Disabled electoral system and Gotabaya’s candidacy
With Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s candidacy contested in court over his citizenship, Victor Ivan turns to the machinery of the election itself — an Election Commission without the power to enforce its own rules.
රාවයේ මහජන පෙත්සම
Ivan describes the response to Ravaya’s public petition for reform of government: calls and emails on the day it went on sale from Gamini Viyangoda, Chandra Jayaratne, a professional association and ordinary readers. Ravaya’s readers, he writes, are an unusual constituency; the petition’s aim is to win a political framework the country needs after decades of decline. He then examines the President’s election-year budget promises, from university places to allowances for kidney patients and pensions for garment workers, and asks what they are worth.
මගේ සිහිනය ගැන වැඩිදුරටත්
Replying to readers’ reactions to his plan to reorganise Ravaya, Ivan explains his habit of seeing things unconventionally, as Gandhi and Mandela did, and sets his plan against his forecast that Sri Lanka is heading for anarchy. After Prabhakaran’s defeat the political system stood exposed; Mahinda Rajapaksa, the only leader left, failed to rebuild the state, and parties on both sides are historically spent. With a monk’s self-immolation over cattle slaughter and the row over the Thirteenth Amendment as signs, he argues Ravaya must be strengthened to guide readers through the coming collapse.
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.
වාද කරන්නට පෙර ප්රකෘති සිහිය ඇති කරගැනීම වැදගත්ය
Answering Gamini Viyangoda and Jayatilaka Kammallaweera, who accused him of labelling them and of defending the Rajapaksa regime, Ivan restates his thesis: after losing socialism they adopted the ethnic crisis as their cause and lost their judgement when the LTTE fell, as he once feared a coup under Wijeweera’s spell before 1971. He rejects Viyangoda’s claim that he attacked individuals for twenty years and turned to ‘the system’ only to protect Rajapaksa, noting that his ‘Chaura Rajya’ series on reforming the predatory state ran in Ravaya in 2002, before ‘Chaura Rajina’ (2006), and listing earlier articles on system change. He recalls the Kaha Pati (yellow ribbon) campaign of 2000, the all-party talks on his reform draft in Parliament in 2001, and the 2006 Kobbekaduwa round table, and argues that reform must come by consensus, as Mandela achieved.
පටිසෝතගාමී හා විප්ලවකාරී ළදරු වලිප්පුව
Replying to Gamini Viyangoda’s criticism of Ravaya’s anniversary, Ivan apologises to guests, including Chitrasena’s widow Vajira, who were distressed by the security checks, which he says could not be avoided once the President was invited. The real objection, he argues, is to the President’s presence and to Ravaya’s call for reform under this government. Rajapaksa’s regime, like its predecessors, is corrupt, wasteful and arbitrary, but it is not a dictatorship: it can be changed at elections, and a reorganisation of the political system needs the consent of both government and opposition. The critics’ insistence on waiting until the regime falls looks radical but is extreme and reactionary, and he asks why such a group has been pushed to that position.