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ආගමික නායකයන්ගේ මැදිහත් වීමක් අත්යවශ්ය ය
Victor Ivan
Ravaya
The editorial welcomes the Inter-Religious Council formed by Buddhist, Catholic, Hindu, Muslim and Christian leaders to press politicians to put the country right. It argues that politics, not religion, now determines every aspect of life and is leading to ruin through rigged elections, politicised institutions and ethnic mistrust, and asks
The PA government is in political uncertainty. With a UNP no-confidence motion gathering momentum it has become suspicious not only of its enemies but of its allies, and appears to have lost the capacity to look at anything calmly or logically.
After a smoke bomb attack on Ravaya, the Media Minister condemned it and ordered an inquiry. The piece reads the attack as a warning linked to state media's anti-Ravaya campaign and to government circles that see the paper as leading efforts to topple it, and recalls the attacks on Lasantha
The judicial crisis around Chief Justice Sarath N. Silva is a question that can decide the politics of the country. At no point should the Supreme Court become a partner in an executive programme that runs against the principles it exists to protect.
Ivan argues that an independent judiciary must protect citizens, not the government, when popular sovereignty is threatened, citing Kuldip Singh's court under Indira Gandhi. Under Sarath N. Silva the Supreme Court has become the executive's tool: he packed the bench on the electoral bill, blocked Karu Jayasuriya's media petitions, reversed
Employees protest the sale of 51 per cent of the National Insurance Corporation, with life funds over Rs. 1,800 million, to Janashakthi for about Rs. 490 million. The editorial says privatisation has become a source of illicit wealth under both UNP and PA, notes that the Public Enterprises Commission misled
With an impeachment motion filed against Chief Justice Sarath N. Silva, Ivan recalls the only earlier one under the 1978 Constitution, against Neville Samarakoon. He recounts Samarakoon's career and clashes with Jayewardene's government: the reconstituted Supreme Court, the Kalawana seat, the referendum amendment, the Ratanasara and Vivienne Goonewardene cases and
After the failure of Agni Khiela the government has had to soften the hard conditions it set for starting talks. It now enters negotiations from weakness rather than strength, and the talks are likelier to deepen its crisis than to steady it.
Ivan argues that the government nurtured thuggish regional bosses such as Minister Mahipala Herath over educated figures like Jagath Balasuriya, and that the Mawanella violence began when his henchmen, long extorting locals with police protection, tied the cashier of the Sahira Hotel to the Premadasa statue and slashed his face.
Ivan argues that the UNP revolt, though it did not unseat Ranil Wickremesinghe, curbed his autocratic leadership, raised internal democracy and forced him to promise to step aside if he obstructed an all-party government. Neither the PA nor the JVP wanted a change of UNP leader. With no outside support
Managing ethnic, religious and linguistic passions is Sri Lanka's greatest challenge, and adding a Muslim conflict to the Tamil one would bring chaos. The editorial argues that no post-independence ruler has shown the ability to do so, recalling how the UNP blamed the JVP for Black July 1983, and criticising
There is a saying that if you go to sleep with dogs you wake up with ticks, and the government is in that position now. What happened at Mawanella, and who let it happen, is followed here from the local politics up to the immunity of the President.
After lawyers Neil Dias, Chandrapala Kumarage and Sena Liyanasuriya urged the Bar Association to act against Ravaya, Ivan recounts how inquiries upheld Ravaya's charges against Lenin Ratnayake and Upali Abeyratne and poses six questions: on Sarath N. Silva's domestic life and judicial ethics, his appointment while disbarment petitions were pending,
PA MP Bharatha Lakshman Premachandra held a concert on the Angoda mental hospital grounds in defiance of a court order, and a PA local councillor accused of stripping a woman in the North Western election has evaded arrest, prompting a notice on the Katupotha police chief. The editorial says the
There is a real discussion in the country about broadening democratic freedom and the reforms it needs, and almost all of it is about how to reform the state. The parties, which are the state's main instrument, are doing nothing to strengthen democracy inside themselves.
Prime Minister Ratnasiri Wickremanayake told Parliament that the President's Fund need not table accounts because it receives nothing from the Consolidated Fund. The editorial calls this misleading: the Act subjects the fund to audit and parliamentary scrutiny, it has not been audited since 1995, and it is fed by state
Following up Ravaya's previous exposé, the piece says a close confidant of the Chief Justice, a man with underworld links whom he made custodian and caterer of the judges' training institute, is linked by phone records to a murder and to fraudulently filed fundamental rights petitions. Police found a photograph
Ivan gives a detailed account of the UNP revolt against Ranil Wickremesinghe after a plan to defeat the budget, with Thondaman's four votes and defectors from the People's Alliance, collapsed at midnight. Thondaman later said he was never asked. The piece follows the group of 23 MPs led by Gamini
After the failed budget vote, Ivan argues that most UNP MPs now believe the party needs new leadership to defeat the government and form an all-party interim administration, with Karu Jayasuriya as Opposition Leader and Gamini Atukorale as party leader. He traces Wickremesinghe's weakness to his rapid rise after the
The government avoided defeat on the budget without finding out who was adding to the four members of Thondaman's group who had agreed to vote it down, and without uniting its own ranks against a repeat. The instability that produced is the setting for a question about the opposition leader.
