POLITICS-SRI LANKA: Snap Poll Set as Parliament is Dissolved

By Feizal Samath Reprint | | Print |

Feizal Samath

COLOMBO, Oct 11 2001 (IPS) - Sri Lankan President Chandrika Kumaratunga, worried about losing a crucial no-faith vote in parliament on Thursday, dissolved parliament and called for a snap poll in December.

Smarting after 12 parliamentarians of a government coalition dramatically switched sides, the president dissolved parliament with immediate effect and called for nominations from Oct. 20-27 for the Dec. 5 poll, a government announcement said.

The new parliament will open on New Year’s Day – January 1, 2002, it added.

Kumaratunga’s desperate move ended months of uncertainty since June when a key government ally crossed over to opposition ranks, severely weakening the ruling People’s Alliance (PA).

Political analysts said the icing on the cake, however, came when three former senior ministers — G.L. Peiris, S.B. Dissanayake and Mahinda Wijesekera — joined a group of eight MPs who defected to the opposition during a parliamentary session on Wednesday.

This occurred on the eve of the no-confidence motion against the government proposed by the main opposition United National Party (UNP) which was to be debated on Thursday. Until Tuesday, both the PA and the UNP exuded confidence of either defeating or succeeding in the vote.

But by Wednesday evening, the government was in tatters as the crossovers occurred and another influential minister, Arumugam Thondaman, leader of the Ceylon Workers’ Congress (CWC) sent in his resignation to the president. Analysts said Thondaman and his two other MPs in parliament had signalled that they would support the UNP-led motion.

This, analysts noted, meant the opposition UNP — which has 88 MPs in parliament — had been able to muster the support of little over 113 MPs while the ruling party struggled to retain its numbers ahead of the crucial vote.

Jehan Perera, a well-known political analyst and media director at the National Peace Council (NPC), an NGO trying to end the conflict through peace, said the UNP is now likely to mass a coalition of pro-peace forces against the PA and its new ally, the Marxist People’s Liberation Front (JVP).

“It is difficult to predict the outcome of the election but it appears the UNP has the edge and are in a far better position to pull off victory with a coalition force than in October 2000,” he said, adding that the UNP will promise to end the war and revive the tottering economy.

Sri Lanka’s economic growth or GDP is set to fall sharply this year and current estimates by the Central Bank range from 2 percent to below 1 percent against 6 percent in 2000 and 4.3 percent a year earlier year.

The economy has been hit by a U.S. recession, which badly bruised the country’s number one export — garments, a drought, crippling power cuts and the secessionist war.

Prospects of an UNP-led government boosted Colombo stocks with the benchmark CSE all share index gaining by 19.8 points to close at 430.8 on Wednesday. The Milanka index, which has a basket of the top 25 companies, rose even more sharply by 48.4 points to 673.7 on Wednesday. On Tuesday, the Milanka was up 25.5 points to close at 625.3.

Colombo stocks have been in the doldrums for many months, hit by bearish trends due to the 18-year old Tamil separatist revolt and gloomy economic conditions. The UNP is seen as a more business-friendly regime.

Sri Lanka’s political crisis has worsened since June and has been little affected by the Katunayake airport attacks in July or the terrorist bombings in the United States last month, though both incidents have severely dented the economy.

Perera said the peace process, in which Norway is playing a key role as a facilitator, would once again be put on the backburner till January at least while the election period is on. “Peace always gets a hit in a political crisis.”

More than 60,000 people have died in the ethnic conflict since 1983. Several rounds of talks between the rebels and the government have failed in the past.

“The president had no choice than call a snap poll as things are getting out of control for her,” said Suraj Dandeniya, president of the Association of Licensed Foreign Employment Agencies (ALFEA), which has also recently issued calls for a peaceful resolution of the conflict.

ALFEA is responsible for finding jobs for thousands of Sri Lankans in the Middle East which hosts close to a million Sri Lankan migrant workers.

Among Wednesday’s defectors, S.B. Dissanayake was one of Kumaratunga’s most trusted aides until a few months ago when he fell out with the president over differences of opinion on how to govern the country. Peiris is the former constitutional affairs minister, a former vice chancellor of the Colombo University and a widely-respected academic.

Kumaratunga has been under increasing political pressure since June when the Sri Lanka Muslim Congress quit the government in a tiff with the president, propelling the then lackadaisical opposition into action.

The president countered UNP moves to oust the government through a no-confidence motion by proroguing parliament for a two-month period till September. She also clinched a deal with the JVP, soliciting the support of their 10 MPs in the legislature in return for cutting state spending and wiping out corruption.