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by Harim Peiris

The new government installed in office has commenced a hundred day program to implement its key proposals and the people will await the outcome of the program and its inaugural budget scheduled for the middle of March.

However, a key component and undoubtedly the priority issue for our nation is the national ethnic conflict and the peace process to resolve the same. It is a welcome sign that the new government has continued the Norwegian facilitated process begun by its predecessor and initial signs are hopeful.

President Kumaratunga who was away at the SAARC Heads of Government Summit in Katmandu, Nepal used her address to the assembly to outline her views with regard to Sri Lanka's peace process going forward.

She stated that she believed that the recently concluded general elections have provided a historic opportunity for Sri Lanka's two major political parties, now both in government through the executive presidency and the cabinet to forge means of creative cohabitation to address the pressing national problems and namely the separatist conflict.

She pledged the support of the Presidency to the peace process and promised to provide guidance and leadership to the Government.

This position was supported by the mandates received in her election and re-election for a negotiated end to the conflict. Speaking further at the SAARC Summit on the topic of terrorism, which dominated the agenda at the Summit, she stated that the best method of dealing with terrorism was to stop generating it.

She stated that terrorists did not, dispose the Palestinian people or divide Ireland or separate India and Pakistan with Kashmir as a buffer zone nor closer to home, engage in the actions that marginalised minorities and the Tamil community.

Sri Lanka today truly has a historic opportunity for a bipartisan approach to national issues and it is important that we make use of the opportunity to resolve our problems.

The President reiterated her commitment to working together with her new government, drawn from a political party different to hers and the track record of the first month of cohabitation has been good. The transition of power was a smooth process; in fact an almost ideal standard for any developing Asian country, marred only perhaps by continued violence and attacks against activists of the defeated party.

The wheels of government have turned smoothly thus far with the President operating cordially with her new cabinet barring perhaps a few of the PA cross over Ministers who have been particularly and personally abusive of her.

The checks and balances created by the dual executive, in an executive president and the cabinet of ministers have worked as a good check and balance on power, a case in point being the local government elections.

The UNP hard on the heels of its general elections victory desired to go in for the local government elections at the earliest, though the genuine issue would be whether yet another election was our national priority. Further many of the PA local government members and activists are in jail or in hiding and the issue of whether an election held under such conditions would be either free or fair should be examined.

However to use the momentum of the general election victory to grab control of local authorities is fair political play, but the UNP desired to reduce the time period allowed for nominations and campaigning to hold the election even sooner.

The President who had to give her accent for the Supreme Court to determine the constitutionality of the bill to amend the local government law stood her ground, indicating that previously when election laws were to be amended such bills were referred to a special committee of parliament and there should be no undue haste to amend electoral laws.

Accordingly the grand scheme to permit a first past the post local election that would hugely distort the representation from the voting pattern and shorten the period for nomination and campaigning was prevented.

This was an indication of the important check and balance on power that a cohabitation exercise provides and given Sri Lanka's prior experience with abuses of power and as Lord Acton famously wrote "power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely" the current dual executive of Sri Lanka's cohabitation exercise provides an important check and balance on power and Sri Lankan democracy will only be better off in the process.

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Copyright 2001 The Associated Newspapers of Ceylon Ltd.
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