Wijetunga now tough-talking Sri Lankan president

By Feizal Samath

COLOMBO (Reuter): Nearly a year after becoming a makeshift replacement as Sri Lankan president, mild-mannered Dingiri Banda Wijetunga is proving people wrong about his intentions.

Some Sri Lankans expected him to be non-controversial. Others believed he would remain in the background, like before, and do little talking. Both theories were wrong.

The silver-haired Wijetunga has emerged as a tough-talking, no-nonsense president, steeping himself in controversy and not giving an inch to his rivals.

"People who thought he would be a sleeping president have now waken up to the fact that he can't be taken lightly and is in fact tougher than his predecessors," a veteran journalist said.

The 72-year-old Wijetunga has angered Tamils with uncompromising views on the island's ethnic conflict, surprised many by bringing back former powerful ruling party politicians and a top opposition defector and shocked some by deciding to remain in power.

When Wijetunga, then prime minister, replaced Ranasinghe Premadasa, who was killed in a bomb attack last May, political analysts said he was a mere stop-gap president.

But the analysts are no longer surprised by the change. "It is a good illustration of what happens to a village rustic when he strays into a upper-class environment. He becomes thoroughly spoilt and loses all sense of direction and balance," said Hector Abhayawardene, a noted political commentator.

"He then becomes the victim of every conflicting pressure," the analyst said.

But the president, who grew up in a village in the central Kandyan Hills and worked as a cooperatives inspector before moving into politics, has still charmed many.

"He is truly the leader we have been looking for, for a long time," said Gamani Jayasuriya, a former minister leading a campaign for the rights of the majority Sinhalese community.

Businessmen praise him for deftly handling a potentially serious crisis after Premadasa was killed. "He brought things under control, cooled passions and assured foreign investors that economic reforms would continue," an economist said.

Unlike his predecessors, Wijetunga believes he can win the next presidential poll purely on the Sinhalese vote and that could be his undoing, a political-science professor said.

In wooing Sinhalese hardliners who say the Tamils have been given too much, Wijetunga has pandered to extremist elements and in the process hurt the minorities who have always supported the ruling United National Party (UNP) government, political observers said.

The president says there is no ethnic conflict and only a terrorist problem, a view scorned by Tamils who say discrimination against them by the Sinhalese-dominated government continues. They want the power to rule their own affairs.

Another Wijetunga statement that drew fire was his remark that the needs of the majority must be looked after before those of the minorities, who form 26 percent of Sri Lanka's 17 million people.

"The majority Sinhalese community is like a tree and the minorities are creepers," he told a public rally.

That probably led to most of the minorities voting against the ruling party in March 1 local council polls in the east, which has a mixed population of Sinhalese, Tamils and Moslems.

"The humiliating defeat of the UNP in (minority-dominated) areas ... is a cogent message from the Tamil-speaking people that they are not under any circumstances prepared to live as creepers which have to cling and grow round a tree for their survival," said Tamil politician Dharmalingam Sithadthan.

Wijetunga has invited Tamil rebels, fighting since 1983 for a Tamil homeland, for talks. But at the same time he says there is nothing to talk about because minority issues have been resolved.

Neelan Tiruchelvam, director of the International Center for Ethnic Studies, says the president's views are consistent with his instinctive understanding of the ethnic problem -- a rural view projected by Sinhalese hardliners.

This view says there is no ethnic problem, the solution to the rebellion is a military one and the Sinhalese have been fairly generous to the minorities, Tiruchelvam said.

The biggest surprise to many is his determination to stay in power, despite once saying he was prepared to shed most of the wide-ranging powers enjoyed by the president.

Wijetunga, seen as an impartial president at the beginning, is now wheeling and dealing like his predecessors.

He has brought back former powerful UNP politicians to boost his own image, weakened the opposition by splitting their ranks and infuriated the public by pardoning two UNP supporters, facing shooting charges, on the grounds the victim was not pressing charges.

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