When must the Presidential Election be held?
Was Chandrika Kumaratunga’s second term due to end in December 2005 or December 2006? Victor Ivan works through the constitutional arithmetic. G.L. Peiris holds that the public oath of 22 December 1999 governs, making the election due in 2005; Mangala Samaraweera replies that a two-term president is entitled to twelve years, placing it in 2006 and resting on an oath the President is said to have taken in secret on 12 November 2000. Ivan tests the twelve-year claim against J.R. Jayewardene, who served two terms and got eleven: having gone to the country early in October 1982, he took his second oath in February 1983 and lost a year. Article 31(3A)(d), quoted in full, sets the term from the date of the oath. He then explains why she took the December oath at all — after the bomb attack on her campaign, her advisers invoked the doctrine of necessity so that her death would not force a fresh election, an insurance that has since become a liability. A secret oath cannot invalidate a public one, he concludes, and any attempt to make it do so will bring on another crisis.
ව්යවස්ථාව හිතුමතයේ වෙනස් කිරීම වෙනම රාජ්යයකට පාර කැපීමකි
The coming presidential election now steers politics in the South, and the President must complete a change that saves her from irrelevance before August 2005. The editorial warns that entering peace talks with hidden political aims rather than an honest wish to end the conflict could open the road to a separate state.
රනිල් හා චන්ද්රිකා: විධායක ජනාධිපති ක්රමයේ ඊළග දගර නැටුම
The UNP has finally spoken about the President’s secret second swearing-in. The editorial asks why Ranil Wickremesinghe never fought the executive presidency when he held a parliamentary majority, and says that backing real reform would be his best answer to the belief that he too is an autocrat.
කිරි හා සීනිවලින් ස්වයංපෝෂිතවීමේ සිහිනය
The President has promised self-sufficiency in milk powder and sugar within five years. Ivan asks whether the country has the capacity, comparing Sri Lanka with India, which won independence through a movement that united all its groups and could build a national economy afterwards.
අවලංගුවීම වළකා ගැනීම
President Kumaratunga presses on with her plan to avoid political irrelevance after her second term: the costly JVP alliance, the defeat of the UNP, and a constitutional change she hopes the Chief Justice will help her through. Ivan argues that growing economic hardship is the chief obstacle to her plan and to the referendum it needs.
ශිෂ්ට සම්පන්න භාවයේ තරම
The Human Rights Committee has ruled against Sri Lanka again, this time over Nallaratnam Singarasa, jailed for 35 years under the Prevention of Terrorism Act, while Tony Fernando’s case is pending. Ivan holds President Kumaratunga responsible for appointing Sarath N. Silva as Chief Justice, and Ranil Wickremesinghe for allowing the system to take root.
ත්රස්තවාදය ගැන ජනාධිපතිනිය
President Kumaratunga’s view of terrorism, given to the UN General Assembly after George W. Bush spoke, is judged sound, and more careful than Ranil Wickremesinghe’s earlier speech there. But the editorial reminds her that her government can do nothing without the JVP and cannot move a step without a settlement of the ethnic conflict.
සන්ධාන ආණ්ඩුව දුෂ්කර කඩුල්ලක් ජයගනී
With Arumugam Thondaman’s Ceylon Workers’ Congress and its eight MPs on board, the alliance government has overcome its lack of a parliamentary majority. The editorial says the President’s hardest task now is to satisfy both Velupillai Prabhakaran and Wimal Weerawansa at once.
නිල බලයට හෝ රාජ්ය බලයට සත්යය සදා යටපත් කළ නොහැකිය
Ivan welcomes the Human Rights Committee’s ruling as historic: the first time a Sri Lankan Supreme Court judgment in a fundamental rights case has been answered by an international body. He recounts the criminal defamation indictments brought against him before and after 1994, the Attorney General Sarath N. Silva’s role, the petition argued by Suranjith Hewamanne, his quarrel with Silva over the 1971 case, and other cases now before Geneva.
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.