Sri Lanka It's Happening

The Chief executive in Sri Lanka is president Chandrika Bandaranayake Kumarathunga. Her party the UPFA (formerly the Peoples Alliance (PA)) won the last general election but does not have enough seats to form a government. What exactly will happen when the parliament meets for the first time since the elections on April 22, 2004 is uncertain.

The main opposition party, the United National Party (UNP), ruled Sri Lanka for 17 years until the general election in 1994. It was in power again for just over two years before the parliament was dissolved by the president four years ahead of schedule.

Shortly after late president JR Jayawardhana came to power in 1977, The UNP introduced the presidential system of government to Sri Lanka. It is said that this constitution resembles a collection of the worst aspects of the French, US and British Constitutions. And the goverment has vowed to change it even without the required two thirds majority

Chandrika Kumarathunga first won an election mainly on the promise of abolishing the presidential system within an year of being elected. She clung on to the presidency for Ten years but now at last she wants to make the changes because here term ends in 2005.

Worse still she was been unable to end the civil war that raged in the northern regions of Sri Lanka, and occasionally reached Colombo in the form of a terrorist bomb attack. However the goverment of Ranil Wickramasinghe started peace talks with the tigers and the ceasefire has held of two years.

Now the country's future is uncertain with infighting among two factions of the tigers threatening the peach process. To make matters worse leaders of the UPFA have expressed conflicting views about the entire peace process and it's not certain when the peace talks will resume - if they do resume.

The last time the PA was in power they added to the countries economic woes by many short sighted policies and taxes that stiffled growth. Resulting in the economy contracting in 2001. Worse still the then government's linient attidudes toward trade union activities lead to spurt of srikes in 94/95, after 17 years of somewhat brutal suppression.

The conclusion is that successive governments keep getting worse. And there's no evidence to show that the next be it a PA or a UNP government will be any better. While it may be argued that the last goverment made progress in both the peace and economic fronts it certainly was a disaster on enviorenmental issues. The UPFA claims the last UNP government was the most corrupt in history.

At a glance

Full Name : The Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka
President : Chandrika Bandaranayake Kumarathunga
Prime Minister : Mahinda Rajapaksa
Population : 18.5 Million
National Day : Febraury 4