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.
සටන් කිරීම හා අවසාන සටන
Challenged by a friend who says he has turned from a fighter into a preacher, Ivan explains that his aim now is not a change of government but a change of the political system, which needs the support even of those tied to the evil. Prompted by Ravaya’s 25th anniversary, he lists the eight real battles of his career — against the parliamentary privileges law, the 17-year UNP government, criminal defamation, for the assets law, against two court decisions, an outside Elections Commissioner, a retiring President’s taking of state property, and the limits of book publishing — and says he lost only one, blaming K.N. Choksy’s concession in court. His ten-year struggle with Sarath N. Silva ended without result, he argues, because the Bar, media owners, parties and senior judges such as Mark Fernando stayed silent; Silva never used contempt law against him, which Ivan attributes to the remnant of conscience he appealed to.
2005-2010 දක්වා ආපසු හැරී බැලීමක්
The years 2005 to 2010 were a period crowded with events: a great war between the government and the LTTE, and alongside it a great conflict between the government and the opposition movements. Ivan had wanted for some time to write a review of the conflict between those two sides in those five years, and of his own part in it.
අනුන් ගැන මිස තමන් ගැන විවේචනයක් නැති ජනමාධ්ය හා ජනමාධ්ය බෝම්බ
Uvindu answered Ivan’s article without answering the basic question it raised about reporting, and Ivan writes again because the subject matters to journalists and to readers interested in understanding Sri Lankan political reality. Six sections follow, ending on the power the press holds and on what he calls media atom bombs.
ලංකා ඊ නිව්ස් කාර්යාලය ගිනි තැබීම
The savage attack on the Lanka e-News office should be condemned by the whole country: it is hard for it to have been done by anyone other than the government or people attached to it, and it disgraces not only the president and his government but the country. Ivan then says the other half of what he thinks, which is that the do-or-die reporting of many anti-government websites cannot be approved either.
ආපසු හැරී බැලීමක් සමග ඉදිරිය දැකීමක්
Ivan sets out his own positions and why they left him isolated. He held that the Tamil rebellion was inseparable from Tamil grievances and had to be settled by negotiation — until it became clear the LTTE would accept nothing short of a separate state or confederation, at which point he supported defeating it militarily. He backed the war publicly and predicted the LTTE’s defeat while most of Ravaya’s own writers argued it could not be won. On the killing and beating of journalists he told colleagues the blame could not be laid wholly on a government unable to move against its army commander mid-war, and was angrily rejected by Sunanda Deshapriya. He records that this was the third insurrection he supported suppressing, including the 1971 rising he took part in himself. At the presidential election his loyalty was to Rajapaksa, whose remaining task he defines as remaking the state and political system.
ජයග්රහණය හා ඉදිරි ගමන
Rajapaksa’s re-election was large but its limits are visible. Ivan contrasts Wickremesinghe’s acceptance of defeat in 2005, decided by 180,786 votes, with Fonseka’s refusal to concede without explaining why the result is dishonest — a soldier new to politics who misread his crowds and campaigned believing defeat impossible. Both sides broke the law: the government used state media and resources as every government has since 1977, while the opposition used overseas websites and an FM station to spread false reports that the President had fled to India and the Elections Commissioner was under house arrest. The alliance behind Fonseka was held together by nothing but hostility to Rajapaksa, and included men who had accused him of Lasantha Wickrematunge’s murder. The anti-Rajapaksa revolt was largely urban, and the victory drew almost no Tamil, up-country Tamil or Muslim support. Infrastructure spending in the north and east has not answered the political question beneath it.
දූෂණය ගැන වැඩිදුරටත්
Answering replies from Shiral Lakthilaka in Ravaya and Wasantha Wijenayake in Lanka, Ivan denies ever certifying the Rajapaksa administration as clean. His argument was that J.R. Jayewardene’s political system was built to reward plunder, so every ruling party since 1977 has been corrupt by design — and the opposition attacks corruption only to reclaim the right to profit from it. He rejects the claim that corruption cannot be proved without rumour, citing Ravaya’s own documented exposures under previous governments. He then turns to the libel suit Gotabaya Rajapaksa brought against Lasantha Wickrematunge over the MiG procurement story, and states that Wickrematunge’s celebrated posthumous editorial was written after his death by another hand.
අගවිනිසුරුට ප්රීතිමත් විශ්රාම ජීවිතයකට සුබ පැතුම්
Continuing the previous week, Ivan asks what a review of Sarath N. Silva’s judgments would
find, and answers with the record of appointments, plunder of public property, the company
he kept and the ambition to become head of state. He reports the meeting at which senior
counsel advised Chandrika Kumaratunga against appointing him — and Aloy Ratnayake’s
prediction that one day he would turn on her — and closes with the long list of lawyers and
judges who signed against him.
අඳුරු වලා මැද රිදී රේඛා
Ivan argues the coming military victory will change the picture of the country. The decision to fight the LTTE to a military defeat broke with every previous government’s policy, taken against a recognised ceasefire, an established belief that only negotiation could work, and the near-universal opposition of the donor group — and Rajapaksa’s resolve in holding to it under sustained pressure was, he writes, unequalled. He will enter history as the first leader in the modern world to prove a terrorist movement can be defeated by war, and if he also answers Tamil grievances, as one who did both. The gains will follow: aid for the north and east, tourism, paramilitaries disarmed, the army turned to building roads, high security zones released to their owners. Credit belongs to the service chiefs, above all the army commander, and to a Defence Secretary who could obtain whatever he asked because he was the President’s brother.