Colombo : Sri Lanka’s Supreme Court said President Mahinda Rajapaksa is eligible to seek a third term in office.

The Supreme Court determined there were no barriers for Rajapaksa, 68, to contest again, Sri Lanka’s information department said in a text message. The Supreme Court’s decision was communicated to parliament on Tuesday, it said.

Rajapaksa, who is seeking to extend his 10-year rule, asked the island’s top court on 5 November for an opinion on whether he could run again. While a change to the constitution in 2010 scrapped term limits, his opponents had said the provision only applied to future presidents.

Rajapaksa is looking to call a presidential election two years early after his ruling coalition saw its popularity fall in a provincial vote two months ago. In a budget last month, he increased wages for state employees, boosted pensions and raised guaranteed crop prices for farmers even while maintaining plans to narrow the budget deficit to a 40-year low.

Rajapaksa’s coalition members are preparing for an election in January, environment minister Susil Premajayantha said by phone from Colombo on 21 October. Rajapaksa is likely to call elections once he completes four years of his current term on 19 November.

Sri Lanka’s constitution allows the president to seek the Supreme Court’s opinion on legal questions that are “of such public importance." The proceedings must remain private in most cases and at least five judges should consider the case, it says.

Opponents

Rajapaksa’s opponents say he is abusing his power and say he must serve until his term ends in November 2016. They have said he is pressuring the judiciary, saying that the impeachment of former chief justice Shirani Bandaranayake in 2013 was politically motivated.

“This shows an attempt to deny the opportunity to a fair hearing and impose the will of the administration," Anura Kumara Dissanayake, leader of the Marxist Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna, an opposition party, told reporters in Colombo on 6 November, referring to Rajapaksa’s move to approach the court.

While the Supreme Court has the jurisdiction to interpret the constitution, it should hold a public hearing with oral arguments, Upul Jayasuriya, president of the Bar Association, said in Colombo on 7 November.

“I think it is a matter that should be open to debate," Jayasuriya said. “It is a matter of democracy and transparency."

Prices, interest rates

The end of a three-decade civil war in 2009 has propelled Sri Lanka’s economy to grow the fastest in South Asia. Even so, rising prices of staples like rice, wheat flour and milk powder due to a recent drought are undermining Rajapaksa’s popularity.

Food prices rose 4.6% in October, a slower pace than a year earlier and faster than the average in the first three months of 2014, according to Sri Lanka’s statistics department. Overall inflation slowed to 1.6% from 6.7% in October 2013, the data show.

Sri Lanka’s central bank has held benchmark rates at a record low this year and said inflation can be sustained at low single-digit levels. Monetary policy alone can’t sustain Sri Lanka’s growth momentum, Eteri Kvintradze, the IMF’s representative in Colombo, said in a 26 September interview.

Rajapaksa has forecast a budget deficit of 4.6% of gross domestic product next year amid an expansion rate of about 8%. That would be the lowest since 1974.

In Uva province in September, Rajapaksa’s United People’s Freedom Alliance coalition won by a narrow margin while seeing support fall by 21 percentage points.

Rajapaksa won about 60% of the 10.4 million votes cast in a January 2010 poll, compared with 40% for former army chief Sarath Fonseka, after his troops defeated the separatist Tamil Tigers. That was the strongest mandate in 16 years and gave Rajapaksa a second six-year term.

A divided opposition and Rajapaksa’s command of the state machinery would still make him the frontrunner in a fresh election, according to Sasha Riser-Kositsky, Asia Associate at Eurasia Group. Bloomberg

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