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උගත් පාඩම් කොමිසම හා උගතයුතු පාඩම්
Victor Ivan
Ravaya
The Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission's report has been handed to the president, and what it finds and recommends is not yet clear. It is a commission that drew international attention: the British foreign secretary said Sri Lanka should show its honesty by making the report public, and the government
The judiciary can be counted an important factor in the tangles of this country. As Harold Laski said, the courts are the mirror that reflects the degree of political civilisation in any national society — and we did once have a judiciary of that kind.
The article on the news websites that have turned into a species of electronic gutter press brought Ivan the chance to exchange views with one of the people he had charged — a man running a news website from a foreign country. Three sections follow: ethics, one-sided intellectuals, and Lionel
The much-argued bill for the revival of underperforming enterprises and underutilised assets passed its first reading by a majority of 76 — 122 for and 46 against, with two parties in the government abstaining. That shows there is no common agreement about this law even inside the government, and the
The select committee the government means to appoint to inquire into the improper acts done while Sarath N. Silva held the office of chief justice has become a subject of argument, and the first man to challenge it is Sarath N. Silva. He says appointing one two years after his
It was reported that the telecommunications regulatory commission had made the e-News website hard to reach, and a number of local and foreign media organisations protested, as did the American and European Union missions. Ivan's article is about what those websites do and about the freedom they claim.
The savage killing of a doctor at Karandeniya, the social setting of the people involved in it, and the violent behaviour of the people of that area after the suspects were arrested, show the country several important faces of the crisis it is in.
When Ivan heard that a doctor had been shot dead at Karandeniya he wanted to know why. He asked several people in Colombo with connections there, and from every one of them heard only that he was a kind young doctor who worked with great love for the people of
Kumudu Kusum Kumara's article criticising Ivan's 'Colombo City Development Debate' appeared in the last Ravaya. Kumudu is a sociologist with a connection to the 1971 insurrection, Ivan writes, and it is right that his views on the development of Colombo should be criticised by such a man — and he
Two newspapers, one Sinhala and one English, led on the report that the government is moving to legislate in haste an act for taking over failed private sector businesses. Not all the government's own businesses are profitable, Ivan points out: if every business must be profitable, the government should bring
Ivan opens with a telephone conversation with an educated man of some standing inside the UNP who is himself a subject of argument there, and the question he put to him. What follows is an account of the intellectual poverty on both sides, of the deceiving of party members, of
Until the Kolonnawa tragedy on polling day, the political society saw the problems to be settled after the war as the visible ones — the disappeared, the displaced, the destroyed houses and infrastructure. What made them see that the great distortions the war worked on social life are a large
The investigation into the tragedy arising from the clash between the member Duminda Silva and the president's trade union adviser Bharatha Lakshman Premachandra is a criminal investigation that puts the working of the law in Sri Lanka to the test. In a criminal case the working of the law begins
The policy the elections commissioner followed on the assets and liabilities law at the last provincial council election was excellent. What would have been better still was an order that every candidate file a declaration with the nomination papers — and to get round the defect of not doing so
If the tragedy that came out of the unseemly clash at Kolonnawa between a government member and a former government member is not taken as the warning signal it is, and the changes that would bring the country's deeply uncivilised political culture to a civilised place are not made without
The clash at Kolonnawa on polling day between the government member Duminda Silva and the former member and presidential adviser Bharatha Lakshman Premachandra, and the tragedy that came of it, is a powerful event that gives a warning signal not only to the president and his party but to every
The crafty and comical way the assets and liabilities law works at elections was shown again at the Colombo municipal poll. The law matters at an election because it gives voters the right to know the background of the candidates' assets and liabilities — and they get that right only
The thug attack on Dr N.J. Nonis, the registrar of the Sri Lanka Medical Council, gives the country a bad signal, and at first sight it looks like a by-product of the argument that had arisen over the private medical college.
Gotabaya Rajapaksa's Colombo development programme is heavily criticised by the opposition, and at first sight what Ivan sees is a good change that can be felt: the city is cleaner than it has ever been, the rubbish heaps along the main roads have stopped, and not only Colombo 7 where
When giant development schemes are made by decisions taken on the political power of politicians alone, disregarding expert advice, the destruction a country can suffer is enormous. Some geologists, irrigation engineers and civil engineers had heavy criticisms of the accelerated Mahaweli scheme, and it was begun in disregard of them.
