යහපත් අනාගතයක් සඳහා
Sri Lanka should not go on manufacturing new conflicts once an old one ends. Fonseka’s arrest looked at first glance like the winner punishing the loser, but the President’s account is that the army authorities wanted to court-martial Fonseka over matters arising from his time as Chief of Defence Staff, and that he instructed them to wait until after the election so it would not appear he was blocking his opponent from standing. If the process cannot be reversed it should at least be transparent, and a conviction could be met with a pardon in view of Fonseka’s war service. With the war over, the President’s duty is to soften his administration: let the opposition campaign unhindered, invite back journalists who fled, investigate the one who disappeared during the campaign, and legislate on torture and children’s rights — which would also restore GSP Plus.
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.
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.
පරිගණක මගඩිය ඇත්තක්ද?
The official result gave Rajapaksa 6,015,934 votes to Fonseka’s 4,173,185 — a margin above 1.8 million. Fonseka and the JVP say that figure was manufactured by the Elections Secretariat’s computer unit rather than summed from the counting centres, and some UNP spokesmen agree, but none has proved it. The signed centre reports are in the hands of party organisers in every seat; comparing a sample against the declared total would take three or four hours. That nobody has done so suggests the claim is untrue. Reports of opposition agents being driven from counting centres cover fewer than ten places, and around eighty officials staff each one — too many to suborn, and the ballots are already marked. The Elections Commissioner is also at fault for not explaining publicly how the count and final tally were conducted.
මැතිවරණ ප්රතිඵලය ගැන විවාදය
Opposition leaders claim the declared result was manufactured by the computer unit at the Elections Secretariat rather than summed from the counting centres. Ivan sets out how counting actually works — three stages, roughly eighty officers per centre, party agents present throughout, signed reports in six copies with one posted on the hall noticeboard and one handed to each candidate’s agent, results phoned to headquarters and confirmed back by the Commissioner before being faxed in writing. Any discrepancy between the centre reports and the official figure could be proved in hours, not months. He then checks: UNP organisers in Kesbewa, Moratuwa, Mawanella, Matara and Yatinuwara all report their centre documents matching the declared result, and Sajith Premadasa says the same of Hambantota. Kabir Hashim put a ten-rupee note in every ballot box in Mawanella and found them all at the count. Rather than trying to falsify the public’s genuine preference, Ivan argues, the opposition should ask why it existed.
ජයග්රහණය හා ඉදිරි ගමන
Rajapaksa’s re-election was large but its limits are visible. Ivan contrasts Wickremesinghe’s acceptance of defeat in 2005, decided by 180,786 votes, with Fonseka’s refusal to concede without explaining why the result is dishonest — a soldier new to politics who misread his crowds and campaigned believing defeat impossible. Both sides broke the law: the government used state media and resources as every government has since 1977, while the opposition used overseas websites and an FM station to spread false reports that the President had fled to India and the Elections Commissioner was under house arrest. The alliance behind Fonseka was held together by nothing but hostility to Rajapaksa, and included men who had accused him of Lasantha Wickrematunge’s murder. The anti-Rajapaksa revolt was largely urban, and the victory drew almost no Tamil, up-country Tamil or Muslim support. Infrastructure spending in the north and east has not answered the political question beneath it.
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.
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.
ජනාධිපතිවරණය හා නීතියේ පාලනය
The Elections Commissioner has said he may have to withdraw from running the election because his orders are not obeyed — the police ignore him, and state media ignore the Competent Authority. However much authority the constitution grants him, nothing in the country lets him exercise it. This is not new: under Chandrika Kumaratunga an attempt to arrest the Elections Commissioner was stopped only by Attorney General Kamalasabesan’s intervention, and it was Chief Justice Sarath Nanda Silva who advised her to make it. The 1981 Jaffna district council poll was the first time a ruling party seized election administration outright, and Commissioner Jayasekera resigned over it. Since 1982 no election has been free and fair. Powers mean nothing while the ruler declines to obey the law.
ජය – පරාජය
The presidential contest can only end with one man winning and the other losing, and the system is built so that struggle runs on hatred rather than argument. Rajapaksa and Fonseka fought Prabhakaran on the same side and praised each other publicly; now each sees a traitor across the field, and the public that cheered both has split into camps that regard the other candidate with the loathing once reserved for Prabhakaran. Given that venom, the losing leader and his senior followers will face reprisal whoever wins. The press profits by fanning it. Beneath this lies a system that keeps one party in power for decades — seventeen years to the first change of government, sixteen so far for this one — long enough for the bureaucracy and police to make common cause with whoever rules.