But the defeat has also left a void in Tamil politics. The LTTE’s intolerance for democratic processes and dissident Tamil opinion saw it spearhead a sustained campaign to eliminate rival Tamils that is widely believed to have included the assassination of more than 50 Tamil leaders from 1975 to 2008.

‘Killing people…opposed to the LTTE was one of the greatest wrongs of the LTTE,’ says SC Chandrahasan, son of the late Tamil leader SJV Chelvanayakam, who founded the Federal Party and who believed in non-violence. ‘It not only eliminated many experienced and talented leaders, but also prevented many up-and-coming people from contributing to the cause of the Tamil-speaking people of the island.’ Estimates vary as to how many rival Tamils the LTTE ‘eliminated’ during the conflict, though most range from between 8,000 to as many as 18,000 Tamils. ‘This is one of the things that prevented the LTTE from becoming a popular movement,’ he adds.

Tuesday’s election--Sri Lanka’s sixth presidential election--is expected to be one of the closest in decades and pits President Mahinda Rajapakse’s United Peoples Freedom Alliance (UPFA), led by the Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP), against the United National Party (UNP), which has been revitalised since the emergence of former Army Commander General Sarath Fonseka as leader. And both sides have been making significant efforts to secure Tamil votes, a bloc whose support many commentators believe could be decisive if the race is tight.

Rajapakse has so far secured the support of seven Tamil parties, and in an effort to placate Tamil voters has expedited reconstruction and large development projects in Northern and Eastern provinces and pledged to implement the 13th Amendment, which essentially provides for regional autonomy at the provincial level.

The UNP, for its part, has traditionally been seen as supportive of ethnic minority interests and has typically attracted Tamil support and votes. Indeed, as part of his election platform, Fonseka has offered to move beyond the 13th Amendment as a way of addressing Tamil grievances, and the party has also attracted the support of the Democratic Peoples Front, which has a seat in parliament and a Tamil support base in the Colombo District. The most significant boost to the UNPs campaign, though, has been the support obtained through the Tamil National Alliance (TNA), Sri Lanka’s largest Tamil democratic party, which holds 22 seats.

However, it remains unclear how the Tamil vote will play out now that the LTTE is no longer trying to stifle rival voices. Opinion was divided among Sri Lanka’s main Tamil parties over the LTTE defeat, although the four Tamil constituents of Rajapakse’s government--the Ceylon Workers’ Congress, the Up-Country Peoples Front, the Tamil Makkal Viduthalai Pulikal and Eelam Peoples Democratic Party--were united on the issue. In addition, the influential Democratic Tamil National Alliance(DTNA), which includes the Eelam Peoples Revolutionary Liberation Front-Naba (EPRLF-Naba) and People’s Liberation Organization of Tamil Eelam (PLOTE), also endorsed the outcome.

EPRLF-Naba Secretary Thirunavakkarasu Sritharan, for example, claimed, ‘President Rajapaksa will go down in Sri Lanka’s political history as the leader who ended the fascist violent culture in the country.’

PLOTE leader Dharmalingam Siddharthan, meanwhile, said: ‘We welcome a new era, the reintroduction of democracy and pluralism to the northeast. The LTTE is finally defeated. Democracy and pluralism were long denied to the Tamil community. They [the LTTE] failed to understand the political reality that a separatist state for Tamils was unattainable.’

However, the TNA, a loose confederation of four influential pro-LTTE parties formed in 2001, essentially denounced the government’s victory and rejected conciliatory overtures such as a meeting with Rajapakse (although some TNA members of parliament met with him on an individual basis). There were similarly mixed feelings among ordinary Tamils. For many, although there was a palpable sense of relief that the insurgency was over, they remained burdened by a sense of uncertainty about the future, feelings exacerbated by concerns over how the Sri Lankan government might use its newfound strength.

N. Suntharesan, president of the Batticaloa District Chamber of Commerce and Industry, perhaps best captured the pervading mood when he told The Nation newspaper: ‘In one way we’re really happy that the LTTE is finished. All these days, successive governments accused the LTTE of being a stumbling block to any development or even power sharing.’

‘But now, with the LTTE no longer in existence, we’re waiting to see what’s going to happen. The Tamil people feel that the victory has given the government and especially the armed forces the upper hand,’ he said, noting the government repression surrounding ethnic riots in the 60s, 1977 and 1983. ‘They’re worried that if the government’s military becomes more and more powerful, they won’t have anybody with military power to counteract this. [But] I think with a proper development plan and a meaningful political package, this fear in the minds of the Tamils could quickly be allayed.’

Such views were in large part down to uncertainty surrounding the fate of the nearly 300,000 Tamil refugees who required urgent humanitarian attention. Legitimate concerns over the length of time for screening and resettlement of internally displaced people aroused suspicion--and provoked some international criticism--over the government’s true motives behind severely restricting refugees’ movements, although the government went a long way toward easing these concerns when it granted the majority of such people freedom of movement from last October.

But the general uncertainty and lack of visible improvement in conditions for Tamils likely influenced the results of the Northern Province’s first local government elections. In the Vavuniya Urban Council, a stronghold of the Democratic Peoples Liberation Front--an affiliate party of the PLOTE--lost out to the TNA, which carved out an unexpected victory.

Despite excessive caution following the LTTE’s defeat, the government still took incremental steps toward relaxing its security posture. This was demonstrated as early as last May, when it launched a major drive to recruit 2,000 Tamil-speaking police constables in Eastern Province. On June 17, 2009, The Island newspaper reported in Batticaloa District that the police still had 74 check points.

However, by September, the situation in Eastern Province had changed markedly, as demonstrated in a report by Sunday Leader journalist R. Wijewardene, who wrote: ‘To travel to Batticaloa through the emptiness beyond Medawachchiya and through the once fraught towns of Valaichchenai, Kiran and Eravur in the darkness – without fear or check points is to experience, in a journey, the magnitude of the changes that have gripped this country over the past few months