Sri Lankan main opposition, leftist party to form gov't

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Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Friday, January 16, 2004

Sri Lankan main opposition, leftist party to form gov't

Sri Lanka's main opposition party said Friday that they were hoping to form a government soon with the help of the main leftist party.

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Sri Lanka's main opposition party said Friday that they were hoping to form a government soon with the help of the main leftist party.

Mangala Samaraweera, the spokesman for the Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP) which is the dominant party in the main opposition People's Alliance, said that they have agreed with the leftist JVPor People's Liberation Front to enter into an alliance based on five basic principles.

The two parties on Wednesday announced that they would be signing an accord at a grand ceremony to be held on Jan. 20.

Samaraweera said the accord would form the "blueprint for a government which we hope to form shortly."

Samaraweera added that the present government headed by Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe had dragged Sri Lanka to "extreme right."

"We (the joint alliance) will be reaffirming the center policies or the social democratic policies," he said.

The SLFP headed by President Chandrika Kumaratunga and the JVP have been having talks for over a year with the objective of forming a joint front to topple the government of Wickremesinghe.

Kumaratunga's action of taking over three ministries of the Wickremesinghe government had led to a constitutional impasse since Nov. 4 last year.

Political observers who saw a snap parliamentary election as the way out of the prolonged political crisis now feel that such an eventuality is inevitable after the Jan. 20 when the two parties seal accord.

However, Kumaratunga and her senior party men have ruled out a snap parliamentary election.

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