Sri Lanka shelves key constitutional reforms

August 8, 2000
Web posted at: 5:30 PM HKT (0930 GMT)

COLOMBO, Sri Lanka (Reuters) -- The Sri Lankan government shelved its long-heralded constitutional solution to a bloody ethnic war on Tuesday under mounting opposition in parliament.

Senior government minister Ratnasiri Wickremanayake told party leaders that constitutional reforms, under discussion for five years, would not be debated after Tuesday, lawmakers said.

They said that if the plans managed to draw more support, the government still had the option of putting the bill to a vote before the parliamentary term ends on August 24.

President Chandrika Kumaratunga had been banking on the new constitution to bring peace to the country, the platform on which she won power for a second term in December.

The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, or LTTE, have been fighting for a separate homeland for the mostly Hindu minority Tamils in Sri Lanka's north and east since 1983.

The rebels have already rejected the peace proposals.

A first vote on the new constitution had been due on Tuesday, but lawmakers said it seemed the government had been unable to muster the two-thirds support it needed to push it through.

"The Sinhala chauvinists have won once again," said Dharmalingam Siddharthan, leader of the People's Liberation Organization of Tamil Eelam, a former Tamil militant group now represented in parliament.

The government has only a slender majority in the 225-member parliament and was relying on support of minority Tamil parties and breakaway lawmakers from the main opposition United National Party to pass the constitution.

The new constitution aims to devolve some powers to regions, including one administered by Tamils, in an attempt to give the minority a political alternative to the LTTE.

Kumaratunga launched talks with the UNP to reach a consensus on the constitution with plans to take it to the LTTE after it was ratified by the parliament.

But the opposition denied her support at the last minute on grounds that the document contained several clauses that were not agreed upon by the two sides.

Tuesday's move came after thousands of people protesting against the new constitution blocked the main road to parliament.

Hundreds of saffron-robed Buddhist monks among the demonstrators sat on the road and chanted hymns as riot police surrounded them to prevent any eruption of violence.

The protesters, including Sinhala nationalists clad in white and Catholic priests, began to march towards the parliament early on Tuesday and booed lawmakers on their way to the house for the second day of debate.

They waved black flags and chanted slogans against the proposed reforms and the LTTE.

The new constitution includes a proposal for an interim council, to be set up for a limited period, to administer the north and east of the country.

Sinhala nationalists say that would be like handing over the region to the rebels and could lead to the country's division.

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