අඬමුද? සිනාසෙමුද?
This article critically examines the controversial tenure and actions of former Chief Justice Sarath Nanda Silva, detailing his abuse of judicial power for personal and political gain. It outlines his role in imprisoning S.B. Dissanayake to appease President Chandrika Kumaratunga, his subsequent legal betrayal of Kumaratunga following a personal insult regarding his behavior toward women, and his intimidation of treasury officials to secure an abnormally high pension. The author also provides a detailed investigative account of a 2004 incident near Diyawanna Oya, where police allegedly found the Chief Justice half-naked in a parked vehicle with a woman, using the cover-up of this event to highlight the systemic corruption and apathy within Sri Lanka’s political, parliamentary, and judicial systems.
හිටපු අගවිනිසුරු සහ ජීඑස්පී ප්ලස් සහනය
The EU has suspended Sri Lanka’s GSP Plus concession, worth 78 million euros in 2008 against exports of 1.24 billion. Government, exporters and commentators alike have forgotten what caused it: two rulings by former Chief Justice Sarath Nanda Silva, the same man now lecturing the country on international law. Under the ICCPR, citizens could petition the UN Human Rights Committee where the highest court failed them, and most complaints heard concerned Silva’s own conduct — among them Tony Emmanuel Fernando, jailed a year for contempt on a false charge after suing over withheld case records, and assaulted in prison the day he was committed. Silva also barred a work-to-rule at the port, which the ILO found breached its convention, and then disparaged that convention in open court with an ILO representative present. Correcting those two wrongs would be enough to recover the concession.
ආපසු හැරී බැලීමක් සමග ඉදිරිය දැකීමක්
Ivan sets out his own positions and why they left him isolated. He held that the Tamil rebellion was inseparable from Tamil grievances and had to be settled by negotiation — until it became clear the LTTE would accept nothing short of a separate state or confederation, at which point he supported defeating it militarily. He backed the war publicly and predicted the LTTE’s defeat while most of Ravaya’s own writers argued it could not be won. On the killing and beating of journalists he told colleagues the blame could not be laid wholly on a government unable to move against its army commander mid-war, and was angrily rejected by Sunanda Deshapriya. He records that this was the third insurrection he supported suppressing, including the 1971 rising he took part in himself. At the presidential election his loyalty was to Rajapaksa, whose remaining task he defines as remaking the state and political system.
ජයග්රහණයේ වටිනාකම බොඳ කරගැනීම
Fonseka’s arrest, whatever the grounds, dulls the shine of Rajapaksa’s victory and can be read as a move to head off an election petition. Ivan sets out the opposition’s crisis at that moment: Fonseka wanted to keep the swan symbol and the leadership that came with it, believing he had lifted the UNP’s base from two million votes to 4.1 million, while Wickremesinghe insisted on the elephant. Privately, Ivan writes, Wickremesinghe was relieved by the scale of the defeat — a narrow loss would have made Fonseka unchallengeable — and on the day of the arrest sent word through Mangala Samaraweera offering nomination under the elephant. The JVP is in the deeper crisis, having first approached Sarath Nanda Silva before settling on Fonseka, and may now win no seats at all. Ivan judges them the most remarkable political movement in the country, undone by an inability to revise an old doctrine for a changed world.
භූමිය පමණක් නොව ජනතාවද එක්සේසත් කළ යුතුය
Had the margin been three thousand votes rather than a landslide, Ivan argues, supporters of the two camps would have turned on each other and the country would have run with blood. He traces how every Elections Commissioner has worked under duress: Jayasekera resigned after the 1981 Jaffna district council poll was taken over by the Defence Secretary, Chandananda de Silva could not publish his referendum report for five years, and in 2001 Chandrika Kumaratunga tried to arrest the Commissioner on Sarath Nanda Silva’s advice. The raid on Fonseka’s hotel after the result dulled the victory’s lustre. Ivan closes with eleven questions any constitutional reform must answer — on ethnic identity, rule of law, limits on presidential power, corruption, money in elections, party democracy and access to justice — and warns against repeating 1972 and 1977, when a governing party wrote a constitution alone.
ජයග්රහණය හා ඉදිරි ගමන
Rajapaksa’s re-election was large but its limits are visible. Ivan contrasts Wickremesinghe’s acceptance of defeat in 2005, decided by 180,786 votes, with Fonseka’s refusal to concede without explaining why the result is dishonest — a soldier new to politics who misread his crowds and campaigned believing defeat impossible. Both sides broke the law: the government used state media and resources as every government has since 1977, while the opposition used overseas websites and an FM station to spread false reports that the President had fled to India and the Elections Commissioner was under house arrest. The alliance behind Fonseka was held together by nothing but hostility to Rajapaksa, and included men who had accused him of Lasantha Wickrematunge’s murder. The anti-Rajapaksa revolt was largely urban, and the victory drew almost no Tamil, up-country Tamil or Muslim support. Infrastructure spending in the north and east has not answered the political question beneath it.
ජනාධිපතිවරණය හා නීතියේ පාලනය
The Elections Commissioner has said he may have to withdraw from running the election because his orders are not obeyed — the police ignore him, and state media ignore the Competent Authority. However much authority the constitution grants him, nothing in the country lets him exercise it. This is not new: under Chandrika Kumaratunga an attempt to arrest the Elections Commissioner was stopped only by Attorney General Kamalasabesan’s intervention, and it was Chief Justice Sarath Nanda Silva who advised her to make it. The 1981 Jaffna district council poll was the first time a ruling party seized election administration outright, and Commissioner Jayasekera resigned over it. Since 1982 no election has been free and fair. Powers mean nothing while the ruler declines to obey the law.
අවලස්සණ ජනාධිපතිවරණයක්
Three weeks before the January 2010 presidential election, Ivan argues the contest between Mahinda Rajapaksa and Sarath Fonseka has taken the shape of a fight between two bazaar thugs rather than between democratic forces. Both camps breach the law on cutouts and posters, and neither the police nor the Elections Commissioner will enforce it. He traces the collapse to Chandrika Kumaratunga’s appointment of Sarath Nanda Silva as Chief Justice over the senior Mark Fernando, while corruption complaints against Silva were still before the court. Silva, once the target of a joint UNP–JVP impeachment motion, is now the opposition campaign’s constitutional spokesman. Ivan concludes that defeating a man will not change a system, and no party has said what should replace the executive presidency.
Whither Justice?
A retired army commander and a respected engineer petitioned the Supreme Court over judicial appointments made without constitutional council approval. Victor Ivan records what happened: a bench including the Chief Justice heard the petition and then directed the Attorney General to establish whether the petitioners had abused the judiciary by bringing it. The message, as he reads it, is that nothing the President does may be questioned, and that asking is itself an offence. Neither man belonged to the UNP or sought party advantage; they went to the last place open to a citizen with a grievance about governance. The Court’s first duty is to defend the constitution against an executive assuming powers it does not have, and by making the protection of the President its duty instead it has annulled the constitution without replacing it — leaving the country, Ivan writes, with no fundamental law at all. Similar cases from the Organization of Professional Associations and the People’s Movement for Good Governance have met the same immunity ruling. What strikes him most is who is fighting: citizens who know they will lose, while the UNP, the JVP and the Jathika Hela Urumaya say nothing and parliament will not even debate it. A judiciary that abandons its supervision of the executive, he concludes, brings the country closer to Prabhakaran’s Reich, where no authority may investigate Prabhakaran.
How will the struggle for power end?
In this article, Victor Ivan analyzes the escalating power struggle between President Chandrika Kumaratunga and Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe. Facing the end of her term and unable to contest the next presidential election, the President seeks to overhaul the executive presidency to secure her continued political dominance, potentially by aligning with the JVP or utilizing Parliament as a constituent assembly. Conversely, the Prime Minister is determined to preserve the current system to claim the executive presidency for himself, plotting to render the President politically irrelevant. Ivan warns that this clash of ambitions, coupled with a lack of faith in the impartiality of the judiciary under Chief Justice Sarath Nanda Silva, risks plunging the nation into an extra-constitutional crisis and potential civil conflict.