AGL 40.00 Decreased By ▼ -0.01 (-0.02%)
AIRLINK 127.00 Decreased By ▼ -0.99 (-0.77%)
BOP 6.68 Increased By ▲ 0.08 (1.21%)
CNERGY 4.49 Decreased By ▼ -0.11 (-2.39%)
DCL 8.60 Increased By ▲ 0.12 (1.42%)
DFML 41.30 Decreased By ▼ -0.18 (-0.43%)
DGKC 86.71 Increased By ▲ 0.13 (0.15%)
FCCL 32.16 Increased By ▲ 0.02 (0.06%)
FFBL 64.70 Decreased By ▼ -0.72 (-1.1%)
FFL 10.29 Increased By ▲ 0.04 (0.39%)
HUBC 109.51 Decreased By ▼ -0.98 (-0.89%)
HUMNL 14.90 Increased By ▲ 0.15 (1.02%)
KEL 5.05 Decreased By ▼ -0.08 (-1.56%)
KOSM 7.40 Increased By ▲ 0.28 (3.93%)
MLCF 41.39 Decreased By ▼ -0.26 (-0.62%)
NBP 60.60 Increased By ▲ 0.51 (0.85%)
OGDC 190.00 Decreased By ▼ -4.69 (-2.41%)
PAEL 27.81 Decreased By ▼ -0.14 (-0.5%)
PIBTL 7.75 Decreased By ▼ -0.25 (-3.13%)
PPL 149.75 Decreased By ▼ -1.42 (-0.94%)
PRL 26.73 Decreased By ▼ -0.15 (-0.56%)
PTC 16.18 Increased By ▲ 0.18 (1.13%)
SEARL 86.02 Increased By ▲ 7.82 (10%)
TELE 7.72 Increased By ▲ 0.33 (4.47%)
TOMCL 35.58 Decreased By ▼ -0.09 (-0.25%)
TPLP 8.14 Increased By ▲ 0.23 (2.91%)
TREET 16.51 Increased By ▲ 0.62 (3.9%)
TRG 53.35 Increased By ▲ 0.59 (1.12%)
UNITY 26.28 Decreased By ▼ -0.27 (-1.02%)
WTL 1.26 Decreased By ▼ -0.01 (-0.79%)
BR100 9,889 Decreased By -31.1 (-0.31%)
BR30 30,611 Decreased By -140.9 (-0.46%)
KSE100 93,355 Increased By 130.9 (0.14%)
KSE30 28,931 Increased By 46 (0.16%)

A presidential election in Sri Lanka next month will see two former allies from the country's bitter civil war slugging it out, but their record on corruption, not the battlefield, might swing the final vote.
President Mahinda Rajapakse and his former army chief Sarath Fonseka are set to face each other at the ballot box on January 26 in the first national elections since the end of Sri Lanka's 37-year-long ethnic conflict in May.
Official campaigning opened on Friday in what promises to be a bitter and highly personal battle between the two architects of the victory over Tamil Tiger rebels that ended a war the United Nations estimates cost up to 100,000 lives.
Rajapakse, 64, told his first campaign rally on Friday evening that he will "wage war" against corruption and triumph in the same way as he finished off the Tigers, who were fighting for a Tamil homeland in the north of the island. In a similar vein, Fonseka has promised to stamp out the pervasive graft that both candidates agree is stalling post-war economic recovery.
For Fonseka, the root of corruption is the president's family. The former general and his backers have made much of a pledge to oust what they call the "family oligarchy" of Rajapakse. This "oligarchy" sees one of the president's brothers as the ports and aviation minister, another handling post-war reconstruction and the third being the all-powerful defence secretary. Rajapakse's eldest son controls a national youth movement.
"The corruption stems from the family rule of the Rajapakses," Fonseka said while launching his campaign on Friday evening. "I will end the culture of corruption and jail those responsible."

Copyright Agence France-Presse, 2009

Comments

Comments are closed.