To mark its victory over the LTTE, the government is holding a victory parade on May 20. Triumphalism among the majority Sinhala ethnic group, which has surged throughout the past year, will climax this week. The celebrations have already begun.
But not everyone will be celebrating.
For the island's Tamils and a section of Sinhalese, this is a period of mourning. Thousands of Tamil civilians trapped in the war-zone were killed in this week last year as the fighting was in its last stages. The Tamil diaspora will observe May 17-19 as "Days of Remembrance" and May 18 as "Genocidal War Crimes Day".
Sustainable peace still seems a long way off. The Sinhala-Tamil divide remains wide, with critics saying a a political solution to the ethnic conflict is not on the government's agenda.
On the other hand, some say the government and President Mahinda Rajapaksa's attention has been consumed with the presidential and legislative polls held in the past year. Rajapaksa won the January presidential election and was the star campaigner for his party, the Sri Lanka Freedom Party, in the parliamentary election that followed.
The elections have strengthened the president's position significantly. Rajapaksa defeated his nearest rival in the presidential election by a huge margin, winning another six-year term. The parliamentary election too went in Rajapaksa's favor, with the ruling coalition winning 144 seats in the 225-member parliament.
With three victories over the past year - the defeat of the LTTE, and the wins at the presidential and parliamentary elections - Rajapaksa's position seems unassailable. The opposition is in a state of disarray and former army chief General Sarath Fonseka, Rajapaksa's presidential rival, is undergoing court martial.
The president has been accorded a god-like status by his followers. His party is not encumbered by ultra-nationalist parties as coalition allies as in the past. Although he is six seats short of a two-thirds majority in parliament, Rajapaksa is fully capable of engineering defections from the opposition. He is in a good position to put in place the constitutional changes that are needed for resolution of Sri Lanka's ethnic conflict.
However, its unclear if he has the will to find a political solution.
Defense Secretary Gotabaya Rajapaksa, the president's brother, wrote in a recent article in the Sri Lankan English weekly newspaper, Sunday Times, that he "sincerely believes priority should be given not to political reforms but to infrastructure development and attending to other basic social needs of the people".
Sri Lankan analyst Darini Rajasingham-Senanayake has said that the Rajapaksa regime's preferred solution to the ethnic conflict in Sri Lanka prefer is economic - rapid development and reconstruction of the conflict-affected region - rather than political.
"This would be along the lines of the authoritarian democracy visible in countries like Singapore and Malaysia, where the state's emphasis on economic development has trumped and muted ethno-religious identity conflicts," said Rajasingham-Senanayake.
A task force headed by another brother of the president, Minister for Economic Development Basil Rajapaksa, has been set up to oversee development in the north, with companies from Colombo, India and China setting up shop. Banks, finance companies, hotels and businesses dealing with consumer goods are springing up.
While the kick-starting of the economy in the north and the improvement of north-south transport links have eased daily difficulties for the Tamils over the past year, local Tamils are disappointed. They are not being hired. They feel that they don't own the development happening around them and are being relegated to being bystanders. The benefits of development are being reaped by "outsiders" - the government, foreign companies and Sinhalese.
The Tamil group's alienation from the Sri Lankan state remains considerable, indicating that economic development, while helpful, is not enough to resolve the ethnic conflict. Analysts say that as Sri Lanka moves from a post-war to a post-conflict era, it will need to find a political solution that involves power sharing, as well as pursuing development that is equitable and inclusive. They say the government needs to take decisive steps towards reconciliation.
While the government as seen as showing no appetite for a political solution, its reconciliatory gestures are often seen as hollow. A fortnight ago, it announced the setting up of a Commission on Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation. Few expect anything to come of it and Human Rights Watch has dismissed the commission as "yet another attempt [by the government] to deflect an independent international investigation" into allegations of war crimes by government forces during the final phase of the fighting.
Few Tamils are impressed by Rajapaksa's promises of reconciliation, with many saying there is scant reconciliation in what the government has been doing in Tamil areas over the past year. For instance, they point to armed forces systematically bulldozing LTTE cemeteries in the north as well as the homes and offices of LTTE leaders, including those of Prabhakaran. The government has also started erecting "victory monuments" commemorating at various locations in the north.
This has the potential to spark anger against the state, since the fighters buried in the cemeteries are also the relatives of the living. The graves played an important role in the LTTE's building of a martyrs' cult, no doubt. But they also helped many Tamils come to terms with their grief.
The government is reportedly building Buddhist shrines in the predominantly Hindu north and building permanent housing for the families of the tens of thousands of troops - overwhelmingly Sinhalese - who fought there. This has underscored fears among Tamils that the government, alongside its military occupation, is bent on altering the demography and religio-cultural identity of their land.
"The regime needs to take urgent measures to alleviate the sense of alienation felt by Tamils, a task that requires political action rather than infrastructure development," wrote noted political commentator Tisaranee Gunasekara. "The current Rajapaksa policy of treating the north as occupied enemy territory should end. There should be a significant reduction in army camps and army presence, as well as an end to what many Tamils seem to regard as a state-sponsored religio-cultural invasion of the north by Sinhalese Buddhists."
May peace come to the lives of Tamils. Hope to see change in common Sinhalese' attitude, though the government is unfortunately again the same genocide-spree Rajapakse's :(
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