SRI LANKA: The crisis is fueled by rivalry between a president nearing the end of her tenure and a prime minister with a wafer thin majority, writes Rahul Bedi.
Sri Lanka's political turmoil is fuelling the daunting spectre of fresh elections - the third in four years - and stalling of the tentative peace process with the Tamil Tiger rebels.
It is feared that President Chandrika Kumaratunga's unexpected move of imposing an emergency after sacking three ministers and suspending parliament might push political protest onto the streets.
Analysts apprehend that the resultant uncertainty, in turn, may trigger a resumption of the debilitating civil war with the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam that has spelt the ruination for the island republic for nearly two decades, claiming over 65,000 lives.
And though Ms Kumaratunga, known for her hard line against the Tigers, in a nationwide television address declared her willingness to enter into negotiations with the rebels, her Sri Lanka Freedom Party has rejected the Tigers' controversial proposal to head an interim administration in the Tamil dominated northeast, pending the outcome of the talks.
The offer from the Tigers came eight months after it broke off peace talks on grounds that the government was not doing enough to resettle refugees and to redevelop war ravaged Tamil areas.
"I remain willing to discuss [with the Tamil Tigers\] a just and balanced solution of the national problem, within the parameters of the unity, territorial integrity and sovereignty of Sri Lanka," she said on Tuesday night without elaborating.
Ms Kumaratunga, who lost her right eye in an assassination attempt in 1999, has always pursued an ambiguous approach to peace talks with the rebels. She claims credit for having invited Norway to help bring Tamil Tiger guerrillas to the negotiating table, but her conciliatory moves were placed on hold in April 2001 after renewed fighting erupted in the island's north in which the Sri Lankan army suffered severe setbacks.
Prime minister Ranil Wickremesinghe whose United National Party defeated Ms Kumaratunga's Sri Lankan Freedom party and assumed power 23 months ago, revived the Oslo-led initiative. But ever since, Ms Kumaratunga has been highly critical of Mr Wickremesinghe's handling of the process. She has also accused the US and Japan of trying to "reward terrorism" by attending an aid pledging conference in Oslo last November and charged Norway with overstepping its brief.
The president criticized Wickremesinghe for lifting the 1998 ban on the Tigers, entering into a truce with it without her approval and allowing the rebels to import sophisticated radio equipment. "If a doctor is not treating the patient well and is trying to kill the patient, isn't it the duty of the doctor's boss to sack him? That is the question that I ask myself," Ms Kumaratunga declared at the time. And in May, she signaled that she might dismiss the government for granting too many concessions to the Tigers.
And though the Tigers, for their part, have declared they remain committed to the peace process and the February 2002 ceasefire, the leadership is bound to be riddled by doubt as Ms Kumaratunga is the new defence minister after Mr Tilak Marapana was sacked on Tuesday.
Besides, for Ms Kumaratunga, the daughter of two prime ministers, running Sri Lanka is a "family business". But unfortunately she is embroiled in a bitter struggle to survive as she faces a political dead-end, unable to offer herself for re-election after December 2005 as she would by then have completed two terms allowed by the constitution.
One way out would be for her to re-write the constitution, but that would require a two-thirds majority in the legislature which she may muster with the help of hard-line Marxists or by calling snap elections. Prime minister Wickremesinghe's party enjoys a wafer thin majority of two in the 225-member parliament.
Directly voted to office, Ms Kumaratunga is constitutionally empowered to sack ministers and possibly even the government whose six year term ends in 2007. If she travels down that route for reasons of personal ambition, it could have serious repercussions for the republic already badly scarred by war.