යළි ඉන්දියානු මැදිහත්වීමක්
Ivan assesses India’s offer to mediate if both sides ask, after it refused the President’s request for air support. India distrusts the Norwegian process, dislikes Pakistani and Israeli involvement, and will not allow outside powers to crush the LTTE, yet even its intervention seems unlikely to bring a solution before the election. He notes rifts within the Ceylon Workers’ Congress and the Muslim Congress, and emergency rules used to hobble the opposition.
එල්. ටී. ටී. ඊ.
The editorial argues that Anton Balasingham’s interview with the Tamil Guardian, setting out the LTTE’s conditions for Norwegian-facilitated talks such as the Thimpu principles and a homeland, should be debated seriously rather than sensationalised by Lankadeepa and Divaina. It agrees that both the People’s Alliance and the UNP view the national question from a Sinhala standpoint, calls their talks a deception, and condemns the Foreign Ministry’s reply as pandering to chauvinism.
Truth of all truths!
With the French Ambassador entering the argument about the President’s educational qualifications, the debate has gone beyond Sri Lanka. An explanation from someone in that position ought to be impartial, Ivan writes, and hers is not.
දිකිරට බලලූන් සාක්කි දිම
Ivan responds to the French ambassador’s intervention in the dispute over the President’s educational qualifications. He faults her for ignoring the President’s office calling a questioning editor a ‘worm’, and uses The World of Learning directory and an OECD training inventory to argue that Sciences Po and the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales were not then part of the University of Paris and that an école diploma is not equivalent to a university degree.
Self interest in making constitutions
As a nation we are on the edge of a great abyss, and the leaders behave like crabs dancing in water until it boils — so blinded by hunger for power that they cannot see the danger to themselves, let alone the danger to the country.
අභිමත බලය කොයිබටද?
Ivan questions the appointment of businessman Harry Jayawardena, a close Bandaranaike family friend and 1994 campaign financier, to the Securities and Exchange Commission while facing customs fraud cases against Stassen Exports and inquiries over Hatton National Bank dealings. He also criticises the choice of Rienzie Arsecularatne as Director General of the Bribery Commission despite past controversies, and warns that such use of presidential discretion, with opposition silence, is ruining the country.
What signals do appointments give the country?
Harry Jayawardena, a billionaire businessman, a close friend of the Bandaranaike family and the man reported to have met the chief expenses of the presidential campaign, has been appointed to the Securities and Exchange Commission. What, Ivan asks, does an appointment like that tell the country about itself?
Hatred: barrier for fruitful talks
Will the Ranil-Chandrika dialogue change the political picture? Will it produce even a consensus on the ethnic crisis that has gone on destroying life? Not, Ivan argues, while the hatred each side has cultivated for the other is the one thing both of them still hold in common.
When will wisdom dawn on them?
Even after being elected to it, the President has several times called the executive presidency a dreadful cancer introduced into the body politic. By now proposing to keep that cancer to the end of her own term while reforming the constitution, she has turned the whole reform project into a selfish and ridiculous farce.
Way to peace is found within
Norway has come forward as a facilitator to help Sri Lanka find a way out of the ethnic crisis. Will the Norwegian intervention lead to a solution? Ivan’s answer turns on what both Sri Lankan leaders have already shown they will trade for Prabhakaran’s neutrality.