KUALA LUMPUR: Both men were triumphant allies on the battleground last year but are now sworn enemies at the ballot box.

President Mahinda Rajapakse will face his former army chief Sarath Fonseka tomorrow in an absorbing contest as war scarred Sri Lanka holds a peace-time presidential  election after a bitter and highly personal campaign between the duo who engineered the crushing of an almost four-decade-long civil war.

Rajapakse, 64, and Fonseka, 59, wiped out the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) rebels in May last year, ending their brutal struggle for a Tamil homeland that left between 80,000 and 100,000 people dead, according to UN estimates.

Now, the ruling party has portrayed  war hero Fonseka as a future dictator, with some even comparing him with Idi Amin, the notoriously wicked Ugandan military leader.

Fonseka, in turn, dismissed Rajapakse as a “cardboard king” in his closing campaign speech on Saturday, an apparent reference to the latter’s depiction by his supporters as the reincarnated warrior king Dutugemunu of yore, who defeated a Tamil king.

Fonseka’s supporters say if he wins the election, he will be like Dutugemunu and Napoleon Bonaparte, emperor of France, who was also a soldier.

Fonseka was the first serving officer to be appointed a four-star general in Sri Lanka's military history in recognition of his role in the inclusive defeat of the LTTE in one of the world’s longest running insurgencies.

That in a nutshell was the tone of the campaign that ended over the weekend — bitter, highly personal and dominated by the defeat of the Tamil Tiger rebels.

Colombo political analyst Celestine Ramamoorthy noted in an email to The Malay Mail that there was no informed debate on any of the pressing issues afflicting the country and that campaign rallies were a battlefield
of personality clashes.

He said: “Pressing national matters, such economic stagnation, corruption and abuse of power were missing from the campaign speeches.

“Both candidates steered away from addressing the issues of government debt having reached 90 per cent of the GDP last September and the state of meltdown involving public finances,” said Ramamoorthy.

He said both Rajapakse and Fonseka were claiming responsibility for annihilating the Tamil Tigers and they were shamefully bidding to harness a groundswell of support after the victory over the insurgents.

Rajapakse, who led the political drive to maintain military operations against the LTTE, called the presidential
elections two years ahead of the end of his six-year term.

His support base among Sri Lanka’s Sinhalese majority, who represent around 70 per cent of the country’s 20 million inhabitants, has been eroded by the challenge of Fonseke, who spearheaded the military campaign against the rebels.

Here’s the curious twist: The  minority Tamils, on whose behalf the Tigers waged their war of suicide bombings and assassinations, might just swing the final result if the two candidates split the Sinhalese vote equally.

Ramamoorthy and veteran journalist Leslie Jeyaraj both concluded in their analysis to The Malay Mail
that the Tamils who make up 12 per cent of the population and who bore the brunt of the bloody campaign to
defeat the Tigers could decide the next president.

They noted that most Tamils did not vote in the previous presidential election in 2005 due to a boycott called by Tamil rebels and affiliated political parties in the northern and eastern provinces.

The boycott was widely believed to have allowed Rajapakse’s narrow victory of 180,000 votes.

“Most of the withheld Tamil votes would probably have gone to his opponent, the former prime minister Ranil Wickremesinghe, who oversaw the Norwegian-backed ceasefire with the rebels,” said Jeyaraj.

“In a close race, Tamil votes are vital. Just as the Tigers won the 2005 election for Rajapakse, by enforcing a
boycott of the polls in areas they controlled, so Tamil voters could now unseat him,” Ramamoorthy said.

“Strangely, neither candidate has offered a proper power-sharing deal to Tamils in the north and east, where most of them live.”

“Tamils have little reason to expect their lives to improve under Fonseka.

Even as a serving soldier, he ventured that 'Sri Lanka is a Sinhala Buddhist country', and that minorities should not make 'unreasonable demands'."

There are no reliable opinion polls in the country and political observers say the election is too close to call.

Both camps believe they can claim a majority in the voting by the 14.08-million-strong electorate. The bottom line, however, is that Rajapakse is under threat because Fonseka, who represents the United National Party (UNP), a coalition of 18 opposition parties, by his very presence trumps his best card — that of the celebratory hero.

And without that card, Rajapakse’s hand looks weak. His government is widely seen as high-handed, corrupt and crudely nepotistic and a legion of other members of his family whom Sri Lankans have taken to calling the
“royal” family have thrived much to the chagrin of the nation.

Both men remain dogged by allegations of war crimes and whoever eventually triumphs will have to contend
with continuing pressure from the United Nations and the West to submit to a probe into genocide and extreme human rights violations.