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ජනතා විමුක්ති පෙරමුණේ අර්බුදය
Victor Ivan
Ravaya
Will the split that has opened inside the JVP hasten the decline it was already travelling towards, or will it renew the party and make it strong again? Six sections follow, on Kumar Gunaratnam, on correct Marxism, on the JVP's social background, on commitment, on the absence of a forward
Written for the Tamil-language Veerakesari at that paper's invitation, and it begins by placing its author: the man writing to a Tamil paper about what the Tamil people face after the war is not a Tamil but a Sinhalese — and not a Sinhalese born in a Sinhala area but
What has come out about the great railway accident at Alawwa on the 17th shows that those responsible gave no thought to the standards that must be considered when trains are bought and put into use. We have heard of motor cars made with fibreglass; we had not heard of
After Anna Hazare's satyagraha the Indian prime minister's office published, on 3 September, the latest declarations of assets and liabilities of the 77 members of the cabinet, as a step towards rebuilding the public confidence that had collapsed. A research institute working on democracy compared them with what the same
The minister of public relations and public affairs told the Lankadeepa that the sale of beef in the butchers' shops of the Gampaha district would be banned from next week — that killing and eating an animal which does such great service to agriculture is a great sin, and that
After Anna Hazare's satyagraha succeeded, the Indian prime minister and the members of his cabinet published their declarations of assets and liabilities for the public to see. It can be read as a step to control the disillusion growing among people towards the leaders of the government — and as
The Sunday Leader editor Frederica Jansz called the former chief justice a wolf in sheep's clothing, and his long reply appeared in that paper at the weekend — answering not all her charges but only the few he could interpret to his own advantage. This is Ivan's account of the
A new crisis in the health and medical field is coming onto the stage around the private medical college at Malabe. Opposing a private university outright is one extremism, Ivan writes; allowing, in the name of permitting private universities, a shop system that sells degrees of no proper standard is
The papers report that the government has decided to appoint a parliamentary select committee to look into the wrongs done in the judiciary during Sarath N. Silva's time as chief justice. He says it is being done to suppress the fight he is now carrying on against the government's corruption,
India's anti-corruption movement, and the satyagraha Anna Hazare carried out to bring the struggle to a logical end, finished by winning the object they had set — an independent anti-corruption institution under a public ombudsman. It has not been discussed enough in Sri Lanka, Ivan writes, and it can be
The health minister has ordered that laboratory tests for patients at government hospitals with laboratory facilities may not be sent out to private hospitals. If the decision was taken with all the other problems it may create in mind, it can be called a very important step for the health
Discussing the non-violent struggle Anna Hazare is carrying on in India to win a new anti-corruption bill matters to us here too: through it we can understand not only India's future but the real nature of the tangle Sri Lanka faces in the same field.
The grease devil story pushed people in some areas into acting on impulse. It was said at first to be the work of mental patients — which cannot be, since the work of mental patients does not happen in various parts of the country in the same period. Rumour may
A great deal can be learned from the UNP's leadership crisis, not only about that party but about the political culture of Sri Lanka. Removing a party leader is extremely difficult: there is no simple, clear method in the party constitution for the membership to use when they want one
Uvindu answered Ivan's article without answering the basic question it raised about reporting, and Ivan writes again because the subject matters to journalists and to readers interested in understanding Sri Lankan political reality. Six sections follow, ending on the power the press holds and on what he calls media atom
Reducing the number of members for the Jaffna electoral district may be constitutional, but doing it at a moment when the settlement of the Tamil people's problems is unfinished cannot create a good feeling among them. What matters more to the country now is creating conditions in which people can
For a decade there have been attempts inside the UNP to remove Ranil Wickremesinghe and change the leadership, and he has defeated every one of them and kept his place. The leader of the recent revolt was Sajith Premadasa, and though the popular belief was that he would win, Ranil
Sri Lanka paid a large price for President Jayewardene's failure to understand the Tamil people's question, Tamil Nadu's sensitivity to it and the geopolitical reality of the region — and India paid a large price of her own for not judging the LTTE movement fairly.
Whatever it is officially called, the government has begun the second stage of its cultivation campaign. In the first stage a small packet of fertiliser with a few kinds of seed was given out among people interested in home gardening, and it was heard from various places that the seed
The results of the elections for 65 local bodies show that no decline or collapse has yet happened in public confidence in the Rajapaksa coalition government. With the faults and weaknesses of its administration plainly visible, the public have still chosen, among the alternatives open to them, the one that
