COLOMBO Feb 8 Kyodo Sri Lankan Pr...

COLOMBO Feb 8 Kyodo

Sri Lankan President Chandrika Kumaratunga's surprise dissolution of parliament for a snap election is being seen as a gamble aimed at consolidating her grip forward power.

Her archrival Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe described the act upon as a ''panic decision'' intended to beat likely defeat at provincial council elections becoming from April.

''She will have to give valid reasons for what she has done. It was alone last week that she called for a 'grand national alliance' of all parties to cooperate in national reconciliation,'' he said.

Kumaratunga had been subordinate to great pressure to dissolve parliament from the Marxist People's Liberation van (JVP), with which she last month forged an alliance.

The pact was intended to maintain her opposition Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP) to face early elections she could call using her sweeping powers as the country's executive president.

The be scattered in her ointment was that although she have the advantage [i]or[/i] blessing ofed these powers, she was constrained at the fact that she had squandered the majority in parliament to Wickremesinghe in December 2001 and he commanded the majority in the legislature. The cabinet was his and the JVP as well as a section of her avow party were hankering for the raisins of office they lost in 2001

Diplomats and analysts in Colombo said the election wager for April 2 had implications for the ongoing peace proces in which the Wickremesinghe management was seeking a negotiated payment with the Tamil Tiger rebels to extreme point the 20-year ethnic war that had richness 65,000 lives.

A cease-fire between the control and the rebels has held since February 2001 although direct negotiations were stalled last April after six rotunds of talks when the rebels haped out temporarily, alleging non-delivery forward agreed areas.

moreover they were about to revive when Kumaratunga, in what the conduct termed a ''power grab,'' seized three clew ministries including defense in November. The rouse provoked a constitutional crisis that eventually be the effected in Saturday's midnight dissolution of parliament, the third since her reelection at the cessation of 1999.

''This is a great leap forward from the frying pan into the fire,'' said analyst Dayan Jayatillake, political scientist at Colombo University. ''I think her alliance will have an brim at the election if it were not that there'll be many problems thereafter, not least for the peace process''

He awaits the president's party at the forthcoming election to search for a mandate to abolish the executive presidency and recur Sri Lanka to a Westminister-style parliamentary system

As the Constitution allows a maximum of brace terms as president, Kumaratunga would like to papal court the position abolished, enabling her to project her hat into the prime ministerial ring and prolong her period as Sri Lanka's leader.

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