ගෝඨාභයගේ හෙවණැල්ල
Ivan credits Defence Secretary Gotabaya Rajapaksa with driving the war to a conclusion, but argues that he failed at what must follow the defeat of an internal rebellion: the humane rehabilitation of the defeated, as after 1971 and 1989, and letting a people mourn its dead. His gravest wrongs, Ivan writes, were the killing of criminals without trial, which continued after the war, and his patronage of extremist groups, from the halal campaign to the Beruwala and Aluthgama violence, which threatens to undo the peace won by defeating Prabhakaran.
චෝගම් ආශ්රයෙන් උගත හැකි පාඩම්
CHOGM exposed the depth of Sri Lanka’s crisis, Ivan argues: foreign lawyers were refused visas for a Bar Association event, when Param Cumaraswamy had once come freely to criticise the judiciary. The government cannot investigate war-time abuses because it fears the armed forces it now leans on, and Gotabaya Rajapaksa would not welcome it. Every insurrection and its suppression was brutal; Ivan judges the army’s conduct against the LTTE less savage than in 1989 and rejects the 40,000 figure, yet accepts crimes such as the Trincomalee killings. Sirimavo Bandaranaike prosecuted Premawathie Manamperi’s killers; Mahinda Rajapaksa has shown no such courage.
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.
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.
නිල්වලා ගඟේ අයිතිය කිඹුලන්ට!
A column of shorter pieces. Ivan mocks a conservation policy that has handed the Nilwala River to man-eating crocodiles while villagers who kill them are prosecuted; asks again why people dying of kidney disease in Rajarata still have no filtered water; argues that the media, rather than simply rejecting the government’s code of ethics, should adopt codes binding owners as well as journalists; cautions, after Snowden, that states will police cyberspace because future wars will be fought there; and urges building expressways over double-tracked railways free of level crossings.
ආරක්ෂක ලේකම් කෝපයට පත් කළ ෆේරඩ්රිකා ජෑන්ස්ගේ කරුණු විමසීම
Ivan defends Sunday Leader editor Frederica Jansz, whose paper published her telephone conversation with Defence Secretary Gotabaya Rajapaksa about a puppy flown from Zurich on SriLankan Airlines. He describes how the Secretary answered calmly at first, then turned to abuse and threats, using obscene language and calling her a journalist who eats filth, when she asked about a pilot unqualified to fly the aircraft. Jansz, he argues, was doing her job properly by putting a story of public interest to the person concerned before publishing it, and the Secretary’s conduct was unworthy of his office.
ෆොන්සේකා නිදහස්! ඊළඟට කුමක්ද?
The President’s decision to release General Sarath Fonseka, whatever its motives, signals willingness to move towards a softer government and reform, Ivan writes. The prosecution looked to fair-minded people like the victor’s revenge, displeasing even those who voted against Fonseka. He traces the rift between Fonseka, the President and the Defence Secretary after the war, and argues that its breaking of the ruling triumvirate was good for the country, since a united trio might have produced a harsher, more militarised government, and a Fonseka victory in 2010 might even have led to dictatorship. Fonseka’s leap into politics at the head of anti-war forces was his greatest folly; abandoned by his allies except Karu Jayasuriya, he accepted a conditional release, yet history will remember him as one of the world’s great commanders.
ප්රතිසන්ධානය හා ගෝඨාභය සාධකය
Ivan rejects Uvindu Kurukulasuriya’s website report that at a dinner with Minister DEW Gunasekera he had plotted to save the government and blamed Gotabaya Rajapaksa for every problem; the report, he says, rested on a third-hand source. The talks were among many long one-to-one discussions he held with politicians of all sides to test support for a national programme to rebuild the state and nation, which he believes many would accept. Leaders need not be ideal — South Africa’s transition, Cromwell and Lenin show that — so the chance must not be missed. He credits Gotabaya Rajapaksa with the war’s strategy, with bringing Sarath Fonseka forward, and with resettlement and rehabilitation, but says abductions, including of Frontline Socialist Party activists, and extra-legal drives against drug dealers are squandering that honour; he must adapt to peace or lose everything.
යුද්ධය ගැන ආපසු හැරී බැලීමක්
Ivan had planned to write about the war as the subject connected to his review of 2005 to 2010 — the de facto state the LTTE ran, the war that ended its existence, and the great changes it has made in the social, economic and political picture. The leadership contest between Ranil and Karu tempted him to write about that instead, and he judged the war the more important thing for understanding the political picture.
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.