The people for their part don't seem to know whether to laugh or to cry over all these developments. The UNF seems to be saying "all this sweetness is killing us."

This sweetness may be literally killing the UNF. By pretending that she is for compromise, the President can keep the UNF in a bind, and paint the government as the stubborn unwilling political tough.

This will make it difficult for the UNF to pursue its own agenda - its own 'mandate' as Minister G. L. Peiris has said.

Can the PA form a government against the popular tide, which seems to be one of endorsing the peace process? This would have weighed on the mind of the President. Take the United States for instance. An emphatic statement has been made by a high-ranking US official, to the effect that there should be a bi-partisan consensus towards building peace in Sri Lanka.

It is very unlikely that the LTTE would want to work towards peace with a Chandrika-led government. There is so much bad feeling between Prabhakaran and Kumaratunga that you could say that there is a psychological chasm there that is quite unbridgeable.

If Sarath Amunugama and all the eager beavers of the PA want to form a government, despite all that - it is necessarily going to be a government by unreasonable force. Caution: this is obviously not to say that such a government will be by coup detat.

It is perfectly legitimate for the President to dismiss the Wickremesinghe government and ask her own party, or ask anybody else for that matter, to form a government. But what's constitutional is not necessarily going to engender public support or universal sympathy.

It is not a case of being for or against the peace process, but a case of going against various forces which are probably too powerful for the President to contend with. If the President forms a government of her own, she will not be able to work with the LTTE - which means that there will necessarily be a breakdown in the peace process. If there is a breakdown in the peace process, it will probably mean that the Kumaratunga government would have alienated so many powerful forces - that it will not be in a position to survive.

So even though it is the UNF that seems to be fighting with its back to the wall at the moment, it is the PA which needs to watch out before making any pre-emptive moves towards forming a government that will be destined to fail.

These political imperatives seem to be irrelevant to the brat pack of MPs who seem to be hell bent on forming a government, notwithstanding the fact that all reasonable political considerations weigh against the suitability of such a government in the immediate term. For Amunugama, any sort of government will do - if he is in it. So with the rest of the brat pack.

How long will such a government last, with a TNA which will quite obviously not like to work with a dispensation that is headed by Chandrika Kumaratunga? G. L. Peiris has reworked his rhetoric. He says that "an election is definitely an option that the UNF has but it is not necessary.''

It means that the UNF is confident that it cannot get a two-thirds majority at an election. If there is no two thirds majority the situation will be back to square one, except perhaps that the UNF will have won a further year, in which it can be confident that the President cannot dissolve parliament.

But delve deeper into this whole can of worms, and one will find more in the form of odious possibilities. What if Chandrika Kumaratunga dissolves parliament, when the UNF slides in popularity, further into its own term? Will that necessarily mean that the voter, at the ensuing election, will go on the perception that it is Kumaratunga who calls the shots - which means it is better to vote with the PA?

That is the vast intangible that even the greatest political masters will not be able to quite size-up. Definitely Sri Lankan voters have been voting on perceptions, and if the perception is that the PA is calling all the shots, it will stand to reason that the PA will have the advantage if the President dissolves parliament and calls for an election. But other than that, it cannot be forgotten that the UNF is playing with a great hand.

The entire media seems to be at its beck and call - and this is not a question of having to railroad the media into doing its own bidding. The UNF, by proxy at least, basically seems to own the media today - and the PA does not have a voice except for a wretched and miserable party paper.

Under the circumstances, the UNF can virtually hang the PA as the wrecker of the peace process, and the one time wrecker of the economy poised to do it again.

The UNF seems on the other hand to be painting the President as being more popular than she actually is. It appears that the UNF's media machine is not half as powerful as the PA's when the PA was in power.

But it also seems to be a blessing of sorts. The UNF is more subtle - and since the media are a willing player, it seems that the UNF's line is being articulated more naturally in TV and in newspapers. Read: The message seems to look less like blatant propaganda.

But even so- the UNF will have to live with the anxiety that the President can dissolve parliament. If this anxiety is to be delayed, by a further year, the UNF can call for an election now. The UNF will be buying exactly one year of solid security. But then again - the UNF cannot go for an election. The President says that calling for an election is her own constitutional prerogative, and what's the court that is not going to vote with her?

So there it is - the UNF's options are to cohabit with a President who is herself a lame duck, despite all her huge constitutional powers. Cohabit, and pray that the press and Prabhakaran will join hands to keep the UNF afloat - not the most enviable of predicaments. But as they say in the new inversion of that notorious line, bedfellows can make for strange politics?

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