Chandrika, Ranil to meet next week

No 10-day ultimatums, no deadlines, no conditions, and no letters have gone from Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe to President Chandrika Kumaratunga, but a summit meeting between the two leaders is scheduled for early next week for make or break talks on whether a cohabitation government can work, both the President's Office and the Prime Minister's Office have confirmed.

At the summit-talks, the prime minister is expected to tell the president that his United National Front (UNF) government is demanding a constitutional amendment to ensure that the powers of dissolving the UNF-held parliament is not exclusively in her hands.

The prime minister will explain that his eight-month-old coalition has reasonable apprehension that the president will indiscriminately exercise her constitutional discretion after December 5, 2002 to dissolve parliament and call for fresh elections.

The president is constrained by the constitution from dissolving parliament before that.

The prime minister is likely to suggest that a constitutional amendment be introduced to extent the period that bars a president from dissolving parliament after the last general elections from one year to a possible three or four years, unless the ruling party loses its majority in parliament, and the party or coalition with the majority calls on the president to dissolve parliament.

People's Alliance (PA) legal experts, including H.L. de Silva, have said that piece-meal constitutional amendments are bad, and this view was reflected in this week's cabinet meeting by Kumaratunga who suggested the abolition of the entire executive presidential system.

Moves to have Kumaratunga sign a public statement that she will not dissolve parliament soon after December 5, 2002, instead of a constitutional amendment appears to have not comforted UNF coalition partners given the belligerent mood of the president.

Wickremesinghe has indicated his willingness to go for fresh polls to seek a mandate to show Kumaratunga for a second time "who is boss".

The move sent jitters down the country's business community, and several sitting parliamentarians from both sides of the House.

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