ලසන්ත වික්රමතුංග
Ten days after the murder, Ivan writes about a friend he had fallen out with. Lasantha was the finest investigative journalist Sri Lanka has produced — the instinct, the persistence, the ability to read what documents concealed — but the politician inside him was a small man, wielding the pen to install a UNP government in which he expected a senior ministry. He exposed his opponents’ corruption without mercy and covered up his own side’s. Ivan recounts the 1999 Town Hall bomb, when both were to be arrested and they packed bags for Singapore until Ranil Wickremesinghe called Lasantha back; Chandrika Kumaratunga’s later claim that she stopped a minister’s plan to kill them; and the quarrel over her interview and Ivan’s book that soured the friendship. Assassination, he writes, gave the life its meaning.
රනිල් විරෝධී කුණාටුව
Ivan gives a detailed account of the UNP revolt against Ranil Wickremesinghe after a plan to defeat the budget, with Thondaman’s four votes and defectors from the People’s Alliance, collapsed at midnight. Thondaman later said he was never asked. The piece follows the group of 23 MPs led by Gamini Atukorale, Karu Jayasuriya and Rajitha Senaratne, their demand that Jayasuriya become Opposition Leader, the seven-member committee Wickremesinghe appointed, and his delay over impeaching the Chief Justice.