THE SRI Lankan president Mahinda Rajapaksa has dissolved parliament, clearing the way for elections on April 8th.
Meanwhile his supporters yesterday clashed with those of apprehended opposition leader and former army chief Gen Sarath Fonseka in the streets of the capital, Colombo.
Government supporters hurled stones at opposition activists who were protesting at the arrest of Gen Fonseka, their defeated presidential candidate who was arrested by the military police on Monday on sedition charges. The general faces a court martial even though he resigned from the army last November.
The clashes took place outside Sri Lanka’s supreme court where Gen Fonseka’s supporters had gathered to protest at his arrest They said it was illegal and an attempt to intimidate them before April’s parliamentary elections.
Government supporters who were holding a counter rally threw rocks and chased away opposition demonstrators. Eyewitnesses said police did not intervene until opposition protesters fought back. Police then fired tear gas into the melee to break it up.
Undeterred, opposition protesters say they will launch a series of countrywide rallies.
Political analysts in Colombo said that by advancing parliamentary elections by two months, President Rakapaksa is hoping to capitalise on his presidential victory last month to increase the slim majority of his Freedom Alliance Party-led coalition in government.
Reports from Colombo say Mr Rajapaksa is hoping to secure a two-thirds parliamentary majority, giving him almost untrammelled control of the island republic.
Mr Rajapaksa had based his earlier presidential campaign on his government’s victory over the almost three-decade-long Tamil Tiger insurgency in northern and eastern Sri Lanka. It is widely anticipated in political circles that he will follow the same line in the parliamentary elections.