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A MAJOR SETBACK

THE FIRST CHALLENGE for a minority government in any democracy is to build bridges with other political parties in the interests of good governance and its own survival. The United People's Freedom Alliance that formed a minority government in Sri Lanka after the recent parliamentary elections has conspicuously failed to do this. The defeat of the UPFA candidate in the Speaker's election — its very first parliamentary test — was the result of a series of steps taken by the new government that showed little appreciation of its lack of a majority in Parliament, and had the net effect of putting off potential allies instead of winning them over. Foremost among these seems to have been the inability of the main constituents of the UPFA — the Sri Lanka Freedom Party and the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna — to agree on the distribution of portfolios. Their unseemly public bickering so early in what should have been a honeymoon period in government sent out the wrong signals. Promised a key Ministry before the election, the JVP, which played a big role in the UPFA win, expected President Chandrika Kumaratunga, the leader of the coalition, to keep her part of the bargain. The party was understandably disappointed with being let down. The ensuing cold war within the UPFA has given the impression of a coalition that cannot negotiate the demands of its own constituents, let alone outside allies.

Moreover, President Kumaratunga's decision to give priority to the task of changing the country's Constitution was not a well-judged gambit for winning friends. The 1978 Constitution is undeniably the root cause of many of Sri Lanka's political woes today, including the difficulties it places, through the proportional representation election system, for any party to win an outright majority in Parliament. But minority parties representing Tamils and Muslims view proportional representation as the only way to gain empowerment in a non-federal political system. The appointment of a committee by President Kumaratunga to work out a framework for a new Constitution that would bring in the first-past-the-post system and her promise to implement this change bypassing Parliament naturally caused disquiet among minority parties that could have helped the Government shore up a working majority. The UPFA also managed to antagonise the Jathika Hela Urumaya, a new party of Buddhist monks that has nine members in Parliament, by attempting to split it on the eve of the Speaker's election. In the event, it was not surprising that a candidate of the Opposition United National Party won the election by one vote. All in all, the new Government mismanaged an event of crucial importance for its future and that of the country, starting off its term in office on a note of uncertainty and bitter acrimony.

The divisive inauguration of the new Parliament will have its impact on the peace process with the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam. The LTTE has demanded that the Government open talks with it on the proposals it submitted last year for an "interim self-governing authority" in the North-East. In order to present a meaningful response that can thwart the LTTE's designs — evident in the proposals — of setting up a virtually separate state in the North-East without restarting the war, the UPFA Government will need the widest possible backing in Parliament and outside. At the moment such support seems a faraway dream, especially given the contradictions within the main constituents of the Government itself. The Opposition, and especially the United National Party, has no reason to gloat over its victory in the Speaker's election. It has dealt an unexpected blow to the Government's plans but this does not give it any worthwhile advantage in pursuing a peace agenda. No solution to the Tamil question is possible unless the two major Sinhala parties in Parliament work earnestly to find common ground against the odds.

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