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විශාඛාව හා නිදහස් අධ්යාපනය
Victor Ivan
Ravaya
Ivan reproduces the list of charges — Rs 8,320 for two years, including a security fund, electricity and prize-giving — that Visakha Vidyalaya's principal asked A/L students to pay at once, and asks whether this applies only to elite schools or to all. Even then, pupils will spend thousands a
The government appears to be retreating from its strongly anti-Western foreign policy, built on the belief that world power is passing to China. That shift, Ivan argues, is neither imminent nor China's alone, since India is also rising, and the US works to weaken states aligned with rival powers. A
On the chairman's orders, the National Savings Bank agreed to buy 13% of The Finance Company for Rs 390 million from four individuals — two of them directors — at about Rs 50 a share when the market price was Rs 30–32 and the real value perhaps under Rs 15,
The government's answer to the dairy crisis — raising the price of powdered milk and the import duty to Rs 92 a kilo — may ease farmers' problems but will mainly burden consumers and fill the Treasury, unless the revenue goes to dairy development. Urging people to drink local liquid
Tea, the editorial recalls, transformed Sri Lanka: it brought South Indian labour, roads and railways, and created the fortunes of low-country families such as Jeronis de Soysa, whose descendants' wealth funded schools and hospitals. Nationalisation under Sirimavo Bandaranaike failed, and land-reform holdings became a pool for politicians' land grabs, while
India, the West, Tamil leaders and devolution advocates treat full implementation of the 13th Amendment as the best solution, but Ivan argues it was built for the North-East Tamils alone, on the unproven idea of a traditional Tamil homeland, and imposed on a reluctant J.R. Jayewardene under Indian pressure. Citing
Like vegetable farmers at the New Year, dairy farmers are now pouring away milk as Nestlé, yoghurt makers and the state-owned Milco limit purchases. Ivan argues that the government's enthusiasm for food production, including the Divi Neguma home-garden drive, lacks a plan for surpluses. He suggests changing eating habits —
Amid the decay of every party, Ivan reviews the newly formed Frontline Socialist Party through its 445-page book on the JVP's path from 1978 to 2012, billed as a self-criticism but really a critique of its parent party. Its young members are committed, he says, but their thinking still lives
Ivan rejects Uvindu Kurukulasuriya's website report that at a dinner with Minister DEW Gunasekera he had plotted to save the government and blamed Gotabaya Rajapaksa for every problem; the report, he says, rested on a third-hand source. The talks were among many long one-to-one discussions he held with politicians of
Sri Lanka, Ivan warns, is falling into the grip of criminals and black-money barons: only 4% of criminal cases end in conviction, against 70% in India and 85% in Europe, because witnesses are unprotected, police corrupt and courts compromised. He traces how the JVP and LTTE insurrections led politicians to
Sri Lanka was right to oppose the US resolution at the Human Rights Council, Ivan writes, but its campaign damaged the country's name — ending with Minister Mervyn Silva's boast that he had Poddala Jayantha beaten and would punish others who went to Geneva. He warns against the view that
Answering Gamini Viyangoda and Jayatilaka Kammallaweera, who accused him of labelling them and of defending the Rajapaksa regime, Ivan restates his thesis: after losing socialism they adopted the ethnic crisis as their cause and lost their judgement when the LTTE fell, as he once feared a coup under Wijeweera's spell
Dr Sunil Wijesiriwardena, who turned back at the gate of Ravaya's anniversary rather than submit to security checks, wrote that two front-page photographs showed Ravaya treating its readers as a feudal lord treats low-caste visitors. Ivan answers with satire and six historical photographs — LSSP leaders seated above their supporters,
The government's counter-campaign against the US resolution at the UN Human Rights Council, Ivan argues, damaged Sri Lanka's image. It had a clear strategy to win the war but none for what followed: an angry Tamil diaspora that saw the defeat as genocide, a rift with the US after Colombo
Written for Ravaya's 25th-anniversary issue, this personal essay describes how Ivan's family says he has two families: his wife and three children, and Ravaya. Gandhi, his lifelong hero, failed as a father, as did Mandela and King, and Ivan resolved not to. He recalls weekends at home in Galle, his
Replying to Gamini Viyangoda's criticism of Ravaya's anniversary, Ivan apologises to guests, including Chitrasena's widow Vajira, who were distressed by the security checks, which he says could not be avoided once the President was invited. The real objection, he argues, is to the President's presence and to Ravaya's call for
Ivan reflects on objections, among a few readers and staff, to inviting the President and other leaders to Ravaya's 25th anniversary. Ravaya's readers have never held one view, he says: during 1988–89 it refused to use the insurrection to topple the UNP; it helped defeat that government in 1994 but
In the address given at Ravaya's 25th anniversary gathering, attended by the President, the Leader of the Opposition, and the leaders of the TNA and the Muslim Congress, Ivan explains why the paper convened such an assembly. Sri Lanka, he says, stands at a historic turning point: half of its
Ahead of the 28 February celebration, this special anniversary piece describes Ravaya's 25 years as a 'journey against the current' (patisotagami abhicharika). Grounded in non-violence, democracy and pluralism, it was more a movement of ideas than a magazine or newspaper: sometimes revolutionary, sometimes conservative, sympathetic to rebels but never endorsing
The third part recounts two interventions against lower-court decisions in the rape cases of two young girls, risking contempt of court. In the first (1993), after the Attorney General withdrew the case against a retired senior police officer, Ravaya ran a campaign aimed at the Attorney General himself, drawing reader
