ඌවේ ඡන්ද ප්රතිඵල ගැන
Ivan analyses the Uva provincial council result of September 2014, comparing it with the 2004 and 2009 provincial polls and the 2005 and 2010 presidential results in Badulla and Monaragala. The ruling alliance’s share has fallen sharply in what was its strongest province, the UNP has recovered, and he argues that despite the war victory and Sinhala Buddhist support, Mahinda Rajapaksa is no longer certain to win a presidential election.
ඌව ඡන්දය හා අශීලාචාර මැතිවරණ ක්රමය
With the Uva provincial election showing the government’s abuse of state resources, from Divi Neguma handouts to Samurdhi officers campaigning, Ivan compares campaign-finance rules in the United States, France and India with Sri Lanka, where spending limits vanished after 1978. He asks whether the Commissioner of Elections has the power to act, citing court rulings, and proposes nine reforms, including penalties for politicians who order officials to break the law, stronger powers for the Commissioner, control of party funds, and full asset declarations for candidates.
ගල් පර්වතය අයිස් පර්වතයක් බවට පත්වීම
Reading the March 2014 Western and Southern provincial council results, Ivan finds that the government’s vote, once rock-solid, has begun to melt, most of all in the populous Western Province. The UNP remains divided and the rise of General Fonseka’s party is notable. He warns that the government is playing with fire by defying the UN Human Rights Council, since Sri Lanka as a UN member cannot escape scrutiny of the violence used to crush its rebellions.
ස්මෝල්, මැතිවරණ කොමසාරිස් හා පළාත් සභා ඡන්ද
Following responses to his column on W.J.T. Small, Ivan asks the Commissioner of Elections to follow Small’s example in the provincial council elections. Before the executive presidency, he writes, elections were civil: strict spending limits applied, and courts unseated winners who broke the law, as in the 1947 petition against T.B. Ilangaratne. After 1977 the contest turned savage, and the 1994 People’s Alliance government continued the same greedy system rather than ending it.
මැතිවරණ ප්රතිඵල, දේශපාලන ක්රමය හා රනිල්
The government’s wins in two of the three provincial council elections surprise no one, Ivan argues: the post-1977 system is built so that the ruling party, drawing on the power of president, parliament, provincial councils and local bodies at once, almost always wins the elections between presidential polls. Tracing every contest from J.R. Jayewardene to Mahinda Rajapaksa, he says Ranil Wickremesinghe’s ridiculed position owes less to his personal failings than to a system that reduced even Sirimavo Bandaranaike to a political joke. The UNP, he concludes, is caught in the trap it set for others.
වර්ගවාදය හා නායකත්වයේ අර්බුදය
Lee Kuan Yew was right, this piece argues, that Sri Lanka failed because its leaders could not manage racial passions. Bandaranaike knew Sinhala Only without provision for Tamil was unjust, yet tore up his pact with Chelvanayakam under pressure from militant monks; Dudley Senanayake lacked the courage to see his own pact through; J.R. Jayewardene legislated District Development Councils but could not bear to see the TULF win Jaffna. Mahinda Rajapaksa had the golden chance after the war and let it pass. The Northern Provincial Council election is a silver lining, if leaders on all sides stop inciting their people.
පළාත් සභා මැතිවරණය ගැන
As the first Northern Provincial Council election approaches alongside polls in the North Western and Central provinces, Ivan warns the government not to repeat the blunder of the 1981 Jaffna District Development Council election, when its all-out bid to win led to violence, the burning of the Jaffna library and, with the 1982 referendum, the road to Black July and two insurrections. He expects the government to win in the South but with eroding support, as debt-funded white elephants, a squeezed economy, lost GSP+ and a rotting system shed flesh like a decaying body.
විග්නේශ්වරන් මුවහමක් කරගැනීම
Answering Sinhala nationalist attacks on C.V. Wigneswaran, the TNA’s Northern chief ministerial candidate, as a new Anton Balasingham, Ivan argues that the dream of Eelam died with the LTTE. The TNA’s surviving leaders were hostages of Prabhakaran, not his followers, and signalled goodwill that the victors ignored. Wigneswaran — a retired Supreme Court judge who refused to bow to Sarath N. Silva, never an LTTE sympathiser, with children married to Sinhalese — should be welcomed. As Europe learned after the Thirty Years’ War, racial and religious extremism is losing its hold in Sri Lanka too.
ඉන්දු-ලංකා ගිවිසුම ආපසු හැරී බැලීමක්
As the government retreats from diluting the Thirteenth Amendment before the Northern Provincial Council election, Ivan argues that the Indo-Lanka Accord is an international treaty that cannot be changed unilaterally — and that after the war India, as Shivshankar Menon told him, would have backed a better devolution scheme. Drawing on K.M. de Silva and J.N. Dixit, he corrects the popular belief that the Accord was forced on Sri Lanka by the 1987 airdrop: it grew from the 1985 Delhi Accord, and without the IPKF the state might not have survived two insurgencies.
ක්රමයේ අර්බුදය උග්ර කරන පළාත් සභා මැතිවරණ
Hearing Sajith Premadasa promise better welfare for the rural poor under a UNP president, Ivan reflects that no change of president can rescue a system that has outlived its time. Prabhakaran’s defeat left the traditional political system without its enemy and exposed its decay: an economic crisis alongside lavish infrastructure spending, chaos in the energy sector, and mass recruitment of young people into state jobs to buy support. Holding provincial council elections piecemeal before their terms end, he argues, shows how deep the government’s crisis is.