Ensuring healthy peace talks
After the failure of Agni Khiela the government has had to soften the hard conditions it set for starting talks. It now enters negotiations from weakness rather than strength, and the talks are likelier to deepen its crisis than to steady it.
ජනවාර්ගික ආවේග පාලනය කිරීම
Managing ethnic, religious and linguistic passions is Sri Lanka’s greatest challenge, and adding a Muslim conflict to the Tamil one would bring chaos. The editorial argues that no post-independence ruler has shown the ability to do so, recalling how the UNP blamed the JVP for Black July 1983, and criticising the President for implicitly blaming the UNP, the JVP and the railway strike for the Mawanella violence.
සාම කතා ඇරඹීම
Peace talks with the LTTE are due in early May, driven by international pressure after foreign help stopped the Tigers taking Jaffna. Ivan argues that the LTTE now knows Eelam will not be accepted and has softened its claim to be the sole representative of Tamils, but doubts the government’s maturity: it lacks an opposition consensus, a secure majority and internal unity. He urges state reform, accountability of the presidency and the independent commissions as the basis for consensus.
රාජ්ය පාලකයන්ට රතු සංඥාවක්
During the President’s visit to the Netherlands, a lawyer for Tamil refugees sought a court order for her arrest under the Convention against Torture; the Dutch court rejected it only because it was not properly framed. The editorial draws the lesson that rights violations, attacks on democratic rights and plunder of public money are increasingly treated as international crimes, limiting where rulers can travel or flee.
යුද්ධ ආයුධ මිලදි ගැනීම හා දූෂණ
Justice Minister Batty Weerakoon told Parliament that the Bribery Commission is investigating a top Defence Ministry official over arms deals but refused to name him. The editorial says the official should be suspended by the President, under whom the ministry falls, notes that war spending has risen from Rs. 4,000 million to Rs. 6,000 million and is funded by a 7.5 per cent levy, and argues that secrecy in arms buying breeds corruption.
ප්රභාකරන්ගේ ඊළග පියවර කුමක් ද?
The editorial argues that the LTTE is trapped not by military strength but by a world order that no longer legitimises armed struggle, as the fall of Elephant Pass and the outside help that saved Jaffna showed. Mandela, the PLO, the IRA and the JVP adapted; governments that crush just grievances also face isolation. It assesses Prabhakaran as a gifted but ruthless commander, groups him with Wijeweera, Premadasa and Vijaya Kumaratunga, and says a turn to peace would multiply his strength.
Will Prabhakaran take the peace path?
The LTTE and its leader are stuck in a quagmire and finding it hard to keep the violent struggle going. Whether Prabhakaran can take the path of peace, and what it would cost him to try, is the question — and Ivan’s answer is neither hopeful nor hostile.
Fifty three years of incomplete freedom
The fifty-third anniversary of independence falls today. The country was moving from feudalism to capitalism, and what was expected of independence was not freedom from colonialism — colonialism had produced only a modern nationalist state. National integration was the condition of real independence, and it was never met.
ලැබූ නිදහසේ ඇති නොගැලපුම
On the anniversary of Independence, Ivan argues that because Ceylon won freedom without struggle, its communities never forged a real national unity. Citing Lord Soulbury’s foreword to B.H. Farmer’s Ceylon: A Divided Nation, he notes that Section 29 did not stop the citizenship laws or the Sinhala Only Act, and that minority representation fell short of expectations. A new constitution alone will not solve the ethnic problem; Sinhala and Tamil democratic aspirations must be joined in a common movement.
නපුර ජයගැනීම
Sri Lanka signed the UN Convention against Torture and passed a torture law in 1994, yet political torture has grown. Ivan cites the case of beautician Ivan Turner, detained as an alleged LTTE suspect and humiliated by senior police officer Bandula Wickremasinghe, whose only punishment was a transfer. Borrowing Bishop Frank Marcus’s phrase ‘evil rule’, he argues that Kumaratunga, like Jayewardene and Premadasa, rules through partisanship, and that only democratic reform can end it or allow the ethnic question to be seen democratically.