මර්වින් සිල්වා හා අධිකරණය
A charge against the minister was amended, he pleaded guilty to the amended version and was ordered to pay 2,500 rupees in state costs. Ivan sets out what the original charge was — a false signature on a cheque drawn on his own current account — and asks whether the policy the court followed for a member of parliament is the policy it follows for ordinary people.
ජනමාධ්ය ගැන රනිල් වික්රමසිංහගේ විවේචනය
At a press conference on 1 December the opposition leader turned the questions back on the questioner, and then criticised the Sri Lankan press at large. Ivan treats the complaint as the opening of a debate worth having: journalists may question politicians, but the complaint against the culture of the press is a strong one, and it points at the same system that everything else points at.
කට්ටඩියා හා විද්යාඥයා එකකු බවට පත්වීම
Ivan argues that Sri Lanka’s media have never promoted primitive superstition as they do now, filling airtime with astrologers and sorcerers whose advertising has become a key source of revenue. He recounts testing an astrologer-candidate who claimed he could win elections by occult power, and a sorcerer-monk who threatened his life after Ravaya exposed abuse at his temple. Galileo, Newton and Einstein transformed human life yet have no followers; worse, some scientists now mimic the charlatans, spreading fear over kidney disease, milk powder and arsenic to suit political ends.
ජිනීවා අර්බුදය-
Sri Lanka was right to oppose the US resolution at the Human Rights Council, Ivan writes, but its campaign damaged the country’s name — ending with Minister Mervyn Silva’s boast that he had Poddala Jayantha beaten and would punish others who went to Geneva. He warns against the view that the balance of power is shifting to China, arguing that India, soon larger and younger and closer to Western values, matters more to a country that lives ‘in India’s mouth’. National sovereignty is relative: as a UN member bound by the ICCPR, Sri Lanka cannot treat the Council’s action as unlawful. The war was fought within a civilised framework, but the Foreign Ministry lost the propaganda war, letting support fall from 32 votes in 2009 to 15 in 2012. The best course is to go beyond the resolution with a national programme to rebuild the state.
විද්යුත් කැලෑ පත්තර අඩවි ගැන වැඩිදුරටත්
The article on the news websites that have turned into a species of electronic gutter press brought Ivan the chance to exchange views with one of the people he had charged — a man running a news website from a foreign country. Three sections follow: ethics, one-sided intellectuals, and Lionel Bopage and Rohana Kumara.
මර්වින් සිල්වාගේ ගව මස් තහනම
The minister of public relations and public affairs told the Lankadeepa that the sale of beef in the butchers’ shops of the Gampaha district would be banned from next week — that killing and eating an animal which does such great service to agriculture is a great sin, and that the ban is meant to set the country an example from Gampaha in protecting the cattle resource.
සිදුවූයේ කුමක්ද? විය හැක්කේ කුමක්ද?
Sri Lanka’s throat was caught in two nooses, Ivan writes — terrorism and the political system — and the first is nearly loosed. He explains his own shift: he doubted the account that armed struggle followed the failure of non-violent politics, doubted the Tamil homeland claim, and was moved decisively by the LTTE’s treatment of Ranil Wickremesinghe, who had given them more space than any Sinhala leader and whom they destroyed politically. He defends Rajapaksa’s decision as the most important and most dangerous taken since independence, and argues the war could have gone very differently had the LTTE succeeded in mass suicide attacks, a single trap killing thousands of soldiers, or coordinated massacres in fifty or sixty villages. He then judges the opposition, the courts and the press all to have acted without responsibility, and disputes the reported threatening of Poddala Jayantha and Sanath Balasuriya by the Defence Secretary.
සිරසේ සිරසට පහරදීම
The Claymore detonated inside Sirasa’s operations room symbolises the security forces, whoever ordered it: only the forces and the LTTE hold Claymores or know how to handle them, and if the forces did this the signal it sends is more frightening still. Ivan traces the campaign that preceded it — Wimal Weerawansa’s JVP putting up posters nationwide calling Kili Maharaja and Sirasa a front for the LTTE after Sirasa depicted Weerawansa as a donkey, Mervyn Silva calling the channel a Tiger supporter, and public accusations over its coverage of the airbase attack on the day Kilinochchi fell. The attack was the logical outcome of that campaign. Naming political opponents as LTTE supporters, and rejoicing when they are killed by the LTTE, is an established habit here: SLFP supporters let off firecrackers when Premadasa was assassinated, and UNP supporters painted a pottu on Chandrika’s posters in 1994.
ජනමාධ්ය බිය ගැන්වීම
Threats to journalists used to come from the government; now they come from the government and from gangs. Ivan follows the Rupavahini affair from the attack on a programme producer to the armed group that told another employee’s mother he would be killed, and sets it beside the JVP’s habit of calling violence against ordinary people a campaign against a foreign army.