COLOMBO, 27 August 2005 — Sri Lanka’s Supreme Court yesterday ruled a presidential election was due in 2005, handing a victory to the political foes of outgoing President Chandrika Kumaratunga, who wanted to stay in power for another year.
Chandrika, who was first elected in 1994, went for re-election to a six-year term a year early in 1999. She claims she is entitled to stay in office for 12 years since the constitution allows a president a maximum of two six-year terms.
A bitter political squabble with her opponents drove the issue into the courts.
“According to the constitution, and the interpretations heard earlier... I hold the president’s second term in office commenced Dec. 22 1999 and will end six years from that date,” Chief Justice Sarath. N. Silva said.
Elections Commissioner Dayananda Dissanayake told Reuters an election would be held this year.
“It is dead sure that it is this year,” Dissanayake said. “It must be between Oct. 21 and Nov. 21,” he added, saying he would fix the definitive date next week.
Sri Lanka’s leading share index soared on the news, rising 1.56 percent to a new life closing high, while Chandrika’s opponents lit firecrackers outside the courthouse and across Colombo.
“All attempts by the executive president to hang onto power have been defeated,” said Buddhist monk and MP Athuraliye Rathana Thero, parliamentary group leader for the all-monk party Jathika Hela Urumaya (JHU), which filed the fundamental rights application the court ruled on. Chandrika’s office had no immediate comment.
But government spokesman Nimal Siripala de Silva made a brief statement in Parliament as MPs cheered Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa and his predecessor and main opposition United National Party leader Ranil Wickremesinghe, who will now go head-to-head for the presidency.
“We respect the Supreme Court’s judgment,” de Silva said.
Sri Lanka’s main parties — including Chandrika’s — had hedged their bets and were already in full campaign mode before the ruling. Billboards on roads from Colombo to the ancient hill capital of Kandy are pasted with party slogans and candidates’ pictures.
“This country needs peace... but for me the No. 1 priority is unemployment,” Rajapaksa told Reuters at his first campaign rally in the island’s southern district of Matara.
The election will be the fifth since Chandrika’s re-election in 1999 — general elections were held in 2000, 2001 and 2004 — and analysts say another general election could soon be in the offing.
“At least it has put an end to confusion that has existed for the past several months,” said Jayadeva Uyangoda, head of political science at Colombo University.
But with the government already in its worst crisis with the Tamil Tigers since a 2002 truce halted two decades of civil war, and tens of thousands of tsunami survivors at the mercy of the state bureaucracy, the man on the street is asking: Why? “These people are crazy. How can we have an election every year like this? How can the economy cope with such a massive expenditure?” said 33-year-old Sunimal Gomes, tending his vegetable stall.
Sri Lanka’s financial markets and businesses have voiced widespread frustration with the slow pace of economic reform by Chandrika’s ruling coalition, which is struggling to govern after its hard-line Marxist ally pulled out over plans to share tsunami aid with the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam.
