Sri Lankan president risks losing top post in parliament

Sri Lanka's president Wednesday was desperately locked in moves to secure allies as her minority government risked losing the crucial Speaker's post when it faces its first test in parliament, officials said.
President Chandrika Kumaratunga was also battling to retain her junior coalition partner, the Marxist JVP, and ensure it accepts four portfolios allocated to it before parliament's first sitting Thursday, they said.
The first test for Kumaratunga's Freedom Alliance is the election of a Speaker in the 225-member assembly, but she is short of eight seats to have an absolute majority and is looking for allies.
The party of all-Buddhist monks with its nine seats could prop up Kumaratunga's candidate for speaker, but a spokesman for the monks said they had decided to remain neutral, a move that will help the opposition.
The main opposition United National Party (UNP) is expected to field its own candidate for Speaker in the secret ballot Thursday and could win if all other opposition MPs support them while the monks remain neutral.
"There is hectic lobbying going on right now to win the support of the Buddhist monks," a political source said. "The president herself has been trying hard to persuade the monks to support her candidate."
A spokesman for the monks said that Kumaratunga had lengthy talks with them overnight, but there had been no breakthrough.
Kumaratunga's party is fielding a communist party member, D.E.W. Gunasekara, as Speaker while the opposition is fielding former Buddhist affairs minister W.J.M. Lokubandara. The monks are opposed to a communist becoming Speaker. If elected, Gunasekara will be Sri Lanka's first communist Speaker of the legislature since independence from Britain in 1948.
The monks have also faulted Kumaratunga for not supporting a renegade Tamil Tiger leader who held sway in the east of the island for 40 days before being crushed by the main Tiger group on April 12.
The minority government itself is influenced by the Marxist JVP, which holds 39 out of the 105 seats in the Freedom Alliance.
The JVP boycotted Kumaratunga's induction of a 31-member cabinet on April 10 and has refused to take up the four portfolios allocated to it until it is given control over river basin development.