The inherent limits of the Norwegian peace initiative
The Norwegian attempt to bring peace to Sri Lanka is being discussed from every point of view. What the column sets out is what a third-party facilitation can and cannot reach — and why India’s own intervention carried the limits it did.
Reforms should precede consensus politics
The TULF is uneasy about the proposed PA-UNP understanding, because it is limited to an agenda for democracy and contains nothing about the ethnic crisis. If Tamil people and Tamil parties think a solution to that comes before everything else, that is entirely understandable.
දේශපාලන සංස්කෘතිය ගෞරවනීය තැනකට ගෙන ඒම පළමුවෙන්ම සිදුවිය යුතුය
The TULF objects that the PA–UNP consensus agenda covers democracy but not the ethnic question. Ivan agrees a settlement is vital but says it needs cross-party consensus, impossible while ruling parties use state power against rivals: the UNP stripped the SLFP leader’s civic rights and banned the JVP, and the PA humiliated and split the UNP and harassed the JVP. He calls for a level field, beginning with a judiciary freed from the executive and a new Chief Justice, laws against persecuting opponents, and the disarming of armed parties.
රාජසන කතාව හා ප්රජාතන්ත්රවාදය
The editorial says the President’s throne speech covered much but ignored the real problems of democracy. It cites the Elections Commissioner, PAFFREL’s finding of gross malpractice in 22 electorates, the election-violence monitors’ call to annul 17 results and EU observers’ ratings of polling stations, against her claim to have revived democracy since 1994. Consensus against Prabhakaran’s terrorism, it argues, requires first ending the state terror and electoral fraud of every ruling party since 1977, and the opposition must take up a practical reform programme.
Way out of the present crisis
The President’s attempt to form a government with the support of other parties is like collecting frogs into an open basket. The government will not accept Rauf Hakeem’s condition that the four commissions be set up within a hundred days, so she is pushed towards abandoning him for Ferial Ashraff.
මතුවී තිබෙන අර්බුදයට විසඳුම ඇත්තේ කොතැනද?
Ivan likens the President’s effort to assemble a government to collecting frogs in a basket. Rejecting Rauff Hakeem’s demand for four independent commissions within 100 days, she turned to Ferial Ashraff, whose unconditional support is splitting the Muslim Congress and the National Unity Alliance. He proposes an all-party interim government with a democratic agenda: an independent judiciary, abolition or curbing of the executive presidency, a code of conduct for elected members, independent commissions, a right to information, media reform and agreed principles for ethnic coexistence.
කැබිනට් මණ්ඩලයක් පත්වූ පමණකින් ස්ථාවරභාවයක් ඇති නොවේ
The government has formed the largest cabinet in the history of Sri Lanka’s Parliament, but with only 116 members it lacks a working majority and a small storm could bring it down, while the President cannot dissolve Parliament for a year. Ivan argues that the best course is a temporary all-party government built on consensus for a programme of democratic reform, since an electoral system rotten with violence and ballot plunder no longer commands public trust.
Prabhakaran is not our only threat
An answer to the problem of Prabhakaran can be found only if the collapse running through the whole political system can be stopped and the country’s political spirit revived by a successful reform. The threat named in the headline is not the one the country talks about.
සහලින් රට ස්වයංපෝෂිත කරන්න රජයට යෝජනාවක්
Writing from prison under a pseudonym, Ivan argues that Sri Lanka cannot become self-sufficient in rice while nearly half its paddy land is worked by sharecroppers who surrender up to half their harvest to absentee landlords. Drawing on a 1972 cost-of-production survey and the Patha Dumbara study, he shows that tenant farmers are left in debt after paying rent, and that most landlords are estate owners, traders and salaried employees for whom paddy rent is only a side income. He proposes that the state transfer all tenanted land to the farmers who work it, compensate the owners, and recover the cost through paddy delivered to the Paddy Marketing Board. He argues this would secure the rice ration, raise yields, and free some 450,000 tenant families from what he calls feudal bondage.