විමල් වීරවංශ හා චන්දනසූරිය බණ්ඩාර
Under the subhead ‘Minorities within the great Sinhala nation’, Ivan argues that the Sinhala nation itself does not treat all its members as equals, contrasting two former journalists, the JVP’s Wimal Weerawansa and the UNP organiser Chandana Sooriyabandara, and pointing to India, where a Sikh prime minister and a Muslim president are no problem.
මහින්ද-වීරවංශ දීගය හරි යයිද?
Back from Japan, the President did not quarrel with Mahinda Rajapaksa but backed his candidacy, leaving herself room for a later return. Mahinda is now in a bind: saying yes to the JVP’s conditions will cost him some of the forces gathering around him.
විමල් වීරවංශ හා ඇටි කෙහෙල්
Like the civet in the saying who ate a seeded banana, the JVP tried to swallow the SLFP and cannot digest it; now it can only hang on Mahinda Rajapaksa’s neck, and Wimal Weerawansa says any deal will be with Mahinda, not the SLFP.
අගවිනිසුරුගේ මාළු බෑම
The latest fish on the Chief Justice’s hook is the ‘red fish’, the JVP. The note describes how he baits each hook to the taste of the fish he means to catch, and suggests even the revolutionary Wimal Weerawansa could not resist the charms of the ‘mermaid’ on the mobile phone.
කබරගොයා තලගොයා කරගැනීම
A short note on the JVP: Wimal Weerawansa and his colleagues, who saw the Chief Justice as a demon while in opposition, have become his best guardians, and the party’s change on these two basic issues suggests more changes to come.
අධිකරණ දූෂණය – චන්ද්රිකා, රනිල් හා විමල්
The President herself says the police and the courts are full of corruption, and Transparency International ranks them the most corrupt in the region. The editorial replies that the ‘blue’ President injected the poison at the head of the judiciary, the ‘green’ Ranil Wickremesinghe let it spread, and the JVP of Wimal Weerawansa, which first stood against the Chief Justice, fell silent.
සන්ධාන ආණ්ඩුව දුෂ්කර කඩුල්ලක් ජයගනී
With Arumugam Thondaman’s Ceylon Workers’ Congress and its eight MPs on board, the alliance government has overcome its lack of a parliamentary majority. The editorial says the President’s hardest task now is to satisfy both Velupillai Prabhakaran and Wimal Weerawansa at once.
Alliance Government Crosses A Difficult Hurdle
Thondaman’s CWC has brought eight MPs to the Alliance, and with three from the SLMC and one JHU monk the government reaches 118 — enough to govern, but thirty-two short of what the President actually wants. Victor Ivan credits her nerve: she dissolved a parliament the UNP controlled, broke her promise to the Speaker, allied with the JVP at the risk of her own party, and won a gamble that had her survival at stake, while the leader of the opposition remained in a world of his dreams. Her remaining aim is to avoid invalidation at the end of her second term, and Ivan judges that despite her stated preference for abolishing the executive presidency she will instead seek to amend it to permit three terms — a course she can justify to the minorities, to her own party and to the JVP in turn. The arithmetic runs through Prabhakaran: satisfying him on the ISGA delivers the TNA’s twenty-two MPs and brings a two-thirds majority within ten UNP defections. The difficulty is pleasing Prabhakaran and Wimal Weerawansa at once.
අන්තෝජටා බහිජටා තත්ත්වයක්
Ivan argues that anti-government and nationalist forces are converging: after the SLFP–JVP alliance talks collapsed, pro-alliance elements in the SLFP are pushing the President back towards the JVP, which now demands through Wimal Weerawansa that the SLFP drop devolution. He likens her position to her father’s after the Bandaranaike–Chelvanayakam pact, notes the JVP’s drift from the red flag to the lion flag, and blames Ranil Wickremesinghe for ceding public debate on reform to nationalists, risking an independent North and a bloodstained South.
An Utterly Complicated Situation
In this article, Victor Ivan examines the volatile political maneuvering between the Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP) and the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP). Driven by factions eager to topple the ruling government, efforts to form a JVP-SLFP alliance ultimately stalled due to President Chandrika Kumaratunga’s reluctance to commit to a permanent coalition. Ivan draws a historical parallel to the President’s father, S.W.R.D. Bandaranaike, who was forced by chauvinist pressures to tear up the Bandaranaike-Chelvanayagam Pact. The author highlights the JVP’s alarming ideological shift away from Marxism toward blatant racism and Sinhalese chauvinism, explicitly demanding that the SLFP abandon its policies on the devolution of power. Meanwhile, Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe is criticized for remaining passively silent, hoping the President loses credibility—a dangerous strategy that Ivan warns could empower racist factions, destroy the peace process, and ultimately result in a divided and bleeding nation.