Who was responsible for the Mawanella disaster?
There is a saying that if you go to sleep with dogs you wake up with ticks, and the government is in that position now. What happened at Mawanella, and who let it happen, is followed here from the local politics up to the immunity of the President.
Importance of democracy within a party
There is a real discussion in the country about broadening democratic freedom and the reforms it needs, and almost all of it is about how to reform the state. The parties, which are the state’s main instrument, are doing nothing to strengthen democracy inside themselves.
Ranil’s dilemma: Party or himself
The government avoided defeat on the budget without finding out who was adding to the four members of Thondaman’s group who had agreed to vote it down, and without uniting its own ranks against a repeat. The instability that produced is the setting for a question about the opposition leader.
Making corruption possible in a democratic country
The President told a government party meeting that she planned to go to parliament herself to answer the opposition’s accusations over the Katunayake expressway, the Diyawanna golf links land and the Thilan Wijesinghe bribery case, because her ministers were not replying well enough.
The Richard factor in the FMM
A mention of Richard de Zoysa in an earlier article, questioning the purpose of a government photographic exhibition, has become a great controversy. This is Ivan’s answer to it, and the most personally exposed thing he wrote in the Sunday Times.
Eliminate hatred from the struggle for power
Some problems a governing party cannot solve alone, and some cannot be solved without the agreement of all the parties. In a country with many of the first kind, the main challenge of its politics is how to reach the second kind of agreement.
Democratising a rotten system
The political system has fallen so low that reforms are now demanded not only by political parties but by civic organisations. What is on the table — the commissions, the media provisions, the end of the rule that costs an expelled member his seat — and what it would take to get agreement on it.
The politics of justice
Two important observations on the Sri Lankan judiciary were published last week. One is in the latest American human rights report, which says the Chief Justice has cut the number of human rights cases the courts examine on the pretext of preventing a backlog — denying redress even to people who have been tortured.
Will Prabhakaran take the peace path?
The LTTE and its leader are stuck in a quagmire and finding it hard to keep the violent struggle going. Whether Prabhakaran can take the path of peace, and what it would cost him to try, is the question — and Ivan’s answer is neither hopeful nor hostile.
JVP terror to the fore
The government is marking the anniversary of Vijaya Kumaratunga’s assassination as a general commemoration of those killed by the JVP, with a costly travelling exhibition and fresh legal action against those involved in the second insurrection. Ivan’s objection is not to the remembering.