අවලස්සණ ජනාධිපතිවරණයක්
Three weeks before the January 2010 presidential election, Ivan argues the contest between Mahinda Rajapaksa and Sarath Fonseka has taken the shape of a fight between two bazaar thugs rather than between democratic forces. Both camps breach the law on cutouts and posters, and neither the police nor the Elections Commissioner will enforce it. He traces the collapse to Chandrika Kumaratunga’s appointment of Sarath Nanda Silva as Chief Justice over the senior Mark Fernando, while corruption complaints against Silva were still before the court. Silva, once the target of a joint UNP–JVP impeachment motion, is now the opposition campaign’s constitutional spokesman. Ivan concludes that defeating a man will not change a system, and no party has said what should replace the executive presidency.
දූෂණය සනාථ කළයුත්තේ කටකථාවලින් නොව නිශ්චිත සාක්ෂිවලිනි
Corruption is the loudest subject of the campaign and the worst argued. Ivan says any administration’s corruption deserves scrutiny at an election, then insists the opposition move from rumour to specific proof — and gives his own examples, among them a broadcasting licence written into a regulator’s own name and sold on. Assets declarations filed with nominations, he notes, are documents anyone may examine.
දේශපාලන ක්රමය වෙනස් කිරීම!
Abolishing the executive presidency is not the simple act it is being sold as. Ivan traces the underlying philosophy of the system, the cost the country pays for its irregularity, and the size of the cabinet — quoting the United Front’s own 1994 manifesto promising no more than twenty ministers against the fifty-four it appointed — and concludes that the change is possible, but complex, and needs people who understand what they are changing.
ඡන්ද බලය හා පරමාධිපත්ය බලය
Sovereignty is exercised at elections, Ivan writes, and Sri Lanka’s record of holding them on time is better than its record of holding them freely. He sets out why no elections commission was ever appointed under the 17th Amendment, names who advised against it, and tells voters to make the commissioner keep his back straight.
ජනාධිපති මහින්ද රාජපක්ෂගේ අනාගතය
Winning the election will not save a president who cannot look back honestly at his own record, Ivan argues. He sets the strengths against the limits — the war won, the family’s grip, the corruption and nepotism, the scale of the cabinet — and says the victory was an opening to build a political system worth the name, an opening the president has so far declined.
බල තරගයේ හැඩතල
The picture has changed from one in which the government would win any election easily to one in which it must fight for them. Ivan traces the crisis to the scale of the president’s own coming victory, and argues that the country turned a policy of taking help from the anti-American world into publicly campaigning for it — going so far as to attack Obama, which even China, Iran and Venezuela did not do.
ඉදිරියේ විය හැක්කේ කුමක්ද?
State power is gathered around the executive presidency, so the presidential election matters more than any other, and the system is built so that whoever holds the office can arrange every other election to suit. Ivan works through the court judgment, the Sarath Fonseka factor, where the Tamil vote will go, and the steady evaporation of the war’s pleasure.
පළිගැනීම
An opposition member of parliament whose house and office were burned says the police will not arrest anyone, and has taken to smashing coconuts at shrines instead. Ivan follows the wheel through the UNP’s seventeen years and the years after 1994, when each side in turn played avenger and victim, and asks when the country will be free of this politics.
මැතිවරණ නීති උල්ලංඝනය
Cut-outs and posters after nominations are illegal, and Ivan asks how the law came to be enforced only when the president ordered the police chief to enforce it. He returns to the assets declarations the commissioner could make compulsory and does not, and ends on the death threats to Paikiasothy Saravanamuttu, which cost the country goodwill it cannot spare.
යුද්ධය ජයගැනීමෙන් පමණක් රටට ඉදිරියට යා හැකිද?
The victory opened a space the country has not used well. Ivan grants the president the larger share of the credit and then turns to the West’s changed policy, to the covenant on civil and political rights the country has signed, and to Vietnam — which defeated a great power militarily and then spent decades as one of the poorest countries on earth. Jayewardene, he ends, made a hat to fit his own head; Rajapaksa’s task is to make one that fits the country’s.