මහින්ද රාජපක්ෂ ශෛලිය
The president is making a serious effort to bring the parties to common ground on the ethnic question despite their differences, and that effort is worth making even if it is unlikely to succeed. What he shows no sign of noticing is the collapse of the democratic institutional system. Ivan then reads the three-cornered local election, and the former president’s retreat: she gave up the party chair and left the country.
ආණ්ඩුව ගමන් මග වෙනස් කරයි!
Two significant men came to Sri Lanka last week, one from Ireland and one from India. Martin McGuinness — a pioneer of the Irish peace movement, a figure in Sinn Féin and, Ivan writes, the godfather of the IRA — came to meet the leadership of the LTTE and not the president. The Indian foreign secretary saw the president and then the leader of the opposition at length, pressing India’s interest in a larger part in settling the crisis.
විදේශ ආධාර හා දේශපාලන යථාර්ථය ()
The prime minister says the government will not demean itself for foreign aid, days after Germany suspends new assistance and France does the same. Ivan’s answer is that we should object to conditions that harm the country and accept those that help it, and that pressure to observe human rights in wartime is what restrains the naked use of power.
ව්යවස්ථාවේ ගෙල සිඳ මරා වළ ලා දමා නීතියේ පාලනයක් ගැන වහසි බස් දෙඩීම
The opposition leader told parliament that 150 crores had been moved between heads without its approval, and set out parliament’s constitutional control of public money. Ivan agrees the act was unlawful and asks who buried the constitution in the first place: the killing was done, he writes, when the 17th Amendment was implemented, and the government, the opposition and the courts are equally answerable for it.
විදුලි මාෆියාව ඇත්තක්ද?
Weighing the arguments of Tilak Siyambalapitiya, Udaya Gammanpila, Harsha de Silva, Champika Ranawaka and the CEB chairman on the 2013 power tariff increase, the article argues that the root problem is Sri Lanka’s dependence on oil-fired private power costing Rs 40–45 a unit against Rs 1.50 for hydro. It asks who blocked the Norochcholai coal plant in 2002 so that oil plants could be tendered instead, why the Chinese plant keeps breaking down, and why the one-sided private power contracts exposed by the Central Bank in 2007 remain secret.
ව්යවස්ථා සභාව, උයන්ගොඩ හා විග්නේෂ්වරම්
The Jathika Hela Urumaya objects to Jayadeva Uyangoda’s nomination to the Constitutional
Council because he once served a twelve-year sentence, and the prime minister to C.V.
Wigneswaran’s. Ivan answers that the 1977 government repealed the law Uyangoda was sentenced
under and gazetted that it should not follow him, that Gandhi, Mandela and D.S. Senanayake
were all imprisoned men, and that being Tamil does not make a retired Supreme Court judge a
separatist. The deeper fault, he argues, is a constitution written to place the president
above itself.
මරුවා සමග වාසේ
Ivan mocks the daily broadcasting of the inauspicious direction and the superstition peddled by television and even the JVP-backed paper Lanka. He turns the President’s lecture on the decline of politicians against her, tracing how every president since J.R. Jayewardene, including Premadasa, Wijetunga and Kumaratunga herself, used office for money or power, and attacks the costly upkeep of former presidents, now to be extended to former Prime Minister Ratnasiri Wickremanayake.
ජපන් ආධාර සමුළුව
Despite the LTTE’s absence, the Tokyo conference pledged $4.5 billion against the $3 billion sought, huge relative to government revenue, though much of it is loans and past aid use has been poor. The editorial finds the Prime Minister’s vision attractive but says good governance must begin with an independent judiciary and a disciplined party, and that the LTTE, having rejected his interim proposal, is unlikely to accept reconstruction outside its control.
අඳ-ගොළු-බිහිරි පාර්ලිමේන්තුව
Ivan argues that Parliament, unlike legislatures elsewhere, ignores citizens’ complaints and media exposures. His examples include the Bribery Commission’s ruling on Mangala Samaraweera’s credit-card spending, its refusal to act on his own complaint against the Chief Justice, and Ravaya’s 2001 exposure of abuses by the Public Trustee, including misuse of the Samarakoon fund meant for poor couples’ dowries. He cites the Marga survey and the IBA report on the judiciary, which Parliament never debated, and the UNP’s silence on the Chief Justice now it is in government.
සැසි වාරය කල් දෑමීම ප්රජාතන්ත්රවාදයට පටහැනියි
The editorial condemns the prorogation of Parliament to evade a no-confidence motion when the opposition had become the majority, likening it to postponing an election in the face of certain defeat and calling it a grave political crime. It criticises the Prime Minister for repeatedly promising debate on 16 to 18 July and denying any plan to prorogue, and urges MPs to stand up for Parliament against the President’s arbitrary act.