නීති විද්යාලයේ විදුහල්පති ගෙදර යැවීම
The new Chief Justice’s suspension of the Principal of the Law College, reportedly for ensuring his own son passed with distinction, lays bare the rot in the legal community and the examination system, Ivan argues. The principal might well reply that he did the same for the children of the powerful for years without complaint. Ivan recalls a deputy examinations commissioner jailed for fixing A-level results, a Supreme Court bench that ordered a judge’s daughter admitted to law school without the marks, the Attorney General’s Department as a preserve of elite families, and principals who justify admission bribes by the lifestyle their schools demand.
ජනමාධ්ය හැසිරීම ගැන
A friend who has read Ivan’s book on the Lenin Ratnayake affair many times asked him why no newspaper reported the day a remand prisoner struck Magistrate Lenin Ratnayake with a bag of excrement in the Nikaweratiya court, after the magistrate had abused the prisoner’s wife. Local reporters, Ivan concludes, stayed silent to please the magistrate. He then recounts how a former court officer turned television court reporter brokered favourable judgments for his channel’s owner in exchange for coverage that propped up Chief Justice Sarath N. Silva. Sri Lanka’s media culture, he argues, is as corrupt as its political culture.
චෝගම්වලින් පසු ජනාධිපතිවරණයක්!
After a costly CHOGM that worsened Sri Lanka’s standing, Ivan predicts an early presidential election, called before a fragile economy — falling exports, heavy Chinese loans, banks lending to the state instead of business, finance companies near collapse — gives way. The government runs on three wheels, Mahinda, Basil and Gotabaya Rajapaksa, and the family is fraying over succession, as D.S. Senanayake’s preference for Dudley once split the UNP. With discontent in the SLFP, the JHU and all communities, he foresees a three-cornered contest: Karu Jayasuriya on a system-change platform, Chandrika Kumaratunga seeking to reclaim the SLFP, and an unpredictable royal battle.
රාජ්ය නිලධරතන්ත්රය
Politicians come and go but officials stay, Ivan argues, and a strong, law-bound bureaucracy is what has kept India’s democracy standing. Sri Lanka had one until the 1972 constitution weakened it and the 1978 constitution destroyed it. He traces the result through the forced resignation of Auditor General Wijesuriya, outsiders placed over the Elections Department, and Chief Justices chosen for loyalty from Wanasundera’s passing-over to Shirani Bandaranayake’s removal. Reviving the Seventeenth Amendment’s independent commissions is no cure, he says, because they had no power to punish a president who ignored them.
පක්ෂපාතභාවයට කප්පම් ගෙවන අපක්ෂපාතභාවයට දඬුවම් දෙන ක්රමයක්
Prompted by a reader’s tip, Ivan sets out how former Elections Commissioner Dayananda Dissanayake obtained a prime plot in Nuwara Eliya on President Kumaratunga’s recommendation for Rs. 30,000 in 1995 and sold most of it five months later for over Rs. 5.2 million. Such favours, he argues, are the bribe the executive presidency pays for loyalty, continuing the plunder of estate land after 1977. Those who uphold the law are punished instead: Auditor General Wijesuriya forced out, Justices Wanasundera and Mark Fernando passed over, B.C. Perera driven from the Treasury, and Shirani Bandaranayake impeached.
මැතිවරණ කොමසාරිස් වත්කම් බැරකම් නීතිය
Elections Commissioner Mahinda Deshapriya collected candidates’ asset declarations with zeal, Ivan argues, only to lock them away, telling Ravaya that the public needs a court order to see them. The 1988 amendment to the Declaration of Assets and Liabilities Law gives anyone the right to certified copies for a fee. Ivan recounts how he first saw Lalith Athulathmudali’s declaration, the People’s Alliance’s broken 1994 pledge to publish ministers’ assets, the Speaker who complied and the President’s office that did not, and reproduces a 2005 letter from Deshapriya’s predecessor sending him six declarations — disproving the claim that there is no precedent.
මැතිවරණ තිබීම නිසා පමණක් රටක් ප්රජාතන්ත්රවාදීවන්නේ නැත
The true test of democracy, Ivan argues, is whether the opposition has a fair chance of winning power. Before 1977 it did: governments changed at almost every election, spending was capped, election petitions worked and the police stayed neutral. J.R. Jayewardene replaced that with a petrified system in which the president can call elections at will and turn every contest into a puppet show. Ivan recounts the rigging of the Jaffna Development Council poll, the 1999 installation of an outsider as acting Elections Commissioner, and a commissioner too afraid for his family to investigate forged ballots. The UNP, he says, now reaps what it sowed.
මැතිවරණ ප්රතිඵල, දේශපාලන ක්රමය හා රනිල්
The government’s wins in two of the three provincial council elections surprise no one, Ivan argues: the post-1977 system is built so that the ruling party, drawing on the power of president, parliament, provincial councils and local bodies at once, almost always wins the elections between presidential polls. Tracing every contest from J.R. Jayewardene to Mahinda Rajapaksa, he says Ranil Wickremesinghe’s ridiculed position owes less to his personal failings than to a system that reduced even Sirimavo Bandaranaike to a political joke. The UNP, he concludes, is caught in the trap it set for others.
කියවීම හා ප්රශ්න කිරීම
A visit to Prem Dissanayake’s bookshop leads Ivan to a Sinhala translation of Martha Nussbaum’s ‘Not for Profit: Why Democracy Needs the Humanities’ by Liyanage Amarakeerthi. He laments a culture in which teachers, journalists and politicians rarely read — no Sri Lankan leader since D.S. Senanayake has written a serious book, unlike India’s — and in which publishers favour novels over ideas. Drawing on Nussbaum’s chapter on Socratic pedagogy, he argues that Sri Lanka treats the questioner as a traitor and must learn to read, argue and respect dissent.
මගේ සිහිනය
Answering websites that claimed the Rajapaksa government was buying Ravaya through Milinda Moragoda and paying Ivan a bribe, Ivan sets out Ravaya’s 27-year record of refusing favours: turning down Chandrika Kumaratunga’s offer of the Lake House chairmanship, free newsprint from the anti-Premadasa impeachment camp, and Harry Jayawardena’s private money. He describes his dream for Ravaya before he retires — staff as shareholders, new presses, a stronger paper and a web presence — and the conditions under which Moragoda would buy only a 40 per cent minority stake, inviting alternatives.