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Childhood playmates play out bitterness on political stage
Colombo, Nov 07: They were childhood playmates who grew up amid the genteel luxury of Sri Lanka`s elite. There were lessons at the golf club and weekends at family homes in the tropical highlands. There were dances in wood-paneled clubs right out of Victorian London.
Colombo, Nov 07: They were childhood playmates who grew up amid the genteel luxury of Sri Lanka's elite. There were lessons at the golf club and weekends at family homes in the tropical highlands. There were dances in wood-paneled clubs right out of Victorian London.
One became Sri Lanka's President, the other its Prime Minister.
Years later, their mutual hostility has led Sri Lanka to a political crisis that has endangered the country's fragile peace process and sent the two leaders toward a political showdown.
Neither bothers to hide distaste for the other.
Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe once referred to President Chandrika Kumaratunga as a "hitler madam". Kumaratunga said that the Prime Minister was "without a backbone".
Kumaratunga denounced her Prime Minister's cabinet as filled with "worms, snakes and pigs".
The two inhabit a world caught at the intersection of the personal, the political and the dynastic, magnified by a 20-year civil war that has savaged parts of this beautiful island nation and left some 65,000 of its people dead.
Their differences came to a head this week, when Kumaratunga fired three of Wickremesinghe's most powerful supporters from the cabinet, suspended parliament and declared a state of emergency. All were done while Wickremesinghe was in Washington to meet with US President George W Bush.
Bureau Report
Years later, their mutual hostility has led Sri Lanka to a political crisis that has endangered the country's fragile peace process and sent the two leaders toward a political showdown.
Neither bothers to hide distaste for the other.
Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe once referred to President Chandrika Kumaratunga as a "hitler madam". Kumaratunga said that the Prime Minister was "without a backbone".
Kumaratunga denounced her Prime Minister's cabinet as filled with "worms, snakes and pigs".
The two inhabit a world caught at the intersection of the personal, the political and the dynastic, magnified by a 20-year civil war that has savaged parts of this beautiful island nation and left some 65,000 of its people dead.
Their differences came to a head this week, when Kumaratunga fired three of Wickremesinghe's most powerful supporters from the cabinet, suspended parliament and declared a state of emergency. All were done while Wickremesinghe was in Washington to meet with US President George W Bush.
Bureau Report