COLOMBO, 8 September 2003 — Sri Lanka’s Marxists said yesterday they failed to form a common front with the main opposition due to disagreements over the deadlocked peace process with Tamil Tiger rebels.
The Marxist JVP, or People’s Liberation Front, had been talking for months with President Chandrika Kumaratunga’s Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP) in hopes of toppling Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe, who revived the peace bid after his 2001 election.
But JVP General Secretary Tilwin Silva said the two parties disagreed over the role of Norway, which is mediating to end the Tamil separatist conflict that has claimed more than 60,000 lives since 1972.
“We firmly believe that Norway must be removed from its current role in the peace process,” Silva said.
He said the Marxist party also opposed any power sharing with the Tigers.
“Our position was that the devolution of power was not the solution to the separatist problem. We proposed that democracy be strengthened to create social equality — these were the other areas of disagreement,” he said.Kumaratunga, who is president until 2005 even though her party is in opposition in parliament, has repeatedly accused the government of offering too many concessions to the rebels. But it was she who initially invited Norway to broker peace.
Wickremesinghe has a slender two-seat majority in the 225-member Parliament, although the JVP and the president’s party would still need allies to topple the government.
The JVP and the People’s Alliance, the opposition group of which Kumaratunga’s SLFP is the main constituent, together would have 93 seats, 20 away from a majority.
The JVP — which led bloody insurrections in 1971 and 1987 before joining mainstream politics in 1994 — has staged a series of demonstrations in Colombo against the peace bid.
Last month slogan-shouting JVP activists were welcomed by the president’s brother, Anura Bandaranaike, in what was seen as a sign of an impending alliance.
Norwegian and Japanese envoys are due in Colombo this month to help jumpstart the peace process, which has been deadlocked since the Tigers suspended participation in talks on April 21.
