ගම්පහ මාෆියාව
The best candidate the UNP had for mayor of Colombo was Sirisena Cooray, and the party was in no state to make even that decision: its nomination papers for the one council it could have won were rejected, as its earlier case to postpone the local elections had been thrown out for being badly drawn. From there Ivan turns to the vehicles registered without excise duty over the customs director’s objection, and to the former Public Trustee.
හෘදයක් නැතිව හෘදය සාක්ෂිය ගැන ප්රශ්න කිරීම (උවිඳු කුරුකුලසූරියට පිළිතුරක්)
The longest article in this stretch — five thousand words answering a piece that questioned Ivan’s conscience and Ravaya’s. He takes the charges in order: that Ravaya attacked Mangala Samaraweera and did not print his reply, that it opposes him and suppresses him, that it should ask where new media outlets come from. An executive president cannot be examined while in office, Ivan notes, but he can examine whoever accuses him.
ශ්රී ලංකා යෝජනා හා අනාගතය
The SLFP’s package for the ethnic question and for political reform has been rejected by the Tamil alliance. Ivan quotes Suresh Premachandran — that Tamils took the armed road because Sinhala leaders refused to share power, and that after more than seventy-five thousand deaths the government still does not grasp how serious this is — and says no single party can reach the target, so the president and the opposition leader have to work with mutual understanding.
The State and the bulldozer
A state that knows only how to bulldoze: Victor Ivan runs the argument through garbage, schools, paddy land, caste and fake passports, and concludes that structural reform must come before any election.
කූට ලේඛන සංස්කෘතිය (ජාතික හැඳුනුම්පත හා ගමන් බලපත්රය)
Answering officials who disputed details in his series on the bureaucracy, Ivan stands by his accounts and then turns to how deep forgery runs. Using Dayananda Dissanayake’s Nuwara Eliya deal, he calculates the Treasury’s loss at over Rs. 6.1 million on one plot. Birth certificates without serial numbers, a corrupt identity-card office that issued LTTE suicide bombers genuine-looking cards, and a passport office that keeps no copies have created an industry, fed above all by the trade in underage and overage housemaids for the Middle East. Forgery, he says, now runs from school admissions to medical licences and doctorates.
දෙමළ සමාජය ගැන
Three and a half hours with a delegation from the Tamil diaspora — all of them long-standing opponents of the LTTE — gives Ivan an account of the north he could not get otherwise: the local elections, the caste composition of Jaffna now that most Vellala families live abroad, and the widespread refusal to believe Prabhakaran is dead.
අඳුරු වලා මැද රිදී රේඛා
Ivan argues the coming military victory will change the picture of the country. The decision to fight the LTTE to a military defeat broke with every previous government’s policy, taken against a recognised ceasefire, an established belief that only negotiation could work, and the near-universal opposition of the donor group — and Rajapaksa’s resolve in holding to it under sustained pressure was, he writes, unequalled. He will enter history as the first leader in the modern world to prove a terrorist movement can be defeated by war, and if he also answers Tamil grievances, as one who did both. The gains will follow: aid for the north and east, tourism, paramilitaries disarmed, the army turned to building roads, high security zones released to their owners. Credit belongs to the service chiefs, above all the army commander, and to a Defence Secretary who could obtain whatever he asked because he was the President’s brother.
සාම ප්රයත්නයේ අභියෝග
EPDP leader and minister Douglas Devananda told a Sinhala daily that he does not oppose talks with the LTTE but that a northern and eastern settlement is possible without it if the other Tamil parties agree. The piece likens this to the views of the JVP, the Sihala Urumaya and Prime Minister Ratnasiri Wickremanayake, notes Dinesh Gunawardena’s silence, and argues that Devananda, who prospered under Premadasa and now the People’s Alliance, owes his armed guard and power to the war, casting doubt on the government’s sincerity.
Her Vasana chakra spinning other way
President Kumaratunga is drifting towards a political abyss from which there will be no easy return. She did not come to power through commitment, experience or ability but through good fortune, and she became president at a moment when she had been hoping only to become an MP.