Byline: Victor Ivan

ජනාධිපතිවරණ ප්‍රහේළිකාව

The Elections Commissioner has the constitutional power to fix the date and has already decided, but the Supreme Court’s view is unclear. The editorial argues that the oath the President took publicly on 22 December 1999 should be accepted, so that her term ends on 22 December 2005, and notes that the Chief Justice will be the saddest when it does.

විමුක්තිගේ භාෂා අවුල

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 cannot even agree when to hold elections.

රට කොයිබට ද?

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.

මහින්ද-අනුර සමීකරණය

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 with J.R. Jayewardene’s.

ජනතාවට පොත පෙරළීම

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 Supreme Court interpretation, noting that everyone has suffered at the Chief Justice’s hands except the President.

The Mahinda – Anura Equation

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 some cunning: in every sequence of elections, a defeated Mahinda loses even the seat he holds while Anura Bandaranaike emerges as leader of the opposition, and family control of the party survives the defeat. Behind it sits the unresolved question of whether the presidential election falls in 2005 or 2006, and a chain of unanswerable questions about what the Elections Commissioner will decide, whether the President will seek a Supreme Court interpretation first, and what either will do if they disagree. Ivan then turns to the parties themselves, arguing neither main party is democratic — the SLFP run by one family, the UNP by several — and traces the pattern of leaders seeking to escape their term limits: Jayewardene collecting undated resignation letters from a five-sixths majority and dreaming of a third term until Premadasa stood against him, Kumaratunga collecting the same letters from twenty-three deputy ministers in 2000 with the judiciary’s support. Her dreams end, he concludes, only if Mahinda can become a Premadasa.