විය හැක්කේ කුමක්ද?
Ivan argues that Sri Lanka stands on the brink of the collapse of its political system, as N.M. Perera predicted of J.R. Jayewardene’s 1977 constitution. He cautions the new opposition Movement Against Lawlessness against idealising the 17th Amendment, since the constitution lets the president stand above the law as a constitutional dictator. The removal of limits on election spending has put black money in control of sectors from the stock market to energy, and even a change of government would not rescue the system. He draws a symbolic parallel between Prabhakaran’s rise by eliminating other Tamil leaders and what may be unfolding in the Sinhala South.
දරුවන් දීග දීම
Continuing his series on family life, Ivan turns to marriage. He recalls the baker in the house where he boarded as a boy in Katugastota, whose ‘theory’ was that what cannot be seen does no harm, and the romance of the baker’s son that the family tried to break. He warns parents against both indulging and overruling their children’s choices, against searching obsessively into a partner’s lineage, and against letting horoscopes ruin girls’ lives, and urges that daughters be encouraged to continue their education.
දරුවන් යහපත් හා සාර්ථක කිරීම
Prompted by the response to his column on retirement, Ivan writes about raising children. Gandhi, his hero, was in his view a failed father, and he describes how he kept his own weekends for his family. He argues that mothers should stay with young children through the long human childhood, that parental quarrels harm them, and that reading and chess build intelligence and self-control, drawing on how chess helped his son. He warns parents against forcing children into careers they do not want, and tells of his younger daughter’s school survey of social attitudes.
අපට කළහැක්කේ කුමක්ද?
Ivan argues that Sri Lankan society has become spiritually rotten after thirty years of violence within and between communities, which left widows, orphans and a population traumatised by fear, and armed criminals serving both rebels and the state. The war was won but the great transformation that should have followed was not attempted, and the corrupt political system is now close to collapse. Using the parable of a crumbling house, he proposes that a small group with a sense of justice should leave it and build a model community free of caste, race and religious divisions, and he invites debate on the idea.
විශ්රාම ජීවිතය සැලසුම් කරගැනීම
Writing as he prepares to retire, Ivan offers readers near retirement age his thoughts on planning the years ahead. He contrasts a retired acquaintance who kept working for the sake of purpose with J.R. Jayewardene, who had nothing to do after leaving office, and recalls how books and routine carried him through the monotony of prison. He urges retirees to keep the mind active through reading and chess, to write down their experiences, to keep an independent income and avoid fraudulent high-interest schemes, and to form cooperatives; he describes his own plans for himself and his wife and an idea for a small village of artists and writers.
දේශපාලන ක්රමයේ ගමනක අවසානයද?
Ivan argues that the political system is collapsing so fast that an explosion may be near. He cites some 600,000 people wanted on warrants, about 11 in every 100 adults, a conviction rate of around 4% against 70% in India, and extortion from private buses running to hundreds of millions of rupees a month. He traces the growth of a lumpen class of contract killers, extortionists and drug dealers to the post-1977 system, to politicians’ private militias and to the auction of liquor licences being replaced by patronage, and gives examples of land frauds, including a woman who came to him for help in Chandrika Kumaratunga’s time.
ආරක්ෂක ලේකම් කෝපයට පත් කළ ෆේරඩ්රිකා ජෑන්ස්ගේ කරුණු විමසීම
Ivan defends Sunday Leader editor Frederica Jansz, whose paper published her telephone conversation with Defence Secretary Gotabaya Rajapaksa about a puppy flown from Zurich on SriLankan Airlines. He describes how the Secretary answered calmly at first, then turned to abuse and threats, using obscene language and calling her a journalist who eats filth, when she asked about a pilot unqualified to fly the aircraft. Jansz, he argues, was doing her job properly by putting a story of public interest to the person concerned before publishing it, and the Secretary’s conduct was unworthy of his office.
රාජපක්ෂ ආණ්ඩුවට වැරදුණේ කොතැනද?
Ivan warns that Sri Lanka is again drifting into conflict with India, repeating J.R. Jayewardene’s mistake of the 1980s, when the Vadamarachchi operation led to Indian intervention. The Rajapaksa government, he argues, rightly won the war but had no vision for peace: it failed to account for the losses of war and allegations of atrocities, forgot that it had defeated a domestic group rather than a foreign army, and did not keep its promise to India of a political solution. Much has been done for resettlement and rehabilitation, but not what was essential — reform of the whole system of government.
ප්රමිතියක් නැති සිමෙන්ති
Ivan warns that the post-war building boom, from highways and ports to houses for the displaced, is using cement that does not meet legal standards. After the Standards Institution suspended certification for a Lucky cement consignment from Pakistan in 2011, the Auditor-General found that imported cement had failed all 47 compressive-strength tests between 2009 and 2011 yet was released to the market, and the Cement Corporation itself was caught repacking expired cement. He asks why engineers and authorities are silent.
කරුගේ ඇස් පෑදීම
Ivan welcomes Karu Jayasuriya’s call for the fragmented opposition to unite under a common banner to abolish the executive presidency, noting that for the first time Jayasuriya speaks of the political system as a whole. A statement is not enough, he argues, without a working programme, and he sets out six observations: the system has run its historical course; it fragments the opposition; it has lost legitimacy; it lets ruling groups drain the country’s wealth; it encourages corruption by removing old safeguards such as the ban on MPs doing business with the state; and it makes the rule of law, urged by the Lessons Learnt commission, impossible to achieve.