පාර්ලිමේන්තු මැතිවරණය කල් දෑමීමකට ඉඩ නොතැබිය යුතුය
Despite the President’s assurance, Ivan says the government still hopes to extend Parliament’s term, a practice begun with the 1972 constitution and taken further by J.R. Jayewardene in 1982. He calls on the government to hold the election under an independent elections commission and to accept the European Union’s offer of observers, and urges citizens to act rather than watch.
හෘද සාක්ෂියක් නැති සමාජයක්
The editorial says Sri Lanka’s crisis is one of conscience. Intellectuals who spoke out under Jayewardene and Premadasa are now silent or defend injustice, and the Civil Rights Movement founded by S. Nadesan fell silent over the North Western provincial poll, as have peace, rights, professional and religious bodies and the Bar Association. It lists basic wrongs, from extending Parliament to judicial interference, that organised society should publicly oppose.
අධිකරණය කොයිබටද?
Ivan cites cases showing the judiciary’s decline: a Galle magistrate interdicted for fraud, judges accused of sexual abuse, a district judge found biased in a case against the head of the Court of Appeal, and a Chief Justice appointed while facing disbarment petitions. He explains the separation of powers, recalls J.R. Jayewardene’s purge of the Supreme Court and Neville Samarakoon’s resistance, the 1982 referendum ruling, and warns that without reform the executive will swallow judicial power.
ප්රජාතන්ත්රවාදයට සීල් තැබීම
Ivan argues that freedom of expression is the gateway to democracy and that modern practice allows only narrow, court-imposed limits for national security. He criticises emergency regulations used to seal the Jaffna paper Uthayan and the Leader group, including Irida Peramuna for a story it never carried, for six months though emergency powers lapse monthly. He places this beside earlier sealings of Aththa, Davasa and Eelanadu and ties it to plans to extend Parliament.
Can India be a genuine aide?
India has said it is ready to intervene as a third party if both sides ask. Both sides have stayed silent; only some of the bhikkhus who once rose against the Indo-Lanka Pact, and the leader of the opposition, have answered favourably. Whether India can be a genuine helper is the question the column puts.
ඉන්දියානු මැදිහත් වීමක් විසඳුමක් ඇති කරලීමට සමත්වේද?
Ivan argues that India, itself a party to the crisis, cannot really resolve it. He traces the conflict to Sinhala Only under S.W.R.D. Bandaranaike and university standardisation, and to India’s training and arming of Tamil militants in reaction to J.R. Jayewardene’s policies, which Indira Gandhi failed to see would cost her son’s life. Neither a ban on separation nor a merged North-East would satisfy both communities, and no party offers a lasting vision.
පාර්ලිමේන්තු මැතිවරණයක් ජනමත විචාරණයක ද
Ivan expects the government to try to avoid the parliamentary election due by October, fearing defeat after setbacks in the North. With many MPs unsure of renomination, he sets out the seat numbers and shows it would need only 19 opposition votes for a two-thirds majority to extend Parliament through a 1982-style referendum, explains MPs’ pay rises and land grants in that light, and predicts such a referendum could fail.
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.
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.