මහින්ද රාජපක්ෂ හා වේලුපිල්ලේ ප්‍රහාකරන්
The country is being pushed to a place where accounts are settled by war and not by talk, which is the government’s official view and has always been the LTTE’s only one — the difference being that the LTTE has now met an opponent who thinks exactly as it does. Ivan argues that the LTTE’s aims were never practical, that Prabhakaran has been an unsuccessful leader, and that the war can end only if he can be brought to accept a settlement.
Neglect of essential reforms
The Aragalaya put system change at the centre of the argument and then the moment passed. Victor Ivan asks why the Opposition and the JVP both want no part of a reform programme.
ව්‍යවස්ථා සම්පාදනයේ දකුණු අප්‍රිකානු ආදර්ශය (ව්‍යවස්ථාවක් හදාගැනීමේ ප්‍රශ්නය-8)
Part 8 holds up South Africa as a model. After de Klerk freed Nelson Mandela in February 1990, multi-party talks from 1991 agreed a two-stage transition: an interim constitution, elections in 1994, and a constitutional assembly given two years to draft a final text, with wide public participation through theme committees, which the new Constitutional Court then tested against agreed principles before approving it.
මැන්ඩෙලාගෙන් උගත යුතු පාඩම්
Nelson Mandela, Ivan writes, is second in greatness only to Gandhi, and in nation-building he surpassed him: he united two races divided for centuries by hatred, making whites part of the nation rather than overthrowing them, then left power when his work was done. Both leaders refused to hate their oppressors and kept Marxism within their movements without becoming its prisoners. Sri Lanka’s divisions of race, religion, caste and class are far smaller than South Africa’s; what it lacks is an ideological movement that changes attitudes, which no constitution alone can do.
වර්ගවාදය හා නායකත්වයේ අර්බුදය
Lee Kuan Yew was right, this piece argues, that Sri Lanka failed because its leaders could not manage racial passions. Bandaranaike knew Sinhala Only without provision for Tamil was unjust, yet tore up his pact with Chelvanayakam under pressure from militant monks; Dudley Senanayake lacked the courage to see his own pact through; J.R. Jayewardene legislated District Development Councils but could not bear to see the TULF win Jaffna. Mahinda Rajapaksa had the golden chance after the war and let it pass. The Northern Provincial Council election is a silver lining, if leaders on all sides stop inciting their people.
මගේ සිහිනය ගැන වැඩිදුරටත්
Replying to readers’ reactions to his plan to reorganise Ravaya, Ivan explains his habit of seeing things unconventionally, as Gandhi and Mandela did, and sets his plan against his forecast that Sri Lanka is heading for anarchy. After Prabhakaran’s defeat the political system stood exposed; Mahinda Rajapaksa, the only leader left, failed to rebuild the state, and parties on both sides are historically spent. With a monk’s self-immolation over cattle slaughter and the row over the Thirteenth Amendment as signs, he argues Ravaya must be strengthened to guide readers through the coming collapse.
කියවීම හා ප්‍රශ්න කිරීම
A visit to Prem Dissanayake’s bookshop leads Ivan to a Sinhala translation of Martha Nussbaum’s ‘Not for Profit: Why Democracy Needs the Humanities’ by Liyanage Amarakeerthi. He laments a culture in which teachers, journalists and politicians rarely read — no Sri Lankan leader since D.S. Senanayake has written a serious book, unlike India’s — and in which publishers favour novels over ideas. Drawing on Nussbaum’s chapter on Socratic pedagogy, he argues that Sri Lanka treats the questioner as a traitor and must learn to read, argue and respect dissent.
ප්‍රතිසන්ධානය හා ගෝඨාභය සාධකය
Ivan rejects Uvindu Kurukulasuriya’s website report that at a dinner with Minister DEW Gunasekera he had plotted to save the government and blamed Gotabaya Rajapaksa for every problem; the report, he says, rested on a third-hand source. The talks were among many long one-to-one discussions he held with politicians of all sides to test support for a national programme to rebuild the state and nation, which he believes many would accept. Leaders need not be ideal — South Africa’s transition, Cromwell and Lenin show that — so the chance must not be missed. He credits Gotabaya Rajapaksa with the war’s strategy, with bringing Sarath Fonseka forward, and with resettlement and rehabilitation, but says abductions, including of Frontline Socialist Party activists, and extra-legal drives against drug dealers are squandering that honour; he must adapt to peace or lose everything.
වාද කරන්නට පෙර ප්‍රකෘති සිහිය ඇති කරගැනීම වැදගත්ය
Answering Gamini Viyangoda and Jayatilaka Kammallaweera, who accused him of labelling them and of defending the Rajapaksa regime, Ivan restates his thesis: after losing socialism they adopted the ethnic crisis as their cause and lost their judgement when the LTTE fell, as he once feared a coup under Wijeweera’s spell before 1971. He rejects Viyangoda’s claim that he attacked individuals for twenty years and turned to ‘the system’ only to protect Rajapaksa, noting that his ‘Chaura Rajya’ series on reforming the predatory state ran in Ravaya in 2002, before ‘Chaura Rajina’ (2006), and listing earlier articles on system change. He recalls the Kaha Pati (yellow ribbon) campaign of 2000, the all-party talks on his reform draft in Parliament in 2001, and the 2006 Kobbekaduwa round table, and argues that reform must come by consensus, as Mandela achieved.
පවුල් දෙකක් සමග දීගකෑම ( රාවයේ 25 වැනි සංවත්සර කලාපය වෙනුවෙන් ලියූ ලිපියකි.)
Written for Ravaya’s 25th-anniversary issue, this personal essay describes how Ivan’s family says he has two families: his wife and three children, and Ravaya. Gandhi, his lifelong hero, failed as a father, as did Mandela and King, and Ivan resolved not to. He recalls weekends at home in Galle, his family’s refusal to exploit Ravaya, and his son’s reply to taunts after President Kumaratunga attacked Ivan on television and a fake Ravaya was circulated. But Ravaya was not always sensitive in return: reports on a school principal led to reprisals that drove his son, a six-time national chess champion, out of school; attacks on Dian Gomes cost the boy his sponsor; and the paper wounded friends such as Suranjith, Hemasiri Fernando, Susanthika Jayasinghe and Vimukthi Jayasundara. Critics, he says, must remember who their friends are.