චන්ද්‍රිකා මැතිනියනි, සුදු නෙළුමක් මෙන් නැවත පිපී රාජපක්ෂ ආධිපත්‍යයෙන් රට ගලවා ගනු මැනවි
Written as an open letter, and entirely ironic. Ivan reminds the former president of what her own hands did — the 226 acres taken from ordinary people at a nominal price for the parliamentary complex and passed to a project whose owner made a billion rupees from selling the rights, the land she had written into her own name on leaving office and had to give back, the UNESCO post she had to give up — before inviting her to save the country from her successor.
ද්‍රෝහී ප්‍රීමා ගිවිසුමට වගකිවයුත්තේ කව් ද?
Prima raised the price of a kilo of flour by thirteen rupees overnight and the ministers blamed each other. Ivan goes to the agreement itself: the officials who negotiated it, one of whom was working for the company and another who joined Prima in Singapore on a large salary after retiring — and the extraordinary fact that the Sri Lankan government holds no copy of the second agreement at all.
වරද ඇත්තේ කොතැන ද?
A reader rings Ivan on the road from Galle to put a question about him personally, and Ivan answers it in public. The article runs from corruption and the press through the theft of popular sovereignty, the elections commissioner and the Wayamba robbery to an unpleasant experience of his own, and ends where it always ends: the answer is not Mahinda, nor Ranil in his place, nor Somawansa in place of both, but a civilised political system.
මහින්දගේ කොටි විරෝධී යුද්ධය හා දෙමළ ජනතාවගේ අනාගතය
The war has reached a decisive stage: the east taken, Mannar taken, the army inside Kilinochchi. Ivan works through the inevitability of the war, the idea of a homeland, what has changed in the fighting, who gains from it, and what it means for Tamil civilians — and argues that the LTTE’s two greatest blunders were killing Rajiv Gandhi and stopping Ranil Wickremesinghe from winning in 2005.
මොළයෙන් වෙනුවට හදවතින් තර්ක කිරීම
Ivan’s August article on the war and the Tamil people was translated into Tamil and English and answered by Kumar David in the Sunday Island and criticised by Gamini Viyangoda. This is his reply to Kumar David: the LTTE and the JVP, freedom from naked power, the separate state, the Vaddukoddai resolution, the silent revolution, and the difference between pride and emotion.
ඉන්දියානු මැදිහත්වීමක් සිදුවිය හැකිද?
Does the agitation in Tamil Nadu point to a repeat of 1987? Ivan says the mood there looks manufactured rather than spontaneous, and that it has appeared at the moment the war was reaching its logical end. He recalls Vadamarachchi and the food drop that followed, and argues that the answer is not anti-Indian marches but looking after the displaced properly while the fighting goes on.
අපේ අර්බුදය අපි ම විසඳා ගත යුතුය
Written on the day of Prabhakaran’s Heroes’ Day speech but before it was delivered, and finished as the news of the Mumbai attack came in. Ivan says military victories alone will not settle this, that the east is not in good shape even after being taken, and that the government’s duty now is a policy of compassion towards Tamil civilians and no room for inflammatory talk.
මංගලගේ බලමේනියාව
Mangala Samaraweera tells Lakbima that today’s journalists keep their eyes and ears shut while a police state is built. Ivan replies that every government since 1977 has had the features of one, and that if this is the first Samaraweera has noticed he has an ailment needing treatment — then goes through Waters Edge, the violence and the killings, S.B. Dissanayake and the plunder of property.
කූට ලේඛන සංස්කෘතිය (ජාතික හැඳුනුම්පත හා ගමන් බලපත්‍රය)
Answering officials who disputed details in his series on the bureaucracy, Ivan stands by his accounts and then turns to how deep forgery runs. Using Dayananda Dissanayake’s Nuwara Eliya deal, he calculates the Treasury’s loss at over Rs. 6.1 million on one plot. Birth certificates without serial numbers, a corrupt identity-card office that issued LTTE suicide bombers genuine-looking cards, and a passport office that keeps no copies have created an industry, fed above all by the trade in underage and overage housemaids for the Middle East. Forgery, he says, now runs from school admissions to medical licences and doctorates.
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.