දේශපාලන ක්රමයේ වෙනසක් අත්යවශ්යය
With the UNP now for abolishing the executive presidency and the JVP back to its old position, Ivan turns to how a constitution should be made rather than what it should say. Taking the failures of 1972 and 1977 as the warning, he sets out the conditions: not done in haste, not built around the ruling party’s convenience, everyone who should be at the table actually there.
නිල බලය අයථා ලෙස පාවිච්චි කිරීමට ඉඩදිය යුත්තේ ඇයි?
Six junior officers have been transferred over the abduction and assault of a student at the Malabe technology institute, but the head of the Colombo crime division who directed it has faced nothing. Ivan argues the country needs as firm a policy towards educated men who abuse official power as it does towards uneducated criminals, and asks why the police chief has not acted on the defence secretary’s instruction.
කේ පී අසුවීම
Taking KP abroad and bringing him to Sri Lanka is a considerable victory, Ivan writes, not only because he led the diaspora’s notional state after Prabhakaran but because he ran the LTTE’s arms purchasing — and everyone in custody now talks. He notes that the low turnout at the two northern council elections shows the Tamil people’s unease is not over.
මහින්ද රාජපක්ෂගේ හතර අවුරුද්ද
The president may call an election as soon as four years of his term are done — a power added to the constitution by amendment for the benefit of the incumbent and now enjoyed by all of them. Ivan takes stock of the four years: the LTTE gone with not even a ghost of Prabhakaran left, the whole territory in the state’s hands, and the question of whether the respect of opponents as well as supporters can be won.
ක්රෙඩිට් කාඩ්වලින් පරෙස්සම්වන්න!
Credit cards are being issued against nothing but a salary slip, and Ivan works through what the interest actually costs the holder who misses the 55-day window. He moves from there to the presidential term and the argument over abolishing the executive presidency, to the displaced, and to the retired chief justice’s habit of delivering popular judgments to rebuild a reputation he might have run on.
රට යන්නේ කොයිබටද? සමාන අයිතිවාසිකම් පිළිගැනීම
For the first time in thirty years the argument is being conducted by mouths rather than by gun barrels, and Ivan surveys the range of it: implement the 13th Amendment, go beyond it, or solve the question without devolving anything at all. He grants the case against provincial councils — an Indian import, unloved and inefficient — and argues that if a new constitution is made it must be treated as a social contract rather than a party’s instrument.
13 වැනි සංශෝධනයේ අනාගතය
The Jathika Hela Urumaya’s ministers have said they will leave the government if police and land powers are devolved, and that the Tamil people’s problems amount to food, clothing, shelter and social dignity. Ivan answers that the amendment’s value is symbolic as much as practical, and that a country which fought a merciless war and then says the Tamils are its own brothers has to show it.
පුවත්පත් මණ්ඩල ක්රමය නැවත ඇති කිරීම
The Press Council was left dormant in 2002 so that the industry could regulate itself, and is now being revived. Ivan sets out what is wrong with the law — registration of every owner and editor, renewable yearly — and what is wrong with the self-regulation that replaced it, and concludes that the media organisations’ only course is to negotiate a single institution in which the government also has a share.
13 වැනි සංශෝධනය
With the war won, the only voice still raised against the 13th Amendment is the JVP’s — a party that once killed people for supporting provincial councils, then contested them, and is now trying to rise again through them. Ivan notes that the president promised to implement the amendment fully and is doing so from a position the JVP cannot easily inflame.
පෝද්දල ජයන්තට පහරදීම
After a television programme used footage of Poddala Jayantha and Sunanda Deshapriya while
alleging that some journalists were paid by the LTTE, Poddala came to Ivan and asked him to
intervene. Ivan describes what he did, what the president said when the question was put to
him, and why he thinks naming such journalists would have been ruinous — and argues that the
fault can only be corrected by looking critically back at the policy that produced it.