සරත් සිල්වාගේ පුහු තර්ක
Former Chief Justice Sarath N. Silva used interviews in Mawbima and Ceylon Today to recast himself and to claim that Ivan’s campaign against him grew out of a grudge from the 1971 insurrection trial. Ivan answers point by point: Silva was the most junior of five prosecutors, and Ivan’s lawyer in later cases was the lead prosecutor; the fight began when Silva, as Attorney General, shielded Magistrate Lenin Ratnayake. He recounts his challenge to the Attorney General’s criminal defamation indictments, rejected by Justice Mark Fernando but upheld by the UN Human Rights Committee, and the pending Supreme Court inquiry when Silva was made Chief Justice.
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.
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.
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.
දේශපාලන ක්රමය සමග අධිකරණයේ බිඳ වැටීම
Ivan sees the government’s move to impeach the Chief Justice as part of the collapse of the political system. Comparing the courts of the United States, Britain and India, where the judiciary guards the constitution and the separation of powers, he shows how Sri Lanka’s constitution places the courts under the president, who appoints all senior judges, and limits their review of legislation. He criticises the Supreme Court for failing to be creative, from approving the 1982 referendum that extended Parliament’s life to its handling of the 17th Amendment, and traces the decline back beyond Sarath N. Silva to G.P.S. de Silva’s time.
අවලස්සණ ජනාධිපතිවරණයක්
Three weeks before the January 2010 presidential election, Ivan argues the contest between Mahinda Rajapaksa and Sarath Fonseka has taken the shape of a fight between two bazaar thugs rather than between democratic forces. Both camps breach the law on cutouts and posters, and neither the police nor the Elections Commissioner will enforce it. He traces the collapse to Chandrika Kumaratunga’s appointment of Sarath Nanda Silva as Chief Justice over the senior Mark Fernando, while corruption complaints against Silva were still before the court. Silva, once the target of a joint UNP–JVP impeachment motion, is now the opposition campaign’s constitutional spokesman. Ivan concludes that defeating a man will not change a system, and no party has said what should replace the executive presidency.
තක්කඩින් රකින පත්තර සදාචාරය හා මහා භාරකාරයා
Replying to a Divaina article that portrayed Public Trustee Sarath Seneviratne as a pious Buddhist targeted by a Christian conspiracy, the piece insists Ravaya is non-religious and recalls how Divaina and other media shielded Lenin Ratnayake and Wack Silva. It traces Seneviratne’s career from a judicial inquiry at Gampaha to the Bribery Commission and the Public Trustee’s office, and lists alleged abuses: four official vehicles with extravagant repair bills, payments to his daughters’ school, and a Rs. 1.9 million commission on trust funds.
යුක්තිය පසිඳලන ආයතන ක්රමයේ බිඳවැටීම
Ivan likens the judiciary to a cancer patient: the President planted the disease by appointing a corrupt Chief Justice and the present government has let it spread. Further sections mark Mark Fernando’s early retirement and his rulings on presidential immunity, a petition by 22 professionals asking the Tyronne Fernando select committee to hear the charges against Sarath N. Silva, rising Muslim unrest in the East and the demand for Muslim police recruits, and a presidential commission on crime that ignores presidents’ own use of criminals.
මංගලගේ බළලා මල්ලෙන් එළියට
Mangala Samaraweera’s call to abolish the executive presidency, Ivan argues, reflects the SLFP’s real aim of making Chandrika Kumaratunga an executive prime minister after her term ends, just as Ranil Wickremesinghe wants the presidency intact for himself. Further sections cover the Elections Commissioner’s criticism of the hastily passed 17th Amendment and of Supreme Court rulings, and the Editors’ Guild submission on contempt of court.