ජනාධිපතිවරණයේ ප්රවණතා
With three weeks to go, Ivan argues that the winner’s side will stay dominant for a long time. If Ranil Wickremesinghe loses, his career ends and the UNP splits; if Mahinda Rajapaksa wins, he will want an early parliamentary election to weaken the JVP and the Hela Urumaya; and it is unclear what the LTTE will do with the Tamil vote.
Sinhala Buddhist Vote Base and the Presidential Election
Six weeks before the 2005 presidential election, Victor Ivan works through whether it can be won on Sinhala Buddhist votes alone. He begins by conceding the JVP’s pre-2004 argument was arithmetically sound: had the SLFP, JVP and EPDP contested together in 2001 they would have outpolled the UNP-led alliance by 27,579 votes. Contesting as one in 2004 they gained only 5,019 votes on their separate 2001 total, took 108 seats without a majority, and were outpolled by the combined opposition by some seven lakhs — 46.04% against 53.96%. But a presidential election is a different instrument: two contenders, one national constituency, and a winner who must clear half the vote. Ivan estimates the Sinhala Buddhist electorate at 6,094,667 of roughly 9.16 million valid votes, meaning a candidate relying on it alone would need 75% of it — a target he does not think easily attainable. He notes too why minorities prefer the presidential system: with the Sinhala vote split between the main parties, their votes can decide who becomes head of state.
මහින්දට විය හැක්කේ කුමක් ද?
Mahinda Rajapaksa is near the top, a remarkable feat in a party dominated by one family, and he got there not as a Bandaranaike retainer. Ivan weighs Chandrika Kumaratunga’s decision not to fight him at the convention, and his bold readiness to meet Prabhakaran against his pact with the JVP and Hela Urumaya to keep the unitary state.
කදිර්ගාමර් ඝාතනයේ දේශපාලනය
Lakshman Kadirgamar’s assassination is inflaming the ethnic conflict. The LTTE had long treated him as enemy number one; Ivan argues that a policy of defeating the LTTE militarily only makes Tamils suffer and the LTTE stronger, while the killing shows the LTTE will not abandon the murder of its enemies, which blocks any peaceful settlement.
සටන් විරාම ගිවිසුම ආරක්ෂා කරගත යුතු යි
The Sinhala south is absorbed in the unsettled questions of the presidential election while the ceasefire is plainly at risk: figures published by the Sahajeevana foundation show political killings in the East rising from 14 a month in 2004 to 18 in 2005. The editorial urges the two leading candidates to agree before the election to protect the ceasefire and restart talks.
සුනාමි නඩුව
Martin Luther King could look to the US Supreme Court with hope; Prabhakaran and Tamils cannot feel the same about Sri Lanka’s. Ivan recalls the Tamil rights cases that failed, from the Kodakan Pillai citizenship case onwards, then describes the hearing of the petitions against the tsunami mechanism, noting a special guest linked to the Chief Justice’s Diyawanna Oya affair.
ජවිපෙ කොෆි අන්නන්ගේ පිහිට පැතීම
Out of government, the JVP has not raised its voice; it says it will go to court against the tsunami mechanism and complain to the UN. The editorial asks why, if that was the best way, it staged a fast unto death, and argues that if a parliamentary election comes first its plans will collapse, though a new SLFP pact on SLFP terms remains possible.
ජවිපෙ සුභ සිහිනය
The JVP’s dream of power was really one Mangala Samaraweera built for it, with a crown for himself in the interval after the President. Now the joint mechanism leaves the party a choice between looking foolish in government and leaving it; Ivan points to India, with a Sikh prime minister and a Muslim president, as proof that ethnic divisions can be overcome.
සුනාමි යාන්ත්රණය හා දේශප්රේමය
The joint mechanism is splitting the country in two. Its opponents say it gives a terrorist group formal recognition; the editorial answers that 60 per cent of the damage was in the North-East, and that those who stand for peace have as much right to be heard as those who call war patriotic.
රට නැවත යන්නේ යුද්ධයකට ද?
The ceasefire created good conditions for a peaceful settlement, but the country failed to use them and is now being pushed towards settling matters by war. The alliance never had one view of the conflict, and the editorial warns that starting a war is easy but will bring only destruction.