By Feizal Samath
COLOMBO, Apr 4 2004 (IPS)

Sri Lanka’s new government is set to restart peace talks with the Tamil Tiger rebels, in a shaky process that has been complicated by a split in rebel ranks but now also has to pay equal attention to rural poverty and economic issues.

President Chandrika Kumaratunga’s United People’s Freedom Alliance (UPFA) is set to form the next government after the party’s landslide victory at Friday’s parliamentary poll over the United National Front (UNF) led by her rival, Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe.

Despite an UNF-led peace process that has resulted in a truce between government troops and Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) for more than two years, voters threw out the UNF due to its failure to tackle domestic economic woes.

The UPFA won 105 seats in parliament, but was still short of a working majority of 113 seats in the 225-seat legislature. The UNF secured 82 seats. In the December 2001 poll, the UNF won 109 seats against 93 by Kumaratunga’s party and its allies.

Final results showed the UPFA getting 46 percent of votes, the UNF 38 percent. The Tamil National Alliance, supported by the Tiger rebels, got seven percent of the votes and a group of Buddhist monks contesting for the first time under the National Heritage Party (NHP), six percent.

After months of political instability brought into the open by Kumaratunga’s firing of several of Wickremesinghe’s Cabinet members last year, analysts say they expect the new government to buckle to down to work.

One of the new government’s priorities is to restart the peace talks suspended by the Tigers since April 2003, confirmed Wimal Weerawansa, propaganda secretary of the Marxist People’s Liberation Front, known by its local acronym JVP. It is one of two main constituent parties in the UPFA.

Kumaratunga, whose Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP) is the other mainstream party in the alliance, is expected to declare a new framework for peace negotiations soon.

The peace process under Wickremesinghe cracked partly due to Kumaratunga’s persistent complaints that the government was giving in too much to the demands of the Tigers.

The rebels have said they are prepared to discuss a peaceful settlement of the ethnic conflict – they have been waging a two-decade-old war for a Tamil homeland in this majority Sinhalese nation – with any government that has majority support.

The rebel-backed TNA said on Sunday that it was unlikely to join any of the two main parties, dashing the hopes of Wickremesinghe who is desperately trying to cobble together a coalition government despite having far less numbers that Kumaratunga.

Horsetrading peaked on Sunday, as the alliance and the UNF were talking to the TNA, the JHP and smaller parties that gained seats in parliament and have the power to decide who becomes the main political force in parliament.

A revival of the peace talks will also have to take into consideration the split in the LTTE in recent months, after a renegade leader set up an independent militant outfit.

”How does one handle Karuna (the renegade leader) is one of the problems that the new government will confront,” Loganathan said. Karuna, the LTTE’s former powerful leader in the east and a member of the rebels’ negotiating team, has asked Norwegian facilitators to consider him a separate partner in peace negotiations.

Loganathan reckons that the next six months will see the ceasefire holding, the new government using Norway to work out a fresh approach to the peace process and secure more guarantees and assurances. Wickremesinghe’s UNF had been criticised for following a policy of appeasing the rebels and bowing to their demands.

The UNF’s poor showing at the Apr. 2 poll surprised political analysts and Colombo’s elite classes who expected Wickremesinghe to succeed after driving a fairly successful peace process.

In the end, Loganathan said, the ruling party failed because of its ”urban bias” in the peace process and development, noting that the party took the rural sector for granted. Investment and development was essentially targeted toward urban communities, and ”they (UNF) had hoped this would trigger a trickle down effect to benefit lower segments of the population,” he added.

Looking back, the ruling party was unable turn the peace dividend into development and the creation of more jobs in impoverished areas in Sri Lanka, particularly the south, analysts say.

This is manifested in some poll results. For instance, the Monaragala district, the poorest region in Sri Lanka, and the entire southern region voted against the UNF, which has been under pressure to reduce rising costs of living.

Sarath Fernando, coordinator of a large group of farmers and peasants, said the people had voted for change after losing faith in the two main political parties led by Kumaratunga and Wickremesinghe.

The desire for change may also be evident in the fact that the Marxist JVP topped the preference votes in most districts against the more-fancied SLFP and UNF candidates. The JVP benefited from its alliance with a mainstream party, the SLFP.

A former rebel group that failed to oust two governments in revolts in 1971 and 1988, the JVP wants the cabinet portfolios of agriculture, industry and welfare. It wants to leave Kumaratunga and her aides to handle the peace process.

Fernando said the new government should not allow World Bank and the International Monetary Fund policies to dictate terms in the development process. ”There is a need for a vibrant civil society to ensure that the government works out a reforms package with the two institutions that would first benefit rural people – not big business groups,” he said.

But whether the two rival forces – Wickremesinghe and Kumaratunga – can work together is uncertain. While the new government will be under pressure to settle the ethnic conflict, it is unlikely to get the support it needs from Wickremesinghe’s party in opposition, even though the latter is keen on peace.

”The political culture would make it difficult for the ruling party because the opposition priority would now oppose anything that the ruling party does,” Loganathan said. ”That has been the case when both the SLFP and the UNF were in power.”

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