අභියෝගය ජයගැනීම
Whatever the wrongs and shortcomings within the counter-campaigns launched to defeat the terrorist war Prabhakaran led and the terrorist war Wijeweera led, had those campaigns failed and those two movements won, what could have followed was a great destruction. In that sense, Ivan writes, whatever their faults, those campaigns protected the country’s existence.
මහත්මා ගාන්ධි ඝාතනයේ 63 වැනි සංවත්සරය වෙනුවෙනි. ගාන්ධි ශ්රී ලාංකික අපට අදාළවන්නේ කෙසේද?
Gandhi can be called the greatest theorist the world has produced on popular struggle for social justice, and its greatest fighter. Before he introduced his non-violent tradition the world had only a method of fighting evil with evil; he gave it a way of defeating evil without becoming evil, and proved it worked by testing it in an enormous and complicated society.
යුද්ධය ජයගැනීමෙන් පමණක් රටට ඉදිරියට යා හැකිද?
The victory opened a space the country has not used well. Ivan grants the president the larger share of the credit and then turns to the West’s changed policy, to the covenant on civil and political rights the country has signed, and to Vietnam — which defeated a great power militarily and then spent decades as one of the poorest countries on earth. Jayewardene, he ends, made a hat to fit his own head; Rajapaksa’s task is to make one that fits the country’s.
විදේශ ප්රතිපත්තිය නැවත සලකා බැලිය යුතුයි
The foreign secretary was told to appear in person for a British visa, which the government reads as a breach of diplomatic courtesy. Ivan agrees the government’s position is right and argues that being right is not enough: a small country gains nothing by quarrelling with the Western world, and he recalls what calling Indira Gandhi a cow cost the country under Premadasa.
17 වැනි සංශෝධනය හා මැතිවරණ කොමිසම
Provincial elections are being held without the Elections Commission the 17th Amendment
requires, because Chandrika Kumaratunga refused to appoint one and the refusal has outlived
her. Ivan sets the Indian Election Commission against it — its own budget, its own
quasi-judicial powers, 668 million voters and 800,000 polling stations — and argues that an
amendment bolted on to a constitution built around an unaccountable president was never
going to hold.
Can India be a genuine aide?
India has said it is ready to intervene as a third party if both sides ask. Both sides have stayed silent; only some of the bhikkhus who once rose against the Indo-Lanka Pact, and the leader of the opposition, have answered favourably. Whether India can be a genuine helper is the question the column puts.