Sri Lanka banks on defectors to beat Tamil Tigers
K Nanthakopan is a marked man, being roughly the political equivalent of a top Al-Qaeda member who has defected to Washington.
The 38-year-old is part of a group of Tamil Tiger rebels who in 2004 split away from the movement to set up a splinter group, helping the ethnic Sinhalese-dominated government win control over the island's east last year.
On Saturday he is standing in provincial council elections as an ally of Colombo's hawkish government, almost certainly viewed by his former comrades as a traitor who should die.
"I'm not scared. If I was, I wouldn't be in politics," Nanthakopan told AFP in his heavily guarded office in Trincomalee, a strategic harbour surrounded by pristine beaches and one of the biggest towns in the east.
"The magnitude of the threat against us is enormous," he said with a smile, providing some clue as to why the rebel who led the defection, Colonel Karuna, fled to Britain.
Nanthakopan and his fellow ex-rebels have now rebranded themselves as the Tamil Makkal Viduthalai Pullikal (TMVP), or Tamil People's Liberation Tigers, and are hoping to win the polls -- the first in the eastern province for 20 years.
The government of President Mahinda Rajapakse is banking on a TMVP victory as a way of putting in place a Tamil loyalist as a provincial chief and proving it is willing to allow some limited devolution for Tamil areas.
This, in theory, would ideologically undercut the rebel Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) -- who want nothing less than a separate state -- and provide a boost for the escalating military campaign to kick the guerrillas out of the north as well.
Rajapakse pulled out of a Norwegian-brokered ceasefire with the LTTE in January, and has promised to defeat the rebels before the year is out.
"If we win this election, there will be a Tamil chief minister in the east. It is a good starting point for the Tamil people," Nanthakopan said. "We have to trust the government."
But the TMVP and its new leader, another defector who goes by the nom de guerre of Pillaiyan, still appear to have a long way to go to prove they have truly embraced the mainstream democratic process.
Many of its cadre in the tense eastern region still openly carry guns -- even though they live under army protection as well -- and human rights activists accuse them of kidnapping children to use as fighters.
Rights groups are also demanding that Colonel Karuna, who was arrested and jailed on immigration charges after trying to enter Britain using a false name, be put on trial there for war crimes committed during Sri Lanka's decades-old ethnic war.
The British High Commission (embassy) said Friday that Karuna has been released and transferred to an immigration detention centre in Britain.
Comments