President of Sri Lanka Chandrika Kumaratunga was re-elected by people in December 1999 while Prime Minister Ranil Wickramasinghe obtained majority in the Parliamentary elections in December 2001. They belong to rival political parties that have deep-rooted animosity towards each other for a long time. These two mainstream political parties assumed power almost alternately since the 1960s.

Furthermore Sri Lanka's President is not a titular head under the Constitution and has been vested with powers with respect to defence and security of the country. The Constitution does not require the President to act on the advice of the Prime Minister. The powers of Sri Lanka's President are somewhat similar to those of the President of Bangladesh during the tenure of the non-party caretaker government.

Sri Lanka's Constitution may be compared with that of French Constitution where the President and the Prime Minister could be elected from rival political parties. In fact, from 1997 to 2002, President Jacques Chirac had to share power with Prime Minister Lionel Jospin from an opposition Socialist party. They "co-habited" politically and ran the government without obvious friction. People expected that the French model would be followed in Sri Lanka and hopefully there would be no political confrontation between the President and the Prime Minister of Sri Lanka. However that has not been the case.

The dismissal of three key ministers (defence, information and interior) from Wickramasinghe's government, suspension of the Parliament until November 19th, and the declaration of a 10-day state emergency by the President, while the Prime Minister was away in the US, stunned many people both inside and outside Sri Lanka. The President called out the army to secure government installations in the capital, Colombo. She explained that she exercised her powers within the ambit of the country's Constitution as she deemed fit and appropriate.

However on 7th November she withdrew draconian laws under emergency while the Prime Minister returned on the same day from the US. She also called upon all political parties to form a government of "national reconciliation" to tide over the political crisis.

The question is why did the President take such dramatic actions? There are many possible reasons and some of them appear to be as follows:

First, although the President's party, the People's Alliance (PA) secured 62 per cent of the vote in 1994 unseating the Prime Minister's party, United National (UN) after 17 years, PA lost in the December 2001 Parliamentary election and UN formed the government headed by Wickramasinghe. PA won 96 seats, while UN 129 seats in the 225-seat Parliament.

Second, in 1994, Kumaratunga won the election with a promise to restore peace in the country. Contacts were immediately made with Tamil Tiger leaders and the truce collapsed by April 1995. Both parties accused each other of being insincere and duplicitious in the negotiations. The attitude of her government towards the Tamil Tigers gradually became hardened and a series of attacks and counter-attacks followed between the security forces and the Tamil Tigers.

After the victory of UN alliance, Prime Minister Wickramasinghe was able to formally sign a cease fire agreement in February 2002, that opened the way for direct peace talks in the 20-year-old conflict that had seen some 70,000 people killed. The President was not comfortable with the situation and felt that the Prime Minister had been too soft with the Tamil Tigers.

Third, the President in her broadcast on 7th November made it clear that she delegated her powers on defence and security to the Prime Minister and the Prime Minister did not consult her on the peace-talks with Tamil Tigers. She resumed her executive powers in terms of the Constitution and wanted to have a say in the government including in the negotiations with Tamil Tigers as they related to security of the country. Furthermore she accused the government in neglecting the armed forces with necessary arms and equipment required to defend the sovereignty of the country. However the bottomline of her address was that her political party wanted to share power with the Wickramsinghe's UNP alliance in a government under a grand coalition of "national reconciliation".

Fourth, the President is aware that some key elements of security forces and Sinhalese including a section of Buddhist monks are opposed to the peace talks with the Tamil Tigers on a deal that will see full autonomy for the Tamil Tigers in the northern and eastern areas of the country. They consider such a deal by the Prime Minister a complete "sell out" of Sri Lanka's territorial integrity, unity and sovereignty. It is believed that she knows that her actions would find favourable with them.

Fifth, the confrontation came just days after the Tigers agreed to end an eight-month boycott of the peace talks and released a written blueprint for a "semi-independent" Tamil state, a plan which went well beyond Wickramasinghe's government proposals for Tamil autonomy under a new federal Constitution. The President thought that time was ripe to clamp down on the Wickramasinghe's government on questions of security and territorial integrity as she considered that the government had gone far enough to deal with the Tamil Tigers.

Sixth, President Kumaratuga sustained an eye injury in an assassination attempt on April 2000 at the hands of alleged Tamil Tigers. Obviously she cannot forget the ruthlessness Tamil Tigers to eliminate their political enemies. She did not approve the actions of the Prime Minister removing the ban on 6 September, 2002 on the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) and threatened to use her executive powers to sack the Cabinet. In order to forestall this move, the Wickramasinghe's government introduced for consideration an amendment to Sri Lanka's Constitution, removing the President's right to dismiss an elected government. The initiative to curtail the Presidential powers by the Prime Minister is believed to have infuriated the President.

Finally, President Kumaratunga's political career ends by December 2005 because she will be ineligible to contest an election in terms of the Constitution. Political observers believe that by adopting these actions she wants to bolster the standing of her party at the next election. In a national television address immediately after the state of emergency, it seems that the President wanted to keep a balance of her actions by affirming the ceasefire agreement of February, 2002 because the Tamil Tigers might suspend the ceasefire and resume their military offensive on civilians and government targets. The people of Sri Lanka are tired of violence and cry out for peace in the country. In that context any resumption of violence due to the President's actions would not go down well with the people.

Conclusion

The President took a big gamble politically to confront her political rival Prime Minister Wickramasinghe. As Sir Winston Churchill once said: " If you have an important point to make, don't try to be subtle or clever. Use a pile driver." It seems Sri Lanka's President heeded to this advice.

If the President does not come out on top of this power struggle, she is likely to face some resistance from an international community which has been interested in Sri Lanka's peace process with the Tamil Tigers. Britain, the US, China and India had expressed fears that the political confrontation might jeopardise the ceasefire agreement with the Tamil rebels.

Furthermore, Sri Lanka's economy including its tourism has picked up and has been doing well in last two years, the business people including tourist operators do not seem to be happy with the President's actions that saw the country's stock market fall and foreign investment and tourism are likely to stall in the present situation of political confrontation.

Meanwhile the Prime Minister returned on 7th November from the US and denounced the President's moves and vowed to fight what he described as an attempt to derail his efforts to negotiate peace. The 129 MPs of UNP alliance already are reported to have signed a letter to the President affirming their support for the Wickramsinghe's government. Political analysts believe that when the Parliament resumes on 19th November, the government will use its numbers either to bring impeachment proceedings against President Kumaratunga or move to force her to call a snap election. The world has to wait how the political game is eventually played out in the country.

Barrister Harun ur Rashid is a former Bangladesh Ambassador to the UN, Geneva.