පාර්ලිමේන්තු මැතිවරණයෙන් පසු
With the opposition’s enthusiasm spent and its forces fighting the parliamentary election separately, Ivan expects the government to take 130 to 135 seats. He argues this is the historic moment for constitutional reform, and that it will only command respect if the opposition is brought in rather than bypassed by buying UNP members across. His programme: a mixed German-style electoral system, internal democracy in parties, publication of asset declarations on a website for continuous public scrutiny, the information act Milinda Moragoda has proposed, and opening parliamentary committees to the press. On devolution he proposes abandoning the province as the universal unit — keeping it only for the North, where the Tamil majority is overwhelming, and using the district everywhere else, with village councils on the Indian panchayat model beneath. He notes the President won 58 votes in every hundred and his opponent 40, and that reform must include the 40.
යහපත් අනාගතයක් සඳහා
Sri Lanka should not go on manufacturing new conflicts once an old one ends. Fonseka’s arrest looked at first glance like the winner punishing the loser, but the President’s account is that the army authorities wanted to court-martial Fonseka over matters arising from his time as Chief of Defence Staff, and that he instructed them to wait until after the election so it would not appear he was blocking his opponent from standing. If the process cannot be reversed it should at least be transparent, and a conviction could be met with a pardon in view of Fonseka’s war service. With the war over, the President’s duty is to soften his administration: let the opposition campaign unhindered, invite back journalists who fled, investigate the one who disappeared during the campaign, and legislate on torture and children’s rights — which would also restore GSP Plus.
ආපසු හැරී බැලීමක් සමග ඉදිරිය දැකීමක්
Ivan sets out his own positions and why they left him isolated. He held that the Tamil rebellion was inseparable from Tamil grievances and had to be settled by negotiation — until it became clear the LTTE would accept nothing short of a separate state or confederation, at which point he supported defeating it militarily. He backed the war publicly and predicted the LTTE’s defeat while most of Ravaya’s own writers argued it could not be won. On the killing and beating of journalists he told colleagues the blame could not be laid wholly on a government unable to move against its army commander mid-war, and was angrily rejected by Sunanda Deshapriya. He records that this was the third insurrection he supported suppressing, including the 1971 rising he took part in himself. At the presidential election his loyalty was to Rajapaksa, whose remaining task he defines as remaking the state and political system.
ජයග්රහණයේ වටිනාකම බොඳ කරගැනීම
Fonseka’s arrest, whatever the grounds, dulls the shine of Rajapaksa’s victory and can be read as a move to head off an election petition. Ivan sets out the opposition’s crisis at that moment: Fonseka wanted to keep the swan symbol and the leadership that came with it, believing he had lifted the UNP’s base from two million votes to 4.1 million, while Wickremesinghe insisted on the elephant. Privately, Ivan writes, Wickremesinghe was relieved by the scale of the defeat — a narrow loss would have made Fonseka unchallengeable — and on the day of the arrest sent word through Mangala Samaraweera offering nomination under the elephant. The JVP is in the deeper crisis, having first approached Sarath Nanda Silva before settling on Fonseka, and may now win no seats at all. Ivan judges them the most remarkable political movement in the country, undone by an inability to revise an old doctrine for a changed world.
ජයග්රහණය හා ඉදිරි ගමන
Rajapaksa’s re-election was large but its limits are visible. Ivan contrasts Wickremesinghe’s acceptance of defeat in 2005, decided by 180,786 votes, with Fonseka’s refusal to concede without explaining why the result is dishonest — a soldier new to politics who misread his crowds and campaigned believing defeat impossible. Both sides broke the law: the government used state media and resources as every government has since 1977, while the opposition used overseas websites and an FM station to spread false reports that the President had fled to India and the Elections Commissioner was under house arrest. The alliance behind Fonseka was held together by nothing but hostility to Rajapaksa, and included men who had accused him of Lasantha Wickrematunge’s murder. The anti-Rajapaksa revolt was largely urban, and the victory drew almost no Tamil, up-country Tamil or Muslim support. Infrastructure spending in the north and east has not answered the political question beneath it.
ජනාධිපතිවරණය ජනතාව භේද කරන තරගයක් නොවිය යුතුය
Government figures have attacked the Tamil National Alliance’s decision to back Sarath Fonseka, one claiming it could revive terrorism. The alliance did serve the LTTE’s programme, but out of fear rather than conviction; with the LTTE defeated its representatives can act freely, and its local councillors have sung the national anthem. Backing one of the two main candidates is better than a boycott or a separate candidate. Fonseka, once a hardline Sinhala nationalist, has drawn wide minority support. The Vaddukoddai declaration ruined the Tamil people as much as the country, and the LTTE’s defeat opens space for a united society of equal citizens. Both candidates have a duty to make this an election that moves the country forward rather than one that sows division.
ආරක්ෂක සම්බාධක ලිහිල් කිරීමේ අවශ්යතාව
Lifting the restrictions on travel south from the Jaffna peninsula is a good first step, Ivan writes, and the high security zones should go the same way now that the threat that justified them is gone. He asks for the military atmosphere to be dismantled rather than displayed, and for the journalists who left the country for their safety to be invited back.
දෙමළ සන්ධානයේ නව අස්ථානය
With the LTTE gone, the Tamil National Alliance is becoming again the main vehicle of Tamil political hopes — and, most importantly, has set aside the demand for Eelam as unrealistic, accepting a unitary state within which a lasting settlement is to be sought with Sinhalese support. Ivan writes that hatred and separatist feeling are not found only between communities but between castes, religions and parties too.
ජීඑස්පී ප්ලස් බදු සහනය ආරක්ෂා කරගත යුතුය
Whether Sri Lanka keeps GSP+ is a measure of its diplomatic sense, Ivan writes: a member of an organisation is bound by the rules it agreed to or should leave. He points out that nothing done during the war is what is at issue, and that releasing the displaced, withdrawing the Yaksihiran indictment, pardoning Tissainayagam and passing a short law making the covenants domestically enforceable would settle it.
සමගිය හා ප්රඥාව
The politicians are looking at the southern council election and the presidential one, while the country faces war crimes allegations, the GSP+ question and the displaced. Ivan argues these can only be met if the parties set their divisions aside — and that the voice the country used during the war does not suit the moment. We are no longer entangled with Prabhakaran, he writes, but with the powers of the world.