17th Amendment aimed to stop malpractice
At an election a private person or a private institution may help whichever party it likes. A government official or a government institution has no such right: their duty is to be politically silent and inactive and let the people elect the government they want.
Who can name the winner
The PA’s defeat at the coming election is inevitable. Closing off electoral malpractice, a powerful group leaving the PA for the UNP, and the SLMC and the CWC contesting in alliance with the UNP are the main things that will produce the result.
Other side of executive presidency
The President called the 1978 constitution ridiculous and went on enjoying the privileges of the system it created, without even reforming away its contradictions. She is paying for that now.
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The UNP has withdrawn its Supreme Court petition against the presidential election.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.
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.
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.
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.
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.