The 2019 Presidential Election and the aftermath
Two brothers, two minds: Victor Ivan argues that Mahinda Rajapaksa for all his faults kept a civilian outlook, and that what would follow a Gotabaya victory is government by the barracks.
සිංහල-බෞද්ධ මනස තේරුම් ගැනීම
Responding to Kusal Perera’s ‘In Search of the New Man’, Ivan revisits two debates: Newton Gunasinghe’s great and little traditions, which suggest Sinhala cultural narrowness belongs to the era of decline rather than all history, and Sarachchandra’s claim, contested by Martin Wickramasinghe, that Buddhism does not see art as purifying. Europe escaped a similar world-denial through the Renaissance; Sri Lanka’s revivals, independence movement and parties never produced one. Every movement from Dharmapala and Bandaranaike to Wijeweera and the JHU has pandered to the Sinhala-Buddhist mind, shaped by an island that kept its identity against India, rather than changing it.
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.
19 වැනි සංශෝධන කෙටුම්පත ගැන
Ivan welcomes the campaign by Maduluwawe Sobitha’s National Movement for a Just Society to abolish the executive presidency, but argues its draft Nineteenth Amendment is a concept paper with a narrow vision. Every Sri Lankan constitution, and Chandrika Kumaratunga’s 2000 draft, was made by cunning or majority power rather than on the sovereignty of the people, as India and South Africa did. The draft ignores the unresolved question of who belongs to the nation, copies the flawed Constitutional Council of the Seventeenth Amendment, and keeps a simple-majority impeachment of judges.