topic: Constitution & Reform

ඉතින් මැතිනියනි ඔබට ආයුබෝවන්

The worst story about Chandrika Kumaratunga’s honesty came from Le Monde’s Delhi correspondent, puzzled by the degrees listed in her official biography after 1994. Ivan then recalls the impeachment plan of 1991, in which all three main actors lived in dream worlds, and how the exposure of the Suriyakanda mass graves brought the rising Kumaratunga great fame.

ඉතින් මැතිනියනි ඔබට ආයුබෝවන්

Ivan explains that he decided after the 1999 election to write a book on his experience of Chandrika Kumaratunga before she lost power, and that some critics credit him with helping to create the conditions for her rise. He begins with stories that cast doubt on her honesty, including one told at a pearl jewellery fair and one from Le Monde’s Delhi correspondent.

රාජ්‍ය නායකයා තේරිමේ තරගය

The winner may steer the country not for six years but for twelve. After nearly 58 years of independence the country is fractured and bloodied; the editorial calls for democratising the parties’ feudal ways and for each of the executive, legislature, judiciary and media to do its duty.

Trends in the Presidential Contest

Three weeks from the 2005 presidential election, Victor Ivan sets out what each outcome would produce. Defeat ends the political life of whichever man suffers it, and fragments his party. A Wickremesinghe victory brings immediate dissolution and a parliamentary election that would cut the JVP and Hela Urumaya down, after which Ivan expects him to seek an SLFP coalition anyway to shield his peace programme from objection. A Rajapaksa victory requires no dissolution, since the Hela Urumaya could simply be added to the Alliance — though Ivan finds him harder to read, uncertain whether he would accommodate the JVP and Hela Urumaya or pursue an agenda of his own. He then turns to the arithmetic: the Alliance’s 45.60% in 2004 falls some 500,000 votes short of a presidential majority, and its 2004 total merely preserved what the SLFP and JVP had polled separately in 2001 rather than adding to it. The UNP’s losses since 2001 match the Jathika Hela Urumaya’s gains almost exactly, making those voters decisive. And the Tamil National Alliance vote, which nearly doubled in 2004, rests with the LTTE — which may back neither candidate, in which case turnout in the north and east will fall.

දේශපාලන බීරී අලින්ට වීණා ගැයීම

The election is being held without an Elections Commission because the President has not approved the Constitutional Council’s nominees, leaving the Commissioner to act alone. The editorial notes that the Police Commission has at least curbed political interference with the police, and regrets that neither the President nor the candidates see the issue as important.

රට යන්නේ කොයිබට ද?

Fifty-seven years after independence the country lurches from one crisis to the next, and hardly a single field gives cause for satisfaction. No ruler has turned it round, and the editorial points to a head of state placed above the law by presidential immunity as one root of failure.

නායකයන්ගේ වගකීමෙන් තොර බව

The presidential election is being held with neither an Elections Commission nor a Constitutional Council, leaving the Elections Commissioner, the man the 17th Amendment has hurt most, ‘caught like an areca nut in the cutter’. A second section, on the rule of law and the Chief Justice, counts the motion for a select committee on the Diyawanna Oya affair as a third impeachment charge against him.