Though the legislation, which needs a two-thirds' support in parliament, has virtually no chance of going through, the executive committee of the ruling People's Alliance (PA) which met earlier this week, has advised Kumaratunga that this is the only way to demonstrate her government's ``sincerity of purpose'' to the electorate.

Parliamentary and Presidential elections are due in 2000, but ruling coalition MPs are concerned that the government has not been able to keep many of its promises made in the last election, mainly the political resolution of the ethnic conflict and the abolition of the executive presidency.

Of late, the newly resurgent Janatha Vimukthi Perumina (JVP) and the United National Party (UNP) have been drumming up separate campaigns againstthe government for not abolishing the presidency Kumaratunga had promised to do so within a year of assuming office.

The government's defence has been that the abolition of the draconian executive presidency is part of the package of constitutional reforms that the opposition UNP has blocked by refusing to support it in parliament.The UNP refuses to support it on the grounds that it is opposed to some of the important proposals in the package relating to devolution of power to the Tamil-dominated north-east.

The government now believes that presenting the proposals in the form of a bill that is doomed to fail because of the UNP's refusal to support it will enable Kumaratunga to effectively shift responsibility for the failure to fulfill her two main promises on to the UNP.

However, the move may backfire on the PA if the Tamil parties in parliament too do not extend their support to the bill. The four parties TULF, EPDP, PLOT and TELO are dissatisfied with many aspects of the devolution proposals.Moreover, there is, in the background, the threat to all Tamil politicians from the Tamil Tigers who have advised them to join the LTTE or withdraw from politics. At least three out of five TULF MPs are directly affected by this threat and this will be an important consideration in the party's stand on the package.

According to Tamil politicians, if the oldest Tamil party does not extend its support to the package, there is no way three former militant groups will do so.

That will enable the UNP to put the ball back in the PA's court, asking the government to first get the consent of at least the supposedly pro-government Tamil parties, if not the LTTE.

Meanwhile, PA brainstormers at the executive committee also criticised the government's confrontational approach to privately-owned media. General secretary of the Sri Lanka Muslim Congress (SLMC) Rauff Hakeem warned that state-owned newspapers were going over the top targeting journalists of the ``free media'', making the same mistakes as previous UNPgovernments.

Last week, several journalists covering a UNP protest march were beaten up, allegedly by policemen.