The country's president calls her prime minister spineless. The prime minister calls the president a "Hitler madam."
Words like "worm" and "snake" fly between them regularly.
While Sri Lanka struggles to end a 19-year civil war, the country's two leaders, once childhood playmates, are locked in a battle of petty bickering.
Battle-weary Sri Lankans worry the fragile ceasefire between government forces and the Tamil Tiger rebels won't hold for much longer -- not because of occasional clashes, but because of the animosity between the two leaders.
President Chandrika Kumaratunga and Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe argue about nearly everything, from who will give important speeches to who will head what government ministry.
But the most bitter topic is the peace process.
Both insist they want peace for this embattled island nation, where two decades of civil war have cost the lives of 65,000 people, as ethnic Tamil rebels have fought to carve out a homeland in the country's northeast, dominated by the Hindu Tamils.
Wickremesinghe signed a February last year Norwegian-brokered ceasefire agreement with rebels that ended the fighting. Six rounds of talks aimed at finding a political solution were held before the rebels walked out in April.
Kumaratunga says the prime minister caved in to Tiger demands for autonomy without insisting they disarm first, or stop violating human rights.
In an 11-page letter in October, Kumaratunga blasted Wickremesinghe for putting the country's security at risk in the name of peace.
Repeatedly, she has threatened to use her broad powers to fire the prime minister and dissolve parliament.
The animosity between the two is likely to further intensify when the rebels spell out their demands for political and financial authority in the northeast. Their proposals were expected to be released tomorrow.
Sri Lanka's sharp political divisions have many worried.
"A united voice in this crucial time ... is critical to move forward successfully," US Assistant Secretary of State for South Asian Affairs Christina Rocca said during a May visit.
The feud climaxed at the international level in early September, when the two leaders were unable to agree on who would represent Sri Lanka at the UN General Assembly.
Kumaratunga eventually gave in, saying she would not attend. She told UN Secretary General Kofi Annan that her absence was "due to the situation at home."
The bickering has given the rebels more excuses to stay away from the negotiating table.
"Your administration is unstable and caught up in a ferocious cohabitation war with the all-powerful president," Anton Balasingham, the chief rebel negotiator, wrote in a letter to Wickremesinghe in June.
Unsurprisingly, the two put the blame on each other.
Kumaratunga's spokesman, Harim Peiris, says Wickremesinghe ignores her.
But Kumaratunga declined to meet Wickremesinghe before he left for the UN, saying she was "indisposed." She has refused to meet with him on several other occasions.
Raised in Sri Lanka's small political elite, the two were friends as children. That ended when their political careers took off.
Kumaratunga was re-elected president in December 1999, three days after the Tigers tried to kill her in a suicide attack. She rode a sympathy vote to narrowly defeat Wickremesinghe and installed her aged mother as prime minister.
Undeterred by the defeat, Wickremesinghe fought and won the prime ministership in 2001 parliamentary polls, the most violent the country has seen, with 61 deaths in a six-week campaign.
Since then, the bickering has seldom let up.
Kumaratunga, 58, has publicly accused Wickremesinghe, 54, of trying to assassinate her. During parliamentary campaigning, Wickremesinghe called Kumaratunga a dictator -- a "Hitler madam." Kumaratunga said the prime minister is "without a backbone."
Observers say the two must learn to get along.
"It is up to people with social leverage to force a cohabitation arrangement with national interest," said Paikiasothy Saravanamuttu, a top political analyst who heads the Center for Policy Alternatives, an independent think-tank.
POLITICAL PRISONERS VS DEPORTEES: Venezuela’s prosecutor’s office slammed the call by El Salvador’s leader, accusing him of crimes against humanity Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele on Sunday proposed carrying out a prisoner swap with Venezuela, suggesting he would exchange Venezuelan deportees from the US his government has kept imprisoned for what he called “political prisoners” in Venezuela. In a post on X, directed at Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, Bukele listed off a number of family members of high-level opposition figures in Venezuela, journalists and activists detained during the South American government’s electoral crackdown last year. “The only reason they are imprisoned is for having opposed you and your electoral fraud,” he wrote to Maduro. “However, I want to propose a humanitarian agreement that
ECONOMIC WORRIES: The ruling PAP faces voters amid concerns that the city-state faces the possibility of a recession and job losses amid Washington’s tariffs Singapore yesterday finalized contestants for its general election on Saturday next week, with the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) fielding 32 new candidates in the biggest refresh of the party that has ruled the city-state since independence in 1965. The move follows a pledge by Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (黃循財), who took office last year and assumed the PAP leadership, to “bring in new blood, new ideas and new energy” to steer the country of 6 million people. His latest shake-up beats that of predecessors Lee Hsien Loong (李顯龍) and Goh Chok Tong (吳作棟), who replaced 24 and 11 politicians respectively
Young women standing idly around a park in Tokyo’s west suggest that a giant statue of Godzilla is not the only attraction for a record number of foreign tourists. Their faces lit by the cold glow of their phones, the women lining Okubo Park are evidence that sex tourism has developed as a dark flipside to the bustling Kabukicho nightlife district. Increasing numbers of foreign men are flocking to the area after seeing videos on social media. One of the women said that the area near Kabukicho, where Godzilla rumbles and belches smoke atop a cinema, has become a “real
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to
RSS