තරුණ වෛරය සහ අසහනය
There have been three violent insurrections in Sri Lanka since independence, all of them youth insurrections, two Sinhala and one Tamil. The JVP’s 1971 rising was the first attempt by a political organisation to seize power by armed revolt, and a simple one that the forces put down easily in under a month. What follows is Ivan’s reckoning of where Wijeweera and Prabhakaran belong, and of what there is in all this to be shaken by.
පොල්, කුකුළු මස් හා බිත්තර ආනයනය
Importing coconuts as a remedy for the shortage can be called a good and useful act; importing chicken and eggs to control their price cannot. From there the article turns to the spread of monkeys and wild boar, to animal husbandry and religious belief, and to a decision Ivan calls genuinely revolutionary — making vocational education compulsory for those who fail their O levels.
වසන්ත සමයේ අවසානය
Because of the absolute power the presidency gives, leaders who reach it fall in love with the system as a matter of habit. But it was never properly made, and the oppression built into it works not only on the opposition and the public but on the president himself — and what a leader who reaches the office can see is only the sweetness of absolute power, never the poison hidden under it.
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.
ජනාධිපති මහින්ද රාජපක්ෂගේ අනාගතය
Winning the election will not save a president who cannot look back honestly at his own record, Ivan argues. He sets the strengths against the limits — the war won, the family’s grip, the corruption and nepotism, the scale of the cabinet — and says the victory was an opening to build a political system worth the name, an opening the president has so far declined.
අද්විතීය බවේ උභතෝකෝටිකය
The government expects a large win in the south, where its base is, but the south is also the most critical province in the country and the uncritical loyalty of six months ago has gone. Ivan sets the president’s standing beside Sarath Fonseka’s — a man made equally singular by the same victory, for whom no office in the country was large enough — and notes how much local politicians’ cut-outs are costing the government in public patience.
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.
දෙමළ සමාජය ගැන
Three and a half hours with a delegation from the Tamil diaspora — all of them long-standing opponents of the LTTE — gives Ivan an account of the north he could not get otherwise: the local elections, the caste composition of Jaffna now that most Vellala families live abroad, and the widespread refusal to believe Prabhakaran is dead.
ප්රභාකරන්ගේ විනාශය
Prabhakaran’s organisation was thought unbeatable and fell like a great tree. Ivan argues
that had he accepted defeat as Hitler did — taking his own life to release his followers —
the war could have ended without harm to the civilians, and that instead he made them his
shield. Setting him beside Wijeweera, he finds two able men whom a particular political
climate turned cruel, and asks what kind of country would not have done that to them.