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කදිර්ගාමර් ඝාතනයේ දේශපාලනය
Victor Ivan
Ravaya
Lakshman Kadirgamar's assassination is inflaming the ethnic conflict. The LTTE had long treated him as enemy number one; Ivan argues that a policy of defeating the LTTE militarily only makes Tamils suffer and the LTTE stronger, while the killing shows the LTTE will not abandon the murder of its enemies,
The private bus strike of the 9th against new traffic fines brought transport to a halt. The editorial finds public transport in the same chaos as everything else and proposes proper licensing and training for bus crews, paid for by the state while they train.
In the middle of a political crisis the President has shown off her son Vimukthi, perhaps to test demand for the 'prince'. His remarks recall how his grandfather S.W.R.D. Bandaranaike tangled the dog question with the language question; the editorial laments a country forever lost in empty arguments while it
The question of whether the presidential election falls this year or next has become a legal knot. Fearing the Elections Commissioner's decision, the President sought the Supreme Court's interpretation, while Omalpe Sobhitha Thera petitioned to stop it; whatever the Chief Justice decides will anger one side.
Chandrika Kumaratunga has had her biography written by a well-known biographer, with the publisher's US$40,000 fee paid by the Ports Authority under Mangala Samaraweera and launches planned from Oslo to Berlin at public expense. Ivan traces the practice to J.R. Jayewardene, then turns to a heartless Parliament and the coming
In naming Mahinda Rajapaksa as presidential candidate, the President also named Anura Bandaranaike as prime ministerial candidate, which no one had asked for. The editorial reads it as two steps back and one forward in her fight against irrelevance, a fierce chess move, and compares her use of the courts
The Sinhala south is absorbed in the unsettled questions of the presidential election while the ceasefire is plainly at risk: figures published by the Sahajeevana foundation show political killings in the East rising from 14 a month in 2004 to 18 in 2005. The editorial urges the two leading candidates
The President has named Mahinda Rajapaksa her party's presidential candidate and her own brother its prime ministerial candidate, though only the first nomination was asked for — and done while an amendment making her SLFP leader for life was being introduced. Victor Ivan reads it as a chess move of
The latest fish on the Chief Justice's hook is the 'red fish', the JVP. The note describes how he baits each hook to the taste of the fish he means to catch, and suggests even the revolutionary Wimal Weerawansa could not resist the charms of the 'mermaid' on the mobile
Giving jobs to 40,000 unemployed graduates was a good step, but the way they were recruited was unfair to graduates who had already won lesser public posts by examination, and posting any graduate as an accountant ignores the need for trained, qualified people.
Unable to show a winning plan to avoid irrelevance, the President is being deserted; seniors who backed her on the tsunami mechanism are not with her on the candidacy. The editorial suggests she may seek future protection from Ranil Wickremesinghe as J.R. Jayewardene and D.B. Wijetunga once did, and considers
Martin Luther King could look to the US Supreme Court with hope; Prabhakaran and Tamils cannot feel the same about Sri Lanka's. Ivan recalls the Tamil rights cases that failed, from the Kodakan Pillai citizenship case onwards, then describes the hearing of the petitions against the tsunami mechanism, noting a
The High Court's acquittal of S.B. Dissanayake on bribery charges is a blow to the Bribery Commission, which has failed to show independence in politically important cases. The editorial argues that a president's immunity is no reason not to investigate, citing France, and questions a commission made up entirely of
Months after the first Constitutional Council's term ended, no new members have been appointed, and vacancies in the Court of Appeal cannot be filled. Whatever its flaws, the 17th Amendment was an important step towards good governance; the editorial says the commissions matter to the public, not the politicians, and
Mismanaging a disaster that killed nearly 40,000 and displaced close to a million could bring a political tsunami. The Prime Minister's report to Cabinet puts tsunami aid received at Rs 113,262,539 without saying from whom; the editorial says he, the JVP and every other party that collected aid should account
Rulers who ignore the basic law are a lasting source of Sri Lanka's political confusion, from the United Front's new constitution of 1972 to the UNP's in 1978. Ivan shows that everyone, the Chief Justice included, once accepted that the President's second term began on 22 December 1999, as the
A Sunday Leader report that Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa transferred part of the tsunami aid in his account to a Hambantota development fund raises a wider problem. The editorial calls on every party and politician who collected foreign aid to disclose what they received and how they spent it, and
The Chief Justice took up the JVP's and the Hela Urumaya's fundamental rights petitions against the tsunami management structure filed on 5 July. A second note, 'S.B. cries for freedom', finds S.B. Dissanayake in the Merchant ward expecting release at any moment and blaming Bribery Commission Director-General Piyasena Ranasinghe for
Out of government, the JVP has not raised its voice; it says it will go to court against the tsunami mechanism and complain to the UN. The editorial asks why, if that was the best way, it staged a fast unto death, and argues that if a parliamentary election comes
For all her mistakes, Ivan argues, Chandrika Kumaratunga may enter history as the leader who finally stood up to the Sinhala racist and religious extremists that every leader before her, her father included, obeyed. He then weighs her options as her term runs out: retirement, dissolution with the risk of
