Sri Lanka elections

"Yes, we are scared. Anything can happen if the old regime returns to power," a lady who has come in to cast her vote, tells reporters. She makes a sign with her hand to indicate that her throat will be cut! Naturally, she refuses to reveal her name. She is holding her grandson by the hand.

The polling booth is situated in a part of the capital where mainly Muslims live - Muslims being the second largest minority group in the country, after the Tamils. However, ex-president Mahinda Rajapaksa himself belongs to the majority Sri Lankan-Buddhist Sinhalese community. But the general expectation on the eve of the election is of "a Sri Lanka without corruption and a life in liberty."

The West should not meddle

A few days ago, fifty women had been sitting in the lotus position in the main hall of the Abayarama temple waiting to give Rajapaksa the Kiriamma blessing in the Buddhist manner. Rajapaksa, clad in a traditional white robe, got out of his van with the tinted windows and explained to the assembled foreign journalists that people had been supplicating him to stand in the election. That was the only reason he became a candidate, he said.

All speculation that he was planning his political comeback to escape the consequences of the corruption cases hanging against him and his family was simply nonsense, he added. "When you are from Germany, above all, I know immediately what you are going to ask," Rajapaksa said, adding that "foreign countries should not meddle in our politics. Let our people decide what they want and don’t interfere." This is an attitude Rajapaksa has been known to evince during his entire time in power, when critical western journalists were simply denied entry into the country.

Forty thousand dead

The civil war in Sri Lanka ended in 2009. A United Nations estimate puts the number of civilian deaths in the last months of the war at 40,000 - mostly Tamils.

Ex-president Rajapaksa ended his uncompromising battle against the separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) in the middle of his ten-year tenure. Today, on the eve of the elections, many Sri Lankans want Rajapaksa to be victorious again: "Otherwise the terrorists will return" - they say referring to the Tamil rebels.

Six years after the end of the civil war, the north of the country still shows the ravages of war. To this day, thousands are listed as missing. The new government, too, has failed to give any precise information regarding the whereabouts of the missing persons. The United Nations Human Rights Committee will be publishing a report regarding possible human rights violations by the end of September.

It is undeniable that in the eyes of a majority of Sri Lankans, Rajapaksa represents the president who brought peace to his country. Confident of victory, he brought forward the presidential elections to January 8 – but lost, fully unexpectedly, against his party colleague Maithripala Sirisena.

Last November, Sirisena suddenly turned against his old comrade and formed a rival coalition. It was time to end Rajapaksa's system of nepotism and corruption, Sirisena said at the time. The new government, in power since last January, is considered to be more just and democratic. Sirisena’s administration aims at reconciliation and democratic opening.

Storing rice in the lounge?

The notion that Sirisena is taking Sri Lanka in a different direction becomes evident when one looks at the fate an ambitious project started by his predecessor in the latter's home district of Hambantuta: the Mattala Rajapaksa International Airport.

China is said to have provided a major part – roughly $200 million – of the construction costs. The government withdrew the license on the ground that the airport will not be able to recover the costs. Now it is being openly debated whether the empty halls should not be used to store rice. Otherwise there's always that daily flight to Dubai.

According to the latest polls, Rajapaksa will probably not be able to make it to the prime minister's chair, but he will certainly make it to a seat in parliament, it is being assumed.