Chandrika's challenge

The People's Alliance coalition government loses its parliamentary majority, leaving Sri Lanka poised on the edge of political uncertainty.

WHEN the People's Alliance (P.A.) coalition of President Chandrika Kumaratunga was re-elected to power in Sri Lanka in October 2000, the insufficient mandate made it necessary for her to tie up with two other parties outside the coalition to put together a parliamentary majority and form a government.

If the coalition itself, made up as it is of disparate parties like the Sinhala hardline Mahajana Eksath Peramuna, the pro-Indian Tamil Ceylon Workers' Congress and the leftist Lanka Sama Samaja Party, seemed fragile, its dependence on two other parties made it even more so, and pundits predicted an early collapse of the whole edifice.

That prediction has almost come true now. The P.A. government has been reduced to a minority in Parliament after one of its partners, the Sri Lanka Muslim Congress (SLMC), withdrew support to it on June 20.

Sensing an opportunity to unseat the P.A., the Opposition United National Party (UNP) immediately submitted a no-confidence motion against the government that is to come up for debate in July, and Sri Lanka is once again poised on the edge of political uncertainty.

The SLMC's walk-out was, in a sense, expected from the time it joined the government and the only surprise is that it did not come sooner. In the 2000 parliamentary elections, the P.A. won 100 of the 225 parliamentary seats, but fell short, by 13, of a simple majority in the House. While the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP) with 10 seats refused to play ball, the Eelam People's Democratic Party (EPDP), with its strong views against the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), was the first to offer itself with its five members.

The Sri Lanka Muslim Congress (SLMC), which had just a few days earlier lost its founder, M.H.M. Ashraff, played a little harder to get under its new leader, Rauff Hakeem. The party had 11 seats, and Hakeem was suddenly the king-maker.

Finally, when the articulate 42-year-old lawyer did relent in favour of the P.A., after a little footsie-play with the main Opposition United National Party (UNP), which had 89 seats, he had managed to extract what seemed like an awful lot: two Cabinet berths, three deputy ministerships and a raft of other appointments in government. Hakeem even managed to add one more to his long list of portfolios by not turning up at the swearing-in.

With Hakeem on its side, the government had 116 seats, which gave it a majority of four in Parliament. But there was a hex on the partnership from the beginning. For all the concessions he got out of Kumaratunga, Hakeem was still fuming over alleged election irregularities by a senior member of the P.A. in his electoral district of Kandy. To add insult to injury, the P.A. not only did not take any action against the alleged culprit, but seemed to reaffirm its faith in him by giving him an important portfolio that he had held in the government's previous term.

Within days of the formation of the new government, Hakeem, the Minister of Internal and International Trade and Commerce, Muslim Religious Affairs and Shipping Development, put it on a 100-day notice. Within that time, he said, it would have to set up an independent election commission so that irregularities such as he had witnessed could be prevented, as well as form commissions for the police, media and the judiciary, or else...

The 100 days passed, and Kumaratunga seemed to have placated Hakeem by giving instructions for a parliamentary select committee to look into the issue of the independent commissions, and making the SLMC leader the chairman of the committee.

No one could have foreseen then that four months later, a brawl over payment for cigarettes in Mawanella, a small town in central Sri Lanka, that led to an ugly communal riot in which the mainly Muslim traders of the town were the worst hit, would add fresh strains to the already tense relationship between the P.A. and the SLMC. A Deputy Minister, who is also the Sri Lanka Freedom Party heavyweight of the area, was alleged to be behind the rioting in which two people were killed, many wounded and a number of shops and other property destroyed. The rioting had its echoes in the capital Colombo too, forcing the government to clamp dusk-to-dawn curfew on May 4. The UNP, which has a large Muslim constituency of its own, moved a motion of no-confidence against the Deputy Minister, and the SLMC declared it would back the motion.

Another matter for tension between the SLMC and the P.A. was President's Kumaratunga's rejection of the demand for carving out a Muslim majority administrative district in eastern Sri Lanka, comprising Kalmunai, Pottuvil and Sammanthurai in Ampara district. Instead, Kumaratunga announced the upgrading of Kalmunai town alone to a municipality.

In mid-June Hakeem went public with his list of complaints against the P.A. "It is not just one issue, it is a chain of events that has made the SLMC's support to the government difficult to justify to our supporters," he said at a press conference hours after a long meeting with Kumaratunga. At that meeting, he revealed, he had told Kumaratunga that the P.A. would not have been in power had there been an independent election commission at the time of the last parliamentary elections.

Alongside his battle with the P.A., Hakeem was also fighting to retain control of the SLMC. His rival, Ferial Ashraff, is the widow of the party's founder and has nursed a grudge against Hakeem for sidelining her and taking over the party after her husband's death in a helicopter crash just before the elections. But behind the ambitions of his mentor's wife, Hakeem suspects Kumaratunga's hand, and has accused her of trying to weaken his leadership and break the party.

It was at the same press conference that Hakeem warned Kumaratunga not to "mess" with the SLMC. Three days later, on the night of June 19, Kumaratunga sacked him from the Cabinet, perhaps based on a gamble that this would isolate him within an already divided SLMC and that Ashraff would automatically take over the party, and prove a more cooperative partner for the P.A. than Hakeem.

But it was poor political judgment. The party stood by Hakeem, with all those in ministerial and other positions, including Ashraff, giving in their resignations the next day. As if seeking approval for his actions, Hakeem visited the grave of the SLMC founder at a mosque in Colombo, while his widow and Hakeem's arch rival waited in a car outside. The two then stood side-by-side outside the mosque as Hakeem made an impromptu statement, declaring himself "relieved" to be no longer part of a government that had no mandate to rule.

But while Ashraff too said she stood by his decision, it was evident that the tensions within the SLMC continued. When Hakeem crossed over to the Opposition benches in Parliament that afternoon, only six other MPs of the party accompanied him, while Ashraff and three others continued to sit on the government benches. The soft-spoken Ashraff said later there was no reason for her to topple the P.A. government at this stage.

Ashraff's continued support to the government did not, however, alter the big picture. A government that had a majority of four was now in a minority with only 109 MPs on its side. The UNP drove in its advantage and quickly submitted its no-confidence motion.

Apart from the signatures of 88 UNP members (one member, Anura Bandaranaike, is the Speaker, and was therefore not eligible to sign), the motion bore the names of eight Tamil MPs: five of the Tamil United Liberation Front (TULF), three Tamil Eelam Liberation Organisation (TELO) and one All Ceylon Tamil Congress.

TULF vice-president and parliamentarian V. Anandasangaree said his party had lost hope that the P.A. government was serious about starting talks with the LTTE to solve the conflict, and that the sidelining of the Norwegian facilitator Erik Solheim was the last straw for Tamils. He said the TULF was hopeful that when the UNP formed the government it would call an immediate ceasefire with the LTTE, lift the economic embargo on areas held by the LTTE and begin the peace process from where it has stalled at the moment.

But will there be a UNP government? The answer to this lies with the JVP. In order to decide its next moves, the party held a marathon politburo meeting that began in the afternoon of June 23 and lasted into the early hours of the next day. It later released a statement blasting both the P.A. and the UNP as capitalist-imperialist parties, leaving no one any wiser as to which way it would tilt on the no-confidence motion. The party said it had empowered its parliamentary group to decide its course of action during the debate on the motion.

The JVP has been distinctly anti-P.A. and most of the people who voted for it are disgruntled P.A. supporters, especially the rural poor who have been the hardest hit by the country's economic crisis. But for this reason alone, the JVP may find it difficult to embrace the UNP, which, when it was the party in power, decimated its cadres ruthlessly, killed its leader and reduced it to ashes.

Also, the UNP's brothers-in-arms in the no-confidence motion are the Tamil parties, and perhaps the Hakeem-led section of the SLMC, though this too has yet to decide its stand. The JVP has already expressed its opposition to some of the demands of the Tamil parties, such as the lifting of the ban on the LTTE. It is also opposed to what it describes as Hakeem's "communal" politics.

For the government it is not necessary that the JVP should vote against the motion. It is sufficient if the party merely abstains, as a no-confidence vote is passed by a simple majority of members present and voting.

But if the UNP is to push through the motion successfully, it needs the JVP to vote with the motion and the support of at least three other MPs, so that it can cross the P.A.'s 109 mark.

Additionally, it needs to ensure that even if Hakeem and his flock of six MPs, who are being non-committal about their support for the motion right now, do not want to vote with the UNP, they must at least abstain.

The Constitution bars the dissolution of Parliament for one year from the date of the last parliamentary elections, which, in this case is October 10. There have been suggestions from the government that in order to get over the crisis, the P.A. and the UNP should come together in a "national government". A meeting between the President and Opposition leader Ranil Wickremesinghe on the day the no-confidence motion was submitted, generated much speculation on the possibility of such a government being formed.

But a highly confident UNP has rejected both the suggestion and the speculation, and instead put out an invitation to "individual" P.A. members to join hands with it in a "government of national reconciliation". The party's numbers managers even claim to have a few members of the government waiting to cross over at the appropriate moment.

Such a government will be a "short term" measure till the UNP can put in place the independent commissions that it has promised, so that the next elections can be held after the "restoration" of democracy in the country, party leaders say.

But then again, if the UNP's no-confidence motion is successful, what is the guarantee that President Kumaratunga will allow an Opposition government to function? Under the Constitution, the President is all-powerful, and can ensure that the government is a lame duck. To that, the Opposition riposte is that Parliament can block the financial allocation to the President, and thus neutralise Kumaratunga. That sounds like a sure recipe for a political deadlock.

For now, the Constitution offers one escape route for Kumaratunga, and that is the suspension of Parliament for up to 60 days. One of Kumaratunga's predecessors, Ranasinghe Premadasa, took recourse to this option to tackle an impeachment motion against him, and used the two-month reprieve to break his opponents. There is speculation that Kumaratunga too may choose to prorogue Parliament, stall the no-confidence motion, and in the meantime, make new friends and strike new alliances. Kumaratunga's sudden departure from the country on June 27 to an undisclosed destination after handing over the powers and functions of her office to Prime Minister Ratnasiri Wickremanayake seemed to have added to the uncertainties.

WHATEVER Kumaratunga now chooses to do, the political turmoil has pushed the peace process to the backburner. The process for negotiations, adrift after the Solheim controversy, is likely to remain that way till the two main political groupings in Sri Lanka sort out their own battle. But it might be a mistake to assume that the peace process will gallop along rapidly after this crisis is settled.

If anything, the drama being enacted is likely to make a political settlement of the ethnic conflict even more difficult. The crisis has highlighted the dependence of the two political parties on the Muslim and Tamil minorities for their survival, raising demands from hardline Sinhalese that minority political parties should be sidelined.

In such a situation, the next election, which could be as early as this year, might well be fought on an ultra-Sinhalese platform, with both the P.A. and the UNP asking majority community voters to give them a proper mandate so that they do not have to be dependent on the minorities. From its point of view, the LTTE could ask for nothing better.