රට නැවත යන්නේ යුද්ධයකට ද?
The ceasefire created good conditions for a peaceful settlement, but the country failed to use them and is now being pushed towards settling matters by war. The alliance never had one view of the conflict, and the editorial warns that starting a war is easy but will bring only destruction.
ඒකාබද්ධ යාන්ත්රණය හා ඉදිරි දේශපාලන අර්බුදය
At the donor conference in Kandy the President promised to sign the joint tsunami mechanism with the LTTE despite pressure from extremists. For the JVP it has become a question of survival, while neither the President nor Ranil Wickremesinghe will trust the other; the editorial warns that no option will end the confusion soon.
The Joint Mechanism and the Coming Political Crisis
Having promised the Kandy aid conference she would sign the joint mechanism for tsunami relief in the north-east regardless of extremist pressure, the President has been called. The JVP, under internal pressure that has made the issue one of survival and dignity, has resolved to quit the government if she signs. Victor Ivan sets out the arithmetic: the JVP’s departure costs 39 seats, the Hela Urumaya’s likely departure another nine, and the Tamil Alliance’s 22 do not cover the gap. Refusing to sign preserves the government but damages her standing internationally, in her party and among the people. Her alternatives are a coalition with a UNP leader who will not strengthen her hand, inducing a large group of UNP MPs to defect — for whom, Ivan notes, she could probably secure judicial protection through the Chief Justice — or dissolving parliament, possibly resigning the presidency and contesting as prime ministerial candidate herself. He judges a parliamentary election would hurt the JVP and Hela Urumaya most, and warns that whichever course she takes the turmoil will not end soon, still less if the LTTE abandons the ceasefire.
ජවිපෙට නිවට වෙන්නට සිදුවීම
However venomous the President’s attack in her television interview of 16 May, the JVP has not struck back, because she holds two fatal weapons: the power to dissolve Parliament and the power to look into JVP leaders’ assets. Sections follow on the President’s trump cards, the Chief Justice and religion, and the failure of every party to declare its assets and liabilities.
ජවිපෙ ප්රතිරූපය බොඳවීම
The alliance can no longer go on without resolving the conflicts between the JVP and the SLFP. Once the government’s shining star, the JVP took the heaviest blow yet when the President attacked it in a television interview on the 16th, and it is now too weak to satisfy her.
ජවිපෙ කඳ ප්රගතිශීලීය; ඔළුව ප්රතිගාමීය
The JVP deserves credit for bringing the rural Sinhala youth of no privilege into politics, but Rohana Wijeweera’s picture of politics as a musical chairs between two walauwas missed the historic change from feudal society to the modern state. Short sections follow on the President’s newest song, aid thieves, where the country is going, and how the President ignores the 17th Amendment in disciplining public officers.
වෙරළ ආරක්ෂක කලාපයේ යථාර්ථය
Ravaya criticised the 100/200-metre buffer zone from the start, because such a law would ruin the survivors. The piece shows how it breaches eleven basic principles of two international covenants, then examines the roles of the JVP, of Ranil Wickremesinghe and a stagnant UNP, and of a President whose strategy may cost her only the executive presidency.
දේශප්රේමී පෝස්ටර් හා දේශද්රෝහී පාප්ප
The JVP has the country’s best poster machine and spends more on posters than anyone. Ivan mocks its latest campaign, then turns to the question of who the alliance’s presidential candidate will be: the President will not give up her wish to avoid irrelevance, but in a close contest between Mahinda Rajapaksa and Ranil Wickremesinghe, Rajapaksa is more likely to win.
Who Wins?
Victor Ivan reads the JVP’s place in the Alliance government as a third attempt at the ambition two rebellions failed to deliver. The 1971 rising, aimed at simultaneous attacks on police stations across the Sinhala areas, Sirimavo Bandaranaike’s government put down in days; the second, seventeen years later, killed its opponents methodically and came close to power before the Premadasa government crushed it. Having abandoned armed struggle in 1994 and entered parliament in 2001, the party now holds a share of power it means to convert into the whole. Ivan credits it with persuading the President to seize three ministries and dissolve a parliament the UNP controlled, against her own promise and at the cost of her party, and with using state power and state media unlawfully in the campaign that followed. Each then hoped to use the other and neither can now escape: the JVP cannot leave, the President cannot sack it, and both must ridicule the other to keep their own credibility. Meanwhile the Alliance is bound to a JVP economic programme — state sector, self-reliance, a mixed economy, no privatisation, no interim administration for the north-east — that Ivan thinks belongs to 1970 and has no room in the world today. He expects her to end up playing her father’s part.
ජනතා විමුක්ති පෙරමුණට දික්කසාදවීමේ හැකියාවක් නැත
The JVP is caught both ways: it perishes if it stays in the alliance and perishes if it leaves. Sidelined in the tsunami effort and critical of the power given to Tara de Mel and Harry Jayawardena, it cannot break with a President who is equally unhappy with it.