සාමය නොසලකා යුද්ධයට අත වැනීම
The country has a new President, but the search for a peaceful settlement has stalled. Rajapaksa’s win was a win of the Sinhala majority in which minorities had no share; by electing forces that would not grant the Tamils even the tsunami mechanism, the south has signalled that it will not settle the conflict by sharing power.
විමල් වීරවංශ හා චන්දනසූරිය බණ්ඩාර
Under the subhead ‘Minorities within the great Sinhala nation’, Ivan argues that the Sinhala nation itself does not treat all its members as equals, contrasting two former journalists, the JVP’s Wimal Weerawansa and the UNP organiser Chandana Sooriyabandara, and pointing to India, where a Sikh prime minister and a Muslim president are no problem.
ජනාධිපතිවරණය: සිංහල-බෞද්ධ ඡන්ද පදනම
Who will win the presidential election? Testing the JVP’s claim that an SLFP–JVP alliance would have won in 2001, Ivan analyses the party results of the 2000, 2001 and 2004 parliamentary elections, reproduced in tables, to weigh the size of the Sinhala-Buddhist vote each candidate can draw on.
Sinhala Buddhist Vote Base and the Presidential Election
Six weeks before the 2005 presidential election, Victor Ivan works through whether it can be won on Sinhala Buddhist votes alone. He begins by conceding the JVP’s pre-2004 argument was arithmetically sound: had the SLFP, JVP and EPDP contested together in 2001 they would have outpolled the UNP-led alliance by 27,579 votes. Contesting as one in 2004 they gained only 5,019 votes on their separate 2001 total, took 108 seats without a majority, and were outpolled by the combined opposition by some seven lakhs — 46.04% against 53.96%. But a presidential election is a different instrument: two contenders, one national constituency, and a winner who must clear half the vote. Ivan estimates the Sinhala Buddhist electorate at 6,094,667 of roughly 9.16 million valid votes, meaning a candidate relying on it alone would need 75% of it — a target he does not think easily attainable. He notes too why minorities prefer the presidential system: with the Sinhala vote split between the main parties, their votes can decide who becomes head of state.
අපරාධය හා දඬුවම
Three teachers of D.S. Senanayake College have been sentenced to two years in prison for beating a student. The editorial does not doubt their guilt but finds the punishment excessive, and notes that the courts, once respected, have become a subject of public controversy.
මහින්දට විය හැක්කේ කුමක් ද?
Mahinda Rajapaksa is near the top, a remarkable feat in a party dominated by one family, and he got there not as a Bandaranaike retainer. Ivan weighs Chandrika Kumaratunga’s decision not to fight him at the convention, and his bold readiness to meet Prabhakaran against his pact with the JVP and Hela Urumaya to keep the unitary state.
A Country Destroyed by Leaders
Victor Ivan argues that Sri Lanka has become, or is fast becoming, a failed state — a term its academics resist because they fear UN administration, while making no serious intervention to correct the country’s course. His test is the constitution: legislature, executive and judiciary alike decline to respect it, and none treats honouring it as a condition of the system’s survival. The 17th Amendment provides his illustration. A presidential campaign is underway with no elections commission in place, the President having refused to approve a name the constitutional council investigated and cleared. The elections commissioner, past retirement age and unable to leave his post because no commission exists, went to court and was told there was nothing the judiciary could do; parliament did not debate the matter at all. The constitutional council itself has been dormant for months, leaving Court of Appeal vacancies unfilled, with the IGP retiring in November and the terms of the Police and Public Service Commissions expiring. Appointing new members falls to the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition — the two men now contesting the presidency, neither of whom appears interested.
විමුක්තිගේ භාෂා අවුල
In the middle of a political crisis the President has shown off her son Vimukthi, perhaps to test demand for the ‘prince’. His remarks recall how his grandfather S.W.R.D. Bandaranaike tangled the dog question with the language question; the editorial laments a country forever lost in empty arguments while it cannot even agree when to hold elections.
හතළිස් දහසක් උපාධිධාරින්ට රැකියා ලබාදිම
Giving jobs to 40,000 unemployed graduates was a good step, but the way they were recruited was unfair to graduates who had already won lesser public posts by examination, and posting any graduate as an accountant ignores the need for trained, qualified people.
අර්බුදය ගමන් ගනිමින් තිබෙන්නේ කොතැනටද?
For all her mistakes, Ivan argues, Chandrika Kumaratunga may enter history as the leader who finally stood up to the Sinhala racist and religious extremists that every leader before her, her father included, obeyed. He then weighs her options as her term runs out: retirement, dissolution with the risk of impeachment, or giving up the presidency to keep the party and the opposition leadership, and what each would mean for Mahinda Rajapaksa and Ranil Wickremesinghe.