මංගලගේ ආරක්ෂාව හා දේශපාලන භූමිකාව
Mangala Samaraweera says he is an LTTE target, that his guard is inadequate and that the government will answer for anything that happens to him. Ivan agrees he should be properly protected and then declines to join the procession: he recalls what was done to Ravaya through the labour department when Samaraweera held office, and says a man who wants to start again should begin with self-criticism.
What is More Decisive: Ethnicity or Class?
Ivan argues that Sri Lanka’s crisis is not only ethnic: caste, which the youth commission found behind the second JVP rising, cuts across it. He draws on his own custody after 1971, when he was known as Podi Athula, on the caste make-up of the JVP and LTTE, and on the killing of a school principal during the second insurrection.
වඩා ප්රමුඛ වර්ගය ද? කුලය ද?
Answering Gamini Viyangoda’s criticism of his position on the ethnic crisis, Ivan opens the side of it nobody wants to discuss. The ethnic question is half the truth, he argues, not the whole: the 1971 insurrection, the monks who joined it, the Samasamaja movement, the second insurrection and the killing of Saddhatissa all point to inequality inside the communities as well as between them.
ඇඟලුම් කර්මාන්තය ආරක්ෂා කරගැනීම ජාතික වගකීමකි
Germany’s warning that the GSP+ concession could be withdrawn if the country does not meet the conditions it signed up to should be taken seriously, Ivan writes, and not enjoyed by the opposition as damage to the government. Garments drive the economy and employ village women; protecting the concession is the country’s responsibility, and if we have done wrong the answer is to put it right without delay.
අචේ විසඳුම ම ශ්රී ලංකාවට ද ගැලපේ
Prabhakaran can stop the war as surely as the president can, Ivan writes, and the main obstacle to a negotiated settlement is the Thimpu principles, framed to make negotiation impossible and since treated as its precondition. He sets out the Aceh settlement and what its equivalent would look like here: disarmament, the withdrawal of the additional forces, the high security zones gone, people back on their land and an interim administration until a provincial election.
කළ හැක්කේ කුමක්ද?
Addressed to a coalition of civil organisations: agree on the aim before anything else, and make it a large one. Ivan proposes a Sri Lanka whose political system treats every citizen as an equal regardless of race, religion, language, caste or sex, works out which three demands to begin with, and sets out a campaign — posters, workshops, interviews, lunch-hour pickets, sermons — to carry them.
The Harvest of 60 Years of Independence
At sixty years of independence, Ivan refuses to blame the colonial rulers. Sri Lanka began with roads, railways, literacy and income ahead of most of Asia, and fell behind because its leaders ran the British system on feudal lines. He calls for a political system accountable to the people and a national dialogue on where the country went wrong.
රටේ දේශපාලන නායකත්වය පිළිබඳ ගැටලුව
A Sunday Times survey of 519 people for the sixtieth anniversary asked which post-independence leader had most capacity to take the country forward. No leader had won the confidence of a majority; D.S. Senanayake came first and even he scored low; Chandrika Kumaratunga drew one per cent. Ivan reads the result as a verdict on what the office does to whoever holds it.
එල්ල වී තිබෙන අභියෝගයට එක්සත්ව මුහුණ දිය යුතුය
The war has entered a new phase and the LTTE has answered by attacking civilians in the south. Ivan distinguishes civilian deaths from air strikes, which may happen, from attacks aimed at civilians, which are chosen — then says the danger now is a second Black July, and that neither suppressing the opposition nor destabilising the government can be justified against it.
මහින්ද හා ප්රභාකරන්
The sky is filling with the war’s black cloud and killing as much as possible has become its positive quality. Ivan asks where it ends — whether Mahinda brings Prabhakaran to his knees or the reverse — and answers that the honourable name goes to whichever leader is willing to admit that an injustice was done to the Tamil people and to put it right.