![Sri Lanka president seeks court ruling on election date](https://www.jurist.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/jurist-white-text.png)
[JURIST] Sri Lankan President Chandrika Kumaratunga [official website] asked Sri Lanka's Supreme Court [official website] on Tuesday to decide when the next presidential election should be, in an effort to counter increasingly strong opposition calls for a vote this year. The top political parties in Sri Lanka cannot meet a compromise on the timing of the next poll, with main opposition United National Party [Wikipedia backgrounder] leader Ranil Wickremesinghe [Wikipedia profile] pushing for an immediate contest. Kumaratunga was first elected in 1994 and claims her second six-year term should end in late 2006. But Wickremesinghe believes because she ran for her second term a year early, in 1999, her second term ends in 2005. Many diplomats and aid workers want to return the political attention to the the much needed tsunami reconstruction. Reuters has more.