සිරසේ සිරසට පහරදීම
The Claymore detonated inside Sirasa’s operations room symbolises the security forces, whoever ordered it: only the forces and the LTTE hold Claymores or know how to handle them, and if the forces did this the signal it sends is more frightening still. Ivan traces the campaign that preceded it — Wimal Weerawansa’s JVP putting up posters nationwide calling Kili Maharaja and Sirasa a front for the LTTE after Sirasa depicted Weerawansa as a donkey, Mervyn Silva calling the channel a Tiger supporter, and public accusations over its coverage of the airbase attack on the day Kilinochchi fell. The attack was the logical outcome of that campaign. Naming political opponents as LTTE supporters, and rejoicing when they are killed by the LTTE, is an established habit here: SLFP supporters let off firecrackers when Premadasa was assassinated, and UNP supporters painted a pottu on Chandrika’s posters in 1994.
Queen of Deceit Found Guilty
On 8 October 2008 the Supreme Court returned to the UDA 224 acres vested in Asia Golf Company under former President Chandrika Kumaratunga, the Waters Edge case. Ivan uses the judgment to set out how the political system pays supporters and financiers out of public property, and argues that it establishes a public-trust principle future presidents must heed.
සමාජ අධ්යාත්මය ඝාතනය කරනු ලැබුවෝ කවුද?
Learning from experience is what separates people from animals, Ivan writes, and Sri Lankan society — literate, pleasant, clean — is at the bottom of the table for it. He tells of showing three professional visitors the published lists of office-holders under two governments, between 86 and 103 in each, and their astonishment; and asks what half-killed the country’s social spirit and what would revive it.
Where did the Bribery & Corruption Commission Go Wrong?
Responding to the removal of the Bribery Commission’s Director General Piyasena Ranasinghe, Ivan argues the Commission was already a failed institution. He cites its handling of Mangala Samaraweera’s credit cards and the Public Trustee inquiry, retired judges as commissioners, the lack of any oversight, and the career of Rienzie Arsakularatne, and proposes a body to inspect the Commission itself.
චෞර රැජිනගේ රසකථා
Reading Upul Joseph Fernando’s interview with Chandrika Kumaratunga in Lankadeepa, Ivan takes apart the picture of a poor and blameless former president whose children travel by bus. She names two mistakes she knew were mistakes when she made them, and Ivan supplies the reason she does not: the appetite for power inside a system she and Ranil Wickremesinghe built between them.
හැරී ගුණතිලක
An obituary for Air Marshal Harry Gunetilleke, who died at seventy-nine. Ivan writes about how honest a man holding office can be, tells the story of the ban a president placed on him and how he had it lifted, and records that having a son as air force commander did not quiet him: he went on saying what he thought in public until he died.
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.
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.
රට අවුලට යවා බලය අල්ලා ගැනීමට සිහින දැකීම
The JVP is once again pushing the country towards ruin, Ivan writes, and it is using the formula of 1971 — frighten the villages with an invasion that is coming, then offer an armed movement as the answer. Only the enemy has changed: where once it was an American-backed coup, it is now the United Nations and the West preparing to hand Prabhakaran a state.
හොංකොංවලින් උගත හැකි පාඩම් (1)
Hong Kong before 1974 was as rotten as Sri Lanka — a bribe was a condition of getting anything done, including calling the fire brigade. Today its police force is among the cleanest in the world. In the first of two parts Ivan sets out how corruption is structured here instead: what political power is worth, why business invests in politicians rather than in business, and what the country pays for it.