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No polls for five years: Kumaratunga
Recovery from tsunami crisis will take precedence over everything, Lankan President Kumaratunga said.
The Sri Lankan President Chandrika Kumaratunga has said that there will be no elections for the next five years, because people have to close ranks and work together to rebuild the country devastated by the tsunami of December 26, 2004.
"There will be no elections for the next five years as the recovery plan from the tsunami disaster will take precedence over everything else,” she told a public meeting in Siribopura in the southern district of Hambantota, one of the worst affected by the tsunami.
The Daily Mirror quoted Kumaratunga as saying that if elections were held, the ballots should be stamped before the country’s symbol, signifying support for the country, rather than any particular political party.
"We should shed all party and individual politics to take the country forward,” Kumaratunga exhorted.
The President’s remark is bound to kick up a controversy as the presidential elections are due in November this year, according to the opposition parties; and in 2006, according to the President. Neither timetable can be adhered to if she really puts a ban on elections for five years.
Pundits wonder if the President has given up her plan to hold a referendum on changing the Constitution. Her continuing in power depends on changing the Constitution from a presidential system to a parliamentary system.
She cannot contest the next presidential elections because she has exhausted her two chances. But under a parliamentary Constitution, she can become Prime Minister and continue to enjoy her present position of executive supremacy. The opposition is still to react to the President’s proposal.
