According to opinion polls, the two protagonists, the ruling People's Alliance (PA) coalition and the main opposition United National Party (UNP), are running neck and neck and no party may secure even a simple 113-seat majority to form a government on its own, according to some analysts.

Smaller groups, like the left radical Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP) and the ultra nationalist Sihala Urumaya, are expected to benefit from the disenchantment of the voters with the PA and the UNP because of their inept handling of the 17-year war raging in the north and east between government troops and the separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) which has taken a heavy toll on lives and the country's economy. "People are fed up with both the UNP and the PA. There is little to chose between the two, both ideologically and in the way they govern," commented a newspaper editorial after the results of the opinion surveys were published last week.

In the northern Jaffna district where the war has been raging without any let up, politicians say the war-weary populace is indifferent to what they see as a periodic exercise that makes little difference to their daily lives.

And with an electorate left with little choice between continuity and change, the country, for the first time, faces the prospect of a constitutional crisis if the UNP comes to power. The UNP led by Ranil Wickremesinghe has promised to give President Chandrika Kumaratunga of the PA a fierce fight if it emerges victorious at the hustings.

The five-week-long campaign was marked by unprecedented violence that left 58 people dead and slanging matches between the UNP and the PA over whether the executive or the legislature is more powerful under the country's unique Constitution which derives from the French, British and the American codes of governance.

Kumaratunga is not in the field this time round, having already been returned to power a second time in December's presidential poll. But she had spearheaded her coalition's campaign calling on voters to give them another six years to complete the task they began in 1994.

In a notable turnaround, Kumaratunga, who in 1994 offered "a hand of friendship" to Tiger rebels, last week described them as "an insidious force which works in a bizarre way." She vowed on Friday to vanquish them with military might, only two months after she tried, and failed, to get Parliament's approval for a devolution plan that would have given the Tamil minority considerable power.

Kumaratunga is campaigning to get her staunch supporter Prime Minister Ratnasiri Wickremanayake re-elected. Wickremanayake was put in place in August after Kumaratunga's mother Sirimavo Bandaranaike suddenly resigned as premier.

Wickremanayake's main qualification for the top post in Parliament is that he has been a long-time Kumaratunga loyalist. Lacking in national stature, the former plantations minister has nevertheless been working the crowds, making promises of handouts to public servants and sales tax revisions and elimination of the Tiger rebels.

His hardline stance against the LTTE has proved useful in appeasing key members of the powerful Buddhist clergy who vented their ire when Kumaratunga attempted to push her radical peace bid in Parliament.

Wickremanayake's rival in the field, Wickremesinghe, was his party's candidate at the December presidential polls as well.

The UNP leader has been kept busy fending off Kumaratunga's charges of a secret UNP pact with the LTTE while lambasting the government's ecnomic and military performance. This time round, it is the UNP that is offering the prospect of ethnic peace through a negotiated settlement.

In the background, leaving an unmistakable stamp on the political landscape is the LTTE's leader Velupillai Prabhakaran, the school dropout who masterminds one of the world's deadliest guerilla groups.

His crack contingent of suicide bombers has killed two PA candidates while they were on the campaign trail and attempted to murder another. The LTTE has succeeded in heightening pre-poll tension all over the country, mounting devastating strikes in some places and threatening and intimidating voters in others.

(India Abroad News Service)