The country's president calls her prime minister spineless. The prime minister calls the president a "Hitler madam."
Words like "worm" and "snake" fly between them regularly.
While Sri Lanka struggles to end a 19-year civil war, the country's two leaders, once childhood playmates, are locked in a battle of petty bickering.
Battle-weary Sri Lankans worry the fragile ceasefire between government forces and the Tamil Tiger rebels won't hold for much longer -- not because of occasional clashes, but because of the animosity between the two leaders.
President Chandrika Kumaratunga and Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe argue about nearly everything, from who will give important speeches to who will head what government ministry.
But the most bitter topic is the peace process.
Both insist they want peace for this embattled island nation, where two decades of civil war have cost the lives of 65,000 people, as ethnic Tamil rebels have fought to carve out a homeland in the country's northeast, dominated by the Hindu Tamils.
Wickremesinghe signed a February last year Norwegian-brokered ceasefire agreement with rebels that ended the fighting. Six rounds of talks aimed at finding a political solution were held before the rebels walked out in April.
Kumaratunga says the prime minister caved in to Tiger demands for autonomy without insisting they disarm first, or stop violating human rights.
In an 11-page letter in October, Kumaratunga blasted Wickremesinghe for putting the country's security at risk in the name of peace.
Repeatedly, she has threatened to use her broad powers to fire the prime minister and dissolve parliament.
The animosity between the two is likely to further intensify when the rebels spell out their demands for political and financial authority in the northeast. Their proposals were expected to be released tomorrow.
Sri Lanka's sharp political divisions have many worried.
"A united voice in this crucial time ... is critical to move forward successfully," US Assistant Secretary of State for South Asian Affairs Christina Rocca said during a May visit.
The feud climaxed at the international level in early September, when the two leaders were unable to agree on who would represent Sri Lanka at the UN General Assembly.
Kumaratunga eventually gave in, saying she would not attend. She told UN Secretary General Kofi Annan that her absence was "due to the situation at home."
The bickering has given the rebels more excuses to stay away from the negotiating table.
"Your administration is unstable and caught up in a ferocious cohabitation war with the all-powerful president," Anton Balasingham, the chief rebel negotiator, wrote in a letter to Wickremesinghe in June.
Unsurprisingly, the two put the blame on each other.
Kumaratunga's spokesman, Harim Peiris, says Wickremesinghe ignores her.
But Kumaratunga declined to meet Wickremesinghe before he left for the UN, saying she was "indisposed." She has refused to meet with him on several other occasions.
Raised in Sri Lanka's small political elite, the two were friends as children. That ended when their political careers took off.
Kumaratunga was re-elected president in December 1999, three days after the Tigers tried to kill her in a suicide attack. She rode a sympathy vote to narrowly defeat Wickremesinghe and installed her aged mother as prime minister.
Undeterred by the defeat, Wickremesinghe fought and won the prime ministership in 2001 parliamentary polls, the most violent the country has seen, with 61 deaths in a six-week campaign.
Since then, the bickering has seldom let up.
Kumaratunga, 58, has publicly accused Wickremesinghe, 54, of trying to assassinate her. During parliamentary campaigning, Wickremesinghe called Kumaratunga a dictator -- a "Hitler madam." Kumaratunga said the prime minister is "without a backbone."
Observers say the two must learn to get along.
"It is up to people with social leverage to force a cohabitation arrangement with national interest," said Paikiasothy Saravanamuttu, a top political analyst who heads the Center for Policy Alternatives, an independent think-tank.
ROCKY RELATIONS: The figures on residents come as Chinese tourist numbers drop following Beijing’s warnings to avoid traveling to Japan The number of Chinese residents in Japan has continued to rise, even as ties between the two countries have become increasingly fractious, data released on Friday showed. As of the end of December last year, the number of Chinese residents had increased by 6.5 percent from the previous year to 930,428. Chinese people accounted for 22.6 percent of all foreign residents in Japan, making them by far the largest group, Japanese Ministry of Justice data showed. Beijing has criticized Tokyo in increasingly strident terms since Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi last year suggested that a military conflict around Taiwan could
A retired US colonel behind a privately financed rocket launch site in the Dominican Republic sees the project as a response to China’s dominance of the space race in Latin America. Florida-based Launch on Demand is slated to begin building a US$600 million facility in a remote region near the border with Haiti late this year. The project is designed to meet surging demand for the heavy-lift rockets needed to put clusters of satellites into orbit. It is also an answer to China’s growing presence in the region, said CEO Burton Catledge, a former commander of the US Air Force’s 45th Operations
Germany is considering Australia’s Ghost Bat robot fighter as it looks to select a combat drone to modernize its air force, German Minister of Defense Boris Pistorius said yesterday. Germany has said it wants to field hundreds of uncrewed fighter jets by 2029, and would make a decision soon as it considers a range of German, European and US projects developing so-called “collaborative combat aircraft.” Australia has said it will integrate the Ghost Bat, jointly developed by Boeing Australia and the Royal Australian Air Force, into its military after a successful weapons test last year. After inspecting the Ghost Bat in Queensland yesterday,
A pro-Iran hacking group claimed to breach FBI Director Kash Patel’s personal e-mail inbox and posted some of the contents online. The e-mails provided by the hacking group include travel details, correspondence with leasing agents in Washington and global entry, and loyalty account numbers. The e-mail address the hackers claim to have compromised has been previously tied to Patel’s personal details, and the leaked e-mails contain photos of Patel and others, in addition to correspondence with family members and colleagues. “The FBI is aware of malicious actors targeting Director Patel’s personal email information,” the agency said in a statement on
RSS