OPINIONS

Fighting talk anew as the clock ticks

With the likelihood of cohabitation decreasing, Sri Lanka's Prime Minister is running out of time if intends to secure his government against his arch rival, the President, writes Ravi Thurairajah

It is over six months since his United National Front (UNF) government's came to power, and Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe appears, despite his conciliatory efforts, to be deeply embroiled in a bitter political battle with his arch rival, President Chandrika Kumaratunga, the leader of the main opposition People's Alliance (PA). Rising acrimony has left his plans for an amicable cohabitation in jeopardy and set the stage for a dramatic fight for political survival.
The pro-UNF Sunday Leader newspaper reported last week that the Prime Minister was preparing to pass the long overdue 18th amendment in July. The amendment, which includes the cross over bill that is to shield MPs voting against the interests of their respective parties from being dismissed. Notably, the paper said the government had also decided to present legislation which would curtail the powers of the President, particularly her authority to dismiss the government in December.

Earlier press reports had said that sympathisers of the cross over bill within the PA camp would not be supportive of legislation to limit the President's powers, however the UNF leadership seem to be confident they can woo the necessary support to pass both pieces of legislation with the necessary two thirds majority.

Wickremesinghe's government has also been building an impeachment case against the incumbent President in case the parliamentary wing-clipping strategy fails. This week Sri Lanka's Trade Minister Ravi Karunanayake, the UNF MP responsible for investigating allegations of impropriety when purchasing government vehicles during the tenure of the PA government, announced that he had a 'clear case for impeachment.' Fighting talk, with predictable results in Kumaratunga's camp.

Meanwhile, the government confidently announced this week that their popular support had increased in the past six months, extrapolating the claim from the results in the recent local elections. Should the Prime Minister fail to pass the necessary constitutional amendments, he retains the option to call snap general elections in which the UNF, with its increased support, expects to gain the seats necessary to pass the legislation, the Sunday Leader opinioned.

Vital for the government to maintain popular support is to demonstrate the viable benefits it has delivered, particularly with regards the economy and the Norwegian peace process. The central bank this week posting performance statistics indicating the country's economy had turned around as a result of the cessation of the debilitating ethnic conflict.

However, the general population is unlikely to witness the tangible benefits in the near future, potentially weakening the UNF's support base - a widening opportunity the PA has been hammering away at. The ruling party responded by launching a scathing attack on the previous PA government and the agreement it signed with the IMF, blaming reforms required under that deal for the soaring cost of living today.

Meanwhile, President Kumaratunga continued to develop her plans to consign Wickremesinghe's government to the history books. In a bid to head off the UNF's efforts to carry through the proposed legislation, the President sent letters containing an unmistakable warning to a number of suspected PA rebels last week.

PA stalwart (at least for now) Anura Bandaranaike, who is also Kumaratunga's brother and contender for the party leadership, continued to cement the PA's axis with the Marxist Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP), yet again sharing a platform with the JVP leadership attacking the peace initiatives and the government's economic performance. The joint conference comes a month after Bandaranaike met with the self-exiled JVP leader Somawansa Amarasinghe in London to explore joint efforts against the UNF.

With the PA-JVP alliance which shored up her crumbling administration last year, albeit for a few weeks, being resuscitated, Kumaratunga declared that she was now contemplating bringing a vote of no confidence against the UNF government. The President's challenge, although unlikely to be considered seriously in their own right - particularly given the lady's increasing proclivity for empty threats, comes in the aftermath of an announcement to PA party members that she would be looking to form her own government in the near future.

The President also took steps to woo the powerful Sinhala-Buddhist clergy this week, promising them that as long as she was executive president she would determinedly resist the concept of a Tamil homeland - a move that Wickremesinghe in a dilemma (fail to match her rhetoric and incur the prelates' hostility or echo it and alienate Tamil support ahead of the Parliamentary vote).

In a briefing to the religious lobby Monday she informed them that the country was 'in peril' and that she would do everything in her powers to protect its unity. However, her adversary, the Prime Minister, has consistently taken steps to maintain the support of the clergy by providing similar assurances.

In the midst of this escalating animosity, Mr Wickremesinghe's hopes to form a government of national unity with Kumaratunga appear to have evaporated. Despite the encouragement to do so from the powerful Buddhist clergy, all the signs point to a confrontation between the two leaders, with political survival at stake.

This column has consistently argued against the government, elected on a mandate of peace, attempting cohabitation with the hawkish President, particularly given her stated intransigent positions regarding the ethnic conflict. More disconcerting was the hawkish tone Prime Minister Wickremesinghe adopted during his vigorous courtship of Kumaratunga in pursuit of a Sinhala national government.

The likelihood of cohabitation looks increasingly remote, although Sri Lanka's politics have proven nothing is impossible. Indeed Kumaratunga's suspicions that Wickremesinghe is merely playing for time (to prepare a decisive move against her) by offering the prospect of a unity government may be put aside, should she feel cornered, and she could yet accept the Prime Minister's offer in a last ditch bid to remain in office. At this point in time the chances of that appear to be distant.

Kumaratunga's aggressive posture over the past month has forced Wickremesinghe to adopt the confrontational strategy he was hoping to avoid all along. Whether he likes it or not, the Prime Minister is going to have to challenge and conclusively defeat his opponent, for the sake of his own political future.

Fortunately for Wickremesinghe, the circumstances for such a battle seem to be largely in his favour - at this juncture. The Buddhist clergy hasn't made any shrill responses to his 'concessions' to the LTTE and the fighting in the north and east has all but stopped. His government enjoys considerable international backing and his domestic popularity seems to be higher than ever. Whilst the Prime Minister seems to be left with little choice but to sideline

Kumaratunga, but opportunely for him the circumstances under which to do so are conducive. But the clock is ticking and as December approaches, the tide is turning in Kumaratunga's favour.

G8 hypocrisy: the blame the victim summit

The greatest scandal of the G8 summit is not the failure to deliver more resources but the way the world trade rules are rigged against the poorest, argues Barry Coates, Director of the World Development Movement.

From their hideaway in the Canadian Rockies, far from the intrusion of demonstrators, the scrutiny of their Parliaments and the voices of the world's poor, the G8 delivered a stunning blow to the prospects for Africa's recovery. Their ironically named "Action Plan for Africa" was a humiliating slap in the face to the four African leaders who were summoned to the feast. More importantly, it was a cynical betrayal of the 300 million people who are living on less than $1 per day (nearly half of Africa's people), 28 million who are HIV positive and the one third of Africa's children who are malnourished.

Yet the real scandal is not that they did not deliver new resources to help Africa - the world has come to expect little from the G8 - but that they did nothing to stop the ways in which the G8 exploits Africa and inhibits its development.

The crucial test for the G8 was always going to be the rules on international trade. African governments and NGOs called for the G8 to change the unfair rules that are impoverishing Africa's farmers and inhibiting the development of new industries. But the G8 stuck to their line they are pursuing in the World Trade Organisation negotiations - they will not reform their bloated agricultural subsidies or reduce their trade barriers until African countries give new advantages to multinational companies, particularly in basic service sectors.

The price is high. Rather than submitting services to the rules of world trade, to "risk the lives of African people and their access to basic essentials of life", Ugandan trade negotiator, Professor Yash Tandon calls for people-centred policies: "African governments must pledge to provide the basic services to the people - drinking water, basic food, essential housing and transport, and access to energy, etc. - as necessary elements of their basic human rights".

Trade is not a new issue - each G8 summit in the past three years has promised to reform trade. Tony Blair acknowledged that trade rules are stacked in favour of the rich G8 nations against the poor when he said: "It really is hypocrisy for us, the wealthy countries, to talk of our concern to alleviate poverty of the developing world, while we block their access to our markets." Exactly.

But when it came to doing anything about it, he and the other G8 leaders abjectly failed. It really is hypocrisy for the G8 to talk of aiding Africa when are exploiting Africa's people through unfair trade rules.

The second test was set by the Organisation for African Unity in 1999 when they gave the task of preparing a plan for Africa's development to the presidents of Nigeria, Algeria and South Africa, as a means to renegotiate the terms of the debt deadlock. Three years later, the resulting plan, the New Partnership for Africa�s Development (NEPAD), was presented to the G8 summit in Kananaskis.

The vicious cycle of debt and poverty has been well-documented. A week before the G8 Summit, a UN report described how further inaction will consign into absolute poverty 100 million more people in the world's poorest countries, most of them in Africa. Other reports have shown that the Millennium Development Goals for poverty reduction will be substantially missed if there is no further debt cancellation. Even the World Bank and IMF reported in March that the much vaunted Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) initiative is failing.

The G8 applied a sticking plaster on a gaping wound. They undertook to provide up to $1 billion, as a one-off top-up to the HIPC initiative. Yet Africa pays $15 billion each year to the rich nations in debt payments. Half of the African nations spend more on their foreign debts than on health care. The rich world is still draining desperately needed resources from Africa.

The $1 billion is less than the G8 have spent on staging their last five meetings; and contrasts starkly with the $40 billion allocated by the US for the "war on terror" or the $350 billion spent annually by the rich nations on farm subsidies.

The final insult was to spin the outcome as if the G8 had agreed more aid for Africa. They re-announced a promise made last March (in Monterrey, Mexico) for more aid, but then could not even agree to allocate half of it to Africa.

As predicted by a conference of African bishops earlier this year, the G8 are "supporting the cost free aspects of NEPAD while avoiding renewed commitment to provide additional resources for Africa's development".

The G8 effectively ignored NEPAD as proposed by the African leaders, and responded with their own Action Plan. Instead of concentrating on their own responsibilities, the G8 lectured African nations on what they should do, perpetuating the myth that African are themselves fully to blame for their poverty.

Included in the statement are a call for African nations to regulate illicit arms sales, ignoring the fact that the G8 supply 80% of the arms to developing world; a call for the "use of tried and tested new technology, including biotechnology"; and, of course, the usual calls for Africa to open its markets and restructure their economies for the benefit of foreign multinationals.

The G8 has done little except lecture Africa while continuing to rig the global rules against them. After all of the grand talk of Africa's Marshall Plan and a new era for development, so much rhetoric has led to so little delivery.

Courtesy The Guardian