ජනාධිපතිවරණය: සිංහල-බෞද්ධ ඡන්ද පදනම
Who will win the presidential election? Testing the JVP’s claim that an SLFP–JVP alliance would have won in 2001, Ivan analyses the party results of the 2000, 2001 and 2004 parliamentary elections, reproduced in tables, to weigh the size of the Sinhala-Buddhist vote each candidate can draw on.
නායකයන්ගේ වගකීමෙන් තොර බව
The presidential election is being held with neither an Elections Commission nor a Constitutional Council, leaving the Elections Commissioner, the man the 17th Amendment has hurt most, ‘caught like an areca nut in the cutter’. A second section, on the rule of law and the Chief Justice, counts the motion for a select committee on the Diyawanna Oya affair as a third impeachment charge against him.
විශ්රාම යන ජනාධිපතිනිය සහ රනිල් වික්රමසිංහ
Ranil Wickremesinghe has told his MPs he is thinking of how to use the retiring President’s services, and spoke of American provisions for former presidents. The editorial welcomes cooperation between the two main parties but says retiring presidents must also face scrutiny, since immunity shields them while in office.
A Country Destroyed by Leaders
Victor Ivan argues that Sri Lanka has become, or is fast becoming, a failed state — a term its academics resist because they fear UN administration, while making no serious intervention to correct the country’s course. His test is the constitution: legislature, executive and judiciary alike decline to respect it, and none treats honouring it as a condition of the system’s survival. The 17th Amendment provides his illustration. A presidential campaign is underway with no elections commission in place, the President having refused to approve a name the constitutional council investigated and cleared. The elections commissioner, past retirement age and unable to leave his post because no commission exists, went to court and was told there was nothing the judiciary could do; parliament did not debate the matter at all. The constitutional council itself has been dormant for months, leaving Court of Appeal vacancies unfilled, with the IGP retiring in November and the terms of the Police and Public Service Commissions expiring. Appointing new members falls to the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition — the two men now contesting the presidency, neither of whom appears interested.
රනිල් ද? මහින්ද ද?
Leftward forces gather around Mahinda Rajapaksa and rightward ones around Ranil Wickremesinghe; Mahinda is new, Ranil old. The editorial argues that a candidate must lead his own movement, so either Chandrika must hand Mahinda the power willingly or he must take it without splitting the party.
සටන් විරාම ගිවිසුම ආරක්ෂා කරගත යුතු යි
The Sinhala south is absorbed in the unsettled questions of the presidential election while the ceasefire is plainly at risk: figures published by the Sahajeevana foundation show political killings in the East rising from 14 a month in 2004 to 18 in 2005. The editorial urges the two leading candidates to agree before the election to protect the ceasefire and restart talks.
පිරිවරක් නැති රැජිණට රනිල්ගේ පිහිටයි
Unable to show a winning plan to avoid irrelevance, the President is being deserted; seniors who backed her on the tsunami mechanism are not with her on the candidacy. The editorial suggests she may seek future protection from Ranil Wickremesinghe as J.R. Jayewardene and D.B. Wijetunga once did, and considers Mahinda Rajapaksa’s hardest task: pleasing nationalists and minorities at once.
අර්බුදය ගමන් ගනිමින් තිබෙන්නේ කොතැනටද?
For all her mistakes, Ivan argues, Chandrika Kumaratunga may enter history as the leader who finally stood up to the Sinhala racist and religious extremists that every leader before her, her father included, obeyed. He then weighs her options as her term runs out: retirement, dissolution with the risk of impeachment, or giving up the presidency to keep the party and the opposition leadership, and what each would mean for Mahinda Rajapaksa and Ranil Wickremesinghe.
ජනාධිපතිවරණය
Must the next presidential election be held at the end of this year, as Ranil Wickremesinghe says, or next year, as the President says? The dispute arises from her two swearings-in, publicly in 1999 and secretly in 2000. The editorial traces the tangle to the Chief Justice and notes that the Elections Commissioner who must resolve it is past retirement age and in poor health.
ඒකාබද්ධ යාන්ත්රණය හා ඉදිරි දේශපාලන අර්බුදය
At the donor conference in Kandy the President promised to sign the joint tsunami mechanism with the LTTE despite pressure from extremists. For the JVP it has become a question of survival, while neither the President nor Ranil Wickremesinghe will trust the other; the editorial warns that no option will end the confusion soon.