Several times their trajectories merged, most memorably when Sri Lanka's 1996 World Cup triumph -- soon after a bomb claimed nearly 100 lives in Colombo and jeopardised the tournament -- came to symbolise not just a sporting triumph but the country's ability to overcome.

A few years on, the two havebegun to represent twin tragedies, with the decline of Arjuna's cricket team a mirror image of the failure of Chandrika Kumaratunga's government. Just as it is obvious with every passing match that the World Cup is slipping away from the out-of-form hands of Arjuna's boys, it is quite clear that a solution to Sri Lanka's Tamil crisis is slipping out of Chandrika's hands. However, the loss of the World Cup is minor tragedy compared to the unfulfilled promise of Chandrika.

When she came to power, Sri Lanka's ethnic war had already claimed about 50,000 lives. It had torn apart the fabric of Sri Lankan society and not just pitted Tamils against Sinhalese, but also Tamils against Tamils and Sinhalese against Sinhalese. If there was one Sri Lankan politician who people believed could stitch this fabric back together, it was Chandrika.

She was at any rate the first Sinhalese leader to unilaterally offer proposals to devolve substantial power to the Tamil and Muslim minorities. Tragically, Chandrika has not livedup to expectations. She may say today that her hands were tied, one by the LTTE and the other by the opposition United National Party(UNP). But these only sound like convenient excuses for her government's inaction.

Had she embarked on the implementation of her "package" of constitutional reforms in the first or even the second year of her term, she would have succeeded in pushing both Prabhakaran and the emasculated leadership of the UNP into a tight corner. Instead she squandered that early advantage by falling, Rajiv Gandhi-like, into LTTE's trap of engaging them militarily in a costly war that cannot be won, simultaneously alienating thousands of Tamils who had once looked upon her as a messiah of peace. All the government got for its "war for peace" strategy were a tenuous hold on territory on one side, more dead soldiers in two years than in all the preceding 14 years and more refugees than in Kosovo.

The war may have acquired some meaning had it been accompanied by attempts to implement thedevolution package, but without that crucial input, it seemed purposeless. As for blaming the UNP for failing to give her parliamentary support for the devolution package, Chandrika should have known that before she started, for was it not her Sri Lanka Freedom Party that just 10 years ago opposed the then UNP government's efforts to resolve the crisis through the provincial council system?

Now, Chandrika has little over a year left of her six-year term in office. That still gives her more time than Arjuna to try and live up to the expectations of not just 18 million Sri Lankans, but the world. Political prudence, especially after the poor showing by Chandrika's coalition in recently held local elections, may demand that she do nothing that will rock the boat in the remainder of her term. However, burning national issues cannot be solved by those not prepared to make political sacrifices. If Chandrika is at all sincere about her promise of peace, there is still time to demonstrate it. Ignore the hardlinersin the party, hold a referendum and change the constitution, exercise whatever other "option" there is to implement the devolution package and be prepared to face the resultant turmoil.