එකක් කඩතොලු වසා ගන්නට ගොස් දෙකක් කඩතොලු හදා ගැනීම
Ahead of the March 2014 Human Rights Council session, where the High Commissioner was to report on Sri Lanka, Ivan warns that the government is making things worse by putting the President himself at the head of the Geneva fight. He compares the two JVP risings and the LTTE war, three youth rebellions crushed by force, and argues that after defeating the LTTE Mahinda Rajapaksa had a rare chance to heal the nation and win international respect, but instead undermined the rule of law and turned manageable problems into international crises.
ස්මෝල්, මැතිවරණ කොමසාරිස් හා පළාත් සභා ඡන්ද
Following responses to his column on W.J.T. Small, Ivan asks the Commissioner of Elections to follow Small’s example in the provincial council elections. Before the executive presidency, he writes, elections were civil: strict spending limits applied, and courts unseated winners who broke the law, as in the 1947 petition against T.B. Ilangaratne. After 1977 the contest turned savage, and the 1994 People’s Alliance government continued the same greedy system rather than ending it.
සමාජ පාදඩකරණය
Starting from P.B. Jayasekera’s first novel, whose hero is a former rebel of the second JVP rising turned political fixer, Ivan traces how a lumpen class has come to dominate Sri Lankan society. A black economy existed before 1977, but the executive presidency, the open economy and patronage let thugs, criminals and politicians form an alliance, strengthened by the private militias of the 1988–89 terror and the war. The LTTE was defeated, he writes, yet violent crime has become an everyday event, and he asks where the country is heading.
දූෂණ මර්දනය හා ස්මෝල්ගේ ආදර්ශය
Reading the biography of W.J.T. Small, the principal who shaped Richmond College, Galle, Ivan recounts how Small overturned a cricket-captain election won by bribery, setting an example of integrity for the school. He contrasts it with the bribery allegation against the chairman of the Bribery Commission and argues that corruption is built into the executive presidency itself. Examples from his own experience follow: Lalith Athulathmudali’s account of how wealth flows from the presidency, a senior official’s confession, a customs officer punished for enforcing the law, and a young political star.
අඬමුද? සිනාසෙමුද?
This article critically examines the controversial tenure and actions of former Chief Justice Sarath Nanda Silva, detailing his abuse of judicial power for personal and political gain. It outlines his role in imprisoning S.B. Dissanayake to appease President Chandrika Kumaratunga, his subsequent legal betrayal of Kumaratunga following a personal insult regarding his behavior toward women, and his intimidation of treasury officials to secure an abnormally high pension. The author also provides a detailed investigative account of a 2004 incident near Diyawanna Oya, where police allegedly found the Chief Justice half-naked in a parked vehicle with a woman, using the cover-up of this event to highlight the systemic corruption and apathy within Sri Lanka’s political, parliamentary, and judicial systems.
සරත් සිල්වා ගැන වැඩිදුරටත්
Ceylon Today did not print his reply uncut as promised, Ivan says, and the media that now present Sarath N. Silva as a saviour include owners who won judgments from him when he needed their support. Silva, once slated as the common opposition candidate, still poses as a reformer. Ivan contrasts Justice Mark Fernando’s rulings, which forced the only free and fair election since 1977, with Silva’s court, which turned away election petitioners. Four of six UN Human Rights Committee findings against Sri Lanka concern Silva’s judgments, among them S.B. Dissanayake’s and Tony Fernando’s, jailed for contempt after petitioning a bench Silva himself led.
සරත් සිල්වාගේ පුහු තර්ක
Former Chief Justice Sarath N. Silva used interviews in Mawbima and Ceylon Today to recast himself and to claim that Ivan’s campaign against him grew out of a grudge from the 1971 insurrection trial. Ivan answers point by point: Silva was the most junior of five prosecutors, and Ivan’s lawyer in later cases was the lead prosecutor; the fight began when Silva, as Attorney General, shielded Magistrate Lenin Ratnayake. He recounts his challenge to the Attorney General’s criminal defamation indictments, rejected by Justice Mark Fernando but upheld by the UN Human Rights Committee, and the pending Supreme Court inquiry when Silva was made Chief Justice.
මැන්ඩෙලාගෙන් උගත යුතු පාඩම්
Nelson Mandela, Ivan writes, is second in greatness only to Gandhi, and in nation-building he surpassed him: he united two races divided for centuries by hatred, making whites part of the nation rather than overthrowing them, then left power when his work was done. Both leaders refused to hate their oppressors and kept Marxism within their movements without becoming its prisoners. Sri Lanka’s divisions of race, religion, caste and class are far smaller than South Africa’s; what it lacks is an ideological movement that changes attitudes, which no constitution alone can do.
නීති විද්යාලයේ විදුහල්පති ගෙදර යැවීම
The new Chief Justice’s suspension of the Principal of the Law College, reportedly for ensuring his own son passed with distinction, lays bare the rot in the legal community and the examination system, Ivan argues. The principal might well reply that he did the same for the children of the powerful for years without complaint. Ivan recalls a deputy examinations commissioner jailed for fixing A-level results, a Supreme Court bench that ordered a judge’s daughter admitted to law school without the marks, the Attorney General’s Department as a preserve of elite families, and principals who justify admission bribes by the lifestyle their schools demand.
ජනමාධ්ය හැසිරීම ගැන
A friend who has read Ivan’s book on the Lenin Ratnayake affair many times asked him why no newspaper reported the day a remand prisoner struck Magistrate Lenin Ratnayake with a bag of excrement in the Nikaweratiya court, after the magistrate had abused the prisoner’s wife. Local reporters, Ivan concludes, stayed silent to please the magistrate. He then recounts how a former court officer turned television court reporter brokered favourable judgments for his channel’s owner in exchange for coverage that propped up Chief Justice Sarath N. Silva. Sri Lanka’s media culture, he argues, is as corrupt as its political culture.