1988 Presidential election amidst turmoil

Three candidates presented themselves before the electorate for election. Premadasa (UNP), Sirimavo Bandaranaike (SLFP) and an outsider representing the SLMP (the Sri Lanka Mahajana Pakshaya) - Oswin (Ossie) Abeygoonesekera. The SLMP was the party created by Vijaya and Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga in 1977 but had broken up after Vijaya’s assassination and Chandrika’s departure for London to escape the terror which had resulted in her husband’s death.

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The presidential elections were fixed by J R for 19 December 1988. I was in London at the time, almost at the end of my five-year contract as secretary-general with the IPPF. I had followed the course of political events in Sri Lanka during the past year and on the basis that our voters usually threw out the government in power every five years and this-one had now been in for almost ten, I did not rate Premadasa's chances highly. Moreover, he was being opposed by Sirimavo who was yet immensely popular as a person, although the SLFP, her party, had lately gone through some organisational problems. There were also many who had thought that the imposi tion of civic disability for seven years by JR had been unfair and were sympathetic to her. In fact, I recall telling Dulanjali, Premadasa's daughter who was now with IPPF as an internee, that she should prepare herself for her father's defeat in the face of the difficult situation for the UNP prevailing in the country.

The 19 December elections were conducted in extraordinarily disturbed circumstances. The state of emergency declared years earlier covered the entire country. In the Northern and Eastern Provinces the Indian Peace Keeping Force (IPKF) dominated the towns of Jaffna, Batticaloa and Trincomalee, but LTTE ambushes continued in much of the countryside. The LTTE who had established a complex of bases in the mainland Wanni jungles after their eviction from the Jaffna Peninsula in October 1987, operated their hit and run raids, virtually without hindrance. The Sri Lanka security forces, such as they were in the north and east, had been `confined to barracks' in terms of the Indo-Sri Lankan Accord of 1987 and had played no active adversarial role against the LTTE ever since.

In the south, the JVP had commenced its campaign of destabilizing the government, especially after the signing of the accord. Their activities were focused particularly in the Southern. Central and North-Central Provinces.