Sri Lankan President Chandrika Kumaratunga’s decision to dissolve Parliament and order fresh elections had been expected for some time. The President’s decision clearly was influenced by the fact that after protracted talks the Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP), which she heads, had managed to reach an agreement with the JVP. Even as a formal agreement between the two parties was being finalized in the third week of January, Mrs. Kumaratunga was busy consulting her party stalwarts from the provinces on how the SLFP would fare in case of early elections. Most of her party colleagues favoured going in for a fresh vote.

It may be recalled that the relationship between President Kumaratunga and her Prime Minister had been an uneasy one ever since the United National Front headed by Mr Ranil Wickramsinghe was voted to office in December 2001. The one issue on which their differences appeared to be particularly unbridgeable was peace talks with the Tamil Tigers which Mr. Wickramsinghe had been conducting with the Norwegians acting as the facilitators. In the past two years, the President had consistently criticised the Prime Minister for yielding too much ground to the LTTE, and accused him of risking the country’s security.

Even as the peace process had got stuck after six rounds of talks, the encouraging thing about it has been that the ceasefire agreement still holds. True, the peace process should have done a lot better than that. But, the fact that the killings had stopped and the overall climate of security across the country had vastly improved itself was a significant achievement affecting the lives of ordinary people. Independent surveys have shown that more than eighty per cent of the people support the peace process.

The SLFP-JVP alliance has since been sealed with the Election Commission granting recognition to the new combine as the United People’s Freedom Alliance. This has generated a degree of unease among some of Mrs Kumaratunga’s erstwhile coalition partners in the People’s Alliance who see the tie-up as a tilt in favour of the Sinhalese majoritarian ideology of the JVP. Some of them have even voiced unease about the whole business. How the smaller parties will coalesce will become clear in the coming weeks. It is apparent though that the ruling UNF will bank on the restoration of peace as an election issue, while the SLFP-JVP combine will seek to play up the national security issue.

The SLFP-JVP alliance still has a few issues on which their disagreement persists. Among these is their respective position on the all important ethnic problem. While the SLFP offers devolution of powers to the Tamils within a federal constitutional framework as the basis for resolving the Tamil problem, the JVP commits itself to no such deal. Which of the two will ultimately prevail may be anybody’s guess, but the risks are that given the rhetoric that over-writes election campaigns, it may be the tail that would wag the dog.

Not unsurprisingly, critics have seen the coalition as an opportunistic alliance. They even suggest that the two parties would seek to use the JVP hard-line to garner votes from the Sinhalese voters in the south, while the SLFP will seek to appeal to the more middle of the road voters. It is equally clear that the Sri Lankan Tamils shall have reason to feel disappointed with the new alliance, and would tend to see in it revival of the old Sinhala chauvinist bogey. The United People’s Freedom Alliance, on the other hand, will seek to claim the Muslim votes on the plank that their interests have not been sufficiently represented in the government’s talks with the LTTE.

This will be for the third time in four years that the Sri Lankans will be asked to go to the polls on a promise of political stability so necessary to solve the country’s huge economic problems as well as resolve the long standing ethnic conflict. But each time, they were disappointed. Whether their hopes will be answered this time, remains an open question.

Meanwhile, along with the peace talks, the four point five billion dollar aid package promised by the donor countriesâ€â€