Byline: Victor Ivan

රට යන්නේ කොයිබට ද?

Fifty-seven years after independence the country lurches from one crisis to the next, and hardly a single field gives cause for satisfaction. No ruler has turned it round, and the editorial points to a head of state placed above the law by presidential immunity as one root of failure.

සුනාමි හානි පුනරුත්ථාපනය

The Auditor General’s report on tsunami recovery up to 30 June 2005 is now public. Of 48,974 houses destroyed, only 1,055, about 2 per cent of the need, had been completed by 4 August, and the report lists irregularities in the Rs 5,000 allowance payments. Under the subhead ‘Do we need more talk about the country’s failure?’, the editorial says the figures speak for the country’s level of civilisation.

Sinhala Buddhist Vote Base and the Presidential Election

Six weeks before the 2005 presidential election, Victor Ivan works through whether it can be won on Sinhala Buddhist votes alone. He begins by conceding the JVP’s pre-2004 argument was arithmetically sound: had the SLFP, JVP and EPDP contested together in 2001 they would have outpolled the UNP-led alliance by 27,579 votes. Contesting as one in 2004 they gained only 5,019 votes on their separate 2001 total, took 108 seats without a majority, and were outpolled by the combined opposition by some seven lakhs — 46.04% against 53.96%. But a presidential election is a different instrument: two contenders, one national constituency, and a winner who must clear half the vote. Ivan estimates the Sinhala Buddhist electorate at 6,094,667 of roughly 9.16 million valid votes, meaning a candidate relying on it alone would need 75% of it — a target he does not think easily attainable. He notes too why minorities prefer the presidential system: with the Sinhala vote split between the main parties, their votes can decide who becomes head of state.

සිය කැමැත්තෙන් විනාශයට යන රටක්

Lacking the wisdom to untie simple knots, Sri Lanka has let them grow into tangles, and the people pay the price. The editorial notes that the investigation into Judge Ambepitiya’s murder identified an underworld figure as the mastermind, and urges voters to make the candidates present, without lies, their vision for the country’s problems.

නායකයන්ගේ වගකීමෙන් තොර බව

The presidential election is being held with neither an Elections Commission nor a Constitutional Council, leaving the Elections Commissioner, the man the 17th Amendment has hurt most, ‘caught like an areca nut in the cutter’. A second section, on the rule of law and the Chief Justice, counts the motion for a select committee on the Diyawanna Oya affair as a third impeachment charge against him.

අපරාධය හා දඬුවම

Three teachers of D.S. Senanayake College have been sentenced to two years in prison for beating a student. The editorial does not doubt their guilt but finds the punishment excessive, and notes that the courts, once respected, have become a subject of public controversy.

මහින්දට විය හැක්කේ කුමක් ද?

Mahinda Rajapaksa is near the top, a remarkable feat in a party dominated by one family, and he got there not as a Bandaranaike retainer. Ivan weighs Chandrika Kumaratunga’s decision not to fight him at the convention, and his bold readiness to meet Prabhakaran against his pact with the JVP and Hela Urumaya to keep the unitary state.