රට තිබෙන්නේ මහා විනාශයක් අත ළඟය
The country is being pushed towards bloodshed, and it looks like the wish of the government as much as of the LTTE. Norway is close to withdrawing as facilitator and the donor group has given up hope. Ivan reads Soosai’s speech as the sign that the LTTE has come to despair and is preparing to fight by dying — it cannot be defeated militarily, but a war fought in that spirit can destroy an enormous amount.
ඔබාමාගේ ජය සැමරුම හා විජේවීරගේ ඉල්මහ සැමරුම
Ivan reads everything written about Obama in the Sinhala press, and finds two sentences in the JVP’s own paper and no analysis at all. The same weekend the papers give Rohana Wijeweera large space. From there he asks the question the two commemorations put together: who may lead this country — and answers that leadership here is still fixed by race, religion and caste, and that the day talent alone decides it is the day the country becomes free.
25 වැනි සංවත්සරය
Ahead of Ravaya’s 25th anniversary, Ivan answers Sarvodaya leader A.T. Ariyaratne, who told Mawbima that he had spent millions on Ravaya, that the name was his idea and that Ivan later attacked him in the paper. Ivan sets out the founding story: the plan and the name were his, Sarvodaya’s Vishvalekha press printed the magazine at twice market rates and handled all the money, and so profited from Ravaya, not the other way round. He describes his differences with Ariyaratne’s outward Gandhianism, while crediting his service to rural youth, and explains the break: Ariyaratne switched from Premadasa to backing the JVP insurrection and Sirimavo Bandaranaike in 1988, then tried to placate the victorious Premadasa by stopping Ravaya’s printing. Ivan closes with the paper’s 25-year ‘journey against the current’ and plans for the anniversary, including a documentary.
What Next?
Written after the LTTE’s defeat in May 2009, the piece credits Mahinda Rajapaksa, Sarath Fonseka and Gotabhaya Rajapaksa with the victory and turns to what remains: uniting a people divided by race, religion and caste, and settling the ethnic question. Ivan blames the Tamil leaders who first proposed a separate state as much as Prabhakaran, and argues that 1956 could have been handled differently.
සාකච්ඡා කිරීම හා සටන් කිරීම
Accused at a public forum of helping the government’s war, Ivan answers by setting out
thirty years of his own dealings with power: the twenty-odd statements he has given the CID,
the night J.R. Jayewardene ordered him to drop a column and the month he obeyed before
resuming it, the raid on the Ravaya office five days after he declined President Premadasa’s
invitation, and the meetings with Chandrika Kumaratunga after attacks on journalists.
Journalists, he argues, should be able to telephone anyone in the country; the fault lies
only in misusing the connection.