ආචාර්ය නිර්මාල්ගේ දයලෙක්තික අච්චාරුවාදය
Ivan replies to Nirmal Ranjith Dewasiri’s critique (17 June) of his column ‘Is the Thirteenth Amendment the Best Solution?’. Listing his earlier Ravaya pieces on the national question from 2006 onwards and his debate with Kumar David, he rejects the charge that he has turned against devolution, and cites the Asia Foundation survey and the ICES study ‘Seeking Space for State Reform’, in which about 80% of Sinhalese backed reform, to argue that a solution must be built with, not against, public opinion.
අධ්යාපන පරිපාලනය මස්ත බාල්දු කිරීම
Ivan criticises the absorption of 810 people without the required qualifications into the Sri Lanka Education Administrative Service at a time when 20,000 candidates sat an examination for 410 posts. He argues that such political favours degrade the service that runs the school system, and links the decision to wider failures in primary-school policy and the Z-score dispute over university admissions.
පාර්ලිමේන්තුවේ පරිහානිය හා එය ජයගැනීම
Ivan’s submission to the parliamentary select committee on the conduct and discipline of MPs. He cites a survey in which only 12% of people trusted Parliament, and traces the decline through land grabs and permits, thugs and private militias, and black money in elections, contrasting today’s spending with the limits of 1965 and 1970. He recalls the L.M.D. de Silva and Thalgodapitiya commissions, which led to MPs being expelled, and argues that the assets and liabilities law should be enforced, with declarations published on a parliament website. He also proposes a German-style mixed electoral system instead of the plan of the Dinesh Gunawardena committee.
කර්තෘ ධුරයෙන් විශ්රාම ගැනීම හා නව කතුවරයකු පත්වීම
Ivan announces that he has stepped down as editor of Ravaya, which he had led since its founding, and that K.W. Janaranjana, lawyer, cartoonist and acting editor since Thimbiriyagama Bandara left the deputy editorship, has succeeded him. Having long criticised people who cling to office until death, he planned his own departure; he remains editorial adviser and chairman, and intends to retire fully after a transition. Ravaya, he writes, was an experiment in journalism free of profit-seeking, racism, religious or caste chauvinism and corruption, carried out on burning ground, yet no one at the paper was killed or badly assaulted and no lawsuit throttled it. He thanks supporters, writers, readers, staff, his wife and three children, and apologises to anyone he wronged.
දෙමළ ප්රශ්නය හා වියළි කලාපීය ගොවි ජනපද ව්යාපාර
Following his column on the homeland concept, Ivan examines the Tamil leaders’ charge that dry-zone colonisation schemes were designed to change the ethnic make-up of the North-East. He traces the real causes: malaria’s depopulation of the ancient heartland; the Crown Lands Encroachment Ordinance of 1840, which let the state sell 1.8 million acres to planters; the import of South Indian labour, which changed the composition of the hill country; and the resulting land hunger among wet-zone Sinhala peasants — 44% landless in the districts Das Gupta surveyed — as well as in Jaffna. The 1927 Land Commission and the 1935 Land Development Ordinance made the state a trustee of land for the landless, and DDT opened the dry zone after 1946. Colonisation, he concludes, served a national purpose and gave priority to local landless people.
සෝභිත හිමිගේ පැතුම
Unable to attend Maduluwawe Sobitha Thero’s 70th birthday, Ivan honours him as one of the few learned people who never stayed silent in the face of wrongdoing. He recalls telling two vice-chancellors, G.L. Peiris and Arjuna Aluwihare, after the second JVP revolt that intellectuals’ silence was the cause of youth rebellion. Sobitha Thero called for abolishing the executive presidency and changing the electoral system in his lifetime, and Ivan notes a growing chorus — Maithripala Sirisena, Speaker Chamal Rajapaksa, government MPs, the Communist Party, the JHU — for change. He contrasts the old Westminster system, with by-elections, constituency MPs, spending limits and a Prime Minister in Parliament, with the executive presidency, which concentrates power in one person above the law and turns governance into a system of plunder.
වැරදුණේ කොතැනද? පැරණි වම හා නව වම
Marking N.M. Perera’s 106th birth anniversary, Ivan rejects the view — shared by the Frontline Socialists about the JVP — that the Left failed by abandoning class struggle for coalition politics. The old Left’s leaders were middle-class intellectuals of great learning, as Mick Moore described, and able administrators: Anil Moonesinghe made the CTB profitable and handed commission cars to the board, while Leslie Goonewardene refused Yugoslav money. The LSSP might have beaten the UNP in 1947 had it not opposed the war and fled to India, and lacked a Gandhi to hold it together. Its real error was believing socialism could be built through coalitions and abandoning its minority-rights policies; Colvin R. de Silva told Ivan the 1978 Constitution was better for minorities than his own of 1972. The JVP had devotion but no study, and should use parliamentary politics to pursue achievable reforms.
දේශපාලන ප්රතිසංස්කරණ මගහැරයෑමේ හැකියාවක් නැත
Had the country reorganised itself after the war, Ivan argues, it would have satisfied its people and reduced foreign pressure. Three insurrections have cost over 100,000 lives and many of the best leaders — a foreign scholar told a friend that no comparable country had lost so many — yet the causes were never addressed and the Youth Commission’s findings, including on caste, were ignored. Every institution has decayed: Parliament, a discredited judiciary with a 4% conviction rate, schools reliant on tuition, hospitals short of drugs, chaotic buses, a tangled public pay system. Taxes on flour and fuel fall on ordinary people without matching services; corruption is built into a system of black-money elections; and the President stands above the law, which is why the 13th and 17th Amendments were never binding. Only a fundamental reorganisation, including a fair settlement with the Tamils, can prevent permanent division.
ප්රතිසංස්කරණය හා ප්රතිනිර්මාණය
Answering lawyer Sudarshana Gunawardana of Rights Now and the Platform for Freedom, who wrote in Samabima that Ivan merely preaches to the ruler, Ivan says he never believed sermons to leaders could change the system. Rejecting violent revolution, he sees two peaceful routes — persuading lawmakers, the quicker one, or building an alternative within the old system, as set out in his book on saving Sri Lanka — and argues reform must come now, not after the next change of government, because terrorism is gone, the system is exposed and exhausted, and black money is taking over. He calls for a broad national reform agenda drafted as carefully as India’s constitution, dismisses the Platform as a foreign-funded project with a narrow base and no theory, and describes his own books on the political system, caste and religion as the result of long study.
ෆොන්සේකා නිදහස්! ඊළඟට කුමක්ද?
The President’s decision to release General Sarath Fonseka, whatever its motives, signals willingness to move towards a softer government and reform, Ivan writes. The prosecution looked to fair-minded people like the victor’s revenge, displeasing even those who voted against Fonseka. He traces the rift between Fonseka, the President and the Defence Secretary after the war, and argues that its breaking of the ruling triumvirate was good for the country, since a united trio might have produced a harsher, more militarised government, and a Fonseka victory in 2010 might even have led to dictatorship. Fonseka’s leap into politics at the head of anti-war forces was his greatest folly; abandoned by his allies except Karu Jayasuriya, he accepted a conditional release, yet history will remember him as one of the world’s great commanders.