What Can Happen?
Victor Ivan returns to Johan Galtung’s warning that Sri Lanka might end up temporarily under United Nations administration if it fails to manage its crises. Having read Ivan’s An Unfinished Struggle, Galtung reasoned that a judiciary decayed to that degree implied equal decay elsewhere, and that only a failing state deteriorates so far. Ivan’s test is whether serious mistakes get corrected, and he finds no mechanism that does. An election was held without an elections commission because the President twice refused to approve a list the constitutional council had vetted and cleared; parliament and the judiciary both declined to intervene; and with the council’s own term expired, the police and public service commissions cannot be constituted either, making every transfer, promotion and disciplinary action in those services unconstitutional. A year after the tsunami, 6% of the required houses are built — seventeen years at that rate — and the country cannot yet say how many of its dead were men and how many women. He then reads the party system as collapsing: Thondaman reduced to seeking LTTE shelter, the UNP too decayed to reform itself, the SLFP surviving only on state power. Only the JVP and the LTTE retain vigour, and both, he argues, have spent their history accelerating the state’s decay.
එළඹෙන වසර සුනාමි ප්රතිසංස්කරණ වසර බවට පත් කරමු
A year after the tsunami killed 40,000 and displaced a million, the editorial says the country owes the survivors a quick return to normal life, assesses what has and has not been done, and compares the JVP’s politics without arms to the LTTE’s politics with them.
මහින්දගේ ජයග්රහණය
Mahinda Rajapaksa won a close contest, helped by Prabhakaran’s boycott, ending the political careers of both Ranil Wickremesinghe and Chandrika Kumaratunga. For the first time the SLFP passes to a leader outside the Bandaranaike family; sections assess Wickremesinghe, Kumaratunga, the JVP and Prabhakaran, and predict that on the ethnic question Rajapaksa will end up on their path.
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.
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.
මහින්ද-වීරවංශ දීගය හරි යයිද?
Back from Japan, the President did not quarrel with Mahinda Rajapaksa but backed his candidacy, leaving herself room for a later return. Mahinda is now in a bind: saying yes to the JVP’s conditions will cost him some of the forces gathering around him.
විමල් වීරවංශ හා ඇටි කෙහෙල්
Like the civet in the saying who ate a seeded banana, the JVP tried to swallow the SLFP and cannot digest it; now it can only hang on Mahinda Rajapaksa’s neck, and Wimal Weerawansa says any deal will be with Mahinda, not the SLFP.
අගවිනිසුරුගේ මාළු බෑම
The latest fish on the Chief Justice’s hook is the ‘red fish’, the JVP. The note describes how he baits each hook to the taste of the fish he means to catch, and suggests even the revolutionary Wimal Weerawansa could not resist the charms of the ‘mermaid’ on the mobile phone.
සුනාමි ආධාර අගමැති හා ජවිපෙ
Mismanaging a disaster that killed nearly 40,000 and displaced close to a million could bring a political tsunami. The Prime Minister’s report to Cabinet puts tsunami aid received at Rs 113,262,539 without saying from whom; the editorial says he, the JVP and every other party that collected aid should account for it.
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.