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දැන් පවතින තත්ත්වය
Victor Ivan
Ravaya
A numbered twenty-point programme for the country after the tsunami: facing the challenge with a practical vision, an all-party government for two years, restarting peace talks with interim administration for the North-East that the Muslims can accept, rebuilding ten symbolic towns, reorganising the state, a higher court to settle disputes,
The tsunami took some 25,000 lives and displaced hundreds of thousands. Ivan sees a silver lining in the way it let people look past their divisions, but argues that it struck a state already collapsing into farce, and finds the Rs 100 million set aside for emergency relief smaller than
The tsunami that killed some 25,000 Sri Lankans was a natural disaster, but the editorial asks whether the geologists responsible failed in their duty and why the government managed the aftermath so poorly, noting that rescuers reached the wrecked train with over a thousand passengers only after 30 hours.
Victor Ivan treats the December 2004 tsunami as a test the Sri Lankan state failed. Warning instruments existed and went unused; the armed forces were instructed too late to be effective outside the north-east where they were already concentrated. Forty-eight hours after the waves the government allocated Rs 100 million
The biggest question raised by the judgment that sent S.B. Dissanayake to prison is whether the Chief Justice deceived him: the evidence suggests S.B. dropped his legal challenge on a promise he never doubted. If so, the editorial asks, how should such a deception be dealt with, and did the
A Daily Mirror front-page photograph of the Hyde Park rally held on the 21st for S.B. Dissanayake's release prompts reflection on where the crisis around the Chief Justice is heading. The Bar Association and every party looked away while the cancer spread, and their opportunism now threatens a complete collapse
The contested Shah Rukh Khan concert ended in violence, two deaths and injuries, after protests that it should not be held on the eve of Soma Thera's first death anniversary. The editorial calls it a disgrace tied to religious fundamentalism and warns that a country unable to solve its old
A short note on the JVP: Wimal Weerawansa and his colleagues, who saw the Chief Justice as a demon while in opposition, have become his best guardians, and the party's change on these two basic issues suggests more changes to come.
The opposition condemns the Supreme Court's judgment against S.B. Dissanayake with one voice and the government party praises it with one voice, while the JVP claims to be different. The editorial traces S.B.'s journey from PA 'hero' to UNP 'traitor' and insists that the public has the right to criticise
Anura Bandaranaike has changed his tune about succeeding his sister as the alliance's presidential candidate. In sections on the constitutional amendment, Chandrika's tricks, a Ranil who belongs to neither world, and a thunderbolt striking the temple of justice, Ivan argues that the state needs full reform, not reform to save
Contempt complaints are becoming fashionable: UNP MP Johnston Fernando has petitioned the Supreme Court over Anura Bandaranaike's remarks on the S.B. Dissanayake case. The note points out that the UNP leader decries contempt prosecutions while his own MP files one.
The Bribery Commission's term has ended and the new nominees face complaints. The editorial blames weak provisions on its three-member composition, calls the assets and liabilities law a powerful but unused weapon, and notes that the Commission has read the law as if the President need not declare her assets.
S.B. Dissanayake, UNP national organiser, has been convicted of contempt of court. Although he once threatened to close the courts to push through the People's Alliance constitution, the editorial argues that two years' rigorous imprisonment for such an offence would be unjust even from an independent court, and that the
Jobs for graduates, a thousand tanks restored, a relief budget and ten thousand villages uplifted form the populist first round of the government's show. The editorial warns that the second round will be coercive and violent, aimed at removing from politics those able to lead resistance, though the government itself
S.B. Dissanayake went to court on the 14th expecting a suspended sentence and went to prison. Ivan recalls meeting him with Nihal Jayawickrama in November and warning him that, compared with Rauff Hakeem or the Hela Urumaya monks, he mattered little to the Chief Justice, and describes how S.B. walked
The Sunday Divaina ran a full-page interview with the Chief Justice, conducted by a writer who had earlier defended the Public Trustee. The piece asks why the interview appeared while an estate case involving the paper's owners was pending before a bench on which the Chief Justice always sat, and
Prabhakaran insists that talks begin on the basis of his interim self-governing authority proposals and will not discuss a final settlement alongside them. The editorial notes that the donors' pledges depend on talks starting and asks whether the government, tied to the JVP, has any agenda of its own.
The LTTE leader's Heroes' Day speech is read as a sharp analysis of southern politics: his differences with the Wickremesinghe government, his view of the President and the alliance, and his warning that Tamils will neither live bound within a Sinhala state nor wish to separate if given freedom. The
Victor Ivan reads Prabhakaran's Heroes' Day speech as a shrewd account of southern politics. The LTTE leader traces the breakdown back to Washington, where the UNP's participation in the aid conference denied his organisation equal-partner status; he rejects every interim administration draft the government produced, insists talks resume on the
The Chief Justice has suggested that the murder of High Court judge Sarath Ambepitiya was the result of criticism of the judiciary. Since he is the only judge under public criticism, the editorial replies, the claim is shameless, and it recalls how he narrowed human rights jurisdiction and drove out
