M A I N   N E W S

NEWS ANALYSIS
Teardrop island in trouble
S.D. Muni

SRI Lanka has plunged into a deep political crisis. President Chandrika Kumaratunga has sacked four Ministers belonging to the Parliamentary majority party and taken their portfolios of defence, interior, information and finance into her own hands. These ministers have been allowed to retain their other portfolios and remain members of Prime Minister Renil Wickeremasinghe’s Cabinet. The President has also imposed emergency, suspended Parliament for two weeks and tightened security around public installations. In all these moves, the President is well within her constitutional powers under Sri Lanka’s unique Constitution of Executive Presidency. She herself is also a directly elected President.

She has explained these moves on the basis of threats to national security. For a long time, she has not been happy with the way the Wickremesinghe government has been dealing with the Tamil Tigers and the peace process, initiated in February, 2002. Her contention is that this process has allowed the LTTE to consolidate itself militarily. The LTTE has continued to collect taxes, procure arms, killed the cadres of non-LTTE and Muslim parties and set up new military posts without conceding any thing in return. For the past eight months the LTTE has also disengaged itself from negotiations, without disrupting the peace process. The President has also accused the Norwegian facilitators and other members of the international community involved in the peace process, as being soft on the LTTE. According to her the Wickremasinghe government has also been dealing gently with the LTTE arguing that this would stabilize peace in the Island and help him to politically marginalize his opponent, Mrs Kumaratunga and her Peoples’ Alliance. Emboldened by such soft approaches, the LTTE in the latest proposals for an Interim Administration has virtually put forth a blue print of separate State.

The Wickremasinghe government has also been in some ways conceding that the security situation was shifting in favour of the LTTE. To ward against any sudden outbreak of hostilities by the LTTE, the Wickremasinghe government has been talking of the “international safety net”. There were reports of the Prime Minister assuring his close associates that if the LTTE broke the ceasefire, friendly countries would come to his assistance. There were reports of Indian security officials visiting Jaffna to advise the Sri Lankan security forces on beefing up their defences in Pallai base. There were also reports of American peace corps volunteers being deputed in the Tamil dominated Northeast region to deter the LTTE from taking any precipitate action. It was perhaps in this context that Prime Minister Renil Wickremasinghe also proposed to have a separate defence cooperation agreement with India during his visit to India last month. There were indications that he was discussing defence and security matters with the Bush administration during his current visit to the US.

It is therefore clear that the concerns for security, unity and her political future have moved President Kumaratunga to take these drastic actions. Tactically, she has reiterated her commitment to the peace process and assured that the ceasefire agreement with the LTTE is in operation. She has also expressed the desire to talk to the LTTE for a negotiated settlement of the ethnic issue, though perhaps, not on the basis of LTTE’s present proposals. It may be useful to recall here that in 2002, when her party had a majority in Parliament, She had evolved a package of devolution of power to the Tamils based on mutual consultations with the then opposition party (the UNP) of Wickremasinghe.

The UNP then naturally did not want to let President Kumaratunga run away with the credit of resolving the Tamil issue.

President Kumaratunga’s present move is in a way a revenge on the UNP. Her actions have ended the uneasy “co-habitation” between the two opposing centres of power in Sri Lanka, which the Constitution enacted by the late UNP President Jayawardane had not envisaged.

These actions have indeed sharpened political battle lines in Sri Lanka. The Prime Minister has strongly reacted to her moves by describing them as “opportunistic” and “an attempt to subvert the mandate”. He has claimed that he has the support of the majority of parliament members. The coming days will therefore, see a fierce political manoeuvring on the part of both the President and the Prime Minister to ensure a parliamentary majority on their side. If the President succeeds in winning UNP MPs to her side, she will have a new government.

If she fails, she might move further to dissolve Parliament and go in for fresh elections.

Such elections will be fought by the President on the issue of security and national unity, and by the Prime Minister on the prospects of peace and stability.

Eventually, only the wisdom of the Sri Lankan people will decide what to chose, and accordingly resolve the present political crisis. India needs to watch the situation closely as its long term implications will affect not only bilateral relations with Sri Lanka but also India’s own security and stability.

 — The writer is Professor, School of International Studies, JNU, New Delhi.