සටන්කාමී මුනිවරයෙකුගේ තටු සිඳීම
The Supreme Court has asked Elmo Perera to show cause why he should not be struck off the roll of lawyers — a man who has fought fearlessly all his life for the people’s freedom and fundamental rights, for the independence of the judiciary and for the honour of the legal profession. He came to the bar after retiring as Surveyor General, and the case chosen to punish him is one he brought himself about the constitution, public rights and the courts.
එල්මෝගේ ජයග්රහණය
Elmo Perera beat Professor Indraratna easily on Friday for the presidency of the professionals’ association, and the victory can be read as a strong signal from the professionals both to the country and to the courts. Certain powerful people in the judiciary wanted him struck off the roll precisely because he is the man who goes on raising his voice, fearlessly and without a break, against the ugly things done there.
රට වෙනස් කළ හැකි ද?
Ivan had meant to write about Gandhi, and wrote this instead after a telephone conversation with Elmo Perera, the new president of the professionals’ association, who wants to gather a hundred people willing to work for a change of system. The column becomes an account of what it takes to make organisations act together — the long argument needed before selected trade unions and mass organisations could agree on a single aim — and ends by inviting readers to join.
අර්බුදයේ තවත් පැතිකඩක්
Comparing the political system to a badly built ship that is sinking, Ivan argues that the clash between executive and judiciary exposes the constitution’s subordination of both Parliament and the courts to the president. Yet the courts, he warns, have themselves punished people without fair hearings: the Supreme Court’s jailing of Tony Fernando for contempt, which the UN Human Rights Committee found unlawful; the contempt case against S.B. Dissanayake; and the treatment of the lawyer Elmo Perera under Sarath N. Silva. Serious allegations against Sarath N. Silva and Asoka de Silva were ignored while they served governments, so if the judiciary wins without changing its attitudes it may become arrogant.
සදාචාර අර්බුදය ජයගැනීම හා ගාන්ධි
The article on the moral decay among professionals brought a response good enough to satisfy him: one man he knows telephoned to say it was good enough to have muddled his head, another praised the approach while blaming him for stopping the Gandhi series in the middle, and a Tamil lawyer married to a Sinhala woman had his own things to say.
ජනමාධ්යවේදීහු සදාචාර අර්බුදයක
Journalists demand information from everyone and are scrutinised by no one, Ivan argues — and when their own affairs come into question, they close ranks. He notes that Ranil Wickremesinghe’s criticism of media conduct went undiscussed, that neither the Centre for Policy Alternatives nor Sunanda Deshapriya explained their dispute publicly, and that people inside the Free Media Movement asked him to help keep its internal investigation out of the press. He then publishes figures: two officers paid 750 euros a month by INSI for journalist safety, whose existence most journalists do not know of; a protection fund paying 5,000 rupees a month to five families of murdered journalists while paying rents of 230,000 and 178,000 to two threatened ones; trainers paid up to 38,400 rupees for a two-day workshop, who also act as coordinators and judge the essay competitions. Four journalists’ November payments are itemised, with monthly incomes reaching 326,530 rupees.