Peace doubts in Sri Lanka's election

By Frances Harrison BBC correspondent in Ampara, eastern Sri Lanka

Sixty-seven year old Karunawathie strokes the photograph of her dead son and cries.

There is an unwritten line of hatred dividing Tamil and Sinhalese villages

"I am very sad," she says, "I brought up my children with such difficulty and now I have to suffer more."

Her eldest son was abducted by the Tamil Tiger rebels and killed.

Her husband died searching for him - hoping against the odds he might find their son alive.

'Soft targets'

Even now Karunawathie says she sometimes dreams he has come back.

Karunawathie lives in an area where Sinhalese and Tamil villages are divided by an undeclared border.

Throughout 20 years of civil war, civilians in these villages have been soft targets for the Tamil Tigers.

"Tamils and Muslims used to come here and buy our rice and coconuts," she remembers, "and we were close friends until this war began and the Tiger problem made life very miserable."

Villagers say there should be a greater peace dividend

But now there is an unwritten line of hatred dividing the Tamil and Sinhalese.

Even though a ceasefire has lasted more than two years, village boys still guard the hill tops that demarcate territory while paramilitary forces patrol the roads.

"When a new born child was born here, the next day we would go and search for a place to hide ourselves in the jungle," says Karunawathie who was once bitten by a poisonous snake while hiding in a cave to escape the Tigers.

At one time she was prosperous, but she gradually lost almost everything.

'End to the war'

Karunawathie says she wants peace more than anything else, and it is this issue which is likely to figure prominently in the forthcoming general elections.

But when she chooses which party to vote for in the 2 April vote, she has little information to go on - she cannot afford newspapers or batteries for her radio.

In the last election the United National Party of Prime Minister Ranil Wickramasinghe swept the polls in there 'border' areas with his promise of an end to the war.

This time he tells an election rally in Ampara town that he alone can bring peace to Sri Lanka.

The forthcoming election provokes strong debate

His lengthy explanations of how he opened the highway to the northern town of Jaffna cut no ice here in the east of the island.

And his talk of federalism and changing the constitution mean little to farmers who ask where is the prosperity that should accompany the prime minister's peace.

"This government told us that a lot of money was spent on the war, but since there is no war now they can use that money on giving us subsidies for fertiliser as they promised," says Piyadasa.

He is a farmer who was shot in the arm by the rebels while collecting firewood and he is not enthusiastic about the peace process.

"You cannot achieve anything with peace alone - you cannot feed your children with peace," he complains.

Many villagers say they cannot wait too long before their lives improve

In the local tea shop there is heated debate about who to vote for.

"I am really enjoying being able to do my farming peacefully," says Tilikaratne Bandara.

"We go back to the rivers and other meeting places where we used to talk to the Tamil families who were our neighbours," he says, happy to put the enmity of two decades behind him.

He is still voting for the United National Party but overall there is little gratitude that they stopped the fighting, because farmers are still struggling for survival.

The war is far from over and complacency has set in quickly.

Those who have suffered most want a better life and they are not prepared to wait.