දේශපාලනය හා ස්වාභාවික විපත්
The local government election has sharpened the contest between the government and the opposition, and the effect has been to limit the political attention reaching the people hurt by the floods. That cannot be called a good state of affairs: the property damage in the three provinces is larger than the tsunami’s, and the landslides in the central hills need serious attention too.
විදේශ රැකියා හා මැලේසියාව
Foreign employment is one of the country’s main sources of income: it is the chief earner of foreign exchange, it lightens the weight of unemployment, and it is one of the main things easing rural poverty. Ivan asks for a policy that treats the recruitment agents as people who do the economy real service, and for a shift from sending housemaids to sending trained workers.
වෙනස් වෙමින් තිබෙන අධ්යාපනය
Amid heated argument the shape of education is changing and being changed. Serious changes are visible in higher and vocational education; at school level Ivan can see no such change yet, and the national education commission’s proposals for what school education needs are still proposals.
ගංවතුර, නායයෑම් හා ප්රාදේශීය පාලනය
The damage done by the heavy rain and the floods is enormous, worst in the North Central, Eastern, Northern and Central provinces. Close to nine hundred thousand people are affected and more than two hundred thousand are in camps; across five districts 116 tanks are wholly damaged and another 238 partly.
විදුලි මිල හා ප්රශ්න
Raising the price of electricity is destructive not only to ordinary people but to manufacturers and businesses. Widening the concession from 90 units to 120 relieves ordinary households and settles nothing for industry: in ceramics and similar trades electricity is about half the cost of production, and the rise limits what some industries can compete at.
සිරසට එල්ල වූ ප්රහාරය හා ඉදිරිය දැකීම
The attack on Sirasa’s head office in Braybrooke Place makes an ugly picture for the government, which has clashed with the network since the war and appeared to want it punished. Whatever set off this second attack, it looks like a campaign by the government or people connected to it against a media house that backed the opposition at the presidential election. Ivan concedes the government could argue Sirasa obstructed the war — a state may suspend most fundamental rights in wartime, and the power to wage war rests with the state, not with journalists — and notes that the press did not obstruct the campaigns against the two JVP insurrections, saving criticism until afterwards. But the war ended more than six months ago and the President has since won the election too. Supporting Fonseka was not illegal, and the winner is the one who should let old grudges go.
වේගවත් ඉදිරිගමනක් සඳහා දූෂණයට වැට බැඳිය යුතුය
Sri Lanka can only move quickly after the war if it reforms the political and institutional obstacles in its way, and cutting the cabinet to thirty-five is a start. Ivan attacks a convention he traces to J.R. Jayewardene: letting ministers and office-holders enrich themselves from the transactions of the ministries beneath them, which drains the treasury and turns politics from a matter of honour into a squalid way of making money. He questions the privileges — two vehicle permits for a six-year term when one car easily lasts six years, permits for officials who already have official cars, ministers running fleets, backup vehicles for bodyguards now the war is over. Corruption is not confined to politics: Customs collects perhaps a quarter of what it should, and Inland Revenue, Motor Traffic and Excise are no different. Information technology could triple that revenue at modest cost.
නව ආණ්ඩුක්රම ව්යවස්ථාවක් ඇතිකර ගැනීම
Constitutional reform deserves more of the public’s attention than the parliamentary election itself. The government asks for a two-thirds majority to change the system, but Ivan argues it does not need one: a constitution is a social contract, and no single party represents the whole of a society made up of the SLFP, the UNP, the JVP, the Tamil National Alliance, the Hela Urumaya and much else. Sri Lanka’s record here is poor — three constitutions since independence and now a fourth, where countries write them to last centuries. America has the world’s shortest and has not tired of it in two hundred years; India has the longest and credits it with meeting each challenge. Bandaranaike in 1970 and Jayewardene in 1977 both used their majorities to exclude the opposition; Nehru, with a comparable majority, spent three and a half years including everyone. Rajapaksa should not repeat their mistake.
හිටපු අගවිනිසුරු සහ ජීඑස්පී ප්ලස් සහනය
The EU has suspended Sri Lanka’s GSP Plus concession, worth 78 million euros in 2008 against exports of 1.24 billion. Government, exporters and commentators alike have forgotten what caused it: two rulings by former Chief Justice Sarath Nanda Silva, the same man now lecturing the country on international law. Under the ICCPR, citizens could petition the UN Human Rights Committee where the highest court failed them, and most complaints heard concerned Silva’s own conduct — among them Tony Emmanuel Fernando, jailed a year for contempt on a false charge after suing over withheld case records, and assaulted in prison the day he was committed. Silva also barred a work-to-rule at the port, which the ILO found breached its convention, and then disparaged that convention in open court with an ILO representative present. Correcting those two wrongs would be enough to recover the concession.
ජනමාධ්යවල සමාජ වගකීම
The coarseness ruling Sri Lankan politics is equally visible in the media, and in the temple, the church and the courts. Journalists are the teachers of modern society, but teachers without learning, training or reading do damage. Television and radio carry almost nothing of intellectual value: political discussion programmes pick guests the way a cockfight picks birds, and a presenter succeeds by turning the discussion into a brawl. Stations chase audiences with giveaways rather than quality, some pushing the foolish belief that listening all day can make you a millionaire. Ivan argues the media could fill the gap left by the absence of career guidance in schools — European countries want skilled tradesmen more than professionals, and nurses trained here cannot work abroad because their training omits English. Channels teach French and Italian cooking; few Sri Lankans can cook rice properly or make a decent cup of tea.