The Travails of School and Free Education
The dispute over admissions to grade one sets the Supreme Court against the Education Ministry and Parliament. Ivan follows the fundamental rights petitions, the court’s own marking guidelines, Ranil Wickremesinghe’s privilege complaint and the part played by past pupils’ associations, and warns that the result will leave admissions in lasting disorder.
A Cancerous Carnival
Starting from ministers’ housing and fuel allowances, Ivan tallies the cost of keeping politicians: vehicles, pensions, duty-free cars and an over-large cabinet. He traces how Colvin R. de Silva and J.R. Jayewardene concentrated power, and how presidents came to buy loyalty with public funds while black-money barons shape governments.
Whither Justice?
A retired army commander and a respected engineer petitioned the Supreme Court over judicial appointments made without constitutional council approval. Victor Ivan records what happened: a bench including the Chief Justice heard the petition and then directed the Attorney General to establish whether the petitioners had abused the judiciary by bringing it. The message, as he reads it, is that nothing the President does may be questioned, and that asking is itself an offence. Neither man belonged to the UNP or sought party advantage; they went to the last place open to a citizen with a grievance about governance. The Court’s first duty is to defend the constitution against an executive assuming powers it does not have, and by making the protection of the President its duty instead it has annulled the constitution without replacing it — leaving the country, Ivan writes, with no fundamental law at all. Similar cases from the Organization of Professional Associations and the People’s Movement for Good Governance have met the same immunity ruling. What strikes him most is who is fighting: citizens who know they will lose, while the UNP, the JVP and the Jathika Hela Urumaya say nothing and parliament will not even debate it. A judiciary that abandons its supervision of the executive, he concludes, brings the country closer to Prabhakaran’s Reich, where no authority may investigate Prabhakaran.
චන්ද්රිකාගේ ජනාධිපති සමය
A critical assessment of Chandrika Kumaratunga’s presidency: her half-hearted support for Mahinda Rajapaksa, the Cabinet decision to give her land beside Parliament, property dealings in Britain and France, her failure ever to declare her assets, her habits in office, her handling of the peace process and the ‘war for peace’, tenders and procurement favouring friends, and the argument that a president can have no immunity for crimes against humanity.
What Can Happen?
Victor Ivan returns to Johan Galtung’s warning that Sri Lanka might end up temporarily under United Nations administration if it fails to manage its crises. Having read Ivan’s An Unfinished Struggle, Galtung reasoned that a judiciary decayed to that degree implied equal decay elsewhere, and that only a failing state deteriorates so far. Ivan’s test is whether serious mistakes get corrected, and he finds no mechanism that does. An election was held without an elections commission because the President twice refused to approve a list the constitutional council had vetted and cleared; parliament and the judiciary both declined to intervene; and with the council’s own term expired, the police and public service commissions cannot be constituted either, making every transfer, promotion and disciplinary action in those services unconstitutional. A year after the tsunami, 6% of the required houses are built — seventeen years at that rate — and the country cannot yet say how many of its dead were men and how many women. He then reads the party system as collapsing: Thondaman reduced to seeking LTTE shelter, the UNP too decayed to reform itself, the SLFP surviving only on state power. Only the JVP and the LTTE retain vigour, and both, he argues, have spent their history accelerating the state’s decay.
නව සමාජ ව්යාපාරයක් සඳහා කතිකාවතක්
Does Sri Lanka need a new social and political movement, and what vision and form should it take? Ivan reports on a discussion on the 17th that brought together artists, professionals and others across ideology, class, religion and language, and on the ‘Prayatna’ initiative, arguing that a country that never fought for its freedom never united its divided people.
ලැජ්ජා නැතිකමේ දේශපාලනය
Even after Mahinda Rajapaksa’s election, Chandrika Kumaratunga will not give up the party leadership, and Ranil Wickremesinghe clings to his despite telling friends he would quit. Ivan recounts what a CID officer told him in confidence during the terror that followed the 1999 election, and ends by wishing that she not be jailed and made to suffer for what was done in her eleven years of rule.
විශ්රාම යන හැම ජනාධිපතිවරයෙක් ම පරික්ෂාවට ලක්විය යුතු ය
Ravaya explains its decision to go to court against the special privileges planned for former President Chandrika Kumaratunga and on other matters. Because presidential immunity prevents scrutiny in office, it argues, retiring presidents must be examined; it recalls its long pursuit of her assets declarations, her children’s foreign education and the President’s Fund.
කැත කුණු තවරාගත් සුදු නෙළුම
Ivan recalls a private celebration at Temple Trees after the 1994 election, and Chandrika Kumaratunga’s repeated public claims of personal purity, including that she never stole a cent, and sets them against the record. He argues that had Ranil Wickremesinghe treated her as he treated Anuruddha Ratwatte, things might have turned out differently.
රනිල් වික්රමසිංහ: විවේචනාත්මක විශ්ලේෂණයක්
Prompted by a friend’s emotional call on the morning after the defeat, Ivan recalls what he once told Ranil Wickremesinghe to his face. Sections examine his deep but unfulfilled vision, the acting Elections Commissioner, forged ballot papers in an earlier election, his lack of courage, and the party system.