මා විචාරකයකු මිස ගැලවුම්කාරයකු නොවේ ෂෂ
Answering Nirmalda Soysa’s observations about him, Ivan sets out his own position at length: why his reading of the executive presidency goes beyond the constitutional analyses of N.M. Perera and Colvin R. de Silva to take in how the system has actually worked, what he asked each of the two candidates privately at the last presidential election, and why a man who does not believe in violent revolution is left placing his trust in conventional leaders.
දේශපාලන ප්රතිසංස්කරණ කොයිබටද?
The chairman of the All Party Conference says the government will put its political proposals only after the presidential and parliamentary elections. Ivan notes that every party has criticised the executive presidency while in opposition except the one that created it, and warns that a constitution written from a two-thirds majority is written one-sidedly, as in 1972 and 1977.
ජනමාධ්ය මර්දනය
Six media organisations held a meeting against the revival of the Press Council at which the main speakers were not journalists but Ranil Wickremesinghe and Mangala Samaraweera. Ivan reads it as a party turning a media platform into its own, and argues that repression is native to this political system but is sharpened by the media’s own misjudgements — including, during the war, forgetting that the power to decide questions of war and peace rests with an elected government.
අද්විතීය බවේ උභතෝකෝටිකය
The government expects a large win in the south, where its base is, but the south is also the most critical province in the country and the uncritical loyalty of six months ago has gone. Ivan sets the president’s standing beside Sarath Fonseka’s — a man made equally singular by the same victory, for whom no office in the country was large enough — and notes how much local politicians’ cut-outs are costing the government in public patience.
මැතිවරණ නීති උල්ලංඝනය
Cut-outs and posters after nominations are illegal, and Ivan asks how the law came to be enforced only when the president ordered the police chief to enforce it. He returns to the assets declarations the commissioner could make compulsory and does not, and ends on the death threats to Paikiasothy Saravanamuttu, which cost the country goodwill it cannot spare.
විධායක ජනාධිපති ක්රමය ගැන තවදුරටත්
Ranil Wickremesinghe has written an affectionate essay for J.R. Jayewardene’s 103rd birthday while his party’s official position is that Jayewardene’s creation should be abolished. Ivan takes the essay apart against the record — the referendum, the pardon of Gonawala Sunil, the 1982 district council election run by the ruling party rather than the commissioner, and a bribery commission that in thirty years has convicted nobody.
අවුල් විසඳා ගැනීම
The pleasure of the victory is already evaporating, Ivan warns, and a second term will be harder than the first. On GSP+ he points out that the tangle was made by the courts rather than the government — the moment a chief justice traded the country’s future for his own protection — and that releasing two LTTE leaders on bail while Tissainayagam serves twenty years cannot be explained to anyone.
හිටපු අගවිනිසුරු ලක්ෂ 650ක අල්ලසක් ගත්තේද?
The Sunday Leader has reported that the retired chief justice obtained a television station worth 65 million rupees for an institution connected to him from a party to a case before him. Ivan follows the transaction through the licences neither side held, the equipment released from the port, and the pattern of electronic media praising the chief justice while their own cases were being heard in front of him.
යුද්ධය ජයගැනීමෙන් පමණක් රටට ඉදිරියට යා හැකිද?
The victory opened a space the country has not used well. Ivan grants the president the larger share of the credit and then turns to the West’s changed policy, to the covenant on civil and political rights the country has signed, and to Vietnam — which defeated a great power militarily and then spent decades as one of the poorest countries on earth. Jayewardene, he ends, made a hat to fit his own head; Rajapaksa’s task is to make one that fits the country’s.
විධායක ජනාධිපති ක්රමය අවශ්ය නම් එය ප්රතිසංවිධානය කළ යුතුය
A change to the system can only be had if government and opposition both want it for its own sake rather than as a way of unseating each other. Ivan sets the American presidency against the Sri Lankan one point by point — an electoral college rather than a direct vote, no power to dissolve the legislature or to call an early election, an impeachment that can actually remove — and argues that ours was written so that none of those checks bite.