යන්නේ කොයිබටද?
The first presidential election after the defeat of Prabhakaran’s de facto state ought to be about what kind of Sri Lanka replaces it, but the campaign has been consumed by trivia and mutual spite. Both main candidates are products of the war they won — Rajapaksa as commander-in-chief, Fonseka as army commander — and neither has said what he would build. Rajapaksa promises a good future without describing it; Fonseka would abolish the executive presidency without saying what succeeds it. Both are asked to address the grievance minorities believe survives Prabhakaran’s defeat, and to explain how corruption can be beaten within a system built to protect it. The press is told to stop staging cockfights.
අවලස්සණ ජනාධිපතිවරණයක්
Three weeks before the January 2010 presidential election, Ivan argues the contest between Mahinda Rajapaksa and Sarath Fonseka has taken the shape of a fight between two bazaar thugs rather than between democratic forces. Both camps breach the law on cutouts and posters, and neither the police nor the Elections Commissioner will enforce it. He traces the collapse to Chandrika Kumaratunga’s appointment of Sarath Nanda Silva as Chief Justice over the senior Mark Fernando, while corruption complaints against Silva were still before the court. Silva, once the target of a joint UNP–JVP impeachment motion, is now the opposition campaign’s constitutional spokesman. Ivan concludes that defeating a man will not change a system, and no party has said what should replace the executive presidency.
දේශපාලන ක්රමය වෙනස් කිරීම!
Abolishing the executive presidency is not the simple act it is being sold as. Ivan traces the underlying philosophy of the system, the cost the country pays for its irregularity, and the size of the cabinet — quoting the United Front’s own 1994 manifesto promising no more than twenty ministers against the fifty-four it appointed — and concludes that the change is possible, but complex, and needs people who understand what they are changing.
විපක්ෂයේ නව සන්ධානය හා විධායක ජනාධිපති ක්රමය අහෝසි කිරීම
The new opposition alliance has published ten principles with the abolition of the executive presidency at the head of them. Ivan welcomes an opposition able to work together and argues that the accusations the two sides trade — lawlessness, corruption, waste, public property taken as spoils — are all products of the same system, so the question worth arguing is what should replace it.
මා විචාරකයකු මිස ගැලවුම්කාරයකු නොවේ ෂෂ
Answering Nirmalda Soysa’s observations about him, Ivan sets out his own position at length: why his reading of the executive presidency goes beyond the constitutional analyses of N.M. Perera and Colvin R. de Silva to take in how the system has actually worked, what he asked each of the two candidates privately at the last presidential election, and why a man who does not believe in violent revolution is left placing his trust in conventional leaders.
දේශපාලන ප්රතිසංස්කරණ කොයිබටද?
The chairman of the All Party Conference says the government will put its political proposals only after the presidential and parliamentary elections. Ivan notes that every party has criticised the executive presidency while in opposition except the one that created it, and warns that a constitution written from a two-thirds majority is written one-sidedly, as in 1972 and 1977.
දේශපාලන ක්රමයේ වෙනසක් අත්යවශ්යය
With the UNP now for abolishing the executive presidency and the JVP back to its old position, Ivan turns to how a constitution should be made rather than what it should say. Taking the failures of 1972 and 1977 as the warning, he sets out the conditions: not done in haste, not built around the ruling party’s convenience, everyone who should be at the table actually there.
දේශපාලන ක්රමයේ වෙනසකට කාලය පැමිණ තිබේ
Forty thousand of the displaced have been resettled and the government means to finish in 180 days. Ivan asks that the camps at least be opened to members of parliament — nothing the state does should lie outside their oversight — and argues that with three elections ahead, the country is waiting for a change in the system rather than a change of government.
ශ්රේෂ්ඨත්වය පරිපූර්ණ කිරීම
Judging by the weapons taken and the infrastructure found, Ivan writes, another decade of
the LTTE would have been past imagining — and both the wars and the peace talks had
strengthened its de facto state rather than dissolving it. Mahinda Rajapaksa is therefore
the greatest of the country’s leaders since independence; but the greatness is not complete,
and completing it means opening every window to a national argument about what Sri Lanka
should now become.
ආණ්ඩුව හා විරුද්ධ පක්ෂය දෙපැත්තට ඇදීම
The government fought the war as a single-handed act and attacked the opposition through it;
the opposition worked to obstruct the war, likened it to Hitler’s, and sought to cut off
aid. Ivan traces the habit to the system J.R. Jayewardene built to keep an opposition
permanently out of power, follows it through the SLFP’s own years in the wilderness and its
quiet satisfaction at the JVP’s revolt, and ends by asking which matters more to either
side, the party or the country.