මහින්ද රාජපක්ෂගේ හතර අවුරුද්ද
The president may call an election as soon as four years of his term are done — a power added to the constitution by amendment for the benefit of the incumbent and now enjoyed by all of them. Ivan takes stock of the four years: the LTTE gone with not even a ghost of Prabhakaran left, the whole territory in the state’s hands, and the question of whether the respect of opponents as well as supporters can be won.
ක්රෙඩිට් කාඩ්වලින් පරෙස්සම්වන්න!
Credit cards are being issued against nothing but a salary slip, and Ivan works through what the interest actually costs the holder who misses the 55-day window. He moves from there to the presidential term and the argument over abolishing the executive presidency, to the displaced, and to the retired chief justice’s habit of delivering popular judgments to rebuild a reputation he might have run on.
යුද්ධය අවසානයි ඒ බව දැනෙන්නට සැලැස්විය යුතුය
Ending a thirty-year war is a great thing, Ivan writes, but the public has to be able to feel it: the harshness of wartime relaxed, the money once spent on ammunition visibly turned to development, and the A9 open to ordinary travellers. Free and fair local elections in the north would do more for Tamil confidence than any declaration.
විනිසුරුවරුන්ගේ සදාචාරය
Anonymous broadsheets about the conduct of judges are circulating among lawyers in Hulftsdorp at fifty rupees a copy, and Ivan treats them as a symptom rather than a source. Quoting H.L. de Silva on judicial integrity — that a judge’s moral honesty matters more than his legal skill — he sets out his own complaint against a district judge, the two inquiries that followed, and the protections that make a wayward judge almost untouchable.
ආරක්ෂක ලේකම්ගේ වන්දි නඩුව හා සන්ඩේ ලීඩර් පුවත්පත
The defence secretary has sued the Sunday Leader for a billion rupees over an article on the MiG purchase. Ivan accepts his right to sue — criminal defamation was repealed on the argument that civil damages would suffice — but argues that the paper’s right to be represented by counsel of its choice is part of a fair trial, and describes how its lawyers came to withdraw.
දස දහසක් මල් පිපෙන්නට ඉඩදෙමු
Detainees who once bit a cyanide capsule now tell the forces everything they know, which is why weapons caches and LTTE documents are being found in quantity. With no fear of a guerrilla revival, Ivan argues, the restrictions imposed for the war should go, the aid and the IMF loan will follow, and the country can turn to the political reforms that would make it the richest in the region.
යුක්තියේ දෙවොල ගිනි ගැනීම
Harold Laski said a country’s courts measure the civility of its politics. Ivan applies the yardstick and finds it unbearable: politicians who do wrong can at least be voted out, but judges are appointed, and he describes valuable timber confiscated by the courts passed to a friendly monk who sold it and built the chief justice an air-conditioned house.
රට යන්නේ කොයිබටද? සමාන අයිතිවාසිකම් පිළිගැනීම
For the first time in thirty years the argument is being conducted by mouths rather than by gun barrels, and Ivan surveys the range of it: implement the 13th Amendment, go beyond it, or solve the question without devolving anything at all. He grants the case against provincial councils — an Indian import, unloved and inefficient — and argues that if a new constitution is made it must be treated as a social contract rather than a party’s instrument.
13 වැනි සංශෝධනයේ අනාගතය
The Jathika Hela Urumaya’s ministers have said they will leave the government if police and land powers are devolved, and that the Tamil people’s problems amount to food, clothing, shelter and social dignity. Ivan answers that the amendment’s value is symbolic as much as practical, and that a country which fought a merciless war and then says the Tamils are its own brothers has to show it.
පුවත්පත් මණ්ඩල ක්රමය නැවත ඇති කිරීම
The Press Council was left dormant in 2002 so that the industry could regulate itself, and is now being revived. Ivan sets out what is wrong with the law — registration of every owner and editor, renewable yearly — and what is wrong with the self-regulation that replaced it, and concludes that the media organisations’ only course is to negotiate a single institution in which the government also has a share.