A Country Destroyed by Leaders
Victor Ivan argues that Sri Lanka has become, or is fast becoming, a failed state — a term its academics resist because they fear UN administration, while making no serious intervention to correct the country’s course. His test is the constitution: legislature, executive and judiciary alike decline to respect it, and none treats honouring it as a condition of the system’s survival. The 17th Amendment provides his illustration. A presidential campaign is underway with no elections commission in place, the President having refused to approve a name the constitutional council investigated and cleared. The elections commissioner, past retirement age and unable to leave his post because no commission exists, went to court and was told there was nothing the judiciary could do; parliament did not debate the matter at all. The constitutional council itself has been dormant for months, leaving Court of Appeal vacancies unfilled, with the IGP retiring in November and the terms of the Police and Public Service Commissions expiring. Appointing new members falls to the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition — the two men now contesting the presidency, neither of whom appears interested.
අධිකරණ තීන්දුවෙන් පසු: ඊළගට විය හැක්කේ කුමක්ද?
The Chief Justice’s only way out of a great crisis over the election year was to rule for 2005, ending the President’s dream of staying until 2006, though she still has cards to play. Ivan warns that the country is caught in a cycle of political violence and that the killings must be controlled even as attention turns to the election.
රනිල් ද? මහින්ද ද?
Leftward forces gather around Mahinda Rajapaksa and rightward ones around Ranil Wickremesinghe; Mahinda is new, Ranil old. The editorial argues that a candidate must lead his own movement, so either Chandrika must hand Mahinda the power willingly or he must take it without splitting the party.
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.
අගවිනිසුරු අන්තෝ ජටා බහි ජටා තත්ත්වයක
The question of whether the presidential election falls this year or next has become a legal knot. Fearing the Elections Commissioner’s decision, the President sought the Supreme Court’s interpretation, while Omalpe Sobhitha Thera petitioned to stop it; whatever the Chief Justice decides will anger one side.
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.
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.
පිරිවරක් නැති රැජිණට රනිල්ගේ පිහිටයි
Unable to show a winning plan to avoid irrelevance, the President is being deserted; seniors who backed her on the tsunami mechanism are not with her on the candidacy. The editorial suggests she may seek future protection from Ranil Wickremesinghe as J.R. Jayewardene and D.B. Wijetunga once did, and considers Mahinda Rajapaksa’s hardest task: pleasing nationalists and minorities at once.