Close shave for Chandrika at rally

The President who escaped with minor injuries is said to have been taken to a private hospital for ttreatment. Constitutional Affairs Minister G L Peiris and Minister for Local Bodies Alavi Moulana were also injured but are said to be out of danger. Deputy-inspector general of Colombo T N de Silva was among those killed at Kumaratunga’s meeting. Among the injured, were several ministers and MPs, a photographers and some TV crew members.

Kumaratunga had justfinished addressing the rally at the city’s Town Hall grounds and was near her car speaking to a Star News television crew telling them she was confident of victory when the explosion occurred.

“Before I could ask the next question, there was a loud blast. Chandrika fell down, I also stumbled. Lots of security guards fell over her, they covered her with a red cloth, helped her up, put her in her car and took her away,” said Maya Mirchandani of Star News. The TV reporter and the cameraman were not hurt and it is yet unclear whether Kumaratunga sustained direct injuries from the blast or fell down and hurt herself from the impact of the explosion.

The blast came from the first or the second row in the audience, immediately behind the row of television cameras, which were stationed about 25 feet away from the dais. When the explosion happened, Chandrika was standing on one side of the dais where her Mercedes was waiting for her to get in after the interview.

Meanwhile, Lucky Alagama, a retired MajorGeneral and a UNP member who was accused by the government of inciting rebellion in the ranks of the Army during recent battles with the Tamil Tigers, was killed in a bomb blast at an election meeting at Ja-Ela, 25 km outside the capital.

UNP parliamentarian Jayalath Jayewardene was injured in the attack at that meeting. As news of the twin bomb attacks spread, UNP leader and the party’s presidential candidate Ranil Wickremesinghe stayed away from a packed election meeting at another venue four km away from the President’s meeting.

In the 1994 presidential election, Kumaratunga’s opponent and UNP candidate Gamini Dissanayake was assassinated at an election rally in the closing stages of the campaign. Kumaratunga went on to win that election. She had a brief honeymoon with the LTTE, but has been on top of their hit-list ever since she launched an all-out war against the group in April 1995.

President Kumaratunga was extra-cautious about her security during this campaign, addressing less than about 30meetings in all, restricting herself to just one meeting a day in contrast to her main opponent Wickremesinghe, who rounded off his campaign with over 100 meetings.

Kumaratunga’s supporters felt her campaign was too constrained by her security and were worried that she was not getting close enough to the people. Even at today’s meeting, an organiser for her party told this paper that the distance between the dais and the audience and the security measures at the gates to the venue had all contributed to a low turn-out at the meeting.

But the bombing just 10 minutes after this lament proved that no precaution is too great while dealing with the LTTE.

The president tried to address her problem by doing interactive sessions with voters via satellite, but the method was abandoned early on in the campaign in favour of real meetings. Analysts have predicted that the contest for the presidency between Kumaratunga and Wickremesinghe is really close, but the suicide bombing at her meeting and the bomb attack atthe UNP meeting may introduce more factors in an election already loaded with several variables. It is now more uncertain than ever how Sinhalese voters will react at the hustings to Wickremesinghe’s plan of reopening talks with the LTTE.