This is what happened
There are occasions when a foolish friend can be more dangerous than a vicious enemy. The longest piece in the archive: Ivan’s point-by-point answer to the account the President gave of him in a televised interview, setting out what actually passed between them from the founding of Ravaya onwards.
Now back in power, what will she do?
Chandrika Kumaratunga’s win was not a clean victory in the full sense, and the abuses were not so great as to make one regret it. They did occur — in Hanguranketha, Wattegama, Wariyapola, Dambulla. What she does now is the question.
Her Vasana chakra spinning other way
President Kumaratunga is drifting towards a political abyss from which there will be no easy return. She did not come to power through commitment, experience or ability but through good fortune, and she became president at a moment when she had been hoping only to become an MP.
An election with democracy turned upside down
The SLMC leader told the President that winning a corrupt election would blemish not only her but her children, and that losing a free one would be more honourable. She assured him there would be a clean election. This column sets that assurance against what was being arranged in the districts.
Clinging on to a dictatorial presidency
If there is a country anywhere in the world where a dictatorial ruler is elected by popular vote, it must be Sri Lanka. J.R. Jayewardene built the system by discarding every sensible feature of the American and French models and keeping only the diabolical ones — after which he said the one thing he could not do was turn a woman into a man.
Disregard for the law
Under section 16 of the Presidential Elections Act, only the candidate, the person who nominates him and one other may come to the place where the Commissioner receives nominations. What happened at this nomination, and who was standing where, is the subject of the column.
Failure to see the wood for the trees
If Prabhakaran can reverse in seventy-two hours what forty thousand men gained in thirty-three months, and if society still cannot see after that experience that there is no military solution to the ethnic problem, then the day a separate state is established in the North-East cannot be far away.
Who will get the Tamil support?
The President has gone for a snap election before her term expires, hoping to win it and then to convert that into a bigger parliamentary majority. The hope depends on the first hurdle, and the first hurdle depends on the Tamil vote — which this column counts constituency by constituency.
Will her surprise move patch up cracks?
Many observers knew the President had plans for a snap presidential election; most were still caught unawares when she proclaimed one and shelved the November budget. What follows is a reading of the arithmetic she is betting on, party by party and vote by vote.
Towards another reign of terror!
The leaders of the People’s Alliance mean to stay in power for at least one more term whatever the people think of it. Consent and democratic principle are laughable matters to them: the feeling is that if the UNP held power for seventeen years, they are owed a minimum of one term more.