By Feizal Samath
COLOMBO, Nov 4 2003 (IPS)

The firing by Sri Lankan President Chandrika Kumaratunga Tuesday of three ministers has triggered a major constitutional uproar, but is unlikely to upset the peace process and a 20-month long ceasefire, analysts here say.

Defence Minister Tilak Marapana, Interior Minister John Amaratunga and Media Minister Imtiaz Bakeer Markar were removed from their posts under constitutional powers vested in the president.

The move, which stunned many Sri Lankans, came hours before Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe was due to meet U.S. President George W Bush in Washington.

“This is shocking news,” said Jehan Perera, media director at the National Peace Council (NPC), a privately funded peace promoter.

The dismissals add to the perception of more political instability in Sri Lanka, where Kumaratunga and Wickremesinghe have long had differences over the peace process in the past few years.

The peace process that began in September 2002 continues, but the Tamil Tiger rebels suspended participation in April and said that progress was too slow. However, talks are expected to start next month.

Meantime, Kumaratunga has swiftly moved to take charge at the three ministries, appointing her confidantes as permanent secretaries to the institutions. News reports say she is planning a major shake-up in the departments that come under defence, media and interior.

She ordered troops stationed at state television stations and at the government printing press.

Her moves were triggered by widely published proposals made by Tamil rebels at the weekend on the formation of an interim administration in the north-east region, where majority of Tamils live in this South Asian island nation.

The rebels, formally known as the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, said they wanted to lead an Interim Self Governing Authority (ISGA) with autonomous powers – if necessary outside the country’s constitution – to rule the north-east for five years. Elections would then be held afterwards.

In the structure they propose for an interim administration, the Tigers want wide powers over raising revenues and the imposition of taxes, and over land and law and order. They also want to have the power to negotiate foreign aid.

NPC’s Perera said Kumaratunga’s reactions in the wake of the Tigers’ announcement were not warranted by conditions on the ground. After all, he said, this was the first time they have made proposals for a negotiated political settlement to end the 20-year long ethnic conflict – and these deserve to at least be discussed.

“This is very unfortunate since the LTTE step was welcomed by the international community led by the United States,” he added in an interview.

The sacking of the three ministers means an end to a shaky cohabitation between Wickremesinghe’s United National Party (UNP), which was elected to power in December 2001, and Kumaratunga, who was elected separately in 2000 while leading the then ruling People’s Alliance coalition.

Kumaratunga had also expressed unhappiness about the way the military and the police were being run and had reprimanded the ministers, all Wickremesinghe’s nominees.

But Kethish Loganathan, director of the Peace and Conflict Unit at the Centre for Policy Alternatives (CPA), said he did not expect the peace process to be shattered by the latest political divisions.

“In any case peace talks were only likely to resume next month to discuss the proposals made by Tamil rebels,” he said.

There was no immediate reaction from the LTTE to the latest developments. But public support for the peace process, despite concerns over the LTTE strengthening its forces and taking control in the north-east, remains high.

This is given the fact that the ceasefire has been the longest so far. The absence of war has also yielded dividends in the form of economic stimulus and freer movement of people in the war-torn north and the east, areas that were once closed to the public.

Although Kumaratunga well knows that there is massive international support for the peace process and has said she supports a negotiated settlement, her Sri Lanka Freedom Party in a statement Tuesday said the rebels’ proposal for an interim administration would violate the constitution because it would break up the state.

It said it viewed “with grave concern the proposals released by the LTTE for the establishment of an Interim Self-Governing Authority which lays the legal foundation for a future, separate, sovereign state”.

Kumaratunga was in the fact the one who invited Norway to help initiate peace talks in 1999, but failed to push through the initiative due to an escalation in the fighting.

When Wickremesinghe’s UNP took power in December 2001, he cut a deal with the rebels and launched Sri Lanka’s most successful peace effort so far since the rebels stepped up their campaign in 1983 for a separate state for minority Tamils.

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