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.
අඳ-ගොළු-බිහිරි පාර්ලිමේන්තුව
Ivan argues that Parliament, unlike legislatures elsewhere, ignores citizens’ complaints and media exposures. His examples include the Bribery Commission’s ruling on Mangala Samaraweera’s credit-card spending, its refusal to act on his own complaint against the Chief Justice, and Ravaya’s 2001 exposure of abuses by the Public Trustee, including misuse of the Samarakoon fund meant for poor couples’ dowries. He cites the Marga survey and the IBA report on the judiciary, which Parliament never debated, and the UNP’s silence on the Chief Justice now it is in government.
A wake up call to main opposition
The opposition transacts with this government the way a serf transacts with his feudal lord. The serf’s manner before his master is timid: he could not protest even when his wife or his daughter was taken. Timid talk about four commissions will not revive a decaying democracy.
එජාප බැරී බැරී රෝගයට පිළියමක් සොයාගත යුතුය
Ivan likens the UNP’s dealings with the People’s Alliance government to a hereditary serf’s timidity before his lord. Though the Elections Commissioner, religious leaders, PAFFREL, the election-violence monitors and EU observers found the October 2000 poll unfair, the UNP chose to ‘let bygones be bygones’ and filed half-hearted petitions. He recalls, from Prins Gunasekera’s book, how Sirimavo Bandaranaike withdrew as petitioner against the 1982 referendum, leaving Rohana Wijeweera to file, and asks why the UNP stayed silent on Sarath N. Silva’s appointment and on the 1999 presidential poll.