The vicious cycle of revenge
Each government jails the last one’s ministers and is jailed in turn. Victor Ivan calls it a tribal inheritance — a cycle of revenge that has replaced accountability and now protects everyone from investigation.
ලලිත් ප්රේමදාස ඝාතනය (II)
Part II recounts how an informant inside Sucharitha, Premadasa’s residence, telephoned Ivan at night; how the informant’s warnings proved true, including of a planned explosion at the UNP May Day rally that Ivan tried to expose in Ravaya; Mohideen’s revelations; the threats that followed; Bradman Weerakoon’s view of the Premadasa killing; the ‘Sudu Mahattaya’ of Wellampitiya; and why Hemantha Warnakulasuriya’s claims fail both legally and ethically.
චෝගම්වලින් පසු ජනාධිපතිවරණයක්!
After a costly CHOGM that worsened Sri Lanka’s standing, Ivan predicts an early presidential election, called before a fragile economy — falling exports, heavy Chinese loans, banks lending to the state instead of business, finance companies near collapse — gives way. The government runs on three wheels, Mahinda, Basil and Gotabaya Rajapaksa, and the family is fraying over succession, as D.S. Senanayake’s preference for Dudley once split the UNP. With discontent in the SLFP, the JHU and all communities, he foresees a three-cornered contest: Karu Jayasuriya on a system-change platform, Chandrika Kumaratunga seeking to reclaim the SLFP, and an unpredictable royal battle.
මැතිවරණ ප්රතිඵල, දේශපාලන ක්රමය හා රනිල්
The government’s wins in two of the three provincial council elections surprise no one, Ivan argues: the post-1977 system is built so that the ruling party, drawing on the power of president, parliament, provincial councils and local bodies at once, almost always wins the elections between presidential polls. Tracing every contest from J.R. Jayewardene to Mahinda Rajapaksa, he says Ranil Wickremesinghe’s ridiculed position owes less to his personal failings than to a system that reduced even Sirimavo Bandaranaike to a political joke. The UNP, he concludes, is caught in the trap it set for others.
පිල්ලේගේ නිරීක්ෂණ
Whatever Sri Lanka gained by inviting Navi Pillay, Ivan argues, it lost through a media campaign that painted her as a blood-drinking demon and a minister’s lewd offer to marry her — insults recalling Premadasa’s jibe at Indira Gandhi. The government undoes its own good work, as in the North, and rules through a giant among dwarfs, unlike Sirimavo Bandaranaike’s or even J.R.’s cabinets. Pillay spoke within the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which Sri Lanka signed; her warning of drift towards authoritarianism is one Sri Lankans themselves can see.
මගේ සිහිනය
Answering websites that claimed the Rajapaksa government was buying Ravaya through Milinda Moragoda and paying Ivan a bribe, Ivan sets out Ravaya’s 27-year record of refusing favours: turning down Chandrika Kumaratunga’s offer of the Lake House chairmanship, free newsprint from the anti-Premadasa impeachment camp, and Harry Jayawardena’s private money. He describes his dream for Ravaya before he retires — staff as shareholders, new presses, a stronger paper and a web presence — and the conditions under which Moragoda would buy only a 40 per cent minority stake, inviting alternatives.
කරුගේ ඇස් පෑදීම
Ivan welcomes Karu Jayasuriya’s call for the fragmented opposition to unite under a common banner to abolish the executive presidency, noting that for the first time Jayasuriya speaks of the political system as a whole. A statement is not enough, he argues, without a working programme, and he sets out six observations: the system has run its historical course; it fragments the opposition; it has lost legitimacy; it lets ruling groups drain the country’s wealth; it encourages corruption by removing old safeguards such as the ban on MPs doing business with the state; and it makes the rule of law, urged by the Lessons Learnt commission, impossible to achieve.
අනුරුද්ධ රත්වත්ත
Anuruddha has died, and as a man who was close to him for a time Ivan thinks it important to set down a note about him. What follows is a personal account, including the plain observation that neither Anuruddha nor Chandrika appears to have had full confidence in the other when she was brought into the SLFP.
විරුද්ධ පක්ෂ හා ආණ්ඩු පක්ෂ දේශපාලනයේ ශ්රාස්ත්රීය දුගීභාවය
Ivan opens with a telephone conversation with an educated man of some standing inside the UNP who is himself a subject of argument there, and the question he put to him. What follows is an account of the intellectual poverty on both sides, of the deceiving of party members, of family politics, and of the limits of the forward vision on offer.
කැරලිකරුවන් අභිබවා රනිල් ජයගැනීම
Ranil Wickremesinghe has now put down the third revolt against him, and Ivan explains why he
was always going to. The party constitution gives its leader the same absolute power
Sirimavo Bandaranaike used to survive seventeen years out of office — though it cost her the
premiership when the party finally won. The rebels had no agreed leader, and Ranil set
Sajith Premadasa’s name against S.B. Dissanayake’s until neither mattered. They should have
gone after the constitution, not the man.