An attempt to define electorial malpractice
The UNP has withdrawn its Supreme Court petition against the presidential election. What the deputy leader’s statement shows is how deep the dissatisfaction in the main opposition party has become about the way things happen in that court.
Fifty three years of incomplete freedom
The fifty-third anniversary of independence falls today. The country was moving from feudalism to capitalism, and what was expected of independence was not freedom from colonialism — colonialism had produced only a modern nationalist state. National integration was the condition of real independence, and it was never met.
Need for reforms cries out loud
An unprecedented interest in the reforms good governance needs has arisen. The UNP is demanding independent commissions for elections, the judicial service, the police and the public service under a constitutional council, and K.N. Choksy is to bring a draft bill he has prepared.
Economic mess? turn the searchlight inwards
The government is trying to put the economy right with extreme measures that have driven prices up and laid an unbearable burden on the poor, and it wants the liquidity crisis understood as something external that it could not control. The internal factor it will not admit is mismanagement.
Exorcise the evil system
Sri Lanka signed the United Nations convention against inhuman and degrading treatment in January 1994 and passed an Act to give effect to it in November of the same year. What has happened since to the people the Act was written for is the subject of the column.
A cry for democracy
The TULF’s secretary has said that democracy cannot be safeguarded by four commissions alone and that the constitution has to change as well. Ivan agrees, and goes back to the 1930s to show what the country’s democratic tradition actually contained and who carried it.
Criminal defamation Vs. Media freedom
Media freedom is treated as an essential part of a democratic system, and by accepted standards Sri Lanka is among the countries with least of it. The media minister told his first press conference that the government had been brought to power mainly by the media.
Rehabilitating parliamentarians
A research officer is to be added to every MP’s staff. Adding one will not change the quality of what members do; what is needed is to make the staff already there work properly. What would change it is an institution the public can complain to.
Government in extremely delicate position
The PA government seems to be trying to cover up all its sins through peace talks. Meanwhile the conditions for a democratic political culture — an independent elections commission first among them — are being deferred until a new constitution that may never come.
The inherent limits of the Norwegian peace initiative
The Norwegian attempt to bring peace to Sri Lanka is being discussed from every point of view. What the column sets out is what a third-party facilitation can and cannot reach — and why India’s own intervention carried the limits it did.