දූෂණය සනාථ කළයුත්තේ කටකථාවලින් නොව නිශ්චිත සාක්ෂිවලිනි

Corruption is the loudest subject of the campaign and the worst argued. Ivan says any administration’s corruption deserves scrutiny at an election, then insists the opposition move from rumour to specific proof — and gives his own examples, among them a broadcasting licence written into a regulator’s own name and sold on. Assets declarations filed with nominations, he notes, are documents anyone may examine.

දේශපාලන ක්‍රමය වෙනස් කිරීම!

Abolishing the executive presidency is not the simple act it is being sold as. Ivan traces the underlying philosophy of the system, the cost the country pays for its irregularity, and the size of the cabinet — quoting the United Front’s own 1994 manifesto promising no more than twenty ministers against the fifty-four it appointed — and concludes that the change is possible, but complex, and needs people who understand what they are changing.

ඡන්ද බලය හා පරමාධිපත්‍ය බලය

Sovereignty is exercised at elections, Ivan writes, and Sri Lanka’s record of holding them on time is better than its record of holding them freely. He sets out why no elections commission was ever appointed under the 17th Amendment, names who advised against it, and tells voters to make the commissioner keep his back straight.

ජනරාල් මුහුණදී තිබෙන දේශපාලන උභතෝකෝටිකය

The General’s arrival lifted the anti-government forces but has not yet built him a position to win from. Ivan reads the signs — the JVP still absent from his poster campaign, the UNP machine uneasy beneath its enthusiasm, no answer on the minorities or on abolishing the executive presidency — and says a man flying on two borrowed wings that beat in opposite directions may not fly straight.

මඩ ගහගන්නවා වෙනුවට අවශ්‍ය වී ඇත්තේ අර්ථවත් සංවාදයකි

Where should Sri Lanka stand after winning the war? Ivan says that is the question the election ought to be about, and instead both sides are throwing accusations. Abolishing the executive presidency in 180 days means nothing until someone says what replaces it; and if corruption is the great challenge, both camps owe the country an account of how they would beat it.

සේනාපති හා සේනාධිනායකයා අතර තරගය

The UNP and the JVP brought the General forward partly to force a parliamentary election first, Ivan argues, and the president wrong-footed them by calling the presidential one early. He compares the two men as political animals — one seasoned and cured, the other still an apprentice — and says that is the factor that will decide it, for and against the General alike.

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.

යුද වීරයන් දෙදෙනකු අතර කෙරෙන්නට නියමිත ශුද්ධ වූ සංග්‍රාමය

The victory over the LTTE made Mahinda Rajapaksa a giant and every other politician a dwarf, so the opposition answered a hero with a hero. Ivan weighs General Fonseka’s candidacy — the silence about what he stands for, the JVP’s and the UNP’s incompatible expectations of him, and the record of soldiers who entered politics and did not stay democrats.

බල තරගයේ හැඩතල

The picture has changed from one in which the government would win any election easily to one in which it must fight for them. Ivan traces the crisis to the scale of the president’s own coming victory, and argues that the country turned a policy of taking help from the anti-American world into publicly campaigning for it — going so far as to attack Obama, which even China, Iran and Venezuela did not do.

විපක්ෂයේ නව සන්ධානය හා විධායක ජනාධිපති ක්‍රමය අහෝසි කිරීම

The new opposition alliance has published ten principles with the abolition of the executive presidency at the head of them. Ivan welcomes an opposition able to work together and argues that the accusations the two sides trade — lawlessness, corruption, waste, public property taken as spoils — are all products of the same system, so the question worth arguing is what should replace it.