For the two main contenders President Chandrika Kumaratunga, who is seeking re-election for a second term, and Ranil Wickremesinghe, leader of the opposition United National Party (UNP) the resolution of the country's vexed ethnic problem is at the top of their respective campaigns.

But that may be deceptive, because the fight is not really about whose solution is more acceptable to the aggrieved Tamils, but which one appeals more to the majority Sinhala.

President Chandrika Kumaratunga seems to have accepted that the Tamil vote is lost to her and that it may swing towards Wickremesinghe, who has promised to de-escalate the conflict and initiate talks with the Tamil Tigers if he is elected. Consequently, even at the risk of seeming like a hard-line nationalist, Kumaratunga is now spending all her energieson consolidating the Sinhala vote-bank, which at the moment is evenly poised between her Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP) and the UNP.

Recently, Kumaratunga welcomed into her party several defectors from the opposition UNP, two of whom are well known for their illiberal views on the Tamil question.

"Both candidates are talking about war as the main problem facing the country, and the need for peace as the top priority. But on the other hand, when one starts making inroads into the Tamil vote bank, the response of the other is to succumb to the majoritarian impulse," says Loganathan Ketheeswaran of the Centre for Policy Alternatives (CPA).

Accordingly, Kumaratunga has unleashed a high-pitched campaign against Wickremesinghe to break into his Sinhala support base, based on his proposal to set up an interim council in the troubled north-east, one of the first steps in his solution.

State-owned newspapers have gone to town with a mysterious report from a Tamil Internet site that Wickremesinghe plans to handover this interim body to the LTTE for a period of two years, and accused him of being in conspiracy with Velupillai Prabhakaran to pave the way for an independent Eelam.

The sensational accusation grabbed the nation's attention, deflected the attention of the majority community from the government's worst military debacle ever against the LTTE, and may have even managed to offset any electoral advantage the UNP might have gained by it.

The government mouthpiece, Daily News, also argued that if Wickremesinghe could propose a solution acceptable to the LTTE, then it must necessarily point to a prior agreement between the two.

The paper projected Kumaratunga as the only leader who would not kowtow to the Tamil Tigers, ignoring the detail that any non-military solution would need the concurrence of the LTTE. It also dovetailed neatly with the other government accusation that the disaster on the battlefield was the result of a conspiracy between the LTTE and the UNP.

"This is an ethno-populist way ofmobilising opinion by stirring up fears against a peace process, however flawed such a process may be. It can be used to argue against any concessions," said CPA's Ketheseswaran.

Despite Wickremesinghe's protests that his proposed interim body would comprise representatives of all parties, the accusations have rattled many UNP supporters and created a crisis of confidence in the party's leader.Majoritarian campaigning of the sort that Kumaratunga is now indulging in is par for the course in all Sri Lankan elections. In the 1994 presidential election, the boot was on the other foot, as Kumaratunga passionately promoted talks with the LTTE, while the UNP aroused fears of a sell-out.

As the century draws to a close, there are increasing calls from civil society for politicians to resist the temptation of ethnic populism and work genuinely for a plural and democratic Sri Lanka.

At a symposium organised by the International Centre for Ethnic Studies here Pakiasothy Saravanamuttu, executive director of theCPA, argued that the role of civil society was equally important in ensuring that the overall debate during the elections was not overtaken by majoritarian compulsions.

But the quality of the campaign has plumbed such depths that political scientist Jayadeva Uyangoda has urged "a moratorium between Kumaratunga and Wickremesinghe on arousing ethnic passions" during the campaigning.

But the question is: are they listening?