Abstract
The year 1993 was marked by dramatic developments in Sri Lanka in the political and military spheres. President Ranasinghe Premadasa was blown to bits by a suicide bomber in the midst of a May Day parade, just eight days after one of his principal opponents, Lalith Athulathmudali, was shot dead while addressing an election meeting. For the second time in contemporary Sri Lankan history, an opposition political group established an alternate power base, forming a provincial-level government in the crucial Western Province. The Supreme Court, gaining confidence in its political powers, ruled against the ruling United National Party (UNP) in the appointment of two other provincial council chief ministers. The Sri Lankan armed forces experienced their most devastating defeat at the hands of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) at Pooneryn, and underwent a change in leadership. The LTTE went through its own crises, losing a key leader and a ship loaded with arms to the Indian Navy. This exacerbated fissures within the organization, culminating in the arrest and possible execution of the second in command, Mahendraraja (Mahattya). But in the perhaps more fundamental levels of the economy and the civil conflict, things appeared to remain more or less the same as in past years, and the governing system exhibited considerable stability.
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