ජනාධිපතිවරණය, රාජ්ය නායකයා සහ සාමය
Every head of state since independence was elected by the people, yet all ruled like feudal kings, above the law and interfering with the courts. The editorial says change will come only when voters stop following leaders like sheep, and asks at least that the next head of state abandon the tradition of standing above the law.
රට යන්නේ කොයිබට ද?
Fifty-seven years after independence the country lurches from one crisis to the next, and hardly a single field gives cause for satisfaction. No ruler has turned it round, and the editorial points to a head of state placed above the law by presidential immunity as one root of failure.
විශ්රාම යන ජනාධිපතිනිය සහ රනිල් වික්රමසිංහ
Ranil Wickremesinghe has told his MPs he is thinking of how to use the retiring President’s services, and spoke of American provisions for former presidents. The editorial welcomes cooperation between the two main parties but says retiring presidents must also face scrutiny, since immunity shields them while in office.
කෙළවර කුමක් ද?
The Cabinet has decided to give the retiring President an acre and a half facing the Diyawanna Oya opposite Parliament, in lieu of the pension and official residence she says she will forgo. The note recalls her plan for a Rs 1,700 million presidential palace in the same area.
මහින්ද-අනුර සමීකරණය
In naming Mahinda Rajapaksa as presidential candidate, the President also named Anura Bandaranaike as prime ministerial candidate, which no one had asked for. The editorial reads it as two steps back and one forward in her fight against irrelevance, a fierce chess move, and compares her use of the courts with J.R. Jayewardene’s.
ජනතාවට පොත පෙරළීම
Chandrika Kumaratunga has had her biography written by a well-known biographer, with the publisher’s US$40,000 fee paid by the Ports Authority under Mangala Samaraweera and launches planned from Oslo to Berlin at public expense. Ivan traces the practice to J.R. Jayewardene, then turns to a heartless Parliament and the coming Supreme Court interpretation, noting that everyone has suffered at the Chief Justice’s hands except the President.
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.
පිරිවරක් නැති රැජිණට රනිල්ගේ පිහිටයි
Unable to show a winning plan to avoid irrelevance, the President is being deserted; seniors who backed her on the tsunami mechanism are not with her on the candidacy. The editorial suggests she may seek future protection from Ranil Wickremesinghe as J.R. Jayewardene and D.B. Wijetunga once did, and considers Mahinda Rajapaksa’s hardest task: pleasing nationalists and minorities at once.
අර්බුදය ගමන් ගනිමින් තිබෙන්නේ කොතැනටද?
For all her mistakes, Ivan argues, Chandrika Kumaratunga may enter history as the leader who finally stood up to the Sinhala racist and religious extremists that every leader before her, her father included, obeyed. He then weighs her options as her term runs out: retirement, dissolution with the risk of impeachment, or giving up the presidency to keep the party and the opposition leadership, and what each would mean for Mahinda Rajapaksa and Ranil Wickremesinghe.
පළමු වටයේ ජය ජනාධිපතිනියට
The President has cleared a hard hurdle. Allying with the JVP let her defeat the UNP ‘army’ that had surrounded her, but left her a prisoner of the JVP; with the JVP gone she now has two paths, and the editorial argues that a parliamentary election would hurt the JVP and the Hela Urumaya most.