drivers had expected was only from eleven last night to five a.m. Still, at a police checkpoint at the edge of Nuwara Eliya town, the cop wanted us to go way around the other way, but Tyrone lied that he didn’t know that way.
The vote: People’s Alliance 2,105,546, United National Party 1,979,546, making up 70 per cent of registered voters. . “No deaths have been reported.... The majority of the complaints were of a minor nature, bordering on threats, abuse and cases of simple hurt....” as the paper put it.
(Photos of Nywara Eliya, Sri Lanka from the Sri Lanka Gallery at EarthPhotos.com.)
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