චෝගම්වලින් පසු ජනාධිපතිවරණයක්!
After a costly CHOGM that worsened Sri Lanka’s standing, Ivan predicts an early presidential election, called before a fragile economy — falling exports, heavy Chinese loans, banks lending to the state instead of business, finance companies near collapse — gives way. The government runs on three wheels, Mahinda, Basil and Gotabaya Rajapaksa, and the family is fraying over succession, as D.S. Senanayake’s preference for Dudley once split the UNP. With discontent in the SLFP, the JHU and all communities, he foresees a three-cornered contest: Karu Jayasuriya on a system-change platform, Chandrika Kumaratunga seeking to reclaim the SLFP, and an unpredictable royal battle.
සටන් කිරීම හා අවසාන සටන
Ivan sets out the principles that let him win most of his battles: a just cause, a clear philosophy and plan, careful assessment and preparation, and knowing when not to fight, as Gandhi refused to hamper the Allies in wartime. He recalls how J.R. Jayewardene ordered him to stop his ‘Kalinga’ column during the second JVP insurrection and how a calm reply won the President’s respect; how he refused JVP requests for help and armed protection, backed the state against the rebels though opposed to the UNP, and saw every such crisis as no time for regime change. He contrasts Gandhi’s respect for his opponents with the hatred driving Sri Lankan struggles, then tells how he defeated the parliamentary privileges committee’s power to punish journalists by refusing its summons, enlisting Mrs Bandaranaike and international pressure, until the committee adjourned indefinitely.
Political Funds- The Root of corruption
Ivan argues that the absence of any law on party and election funding is the main source of corruption in Sri Lanka. He compares the spending limits and disclosure rules of the United States, France and India with Sri Lanka’s single, unenforced assets law, and describes how candidates repay their backers from public resources.
දේශපාලන අරමුදල් හෙවත් දූෂණයේ මුදුන් මුල
Ivan puts the cost of a Sri Lankan presidential campaign at between 500 million and a
billion rupees and shows that no law governs where any of it comes from, J.R. Jayewardene
having repealed the pre-1978 controls. Setting the American, French and Indian regimes
against the Sri Lankan vacuum, he argues that parties financed by a few men with black money
must repay them from public resources, and calls this the taproot of the country’s
corruption.
මැදමුලනින් පැමිණ හොරගොල්ල ජයගැනීම
Mahinda Rajapaksa’s win lacked minority support, but it decides the SLFP’s future. S.W.R.D. Bandaranaike gave his family no special place; Sirimavo turned the party into a family property, and every leadership crisis since arose inside the family. The Bandaranaikes never believed Rajapaksa could win and planned to reclaim the party after his defeat.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Alliance Government Crosses A Difficult Hurdle
Thondaman’s CWC has brought eight MPs to the Alliance, and with three from the SLMC and one JHU monk the government reaches 118 — enough to govern, but thirty-two short of what the President actually wants. Victor Ivan credits her nerve: she dissolved a parliament the UNP controlled, broke her promise to the Speaker, allied with the JVP at the risk of her own party, and won a gamble that had her survival at stake, while the leader of the opposition remained in a world of his dreams. Her remaining aim is to avoid invalidation at the end of her second term, and Ivan judges that despite her stated preference for abolishing the executive presidency she will instead seek to amend it to permit three terms — a course she can justify to the minorities, to her own party and to the JVP in turn. The arithmetic runs through Prabhakaran: satisfying him on the ISGA delivers the TNA’s twenty-two MPs and brings a two-thirds majority within ten UNP defections. The difficulty is pleasing Prabhakaran and Wimal Weerawansa at once.