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 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.
අල්ලස් කොමිෂන් සභා නීතිය ගැන නැවත සලකා බැලිය යුතුයි
The Bribery Commission’s term has ended and the new nominees face complaints. The editorial blames weak provisions on its three-member composition, calls the assets and liabilities law a powerful but unused weapon, and notes that the Commission has read the law as if the President need not declare her assets.
ප්රභාකරන්ට දෙන්නට උත්තරයක් තිබේ ද?
The LTTE leader’s Heroes’ Day speech is read as a sharp analysis of southern politics: his differences with the Wickremesinghe government, his view of the President and the alliance, and his warning that Tamils will neither live bound within a Sinhala state nor wish to separate if given freedom. The editorial concludes that the President can neither tame the JVP and talk to him nor break with the JVP and join the UNP.
සාම කතා හා ආණ්ඩුවේ න්යාය පත්රය
Prabhakaran insists that talks begin on the basis of his interim self-governing authority proposals and will not discuss a final settlement alongside them. The editorial notes that the donors’ pledges depend on talks starting and asks whether the government, tied to the JVP, has any agenda of its own.
Does Prabhakaran have an answer?
Victor Ivan reads Prabhakaran’s Heroes’ Day speech as a shrewd account of southern politics. The LTTE leader traces the breakdown back to Washington, where the UNP’s participation in the aid conference denied his organisation equal-partner status; he rejects every interim administration draft the government produced, insists talks resume on the LTTE’s own ISGA proposals, and refuses to see an interim authority tied to a final settlement — suspecting the President of wanting to please the JVP, mislead the international community, or simply prolong matters indefinitely. He then challenges every southern party to state publicly where it stands on territory, nationhood and self-determination, and warns that Tamil patience has limits. Ivan judges the ball now in Sinhala hands and finds none of them willing to hold it: Wickremesinghe wanting the talks to last until he is President, the President subordinating the ethnic question to her own invalidation problem, and neither able to move without the JVP’s consent. He closes with a warning that the Sinhala people may come to detest their own leaders enough to say Prabhakaran is good for us too.
බහු පක්ෂ ක්රමයට රතු එළියක්: විරුද්ධ පක්ෂ මර නින්දේ
On the day of the alliance’s first budget, UNP MP Rohitha Bogollagama crossed over and was made a minister. Ivan explains how the law on crossovers is being bent to reach 113 seats, what the government plans for the Speaker and the constitution once it has them, and why the JVP’s ‘red democracy’ is the main prop of the scheme while the opposition sleeps.
ආණ්ඩුක්රමයේ වෙනසක් සඳහා පොදු එකගතාවක්
Aid pledged at Tokyo depends on peace talks, and the alliance’s first budget has been drawn up without the usual IMF support. The editorial warns against playing with the basic law by a bare majority and argues that reform of the executive presidency should come through consensus, which would also bring a more civilised relationship between the parties.
ව්යවස්ථාව චග්ගුඩු පිටියක් නොවේ
The JVP now seems ready to go any distance to stop the UNP returning to power, and to change the constitution by a simple majority with the courts’ help. Ivan argues that the President and the JVP may fight the UNP within the democratic framework but not outside it, and recalls how the 17th Amendment bill was examined by a three-judge bench that included the Chief Justice.
අධිකරණ දූෂණය – චන්ද්රිකා, රනිල් හා විමල්
The President herself says the police and the courts are full of corruption, and Transparency International ranks them the most corrupt in the region. The editorial replies that the ‘blue’ President injected the poison at the head of the judiciary, the ‘green’ Ranil Wickremesinghe let it spread, and the JVP of Wimal Weerawansa, which first stood against the Chief Justice, fell silent.