අල්ලස හා දූෂණය
The challenge corruption poses to the country’s progress is larger and more tangled than terrorism was. Ivan traces the machinery from the old bribery department to the commission that replaced it in 1994, and then shows what it is up against by following a television station sealed by the defence ministry, a fundamental rights petition heard by the chief justice, and the chief justice’s own name on the resulting company’s board — entered in the register as a social worker.
ජනමාධ්ය මර්දනය
Six media organisations held a meeting against the revival of the Press Council at which the main speakers were not journalists but Ranil Wickremesinghe and Mangala Samaraweera. Ivan reads it as a party turning a media platform into its own, and argues that repression is native to this political system but is sharpened by the media’s own misjudgements — including, during the war, forgetting that the power to decide questions of war and peace rests with an elected government.
මැතිවරණ නීති උල්ලංඝනය
Cut-outs and posters after nominations are illegal, and Ivan asks how the law came to be enforced only when the president ordered the police chief to enforce it. He returns to the assets declarations the commissioner could make compulsory and does not, and ends on the death threats to Paikiasothy Saravanamuttu, which cost the country goodwill it cannot spare.
අදහස් පළකිරීමේ නිදහසට තහංචි නොපැනවිය යුතුය
With the war over, Ivan argues, every restriction placed on expression directly or indirectly should go — including the freedom to criticise the government, which a government put in place by the people must hear. On the Press Council revival he finds neither option good, and points to India, where the regulator is built from the media organisations and Parliament together.
විධායක ජනාධිපති ක්රමය ගැන තවදුරටත්
Ranil Wickremesinghe has written an affectionate essay for J.R. Jayewardene’s 103rd birthday while his party’s official position is that Jayewardene’s creation should be abolished. Ivan takes the essay apart against the record — the referendum, the pardon of Gonawala Sunil, the 1982 district council election run by the ruling party rather than the commissioner, and a bribery commission that in thirty years has convicted nobody.
සමගිය හා ප්රඥාව
The politicians are looking at the southern council election and the presidential one, while the country faces war crimes allegations, the GSP+ question and the displaced. Ivan argues these can only be met if the parties set their divisions aside — and that the voice the country used during the war does not suit the moment. We are no longer entangled with Prabhakaran, he writes, but with the powers of the world.
අවුල් විසඳා ගැනීම
The pleasure of the victory is already evaporating, Ivan warns, and a second term will be harder than the first. On GSP+ he points out that the tangle was made by the courts rather than the government — the moment a chief justice traded the country’s future for his own protection — and that releasing two LTTE leaders on bail while Tissainayagam serves twenty years cannot be explained to anyone.
හිටපු අගවිනිසුරු ලක්ෂ 650ක අල්ලසක් ගත්තේද?
The Sunday Leader has reported that the retired chief justice obtained a television station worth 65 million rupees for an institution connected to him from a party to a case before him. Ivan follows the transaction through the licences neither side held, the equipment released from the port, and the pattern of electronic media praising the chief justice while their own cases were being heard in front of him.
ජාතික ගීතය හා දෙමළ සන්ධානය
The Tamil National Alliance’s councillors in Vavuniya took their oaths to the national anthem, which Ivan reads as an important signal. He traces the anthem’s rejection to the Vaddukoddai resolution of 1976, after which the Federal Party and the Tamil United Liberation Front stopped using it and the LTTE banned it in northern schools, and asks the alliance not to stop there.
යුද්ධය ජයගැනීමෙන් පමණක් රටට ඉදිරියට යා හැකිද?
The victory opened a space the country has not used well. Ivan grants the president the larger share of the credit and then turns to the West’s changed policy, to the covenant on civil and political rights the country has signed, and to Vietnam — which defeated a great power militarily and then spent decades as one of the poorest countries on earth. Jayewardene, he ends, made a hat to fit his own head; Rajapaksa’s task is to make one that fits the country’s.