Sri Lanka's political crisis continues to unfold. But as was to be expected, the South Asian Association for Regional Co-operation summit had nothing to contribute to either ending the crisis or reviving the languishing peace process. President Chandrika Kumaratunga, regarding herself as head of both state and government, attended the summit. Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe, who sees himself as head of government, did not. This crisis of cohabitation, created by the president when she fired three of the prime minister's cabinet ministers last November, continues. The two have failed to reach a compromise, thus endangering the peace process. Sinhalese politicians are once again putting political manoeuvring before economic considerations. Whatever the course of future events, there are three underlying causes for anxiety.
First and foremost, there is still no firm consensus within the Sinhalese majority on how the peace process should be pursued. The issue remains entwined in rivalry between the government and the opposition. The initial Tamil offer of a ceasefire in 2000 was rejected by Mrs Kumaratunga, who, at the time was leading a Sri Lanka Freedom Party majority government. When the same offer was repeated a year later, Mr Wickremesinghe, fresh from the United National Party's narrow victory at the December 2001 parliamentary polls, accepted it.
In February 2002, with the Norwegian government quietly mediating behind the scenes, Mr Wickremesinghe's government signed a ceasefire agreement with the Tamil Tigers, thereby bringing to a temporary end the state of civil war that had existed for the best part of two decades. Mrs Kumaratunga, then and subsequently, made no secret of her opposition to the deal.
Agreeing to the ceasefire was the easy part, but negotiating a permanent end to 46 years of Sinhalese-Tamil political and communal discord was obviously going to be far more difficult. It initially entailed finding a compromise between the Tigers' goal of independence for the Tamil areas of Sri Lanka and the Sinhalese majority's insistence on maintaining Sri Lanka as a unitary state. The Sinhalese tended to regard federalism as leading to the break-up of the nation. The Tamils regarded independence as necessary for their community's basic security. The Norwegians faced an intractable problem as they organised successive rounds of peace talks, which were held outside Sri Lanka.
Nevertheless, a crucial step in the peace process was taken in Oslo in December 2002, when the Norwegian government was able to issue a statement setting out the substantive political issues which would be the subject of future negotiations. A delicately-worded key paragraph indicated that a political and constitutional compromise might eventually be attained 'based on a federal structure within a united Sri Lanka'. This implied negotiating a new federal constitution, a position which Mr Wickremesinghe accepted, but Mrs Kumaratunga did not.
Further negotiations on such a structure had been set aside until last November, when the Tigers produced their proposal for interim self-government in the areas they have claimed as their homeland. Mr Wickremesinghe reacted positively, while Mrs Kumaratunga reacted negatively.