POLITICS-SRI LANKA: Kumaratunga Wins Face-off with Opposition

By Feizal Samath Reprint | | Print |

Feizal Samath

COLOMBO, Jan 20 2000 (IPS) - Main opposition leader Ranil Wickremasinghe’s surprise offer of support to Sri Lankan President Chandrika Kumaratunga is the best chance the government has to push through a plan to resolve the ethnic conflict.

In a letter to the president, Jan. 19, Wickremasinghe, who lost to Kumaratunga in the presidential polls last month, said his United National Party (UNP) was prepared to provide conditional support to her constitutional reforms package.

The proposed peace plan has been held up since 1997 by the government’s failure to mobilise the support of two-thirds of members of Parliament (MPs) needed to enact laws.

“It is our position that (your) course of action is not the solution to this problem. But since you do not have another solution we will not stand in the way of the course of action you intend to adopt,” he wrote.

Wednesday’s surprise development capped weeks of political uncertainty here, ever since the elections on Dec. 21 returned an injured Kumaratunga to power for a second time. The president narrowly escaped an assassination attempt in Colombo, Dec. 18.

A bitter Kumaratunga has been publicly lashing out at the opposition, the media and the Tamil separatist militants, Liberation Tigers for Tamil Eelam (LTTE) — seeing a conspiracy against herself and her People’s Alliance government.

In recent weeks, several people including the Tamil wife of a top Colombo banker and two journalists from a private television station have been questioned in connection with a conspiracy to kill the president, police said.

State media have reported that investigators were probing a possible connection between the UNP, some businessmen, some officers of the army, two newspaper editors and Tamil rebels in the alleged plot.

Colombo is a city under siege. Security has been very tight since the failed assassination bid on the president. Intelligence reports claim 10 suicide-bombers — rebels strapped with explosives — have infiltrated Colombo and sensitive areas.

On Monday, city police said they defused a letter bomb sent to the president.

“My own perception is that there is a state of chaos that exists now,” says senior journalist A. Sivanesachelvam, a senior editor with the Tamil-language daily, ‘Thinakkural’.

“Her recent outburst against the media and political opponents has further distanced the government and other sections,” he asserts.

Colombo-based political observers believe the opposition leader, Wickremasinghe, is trying to pre-empt a proposed bill, permitting MPs to switch party’s, which is due to be legislated on in the first week of February.

“Ranil’s (Wickremasinghe’s) position has been weakened in the party by his recent election defeat and he may be further worried that more MPs from the UNP will cross over to government ranks once the bill is in place,” noted an Asian diplomat.

“The next few weeks are going to be interesting. The UNP offer would depend on how Kumaratunga responds. There is a lot of bad blood between the two and it is difficult to predict how they would make up,” the diplomat added.

The opposition has repeatedly refused to support the government’s peace plan. The reforms are aimed at providing regional autonomy to the minority Tamils and end a 17-year civil war led by the LTTE for an independent state, they call ‘Eelam’.

Analysts say Kumaratunga is preparing to move the “cross-over or defection” bill to bolster her position in Parliament. The People’s Alliance had won over a number of dissident UNP MPs to its side in the run-up to the December poll.

Analysts expect the president to call for fresh parliamentary elections in the coming weeks. Sri Lanka has an executive presidency, but the government needs the authority of Parliament to make laws.

Kumaratunga has also rubbed the independent media the wrong way. “She is trying to neutralise the free media ahead of the parliamentary election,” warned one newspaper editor in the wake of the crack-down on the media.

“Rulers who feel that God is on their side tend to get carried away with the notion that everything they say or do is right, and that everyone who has an opposing view is somehow wrong,” said the widely-read ‘Sunday Times’ in an editorial,

Jan. 9.

Waruna Karunatillake, convenor of the Free Media Movement (FMM), the country’s top media rights group, warned the media won’t be frightened by “amateurish attempts” by the government to link it to an alleged conspiracy to kill the president.

“The government is engaged in a desperate move to silence the independent media before general elections,” he told a news conference. Parliamentary polls are not due until August 2000.

Wickremasinghe’s unexpected offer of support to Kumaratunga could ease the tension.