පිල්ලේගේ නිරීක්ෂණ
Whatever Sri Lanka gained by inviting Navi Pillay, Ivan argues, it lost through a media campaign that painted her as a blood-drinking demon and a minister’s lewd offer to marry her — insults recalling Premadasa’s jibe at Indira Gandhi. The government undoes its own good work, as in the North, and rules through a giant among dwarfs, unlike Sirimavo Bandaranaike’s or even J.R.’s cabinets. Pillay spoke within the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which Sri Lanka signed; her warning of drift towards authoritarianism is one Sri Lankans themselves can see.
A wake up call to main opposition
The opposition transacts with this government the way a serf transacts with his feudal lord. The serf’s manner before his master is timid: he could not protest even when his wife or his daughter was taken. Timid talk about four commissions will not revive a decaying democracy.
එජාප බැරී බැරී රෝගයට පිළියමක් සොයාගත යුතුය
Ivan likens the UNP’s dealings with the People’s Alliance government to a hereditary serf’s timidity before his lord. Though the Elections Commissioner, religious leaders, PAFFREL, the election-violence monitors and EU observers found the October 2000 poll unfair, the UNP chose to ‘let bygones be bygones’ and filed half-hearted petitions. He recalls, from Prins Gunasekera’s book, how Sirimavo Bandaranaike withdrew as petitioner against the 1982 referendum, leaving Rohana Wijeweera to file, and asks why the UNP stayed silent on Sarath N. Silva’s appointment and on the 1999 presidential poll.
Is history repeating itself?
When a ruling party acts undemocratically it falls to the official opposition to enlighten its members and the public and turn them into an active force against it. What happens when the opposition cannot or will not is the subject — and the case Ivan works from is the SLFP of the 1980s, read through Mick Moore.