A man walks past a poster of Vijaya Kumaratunga saying “Who Killed Vijaya” in Colombo. (Reuters)

Colombo, Feb. 16 (Reuters): Posters asking who was responsible for the murder of Sri Lankan President Chandrika Kumaratunga’s husband 16-years-ago were plastered across Colombo today, raising the temperature ahead of general elections.

“Who killed Vijaya?” read the caption on posters with a picture of Vijaya Kumaratunga, a handsome movie star and firebrand socialist politician who was set to run for President before he was gunned down in 1988.

“These posters are illegal. In Sri Lanka, nothing can be published without the identity of the publisher,” presidential spokesman Harim Peiris said.

There was no word on who was behind the poster campaign, but it is sure to sharpen political divisions ahead of April 2 elections that will be fought over how to make peace with the LTTE and end a two-decade-old civil war in which 64,000 have died.

Kumaratunga’s family is no stranger to violence.

Her father, President Bandaranaike, was killed by a Buddhist monk in 1959. Her husband was killed in 1988 and in 1994, the Tigers tried to kill her in a suicide bomb attack in which Kumaratunga lost an eye.

Today, the State Film Corporation held free screenings of Vijaya’s films to mark the 16th anniversary of his death.

No one has been convicted for Vijaya’s assassination, and police at the time said they suspected the killers were members of the Marxist People’s Liberation Front (JVP).

But a government commission which investigated the killing said in 1997 that then President Ranasinghe Premadasa was indirectly involved.

Premadasa — who had been assassinated by suspected Tamil guerrillas by the time the report was published — was a member of the United National Party (UNP), which is fighting Kumaratunga’s Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP) in the April poll.

The Left-leaning Kumaratunga called the elections to end a stalemate with the pro-business Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe of the UNP, who she considers to be too soft on the Tigers. Kumaratunga further antagonised Wickremesinghe last month, when her SLFP signed an election alliance with the JVP.

The JVP is opposed to concessions to the Tamil Tigers, who have said a win in the elections for the SLFP-JVP combine could bring the country back to war.

The JVP has led two rebellions, in 1971 and 1987, in which more than 80,000 died. In 1994 it renounced violence and entered mainstream politics.

In December 2001, it became the country’s third-largest party behind the UNP and the SLFP, winning 16 of the 225 seats in the outgoing parliament.

A Sri Lankan party allied with President Chandrika Kumaratunga for upcoming elections rejected a ceasefire with Tamil Tiger rebels in a newspaper interview yesterday, but Kumaratunga said she was committed to the truce.

A rejection of the two-year-old ceasefire by the JVP would be a blow to Kumaratunga's SLFP, which signed an alliance with the JVP last month.

They will run on a common platform in an April 2 general election.