A wake up call to main opposition
The opposition transacts with this government the way a serf transacts with his feudal lord. The serf’s manner before his master is timid: he could not protest even when his wife or his daughter was taken. Timid talk about four commissions will not revive a decaying democracy.
Reforms should precede consensus politics
The TULF is uneasy about the proposed PA-UNP understanding, because it is limited to an agenda for democracy and contains nothing about the ethnic crisis. If Tamil people and Tamil parties think a solution to that comes before everything else, that is entirely understandable.
In the name of the democracy, please
The executive presidency split the state power that had been concentrated in parliament, and a large part of it now sits with a directly elected president. Parliament is nonetheless still the country’s supreme political institution — and this is an argument addressed to its new Speaker.
Way out of the present crisis
The President’s attempt to form a government with the support of other parties is like collecting frogs into an open basket. The government will not accept Rauf Hakeem’s condition that the four commissions be set up within a hundred days, so she is pushed towards abandoning him for Ferial Ashraff.
Donor reaction can compound matters
Winning the parliamentary election somehow was a condition of political survival for the PA, and above all for the President and the presidential system. National and international pressure for a clean election was greater than ever before, and the methods used were autocratic and violent anyway.
Will democracy survive at crucial elections?
For democratic politics this parliamentary election will be decisive: whatever democratic freedom is left depends on how it comes out. The Elections Commissioner means to act forcefully and the EU observers are working more systematically than before — and it remains to be seen whether that is enough.
Scapegoat for political survival
While the Alliance for a Free and Fair Election was getting people to wear a yellow band, the President published an advertisement of her own in which the yellow bands are replaced by bands of various bright colours. What the two campaigns are actually asking for is not the same thing.
Human rights Vs Election victory
The future of democracy in Sri Lanka appears to hang on one question: whether the Commissioner of Elections can hold the coming parliamentary election in a free and fair manner, if not entirely then substantially.
Playing it right in the political arena
Unlike Jayewardene and Premadasa, President Kumaratunga did not come to power after long effort and sacrifice; she came to it by fortunate circumstance. What she did come to power on was a democratic political discourse — and this column measures her against it.
Banding together against polls violence
Administration by representatives the people elect is an inherent feature of a democratic system. If the elections are not free and fair, the administration they produce cannot be called democratic — which is why a campaign to get a million people to band together against election violence matters.