The red lights began flashing on Tuesday when the JVP invited the local and foreign media to a press conference at the National Library Services Board auditorium in Colombo to discuss the ``current political situation.’’ Given that members of the PA’s main ally, who made it possible for President Kumaratunga to unseat the previous UNF government, had become increasingly strident in recent weeks about their relationship with the PA in general and the president in particular, most observers expected the JVP to take a pugilistic stance. But a couple of hours before the conference was due, all those invited were individually telephoned and told that the ``presser,’’ as journalists tend to style these events, was off. No reasons were adduced and the general conclusion was that the cracks had been papered over at least for the time being.

Our front page report today gives the details. Mr. Wimal Weerawansa, the party’s high profile parliamentary group leader and propaganda chief, had apparently pushed hard not to go public with the differences between the UPFA’s two main parties and successfully persuaded the JVP hierarchy to give a little more time before throwing something smelly at the fan. Earlier people like Minister Lal Kantha, who has emerged as the most outspoken critic of the government from within the ranks of its leadership, had made some very cutting remarks at various public occasions. As we had reported in last Sunday’s paper, Lal Kantha had told a meeting at the Tower Hall the previous Thursday that the government was acting like ``the Emperor without clothes’’ and that the decisions of the cabinet after the tsunami tidal waves pounded Sri Lanka’s coast was most irresponsible. A few days earlier, at the executive committee meeting of the UPFA, the JVP’s Nandana Gunatillake, no doubt with the nod from his party’s hierarchy, said some very harsh things about the president accusing her of acting dictatorially and that their party too will have to live with the results of her bungling.

The JVP says that the MOU between themselves and the PA on the basis of which the UPFA was forged had been breached on numerous occasions. Although some noises have been made on some bones of contention in the past, many analysts thought that Gunatillake’s speech was a signal that the parting of the ways was now imminent unless the president treated the JVP less cavalierly. It is well known that Kumaratunga was not enthusiastic about teaming up with those she once accused of murdering her husband. She is once famously reported to have said (before the alliance) that she was not about to give the party of her father and mother to the JVP. But whatever personal likes and dislikes may have been, permanent interests dictated that the two parties got together to push the UNP (or UNF) out of office. Kumaratunga, long used to having her own way with the SLFP and for that matter within the PA, found the going rough with the JVP and took the tactical decision to resign the leadership of the UPFA last year pleading pressure leaving former Prime Minister Ratnasiri Wickramanayake holding the hot potato. She wasn’t giving the job to Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapakse and brother Anura wasn’t getting it either. But she herself wanted to get out of the line of JVP fire, not wanting to expose herself to the kind of situation she experienced when she had to preside over the UNF cabinet in the early days.

Gunatillake made himself very clear at the UPFA Exco saying that they didn’t have to cling on to the government the way that ``the flea clings on to the dog.’’ Wickramanayake tried to smooth ruffled feathers and the often-used palliative of appointing a joint committee to sort out differences was proposed. But the JVP was in no mood to buy that. They have been in government long enough to know that committees are too often used to convert donkeys to asses and are of little use except for wasting time. It was clear that a very blunt message was being delivered from the red corner and it was intended for CBK. It was a few days after that meeting that the JVP leadership, after intensive consultations at their Politbureau and Central Committee decided to go public about their differences with government at a press conference.

President Kumaratunga has more reasons than one for being grateful to Foreign Minister Lakshman Kadirgamar on whom she leans on many matters. As unlikely as it may sound, Kadirgamar’s relations with the JVP are excellent to the extent that party wanted him as prime minister over Mahinda Rajapakse. Thus it was that those good relations once again came to the fore and, according to some very knowledgeable sources, the foreign minister had played a major role in persuading the JVP to give more time before aggravating an already dicey situation by going public about major differences between the UPFA’s principal partners. The time buying exercise has succeeded for the present but how long it will hold is anybody’s guess. The president and many leaders of the SLFP have been unhappy with the JVP winning itself considerable political mileage in the disaster relief effort with its badge-wearing activists showing themselves in a good light. There have been accusations that such activists have in some instances attempted to pass off relief donated by various individuals and organizations as their party’s bounty. All this had raised hackles on both sides.

Whether the JVP by brandishing a mailed fist at Kumaratunga will be able to have its own way remains to be seen. The management of the country’s water resources (privatization of water, the pre-election slogans from the anti-UNP camp went) is festering and about to erupt. The president has to be practical and walk a difficult tightrope to demonstrate her bona fides to the international community about utilization of disaster aid, revival of the peace process and tackling the LTTE. Having faulted the UNP for appeasing the Tigers she has little option but taking the same route and the JVP is a major obstacle to that.

The denial (or clarification) of the president’s controversial statement about there being no elections for five years took six days in the coming with the state media saying that ``certain sections of the media and some political personages have ventured to misinterpret the president’s call to all political parties to unite.’’

What she said on the subject, according to the version published in the Daily News under the headline ``President sets the record straight’’ went thus:

"All these leaders here have resolved to work together shedding their political differences to rebuild the nation. There is no need for elections for the next six years.... or rather five years....one year has gone by. I appeal to you....Let us stop thinking about how we could win votes.... Please forget about self and party for the moment and let us together take our country forward.’’

The presidential secretariat said in a news release (to the state media) that she was very clearly referring to the parliamentary election which is due in five years from now. She said elections period, not parliamentary or presidential elections, analysts point out.

But what about the presidential election? That’s due at the end of this year or next year if the second swearing is taken to account. Given that Kumaratunga was boasting even as recently as last week (in her `setting the record straight’ clarification) that she called the last presidential election fifteen months before the end of her first term ``with the objective of obtaining afresh mandate for peace,’’ the next presidential election should be six years from the first swearing – that’s at the end of this year.

The business of amending the constitution or promulgating a new one (without a two thirds majority) has now been shunted to the back burner. Knowledgeable political sources say that such controversial issues cannot be canvassed at this time of national trauma and will likely be relegated for at least six months when they may be re-examined in the light of the situation that prevails then.

Given her current problems with the JVP the president, at least for the time being, is expected to rein in her tongue. ``If that’s possible,’’ said one wag quoting the chief justices now famous katey brake ne remark.

There’s a concerted campaign on the Internet to urge people of Sri Lankan descent who are now citizeus of the US to lobby authorities and congressmen in that country to investigate a story now current that a big US investor of Sri Lankan descent had a meeting with Tiger leader Prabhakaran in the Wanni and allegedly gave him a seven-figure cheque.

Even while the stories of the LTTE leader may not have survived the tsunami was doing the rounds, there were stories doing the rounds in Colombo that the investor had met Prabhakaran proving that he was very much alive.

The Internet campaign is for US citizens to invoke the Homeland Security Act of that country about contacts between a US citizen and the leader of an organization outlawed for terrorism in that country. Even the Sri Lanka ambassador in Washington, who is himself a US citizen, has been urged to take this matter up at the highest levels to which he has access.

Understandably, reports in different sections of the media speculating that LTTE leader, Velupillai Prabhakaran, may not have survived the tsunami had got under the skins of LTTE supporters as evidenced in a byline editorial last week in the Oru paper titled .Rumour- mongering and wish another human being’s death.

The paper begins with the paragraph Rumour mongering is a habit that is endemic to Sri Lanka. How are false rumours spread? The process begins with one individual who has a grievance with the world. He plants the rumour, and goes away. The juicier the rumour, the faster it spreads. But no one will ever know who started it first.

The editorial has cited .The recent vicious instance of rumor-mongering was the spread of false rumours reporting the death of Tamil leader Velupillai Pirabakaran. Reports of the .death of Mr. Pirabakaran are nothing new. But what is surprising is the number of people in high places who have been deriving a morbid pleasure in wishing that Mr. Pirabakaran were dead.

Among those accused of jumping into the bandwagon are President Chandrika Kumaratunga and Vice Admiral Daya Sandagiri, Chief of Defence Staff, who was quoted by SLBC saying that Prabhakaran may be dead.

Later, both the admiral and the SLBC went back on their statements after their initial stupidity. At a time when the whole of Sri Lanka was reeling under the biggest disaster the country had known, when the smell of death had yet to leave the country, when 30,000 human lives were snuffed out in a matter of twenty minutes, how did these people occupying such seats of responsibility lose their sense of humanity to relish the prospect of the Tamil leader’s death, even it were the `dreaded’ Pirabakaran? the editorial asked.

Even the Hindu is not spared with some hard punches thrown at its Editor, N. Ram for the January 11 editorial in his paper titled Where is Prabakaran?

.`C9 as if that was a fit subject for an editorial in a reputed Indian newspaper, at a time when both his country and Sri Lanka were reeling under the tsunami tragedy. It was very obvious that the poor man was wishing that Mr. Pirabakaran was dead, from the kind of doubts he raised in that editorial about the Tamil leader being alive. What a disappointment for him to find Mr. Pirabakaran is very much alive, it said.

Saying that this was not the first time the Hindu had killed Pirabakaran in its columns after Indias disputable intelligence agency (RAW) spread that diabolical lie.

Among those who were taken for a merry ride, were India Radio, Doordarshan, Lalith Athulathmudali in Colombo and many others.

This newspaper too was not spared with our January 9 report headlined Prabhakaran’s non-visibility fuels speculation and the following Sunday’s Prabhakaran ? Norway meeting to nail canard duly cited.

We do not know whether the writers heart which has bled over wishing another human beings deathhad also similarly bled for thousands including women, children, Buddhist monks, Rajiv Gandhi and many more who were murdered on Prabhakarans orders.