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.
ජාතිවාදය බෙදුම්වාදය හා කල්ලිවාදය
Ivan takes the president’s promise that there will be no more room for separatism — and,
importantly, for racism — as the right formula, since each feeds the other. The victory
should produce humility rather than triumph, and the test of it is whether wrong opinions
are defeated by argument rather than by threat, and whether thinkers, journalists and
artists can say what they think without fear for their lives.
විශ්රාම යන අගවිනිසුරුතුමෙනි. ඔබට ආයුබෝවන්
On the retirement of Sarath N. Silva, Ivan sets out the record: cases of relatives heard and
relieved, enemies punished to the limit, orders issued to the executive and the legislature,
and an injunction obtained against the Speaker through friendly counsel and a friendly bench
to stop an impeachment reaching the House. He goes back to the district court case brought
by a chemical engineer over the judge’s relationship with his wife, and to the officer
promoted before his punishment had expired.
අවතැන්වූවන් පිළිබඳ ප්රශ්න
Ivan calls the UN Secretary-General’s remark to CNN — that he had never seen camps as bad
anywhere — a bad statement, and notes that the Swedish opposition leader who visited the
same day was far less harsh. Housing three hundred thousand people is neither simple nor
quick; the camps are improving rather than worsening, the identification of cadres has to
finish before the army can hand them over, and the contractors’ opportunities to profit
should be cut back.
ආරම්භ වී තිබෙන නව පරිච්ඡේදය අර්ථවත් කරගැනීම
A movement that held a large part of the country by force for close to three decades has
been destroyed, and Ivan writes that in every one of the three armed rebellions the state
has put down, the enemy was its own citizens. What the country owes itself now is to find
the social, economic and political causes that keep producing them, and to use the opening
the victory has made rather than waste it as earlier openings were wasted.
ශ්රේෂ්ඨත්වය පරිපූර්ණ කිරීම
Judging by the weapons taken and the infrastructure found, Ivan writes, another decade of
the LTTE would have been past imagining — and both the wars and the peace talks had
strengthened its de facto state rather than dissolving it. Mahinda Rajapaksa is therefore
the greatest of the country’s leaders since independence; but the greatness is not complete,
and completing it means opening every window to a national argument about what Sri Lanka
should now become.
යුද්ධයෙන් ජයගැනීම හා ප්රචාරක යුද්ධයෙන් පරාජය වීම
The government won the war for territory and lost the argument about how it ended. Ivan
credits it with everything the military victory required — rebuilding the forces’ morale,
ending the factionalism among them, holding to the decision under international pressure —
and finds the same government without a case it could put to the world, when the strongest
argument was available to it: that letting a movement succeed by holding hundreds of
thousands hostage teaches the lesson to every other city.
ආණ්ඩුව හා විරුද්ධ පක්ෂය දෙපැත්තට ඇදීම
The government fought the war as a single-handed act and attacked the opposition through it;
the opposition worked to obstruct the war, likened it to Hitler’s, and sought to cut off
aid. Ivan traces the habit to the system J.R. Jayewardene built to keep an opposition
permanently out of power, follows it through the SLFP’s own years in the wilderness and its
quiet satisfaction at the JVP’s revolt, and ends by asking which matters more to either
side, the party or the country.
ත්රස්තවාදය ජයගැනීමෙන් නොනැවතී දේශපාලන ක්රමය ජයගත යුතුය
The Western Province result leaves the government stronger after three years than when it
began, the UNP down from 39 seats to 30 and the JVP from 22 to three. Ivan argues that the
moment to press for a change in the political system is precisely when the opposition cannot
win power by ordinary means, and that the president’s own promise to abolish the executive
presidency is the lever the opposition should use.
මහින්ද කොයිබටද?
Whether by luck, practical sense or sheer resolve, Ivan writes, Mahinda Rajapaksa will enter
history as the leader who turned modern Sri Lankan politics. But defeating Prabhakaran
militarily is not enough: he must be defeated politically as well, which means bringing the
country’s Tamils to accept that life within the Sri Lankan state is better and fairer than
life in his separate one. A great leader is not satisfied with half a greatness.