Sri Lanka's president was struggling to cobble together a coalition yesterday in a hung parliament where monks, Marxists and militants will call the shots, potentially at the expense of the country's fragile peace process.
President Chandrika Kumaratunga's leftist Freedom Alliance won 105 seats in the 225-member assembly in Friday's election, but was looking for at least another eight seats to give it an absolute majority, party officials said.
A spokesman said party senior and leader of the opposition in the outgoing parliament Mahinda Rajapakse held hectic talks with a party of Buddhist monks to secure the support of their nine seats.
"So far there has been no breakthrough," sources close to Rajapakse told reporters.
Analysts and diplomats expressed fears that a weak government coupled with a highly militant parliament could further undermine the already faltering attempts to reach a permanent solution to Sri Lanka's ethnic bloodshed.
"I don't think you could ask for a more militant parliament in Sri Lanka than this," one Asian diplomat said. "Looks like we are losing the middle ground here. It would be a challenge to get anything done in this new house."
Rajapakse, who is a front-runner to become prime minister in a new government, was also trying to secure the support of two other minority parties -- the Tamil Ceylon Workers Congress and the Muslim Sri Lanka Muslim Congress.
Press reports here said Kumaratunga was likely to invite a member from her own party yesterday to be sworn in as prime minister and then form a government offering positions to potential coalition partners.
Her former foreign minister Lakshman Kadirgamar, a man who is credited with getting an international ban on Tamil Tiger rebels, is also tipped to be the next premier, press reports here said yesterday.
Kumaratunga, who can remain president until December next year, led the campaign in the run-up to Friday's vote seeking a mandate for "continuity with change."
There were no immediate signs that any of the smaller parties were willing to join Kumaratunga's Freedom Alliance, which has a strong contingent of Marxists who are heavily critical of concessions to Tamil rebels.
Proxies of the Tamil Tigers, the Tamil National Alliance, said they would provide support to any future government that recognizes them as the "sole representatives" of the Tamil minority and accept their plan to devolve power.
The Tiger guerrillas in November unveiled their blueprint for peace in the form of establishing an "Interim Self-Governing Authority" in war-torn areas, but Kumaratunga's party has already rejected it, arguing it was a stepping stone to a separate state.
Sri Lanka's 13th parliament since independence from Britain in 1948 will be one of its most ethnically and religiously polarized when it holds its first session on April 22.
The Tiger proxies won 22 seats to become the third largest group while the radical nationalist all-clergy National Heritage Party saw nine of its monks elected to parliament.
The monks staunchly oppose the Tigers, whose three-decade campaign to set up a Tamil homeland has claimed more than 60,000 lives.
The monks have made it clear they would neither support nor help bring down a government, but also hinted that they would be in the running for the post of speaker in the assembly.
"People have voted for us not to align ourselves with any of the two main parties," monk legislator-elect Athuraliya Ratana said.
Republican US lawmakers on Friday criticized US President Joe Biden’s administration after sanctioned Chinese telecoms equipment giant Huawei unveiled a laptop this week powered by an Intel artificial intelligence (AI) chip. The US placed Huawei on a trade restriction list in 2019 for contravening Iran sanctions, part of a broader effort to hobble Beijing’s technological advances. Placement on the list means the company’s suppliers have to seek a special, difficult-to-obtain license before shipping to it. One such license, issued by then-US president Donald Trump’s administration, has allowed Intel to ship central processors to Huawei for use in laptops since 2020. China hardliners
A top Vietnamese property tycoon was on Thursday sentenced to death in one of the biggest corruption cases in history, with an estimated US$27 billion in damages. A panel of three hand-picked jurors and two judges rejected all defense arguments by Truong My Lan, chair of major developer Van Thinh Phat, who was found guilty of swindling cash from Saigon Commercial Bank (SCB) over a decade. “The defendant’s actions ... eroded people’s trust in the leadership of the [Communist] Party and state,” read the verdict at the trial in Ho Chi Minh City. After the five-week trial, 85 others were also sentenced on
Conjoined twins Lori and George Schappell, who pursued separate careers, interests and relationships during lives that defied medical expectations, died this month in Pennsylvania, funeral home officials said. They were 62. The twins, listed by Guinness World Records as the oldest living conjoined twins, died on April 7 at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, obituaries posted by Leibensperger Funeral Homes of Hamburg said. The cause of death was not detailed. “When we were born, the doctors didn’t think we’d make 30, but we proved them wrong,” Lori said in an interview when they turned 50, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported. The
RAMPAGE: A Palestinian man was left dead after dozens of Israeli settlers searching for a missing 14-year-old boy stormed a village in the Israeli-occupied West Bank US President Joe Biden on Friday said he expected Iran to attack Israel “sooner, rather than later” and warned Tehran not to proceed. Asked by reporters about his message to Iran, Biden simply said: “Don’t,” underscoring Washington’s commitment to defend Israel. “We are devoted to the defense of Israel. We will support Israel. We will help defend Israel and Iran will not succeed,” he said. Biden said he would not divulge secure information, but said his expectation was that an attack could come “sooner, rather than later.” Israel braced on Friday for an attack by Iran or its proxies as warnings grew of