ජයග්රහණයේ වටිනාකම බොඳ කරගැනීම
Fonseka’s arrest, whatever the grounds, dulls the shine of Rajapaksa’s victory and can be read as a move to head off an election petition. Ivan sets out the opposition’s crisis at that moment: Fonseka wanted to keep the swan symbol and the leadership that came with it, believing he had lifted the UNP’s base from two million votes to 4.1 million, while Wickremesinghe insisted on the elephant. Privately, Ivan writes, Wickremesinghe was relieved by the scale of the defeat — a narrow loss would have made Fonseka unchallengeable — and on the day of the arrest sent word through Mangala Samaraweera offering nomination under the elephant. The JVP is in the deeper crisis, having first approached Sarath Nanda Silva before settling on Fonseka, and may now win no seats at all. Ivan judges them the most remarkable political movement in the country, undone by an inability to revise an old doctrine for a changed world.
සාමකාමී හා ශිෂ්ටසම්පන්නවීමේ වැදගත්කම
Elections are the highest exercise of popular sovereignty and a measure of a country’s political civility — and on that measure Sri Lanka’s record since 1977 offers only cause for shame. Every administration has used state resources and state media for its campaign; only once has election law been followed to the letter, and only because the Supreme Court intervened. People die at every election, the educated speak of it with distress, and everyone forgets once polling closes. Sri Lanka may be the only country with no law controlling party and campaign funds, yet a leading presidential candidate can spend over 1,500 million rupees, and even a parliamentary candidate 100 million. That money is other people’s and must be repaid in some form: this is the foundation of corruption. Whoever wins, both candidates must pledge there will be no reprisals.
2009 වසර හා දේශපාලන අංක ගණිතය
Ivan opens 2009 expecting the global collapse to hit Sri Lanka hard. The year begins with the Golden Key crisis dragging the rest of Ceylinco’s finance companies down, tea, cinnamon and rubber in unprecedented difficulty, and smallholders who once earned well unable to live. War spending for 2009 is 177 billion rupees, and the country must fight through an economic crisis it cannot abandon the war to escape. At Kilinochchi the army advances slowly through bunds, trenches and traps, its target the LTTE’s war machine rather than territory. Meanwhile a run of court rulings against the government, above all on fuel prices, had trapped it politically — until it escaped by cutting fuel, gas and official expenses in one package worth 16 billion rupees, and put the opposition on the defensive instead. Ranil is the better mathematician; Mahinda is the better political arithmetician.
What is going to happen?
Writing days before the April 2004 parliamentary election, Victor Ivan argues that no result can reduce the country’s instability. Two nationalist blocs have each split — the Jathika Hela Urumaya’s monks drawing away from the JVP’s claim to represent Sinhala nationalism, and Karuna’s break dividing the Tamil National Alliance between north and east. If no party reaches 105 seats, the balancing seats cannot come from the TNA, since courting Prabhakaran means fighting Karuna and courting Karuna means fighting Prabhakaran. Ivan sets out the manoeuvres open to Chandrika Kumaratunga and Ranil Wickremesinghe in each scenario, warns that a prolonged failure to form a government would weaken the economy and the rule of law and choke off international aid, and notes that Prabhakaran — who had watched the earlier crisis with amusement — is now as bogged down as the two leaders he was observing.
Will a Parliamentary Election be a Solution to the Problem?
Victor Ivan evaluates whether holding a parliamentary general election will resolve the political deadlock between the President and the Prime Minister. Using electoral data under Sri Lanka’s Proportional Representation system, Ivan projects that neither a PA-JVP alliance nor the UNF can win an absolute parliamentary majority on its own. Consequently, any future government will be forced to rely on Tamil representatives from the North and East—most notably the LTTE-backed TNA—to form a majority. Ivan warns that this creates a severe governance paradox: a government reliant on LTTE-aligned MPs for its survival would struggle to credibly negotiate peace with the LTTE while maintaining public trust, ultimately leading to an even deeper political stalemate than before.
How will the struggle for power end?
In this article, Victor Ivan analyzes the escalating power struggle between President Chandrika Kumaratunga and Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe. Facing the end of her term and unable to contest the next presidential election, the President seeks to overhaul the executive presidency to secure her continued political dominance, potentially by aligning with the JVP or utilizing Parliament as a constituent assembly. Conversely, the Prime Minister is determined to preserve the current system to claim the executive presidency for himself, plotting to render the President politically irrelevant. Ivan warns that this clash of ambitions, coupled with a lack of faith in the impartiality of the judiciary under Chief Justice Sarath Nanda Silva, risks plunging the nation into an extra-constitutional crisis and potential civil conflict.
A UNP-PA Coalition in Place of a JVP-PA Coalition?
This article analyzes the strategic political maneuvering between Sri Lanka’s major parties—the UNP, PA, and JVP—over the formation of coalitions and control of the government. It outlines the internal divisions within the PA regarding whether to form a permanent alliance with the JVP to topple the ruling government, or to feign an alliance to eventually form a national government with the UNP. The piece highlights the President’s reluctance for a snap election and Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe’s counter-strategy: maintaining stability to secure international aid for the peace process with the LTTE, and proposing a national referendum on peace to isolate the JVP and foster a UNP-PA coalition.
A Snap Election
In a climate where peace hangs by a thread, the looming threat of a snap election promises not a democratic transition, but a destructive contest of death. Caught in a bitter, bilateral deadlock, the Executive President and the Prime Minister are poised to drag the nation into a mad struggle for supremacy. With the LTTE watching warily from the wings, an election waged in the “law of the jungle” risks plunging the exhausted country back into anarchy. To prevent this impending peril, civil society must forcefully demand a civilized consensus—a unified, all-party commitment to structural reform, independent electoral oversight, and a non-military resolution—before the ballot box is completely broken by the barrel of a gun.