They claimed that Sri Lanka has lost the US$ 4.5 billion of aid pledged by donors at Tokyo a few monthsearlier (the promised aid was tentative and had many conditionalities, some of which were impossible to fulfil).As the greatest disaster of all, the UNF leaders pointed to the withdrawal of the MCC from the scheduledcricket tour of Sri Lanka! (The England team did arrive according to plan.)
The issue of whether President Kumaratunga's offensive against the UNF precipitated a crisis or, on thecontrary, averted an impending crisis, needs to be examined more closely. Perhaps the foremost consideration,from the viewpoint of electoral politics, was Wickremesinghe's and the UNF's declining popularity, for whichthere was an abundance of evidence in the form of increasing incidence of highly successfulopposition-engineered strikes and other disruptions in the formal sectors of the economy, and intensifyingunrest the university and farming communities, as well as the massive public support that the oppositionparties have been able to muster for their campaigns of agitation. This waning popularity is due partly toeconomic causes - rising costs of living and unemployment, and the fact that the promised 'peace dividend' isyet to reach the large majority of people. More significantly, it reflects the growing disenchantment of thepeople with the UNF 'peace efforts' - the fact that, hitherto, it has been no more than a process of naiveappeasement.
Specific factors that have contributed to the build-up of anti-UNF sentiments were the apparent inability ofthe Wickremesinghe administration to protect the Muslim communities of the Eastern Province from relentlessLTTE harassment and repression; its insensitivity to the genuine grievances of the Buddhists - especially theviews expressed on matters of crucial importance to the country by the sanga; and its monumentalblunder of attempting to impeach the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court with the obvious purpose ofintimidating the Court while it was engaged in an arbitration of a constitutional dispute, thus antagonisingthe politically powerful legal fraternity.
President Kumaratunga's decision assumes special significance in the context of the long-awaited proposals ofthe LTTE on the interim administration for the northern and eastern provinces, submitted to the Wickremesinghe-ledsegment of the Government five days earlier, which came under intense scrutiny both within and outside thecountry.