දැන් පවතින තත්ත්වය
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, and a new constitution before elections.
සිදුවූ විපත දෙස ආපසු හැරි බලමු
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.
ඛේදවාචකය හා රාජ්යය
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 budget for restoring tanks.
Overcoming the disaster
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 in urgent relief — a hundred rupees a head for a million destitute — and eight days later the President’s office put reconstruction at Rs 100 billion against the Central Bank’s provisional Rs 400 billion, a sum equal to a full year of government spending or three years of Tokyo consortium aid. In twenty minutes the country lost lives and property comparable to twenty years of war. Ivan argues the two catastrophes cannot be addressed separately, since housing tsunami victims alone would affront those displaced by the fighting, and calls for a two-year all-party government charged with physical reconstruction and with enacting a new constitution — something he thinks civil society will have to compel the parties to accept.
අනුරගේ අපහාසය
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.
අනුරගේ රස කතා
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 one person from irrelevance, and above all an independent judiciary.
එස්.බී.ට ඇණ ගැසීම
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 a court that acts as a political instrument.
කබරගොයා තලගොයා කරගැනීම
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.
ටෙම්ප්ටේෂන්
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 problems keeps adding new ones.
අධිකරණයේ ගරා වැටීම
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 of the system of justice.