ජනාධිපතිවරණය
Must the next presidential election be held at the end of this year, as Ranil Wickremesinghe says, or next year, as the President says? The dispute arises from her two swearings-in, publicly in 1999 and secretly in 2000. The editorial traces the tangle to the Chief Justice and notes that the Elections Commissioner who must resolve it is past retirement age and in poor health.
ජවිපෙට නිවට වෙන්නට සිදුවීම
However venomous the President’s attack in her television interview of 16 May, the JVP has not struck back, because she holds two fatal weapons: the power to dissolve Parliament and the power to look into JVP leaders’ assets. Sections follow on the President’s trump cards, the Chief Justice and religion, and the failure of every party to declare its assets and liabilities.
අනුරගේ රස කතා
Anura Bandaranaike has changed his tune about succeeding his sister as the alliance’s presidential candidate. In sections on the constitutional amendment, Chandrika’s tricks, a Ranil who belongs to neither world, and a thunderbolt striking the temple of justice, Ivan argues that the state needs full reform, not reform to save one person from irrelevance, and above all an independent judiciary.
Does Prabhakaran have an answer?
Victor Ivan reads Prabhakaran’s Heroes’ Day speech as a shrewd account of southern politics. The LTTE leader traces the breakdown back to Washington, where the UNP’s participation in the aid conference denied his organisation equal-partner status; he rejects every interim administration draft the government produced, insists talks resume on the LTTE’s own ISGA proposals, and refuses to see an interim authority tied to a final settlement — suspecting the President of wanting to please the JVP, mislead the international community, or simply prolong matters indefinitely. He then challenges every southern party to state publicly where it stands on territory, nationhood and self-determination, and warns that Tamil patience has limits. Ivan judges the ball now in Sinhala hands and finds none of them willing to hold it: Wickremesinghe wanting the talks to last until he is President, the President subordinating the ethnic question to her own invalidation problem, and neither able to move without the JVP’s consent. He closes with a warning that the Sinhala people may come to detest their own leaders enough to say Prabhakaran is good for us too.
ආණ්ඩුක්රමයේ වෙනසක් සඳහා පොදු එකගතාවක්
Aid pledged at Tokyo depends on peace talks, and the alliance’s first budget has been drawn up without the usual IMF support. The editorial warns against playing with the basic law by a bare majority and argues that reform of the executive presidency should come through consensus, which would also bring a more civilised relationship between the parties.
When must the Presidential Election be held?
Was Chandrika Kumaratunga’s second term due to end in December 2005 or December 2006? Victor Ivan works through the constitutional arithmetic. G.L. Peiris holds that the public oath of 22 December 1999 governs, making the election due in 2005; Mangala Samaraweera replies that a two-term president is entitled to twelve years, placing it in 2006 and resting on an oath the President is said to have taken in secret on 12 November 2000. Ivan tests the twelve-year claim against J.R. Jayewardene, who served two terms and got eleven: having gone to the country early in October 1982, he took his second oath in February 1983 and lost a year. Article 31(3A)(d), quoted in full, sets the term from the date of the oath. He then explains why she took the December oath at all — after the bomb attack on her campaign, her advisers invoked the doctrine of necessity so that her death would not force a fresh election, an insurance that has since become a liability. A secret oath cannot invalidate a public one, he concludes, and any attempt to make it do so will bring on another crisis.
බිබික්කම ලස්සන කිරීම
G.L. Peiris told The Hindu that the UNP backs an executive presidency, but a reformed one. Ivan lists the further reforms such a system would need, recounts how a joint reform proposal failed when Uduwe Dhammaloka Thera’s signed copy never came back, and closes with sections on ‘the Chief Justice of the Dharma State’ and ‘a hunter’s sermon’.
රනිල් හා චන්ද්රිකා: විධායක ජනාධිපති ක්රමයේ ඊළග දගර නැටුම
The UNP has finally spoken about the President’s secret second swearing-in. The editorial asks why Ranil Wickremesinghe never fought the executive presidency when he held a parliamentary majority, and says that backing real reform would be his best answer to the belief that he too is an autocrat.
අවලංගුවීම වළකා ගැනීම
President Kumaratunga presses on with her plan to avoid political irrelevance after her second term: the costly JVP alliance, the defeat of the UNP, and a constitutional change she hopes the Chief Justice will help her through. Ivan argues that growing economic hardship is the chief obstacle to her plan and to the referendum it needs.
Alliance Government Crosses A Difficult Hurdle
Thondaman’s CWC has brought eight MPs to the Alliance, and with three from the SLMC and one JHU monk the government reaches 118 — enough to govern, but thirty-two short of what the President actually wants. Victor Ivan credits her nerve: she dissolved a parliament the UNP controlled, broke her promise to the Speaker, allied with the JVP at the risk of her own party, and won a gamble that had her survival at stake, while the leader of the opposition remained in a world of his dreams. Her remaining aim is to avoid invalidation at the end of her second term, and Ivan judges that despite her stated preference for abolishing the executive presidency she will instead seek to amend it to permit three terms — a course she can justify to the minorities, to her own party and to the JVP in turn. The arithmetic runs through Prabhakaran: satisfying him on the ISGA delivers the TNA’s twenty-two MPs and brings a two-thirds majority within ten UNP defections. The difficulty is pleasing Prabhakaran and Wimal Weerawansa at once.