19 වැනි සංශෝධන කෙටුම්පත ගැන
Ivan welcomes the campaign by Maduluwawe Sobitha’s National Movement for a Just Society to abolish the executive presidency, but argues its draft Nineteenth Amendment is a concept paper with a narrow vision. Every Sri Lankan constitution, and Chandrika Kumaratunga’s 2000 draft, was made by cunning or majority power rather than on the sovereignty of the people, as India and South Africa did. The draft ignores the unresolved question of who belongs to the nation, copies the flawed Constitutional Council of the Seventeenth Amendment, and keeps a simple-majority impeachment of judges.
රිසානා ඛේදවාචකය හා තරුණ පරපුරේ සිහිනය
Ivan argues that the execution of Rizana Nafeek exposes a rotten state as much as a harsh foreign court: it was Sri Lankan institutions that turned a child into an adult on her birth certificate, passport and medical papers. Migrant workers’ remittances are now the economy’s largest earner, yet housemaids are treated worse than beggars. He urges the state to replace the export of housemaids with trained craftsmen, making vocational training compulsory for school leavers and and sending them abroad, as graduates of the German technical institute at Ratmalana already go.
දෝෂාභියෝගයේ තවත් පැත්තක්
Ivan argues that the impeachment of Chief Justice Shirani Bandaranayake exposes a constitution built to keep the judiciary subservient: a judge who displeases the executive can be removed by a simple majority, while a president is all but unremovable. He sets her case beside Neville Samarakoon’s dignified stand against J.R. Jayewardene, reads the 1,575-page select committee report and finds the key charge unproven, yet holds that her part in buying a Trillium Residencies flat left her with a moral lapse of her own.
අධිකරණ අර්බුදයේ ගමන් මග
The government set out to fight Shirani Bandaranayake alone, but now faces judges and lawyers united against it. Answering the claim that Parliament is supreme and beyond the courts, the piece argues that Parliament’s powers are limited by law and that even a humble employee may not be dismissed without due process. It recalls the 1984 Samarakoon inquiry, when S. Nadesan and the Civil Rights Movement protested and opposition members agreed that a lawful procedure was needed, and the Kumaratunga government’s 2000 draft constitution, whose Article 151 provided a proper procedure for removing judges, and warns that without such reform the country faces anarchy.
නයාට ගසා පොල්ල වරද්දා ගැනීම
Ivan argues that the government’s impeachment of Chief Justice Shirani Bandaranayake has backfired: it expected her to resign, but the weak charges, the backing she has won from lawyers and the public, and international scrutiny ahead of the March Human Rights Council session have put it on the defensive. He lists this as the fourth clash between executive and judiciary under the 1978 system, after Neville Samarakoon’s time and Mark Fernando’s under Kumaratunga, and warns of a constitutional crisis if Parliament ignores a Supreme Court order, while noting that the judiciary is not blameless for the decline it now suffers.
යහපත් දේශපාලන ක්රමයක් සඳහා සිහින දැකීමේ අවශ්යතාව
Writing during the 2012 provincial council elections, Ivan examines the electoral system created in 1978. Quoting Election Commissioner Chandananda de Silva’s report on the 1989 election, he argues that the system hands the party holding the presidency control of Parliament and the public service, and that open vote-buying and campaigns costing billions have turned elections into auctions. He recalls watching money flow to Chandrika Kumaratunga’s campaigns and Leslie Goonewardene’s refusal of foreign funds for his party, and warns that the country’s richest people have made their fortunes by funding politicians and now rule from behind the scenes.
ඉතිරි කිරීමේ බැංකුවේ කම්බා හොරකම
On the chairman’s orders, the National Savings Bank agreed to buy 13% of The Finance Company for Rs 390 million from four individuals — two of them directors — at about Rs 50 a share when the market price was Rs 30–32 and the real value perhaps under Rs 15, handing them some Rs 140 million. A senior officer alerted the Treasury Secretary and the President and the cheque was stopped, but the sellers were paid through Sampath Bank. The chairman, Pradeep Kariyawasam, is a political appointee and the husband of Chief Justice Shirani Bandaranayake, whom the government had placated with state posts for him when it passed her over for Asoka de Silva. Ivan warns that the case cannot be handled fairly, recalls how Sarath N. Silva destroyed the judiciary’s standing, and says no ethnic solution matters without a trustworthy judiciary.
වාද කරන්නට පෙර ප්රකෘති සිහිය ඇති කරගැනීම වැදගත්ය
Answering Gamini Viyangoda and Jayatilaka Kammallaweera, who accused him of labelling them and of defending the Rajapaksa regime, Ivan restates his thesis: after losing socialism they adopted the ethnic crisis as their cause and lost their judgement when the LTTE fell, as he once feared a coup under Wijeweera’s spell before 1971. He rejects Viyangoda’s claim that he attacked individuals for twenty years and turned to ‘the system’ only to protect Rajapaksa, noting that his ‘Chaura Rajya’ series on reforming the predatory state ran in Ravaya in 2002, before ‘Chaura Rajina’ (2006), and listing earlier articles on system change. He recalls the Kaha Pati (yellow ribbon) campaign of 2000, the all-party talks on his reform draft in Parliament in 2001, and the 2006 Kobbekaduwa round table, and argues that reform must come by consensus, as Mandela achieved.
පවුල් දෙකක් සමග දීගකෑම ( රාවයේ 25 වැනි සංවත්සර කලාපය වෙනුවෙන් ලියූ ලිපියකි.)
Written for Ravaya’s 25th-anniversary issue, this personal essay describes how Ivan’s family says he has two families: his wife and three children, and Ravaya. Gandhi, his lifelong hero, failed as a father, as did Mandela and King, and Ivan resolved not to. He recalls weekends at home in Galle, his family’s refusal to exploit Ravaya, and his son’s reply to taunts after President Kumaratunga attacked Ivan on television and a fake Ravaya was circulated. But Ravaya was not always sensitive in return: reports on a school principal led to reprisals that drove his son, a six-time national chess champion, out of school; attacks on Dian Gomes cost the boy his sponsor; and the paper wounded friends such as Suranjith, Hemasiri Fernando, Susanthika Jayasinghe and Vimukthi Jayasundara. Critics, he says, must remember who their friends are.
25 වැනි සමරුව හා ව්යාකූලතා
Ivan reflects on objections, among a few readers and staff, to inviting the President and other leaders to Ravaya’s 25th anniversary. Ravaya’s readers have never held one view, he says: during 1988–89 it refused to use the insurrection to topple the UNP; it helped defeat that government in 1994 but refused to profit from the new one, learning that changing governments does not change the system. The deepest split came over the war against the LTTE, which Ravaya opposed in a way Ivan now calls sometimes unfair and extreme, while he himself saw a just and winnable war; he argues that the UNP obstructed it hoping for regime change, that Prabhakaran and Wijeweera both chose guns over politics, and that the 2010 election left a hatred between the two camps that now blocks reform.