රට ඇත්තේ විනාශයක එළිපත්තේ ය
Ivan says Prabhakaran’s offensive on Jaffna has evaporated the government’s plans to extend Parliament or win an election through constitutional change. A defeat in Jaffna could topple the government; any election would exclude the North. He notes MPs’ retrospective pay rise, doubts the new Sinhala nationalist party can offer a practical answer, and warns that the war could move south and force the whole country into bunkers.
දිකිරට බලලූන් සාක්කි දිම
Ivan responds to the French ambassador’s intervention in the dispute over the President’s educational qualifications. He faults her for ignoring the President’s office calling a questioning editor a ‘worm’, and uses The World of Learning directory and an OECD training inventory to argue that Sciences Po and the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales were not then part of the University of Paris and that an école diploma is not equivalent to a university degree.
අභිමත බලය කොයිබටද?
Ivan questions the appointment of businessman Harry Jayawardena, a close Bandaranaike family friend and 1994 campaign financier, to the Securities and Exchange Commission while facing customs fraud cases against Stassen Exports and inquiries over Hatton National Bank dealings. He also criticises the choice of Rienzie Arsecularatne as Director General of the Bribery Commission despite past controversies, and warns that such use of presidential discretion, with opposition silence, is ruining the country.
Self interest in making constitutions
As a nation we are on the edge of a great abyss, and the leaders behave like crabs dancing in water until it boils — so blinded by hunger for power that they cannot see the danger to themselves, let alone the danger to the country.
Tactics to ensure parliamentary power
The PA government is locked in a dilemma there is no easy way out of. Even a very satisfactory result at the coming parliamentary election would leave it with fewer seats than it holds now, which is why the electoral system itself is what it wants to change.
Hatred: barrier for fruitful talks
Will the Ranil-Chandrika dialogue change the political picture? Will it produce even a consensus on the ethnic crisis that has gone on destroying life? Not, Ivan argues, while the hatred each side has cultivated for the other is the one thing both of them still hold in common.
When will wisdom dawn on them?
Even after being elected to it, the President has several times called the executive presidency a dreadful cancer introduced into the body politic. By now proposing to keep that cancer to the end of her own term while reforming the constitution, she has turned the whole reform project into a selfish and ridiculous farce.
Political solutions or political opportunism
Making a constitution implies that the people of a country reach a consensus on the kind of government that suits them. In Sri Lanka it is being done behind their backs: they do not know what is proposed, and the document looks likely to reach them for discussion only after every agreement has been struck.
රාවයට වැරදුණේද? ආපසු හැරි බැලීමක්
Ivan defends Ravaya’s critical stance before the presidential election. He explains that the paper promoted Chandrika Kumaratunga in 1992–94 for her reform programme, which she never implemented, and rejects her claim to have ended the fear of death and granted media freedom, recalling how Ravaya defied J.R. Jayewardene and Ranasinghe Premadasa, including publishing the 1988 election petition verdict in advance. He lists corrupted polls under her rule and maintains her win was not a clean mandate.
Individual power disastrous to democracy
The government will not get a two-thirds majority at a parliamentary election. It can reach the number only by enacting a law that permits crossovers and then holding a referendum — which is precisely what was done once before, and this column is about what that cost.