යූඑන්පී අර්බුදය
A great deal can be learned from the UNP’s leadership crisis, not only about that party but about the political culture of Sri Lanka. Removing a party leader is extremely difficult: there is no simple, clear method in the party constitution for the membership to use when they want one removed, and nothing about how a group carrying on an internal struggle should proceed — and that is true of every party in the country.
යක්ෂයා පලවා හැරීම
For a decade there have been attempts inside the UNP to remove Ranil Wickremesinghe and change the leadership, and he has defeated every one of them and kept his place. The leader of the recent revolt was Sajith Premadasa, and though the popular belief was that he would win, Ranil won again — and Sajith does not appear to have finished his fight.
නිදහසේ වාන් දොර ඇරීම
A fundamental change in the political system is essential to any good forward movement for the society and the country — and without overcoming the challenge Prabhakaran’s movement posed to the state, there was no possibility of making one. That challenge was itself something this corrupt political system enlarged: there was a problem before it, and this system turned it into a tangle that could not easily be settled.
නව අගවිනිසුරු හා මහජන අපේක්ෂා
Ivan wishes the newly appointed chief justice well — and records that he wished her predecessor well in the same way, expecting him to put right some part of the enormous damage Sarath N. Silva had done to the courts, and that it has to be said with regret that nothing of the kind happened.
ගාන්ධි නූතන ශ්රී ලංකාවට කැඳවාගෙන ඒම (4)
The British took the Kandyan kingdom in 1815 not by battle but by a crafty programme, and Sir John D’Oyly admitted as much in a long conversation, describing the programme he had run and naming several of the natives who acted as its chief pawns. It succeeded because of the support the Kandyan chiefs gave, in the expectation that the power to rule under British authority would come to them.
ගාන්ධි නූතන ශ්රී ලංකාවට කැඳවා ගෙන ඒම (3)
Gandhi’s analysis of the crisis modern Sri Lanka faces and of the way to overcome it comes with his commentary on Sri Lankan history, and this instalment is his reading of the Portuguese and Dutch periods: the conversions, the Karava and Salagama communities, the Malays, and the taking of the Kandyan kingdom.
ජනාධිපති මහින්ද රාජපක්ෂගේ අනාගතය
Winning the election will not save a president who cannot look back honestly at his own record, Ivan argues. He sets the strengths against the limits — the war won, the family’s grip, the corruption and nepotism, the scale of the cabinet — and says the victory was an opening to build a political system worth the name, an opening the president has so far declined.
මැතිවරණ නීති උල්ලංඝනය
Cut-outs and posters after nominations are illegal, and Ivan asks how the law came to be enforced only when the president ordered the police chief to enforce it. He returns to the assets declarations the commissioner could make compulsory and does not, and ends on the death threats to Paikiasothy Saravanamuttu, which cost the country goodwill it cannot spare.
විධායක ජනාධිපති ක්රමය ගැන තවදුරටත්
Ranil Wickremesinghe has written an affectionate essay for J.R. Jayewardene’s 103rd birthday while his party’s official position is that Jayewardene’s creation should be abolished. Ivan takes the essay apart against the record — the referendum, the pardon of Gonawala Sunil, the 1982 district council election run by the ruling party rather than the commissioner, and a bribery commission that in thirty years has convicted nobody.
අවුල් විසඳා ගැනීම
The pleasure of the victory is already evaporating, Ivan warns, and a second term will be harder than the first. On GSP+ he points out that the tangle was made by the courts rather than the government — the moment a chief justice traded the country’s future for his own protection — and that releasing two LTTE leaders on bail while Tissainayagam serves twenty years cannot be explained to anyone.