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ජනමාධ්ය බිය ගැන්වීම
Victor Ivan
Ravaya
Threats to journalists used to come from the government; now they come from the government and from gangs. Ivan follows the Rupavahini affair from the attack on a programme producer to the armed group that told another employee's mother he would be killed, and sets it beside the JVP's habit
Starting from a gift of Li Zhisui's memoir of Mao, Ivan turns to the morality the JVP claims for itself: the party that says it is the cleanest in the country, and the accounts of extortion from businesses, the sale of party services, and the misuse of money that its
Sixty years on we still blame the British for what we have made of the country, Ivan writes, and we are not ready to ask honestly whether we did it to ourselves. India was worth wealth to the Empire and Ceylon was worth its position; what we inherited was a
The government has decided to give provincial councils the full powers the 13th Amendment already allows. Ivan calls it arguable but better than doing nothing, and adds what costs nothing and is not being done either: making it possible to deal with state offices in Tamil in the north and
The second part of the Hong Kong argument, and the practical half: Godber's flight, the independent commission set up in answer to it, the cleaning of the police, the construction industry and the attorney general's department. A deputy director of prosecutions fled the country and the senior lawyer who helped
The JVP is once again pushing the country towards ruin, Ivan writes, and it is using the formula of 1971 — frighten the villages with an invasion that is coming, then offer an armed movement as the answer. Only the enemy has changed: where once it was an American-backed coup,
Ivan puts the decisions facing the country as a numbered list: whether to keep the All Party Representative Committee going and produce a settlement, whether to protect the European trade concession the garment industry depends on, and what the UNP is for if it will not take a far-sighted position
Hong Kong before 1974 was as rotten as Sri Lanka — a bribe was a condition of getting anything done, including calling the fire brigade. Today its police force is among the cleanest in the world. In the first of two parts Ivan sets out how corruption is structured here
In this political system the ruler and the leader of the opposition can survive only by destabilising each other, Ivan writes, and the system has decayed far enough that each attempt weakens both. He reads Ranil Wickremesinghe waiting to be chosen as the next saviour and Mahinda Rajapaksa waiting on
The year opened with the killing of a member of parliament — the third since the government took office, and all three Tamil. Ivan sets out what is alleged about the reduction of the murdered member's guard after he voted against the budget, and asks how a country's human rights
Opening the 2008 columns, Ivan reads the year ahead as the test of the Rajapaksa administration. The military advantage over the LTTE is its strongest asset and simultaneously its greatest liability — it strengthens the government's standing while eroding the rule of law, its human rights standing and the household
The Third Reading of the Budget: What might happen?
Victor Ivan
Montage
After the government survived the second reading of the 2008 budget, Ivan weighs the UNP's chances of defeating it at the third. He argues that even a defeat would not force a dissolution, that MPs want to finish their terms, and that party leaders should stop fighting over a rotten
The LTTE's attack on the Anuradhapura air base showed it could still strike, and the air raid that killed Thamil Selvan showed the air force could too. Ivan argues neither side can win outright soon, and that the government should use its strong position to present proposals for a political
Despite corruption, rights abuses, nepotism and rising prices, Ivan argues that President Rajapaksa is almost impossible to unseat before the presidential election of 2011. The UNP can defeat the budget only with the JVP, which gains too much from the government to risk it, and the rules of the system
The dispute over admissions to grade one sets the Supreme Court against the Education Ministry and Parliament. Ivan follows the fundamental rights petitions, the court's own marking guidelines, Ranil Wickremesinghe's privilege complaint and the part played by past pupils' associations, and warns that the result will leave admissions in lasting
Mangala Samaraweera's revolt against President Rajapaksa has hurt the regime, but Ivan finds it neither consistent nor honest. He compares it with the 1991 impeachment move by Athulathmudali and Dissanayake, and reminds readers of the share Samaraweera took under Kumaratunga and of the waste in the institutions he controlled.
Starting from ministers' housing and fuel allowances, Ivan tallies the cost of keeping politicians: vehicles, pensions, duty-free cars and an over-large cabinet. He traces how Colvin R. de Silva and J.R. Jayewardene concentrated power, and how presidents came to buy loyalty with public funds while black-money barons shape governments.
A Separate Tamil Nation:- Prabhakaran Has Got It Wrong.
Victor Ivan
Montage
Ivan argues that the separate-state goal adopted at the Vaddukoddai conference was imprudent and has brought the Tamil people mostly loss: India's opposition, a homeland claim covering a third of the island, rival Tamil groups driven to the army as traitors, and a population now largely living outside the North
Ivan argues that the LTTE, like the JVP in 1989, failed to trade armed struggle for politics when it held the advantage, and helped elect the government now bent on crushing it. He compares Gotabhaya Rajapaksa's role against the LTTE to the ruthless suppression of the second JVP uprising and
Anton Balasingham: He left the Buddha and went to Marx
Victor Ivan
Montage
Written after Anton Balasingham's death, the piece traces how the LTTE's theorist moved from Buddhism to Marxism and gave the Tamil struggle the goal of a separate state. Ivan recalls a 1995 dinner in Jaffna with Balasingham, suggests he came to doubt the separatist idea late in life, and urges
