The political change that took place in the country in 1994 marked a significant change in the general attitude towards devolution. The new leadership that had emerged in the SLFP by the time of the 1994 General Election had managed to convince the party of the need to change its rigid stance regarding the ethnic problem and accept devolution of power as a solution to the problem. Given that devolution of power was one of the key slogans of the SLFP-led People’s Alliance, the party’s victory at the General Election and the party’s de facto leader Chandrika Kumaratunga’s victory at the Presidential Election in the same year attested to the favourable attitude with which the idea of devolution of power had begun to be perceived in the country. The Government’s proposals regarding a basic framework for the devolution of power in 1997 and the draft Constitution presented to the Parliament in 2000 which included proposals for the devolution of power showed the Government’s commitment to power devolution. Nevertheless, the proposals failing to see the light of day in the face of massive opposition from the main Opposition parties and the Government’s rapid loss of popularity due to its failure in the war front and the economic sphere resulted in devolution of power, mainly as the party’s main slogan, losing faith among the people.
Although the UNP led by Wickramasinghe had accepted devolution of power in principle, the party did not use it as a slogan in the 2001 General Election, which brought them back to power, obviously due to the negative connotations that the notion had acquired by then. The party campaigned mainly on economic issues. After coming to power, the UNP went public on their position regarding the ethnic problem in the country and indicated their willingness to go for a broader devolution of power, and many pro-Government groups and Opposition groups viewed federalism as a model possible within the Government’s definition of devolution of power. Although this fresh approach to the ethnic problem laid the foundation for a new round of talks between the Government and the LTTE and led the path to a ceasefire agreement between the two parties, constant violations of the agreement mainly by the LTTE, the perceived inability of the Government to take effective measures to prevent these violations, and the perceived partiality of the Norwegian facilitators towards the LTTE put the idea of devolution of power in an entirely negative light where it began to be seen as a pure threat to the territorial integrity of the country.
By the time of the 2005 Presidential Election, the constant and consistent failure of all the proposed political solutions each of which had included some form of devolution of power had generated a strong sense of mistrust regarding political solutions to the ethnic problem in society. This sense of mistrust had created a space in which a military solution could emerge as the only viable solution to the problem.