අඬමුද? සිනාසෙමුද?
This article critically examines the controversial tenure and actions of former Chief Justice Sarath Nanda Silva, detailing his abuse of judicial power for personal and political gain. It outlines his role in imprisoning S.B. Dissanayake to appease President Chandrika Kumaratunga, his subsequent legal betrayal of Kumaratunga following a personal insult regarding his behavior toward women, and his intimidation of treasury officials to secure an abnormally high pension. The author also provides a detailed investigative account of a 2004 incident near Diyawanna Oya, where police allegedly found the Chief Justice half-naked in a parked vehicle with a woman, using the cover-up of this event to highlight the systemic corruption and apathy within Sri Lanka’s political, parliamentary, and judicial systems.
ජෙනරාල් අත්අඩංගුවට ගැනීම
The timing and manner of Fonseka’s arrest were both wrong. He took 40 votes in every hundred cast against the winner’s 57 — 4,173,185 against 6,015,934 — which makes him, whatever his background, the country’s second accepted leader. Arresting the loser at the close of a presidential election looks like reprisal, and looks worse still while he is challenging the result in court: a move to block the election petition. Military law should apply to serving soldiers, and Fonseka has retired; offences discovered after retirement, if criminal, belong in the ordinary courts. The government has stained its own victory and made a new hero of the man the voters rejected, and his wife Anoma will become a political figure carrying the grievance from platform to platform. The president stopped two earlier attempts at this arrest and was abroad for the third; correcting it is his responsibility, and a test of his character. The example to follow is Dutugemunu’s treatment of the defeated Elara.
භූමිය පමණක් නොව ජනතාවද එක්සේසත් කළ යුතුය
Had the margin been three thousand votes rather than a landslide, Ivan argues, supporters of the two camps would have turned on each other and the country would have run with blood. He traces how every Elections Commissioner has worked under duress: Jayasekera resigned after the 1981 Jaffna district council poll was taken over by the Defence Secretary, Chandananda de Silva could not publish his referendum report for five years, and in 2001 Chandrika Kumaratunga tried to arrest the Commissioner on Sarath Nanda Silva’s advice. The raid on Fonseka’s hotel after the result dulled the victory’s lustre. Ivan closes with eleven questions any constitutional reform must answer — on ethnic identity, rule of law, limits on presidential power, corruption, money in elections, party democracy and access to justice — and warns against repeating 1972 and 1977, when a governing party wrote a constitution alone.
ඡන්ද ක්රමය සේම දේශපාලන ක්රමයද වෙනස් විය යුතුය
Rajapaksa promised during the campaign to change the preferential voting system before the next parliamentary election. Changing the electoral system alone is not enough — the political system must change with it, and for the country’s good rather than a party’s. An executive president answerable to parliament and the courts between elections is possible; so is subjecting every presidential act to judicial review, as in the United States. The president should hold no ministry, lose the power to dissolve parliament at will after a year and to call an early election after four, and face a cap on cabinet size. A mixed proportional and constituency system will only work if the parties themselves are made internally democratic, since the present arrangement gives each leader autocratic power. India requires parties to file accounts with the election commission and auditor general, and candidates to declare assets with their nominations. Any amendment must rest on agreement across all parties, not be built for the ruling party as in 1972 and 1977.
විය යුත්තේ කුමක්ද?
Two days before the poll, Ivan states plainly that he does not want Fonseka to win — not because Rajapaksa’s administration deserves protection, but because a change driven by hatred rather than a vision would leave the country in disorder, and anarchy is worse than bad government. Defeat would not finish Fonseka: he would become opposition leader and could acquire the political schooling he lacks, having entered politics straight from the battlefield and now flying on wings borrowed from two other parties. Ivan argues the opposition’s deeper failure is squandering parliament’s committee system, where members sign the attendance sheet for the allowance and leave, breaking quorum and sending summoned officials home with their files unopened. He sets out what Rajapaksa must change: shed the relatives beyond Chamal, Gotabaya and Basil, build an anti-corruption commission on the Hong Kong model, and stop overriding the independent commissions.
යන්නේ කොයිබටද?
The first presidential election after the defeat of Prabhakaran’s de facto state ought to be about what kind of Sri Lanka replaces it, but the campaign has been consumed by trivia and mutual spite. Both main candidates are products of the war they won — Rajapaksa as commander-in-chief, Fonseka as army commander — and neither has said what he would build. Rajapaksa promises a good future without describing it; Fonseka would abolish the executive presidency without saying what succeeds it. Both are asked to address the grievance minorities believe survives Prabhakaran’s defeat, and to explain how corruption can be beaten within a system built to protect it. The press is told to stop staging cockfights.
අවලස්සණ ජනාධිපතිවරණයක්
Three weeks before the January 2010 presidential election, Ivan argues the contest between Mahinda Rajapaksa and Sarath Fonseka has taken the shape of a fight between two bazaar thugs rather than between democratic forces. Both camps breach the law on cutouts and posters, and neither the police nor the Elections Commissioner will enforce it. He traces the collapse to Chandrika Kumaratunga’s appointment of Sarath Nanda Silva as Chief Justice over the senior Mark Fernando, while corruption complaints against Silva were still before the court. Silva, once the target of a joint UNP–JVP impeachment motion, is now the opposition campaign’s constitutional spokesman. Ivan concludes that defeating a man will not change a system, and no party has said what should replace the executive presidency.
ප්රතිවාදී නායකයන් අඟුටුමිට්ටන් බවට පත්වී ජනාධිපති යෝධයකු බවට පත්වීම
An analysis of the Sri Lankan political landscape following the 2009 provincial council elections. The article discusses how Mahinda Rajapaksa solidified his power, rendering opposition leaders like Ranil Wickremesinghe politically impotent and crippling the UNP and JVP. The author urges the President not to misuse this massive mandate like J.R. Jayewardene did, but instead use it to dismantle the corrupt political system, establish private universities, eradicate ethnic divisions, and build a truly democratic nation.
Trends in the Presidential Contest
Three weeks from the 2005 presidential election, Victor Ivan sets out what each outcome would produce. Defeat ends the political life of whichever man suffers it, and fragments his party. A Wickremesinghe victory brings immediate dissolution and a parliamentary election that would cut the JVP and Hela Urumaya down, after which Ivan expects him to seek an SLFP coalition anyway to shield his peace programme from objection. A Rajapaksa victory requires no dissolution, since the Hela Urumaya could simply be added to the Alliance — though Ivan finds him harder to read, uncertain whether he would accommodate the JVP and Hela Urumaya or pursue an agenda of his own. He then turns to the arithmetic: the Alliance’s 45.60% in 2004 falls some 500,000 votes short of a presidential majority, and its 2004 total merely preserved what the SLFP and JVP had polled separately in 2001 rather than adding to it. The UNP’s losses since 2001 match the Jathika Hela Urumaya’s gains almost exactly, making those voters decisive. And the Tamil National Alliance vote, which nearly doubled in 2004, rests with the LTTE — which may back neither candidate, in which case turnout in the north and east will fall.
The Mahinda – Anura Equation
The President has named Mahinda Rajapaksa her party’s presidential candidate and her own brother its prime ministerial candidate, though only the first nomination was asked for — and done while an amendment making her SLFP leader for life was being introduced. Victor Ivan reads it as a chess move of some cunning: in every sequence of elections, a defeated Mahinda loses even the seat he holds while Anura Bandaranaike emerges as leader of the opposition, and family control of the party survives the defeat. Behind it sits the unresolved question of whether the presidential election falls in 2005 or 2006, and a chain of unanswerable questions about what the Elections Commissioner will decide, whether the President will seek a Supreme Court interpretation first, and what either will do if they disagree. Ivan then turns to the parties themselves, arguing neither main party is democratic — the SLFP run by one family, the UNP by several — and traces the pattern of leaders seeking to escape their term limits: Jayewardene collecting undated resignation letters from a five-sixths majority and dreaming of a third term until Premadasa stood against him, Kumaratunga collecting the same letters from twenty-three deputy ministers in 2000 with the judiciary’s support. Her dreams end, he concludes, only if Mahinda can become a Premadasa.