Eliminate hatred from the struggle for power
Some problems a governing party cannot solve alone, and some cannot be solved without the agreement of all the parties. In a country with many of the first kind, the main challenge of its politics is how to reach the second kind of agreement.
වලව් මාලිගා විවාදය
Ranil Wickremesinghe attacked the Rs. 2,500 million presidential palace and its imported oak, marble and chandeliers; Mangala Samaraweera replied that the Bandaranaikes, born in walawwas, need no palaces. Ivan distinguishes royal palaces from the walawwas of radala nobility, notes that the Bandaranaike and Jayewardene fortunes rested on land granted for helping the British in 1815, 1818 and 1848, citing James Rutnam and Kumari Jayawardena, and says Horagolla is humbler inside than Temple Trees.
කමලාවතීගේ ජනාධිපති වේශ නිරූපණය
A woman who dressed as the President, including her injured eye, in a UNP march had her Raddolugama house attacked. The editorial recalls earlier impersonations of Jayewardene and the Premadasas, cartoonists’ caricatures and leaders’ nicknames, notes that the government itself used the covered-eye photograph and caricatured Ranil Wickremesinghe as Dracula, criticises the class disdain in the President’s response and compares the attack to earlier ones over mimicry of Pavithra Wanniarachchi.
සනත් ගුණතිලක සහ රුපියල
A profile of the actor Sanath Gunathilake after losing his post as the President’s media adviser, a fall Ivan likens to the rupee’s. He describes the vehicles, guards, free stays at the Galadari hotel and deference he once enjoyed, his habit of attaching himself to whoever held power from Gamini Dissanayake to Kumaratunga, and the income he drew from bar licences run by Neil Abeywardena, liquor distribution, advertising, teledramas and the Channel 9 deal with Lakshman Hulugalle.
සම්මානය සහ අධිකරණයේ අර්බුදය
Ravaya received the Editors’ Guild’s Sepala Gunasena award for defending judicial independence. Ivan recounts the background: his and W.A.B. Jayasekera’s petitions to disbar Attorney General Sarath N. Silva, Ravaya’s exposure of magistrate Lenin Ratnayake and district judge Upali Abeyratne, the Bar Association’s call for inquiries that found both guilty, the lenient penalties, and the protests by lawyers and MPs before Silva was made Chief Justice in September 1999.
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.
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.
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.
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.