ජීවිතය හා මරණය
Ivan argues that the decay rotting Sri Lanka’s institutions has reached the family itself, where spouses, parents, children and grandparents live in mechanical relationships without purpose. He wrote a book to start a thoughtful conversation within families, and here records the responses: his wife read it in one sitting, a teacher who modelled his life on Aitmatov’s First Teacher called it his most useful work, a separated father bought copies for his wife and daughter hoping for reconciliation, and it sold fastest at the BMICH book fair. A book, he says, about the meaning of death as well as life.
වර්ගවාදය හා නායකත්වයේ අර්බුදය
Lee Kuan Yew was right, this piece argues, that Sri Lanka failed because its leaders could not manage racial passions. Bandaranaike knew Sinhala Only without provision for Tamil was unjust, yet tore up his pact with Chelvanayakam under pressure from militant monks; Dudley Senanayake lacked the courage to see his own pact through; J.R. Jayewardene legislated District Development Councils but could not bear to see the TULF win Jaffna. Mahinda Rajapaksa had the golden chance after the war and let it pass. The Northern Provincial Council election is a silver lining, if leaders on all sides stop inciting their people.
කට්ටඩියා හා විද්යාඥයා එකකු බවට පත්වීම
Ivan argues that Sri Lanka’s media have never promoted primitive superstition as they do now, filling airtime with astrologers and sorcerers whose advertising has become a key source of revenue. He recounts testing an astrologer-candidate who claimed he could win elections by occult power, and a sorcerer-monk who threatened his life after Ravaya exposed abuse at his temple. Galileo, Newton and Einstein transformed human life yet have no followers; worse, some scientists now mimic the charlatans, spreading fear over kidney disease, milk powder and arsenic to suit political ends.
පිල්ලේගේ නිරීක්ෂණ
Whatever Sri Lanka gained by inviting Navi Pillay, Ivan argues, it lost through a media campaign that painted her as a blood-drinking demon and a minister’s lewd offer to marry her — insults recalling Premadasa’s jibe at Indira Gandhi. The government undoes its own good work, as in the North, and rules through a giant among dwarfs, unlike Sirimavo Bandaranaike’s or even J.R.’s cabinets. Pillay spoke within the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which Sri Lanka signed; her warning of drift towards authoritarianism is one Sri Lankans themselves can see.
පමාවී ඇස් ඇරීම
The government’s invitation to UN High Commissioner Navi Pillay, a new commission on disappearances and arrests over the Trincomalee killings show, Ivan says, that it has finally grasped world realities — too late. Firmness during the war was right; afterwards it should have changed gear and cooperated with the UN as any member must, like a cricket board with the ICC. Instead, swayed by extremists who believed a China–Russia–Iran bloc was rising, it picked fights with the West and India. He recounts the meeting after the Darusman report where that line prevailed.
පළාත් සභා මැතිවරණය ගැන
As the first Northern Provincial Council election approaches alongside polls in the North Western and Central provinces, Ivan warns the government not to repeat the blunder of the 1981 Jaffna District Development Council election, when its all-out bid to win led to violence, the burning of the Jaffna library and, with the 1982 referendum, the road to Black July and two insurrections. He expects the government to win in the South but with eroding support, as debt-funded white elephants, a squeezed economy, lost GSP+ and a rotting system shed flesh like a decaying body.
අරාජිකත්වයේ අත්තිවාරම්
Ivan argues that the government, lacking any theory of how rotten the whole system had become by the end of the war, is watching it collapse piece by piece into anarchy. Its answer to a corrupt police — sending the army, as at Rathupaswala — is worse than the disease. Champika Ranawaka’s own column describes a lumpen rich and a super-bureaucracy; the judiciary rotted under Sarath N. Silva; tax collection has collapsed into VAT fraud; and debt-funded infrastructure, the lost GSP+, the DCD milk-powder scare and the anti-fertiliser campaign over kidney disease all speed the slide.
බැරැක්ක සංවර්ධනය
Unlike after 1971 and 1989, when troops returned quickly to barracks, the defeat of the LTTE brought glorification of the forces and a steady military creep into civilian life: officers as governors and secretaries, soldiers running what they build, principals given military ranks. Ivan argues that soldiers and rulers who ended the war did their paid duty and the public owes them thanks, not debt. Command without question suits armies, not societies. The army’s shooting of unarmed villagers protesting polluted water at Rathupaswala, Weliweriya, shows the cost of barrack rule.
නූරිය අනාගතයේ ප්රතිබිම්බයක්ද?
The crimes exposed at Nooriya estate in Deraniyagala, after the murder of superintendent Nihal Perera, show a former Pradeshiya Sabha chairman ruling like a ‘little Prabhakaran’ for a decade — killing, raping and burning homes under the protection of the provincial Chief Minister and the police. Ivan traces this to the fusion of politicians and criminals that began when MPs were allowed private security squads during the JVP and LTTE insurgencies, fuelling a black economy that now finances the parties. Without a sweeping reorganisation of the state, he warns, the whole country could become a Nooriya.
විග්නේශ්වරන් මුවහමක් කරගැනීම
Answering Sinhala nationalist attacks on C.V. Wigneswaran, the TNA’s Northern chief ministerial candidate, as a new Anton Balasingham, Ivan argues that the dream of Eelam died with the LTTE. The TNA’s surviving leaders were hostages of Prabhakaran, not his followers, and signalled goodwill that the victors ignored. Wigneswaran — a retired Supreme Court judge who refused to bow to Sarath N. Silva, never an LTTE sympathiser, with children married to Sinhalese — should be welcomed. As Europe learned after the Thirty Years’ War, racial and religious extremism is losing its hold in Sri Lanka too.