Woman behind Sri Lanka's turmoil

But even Kumaratunga's close allies say that the president may have become so isolated and reliant on advisers that she overstepped her public mandate. "She's going into a precipice which could provoke war inadvertently," says an official in Kumaratunga's party who has had close ties to the president. "I would say she is a mixture of brilliance and madness, and in fact it's a risk for the entire country as well as for her career."

Some say that Kumaratunga is carrying the weight of a political dynasty on her shoulders. Her father was a former prime minister, her mother a former president, and her husband a parliamentarian. But this dynasty has seen more than its share of grief. Her father was killed by a Buddhist monk. Her husband was killed by political rivals, and Kumaratunga herself was seriously injured in a suicide bomb attack in 1998 by the Tamil Tigers.

But it is this legacy of victimhood which forms Kumaratunga's greatest political appeal, says Jayadeva Uyamgoda, a political scientist at the University of Colombo. "She comes as a victim of political violence, and people could identify themselves with her," he says, because they themselves were victims of a long political war.

Mr. Uyamgoda, who once worked with Kumaratunga during the 1994 negotiations with the Tigers, says that Kumaratunga "has a combative personality, but personally I would say she is a brave woman, and I've always admired her for that."

But he chastises Kumaratunga and Wickremesinghe for letting a personal power struggle get out of hand and threaten the "larger interests of the country, of the people." He is now helping lead a signature campaign to convince both of the major ruling parties to set aside the squabbles.

Political experts say that Kumaratunga now has two options. She can provoke an election and hope to sway enough parliamentarians to her party. Or, she can dissolve parliament, appoint a caretaker government, and hope that her prospects get fairer over time.

Thursday, as rumors swirled that Kumaratunga might try to arrest the prime minister after he returns from Washington early Friday morning, Wickremesinghe's party vowed to overturn each of Kumaratunga's actions of the past week, and force the president to reconvene parliament. "As the government of Sri Lanka, we will do what we can to minimize the negative effects of the very shortsighted and selfish actions of Her Excellency, the president," said G.L. Peiris, the government's spokesman, at a press conference. "We can reverse actions that have been taken, but we will not overreact to the situation. We will not react in an emotional manner."

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