Defeating Mr. President All But Impossible
Despite corruption, rights abuses, nepotism and rising prices, Ivan argues that President Rajapaksa is almost impossible to unseat before the presidential election of 2011. The UNP can defeat the budget only with the JVP, which gains too much from the government to risk it, and the rules of the system favour the President over the opposition.
The Travails of School and Free Education
The dispute over admissions to grade one sets the Supreme Court against the Education Ministry and Parliament. Ivan follows the fundamental rights petitions, the court’s own marking guidelines, Ranil Wickremesinghe’s privilege complaint and the part played by past pupils’ associations, and warns that the result will leave admissions in lasting disorder.
A Cancerous Carnival
Starting from ministers’ housing and fuel allowances, Ivan tallies the cost of keeping politicians: vehicles, pensions, duty-free cars and an over-large cabinet. He traces how Colvin R. de Silva and J.R. Jayewardene concentrated power, and how presidents came to buy loyalty with public funds while black-money barons shape governments.
Where the LTTE Went Wrong
Ivan argues that the LTTE, like the JVP in 1989, failed to trade armed struggle for politics when it held the advantage, and helped elect the government now bent on crushing it. He compares Gotabhaya Rajapaksa’s role against the LTTE to the ruthless suppression of the second JVP uprising and concludes that armed struggle brings only blood and destruction.
The Future is Uncertain
Victor Ivan finds the President immobilised. He cannot abandon the JVP after the support it gave him at the presidential election, yet dropping it would mean placing full faith in Ranil Wickremesinghe, whom he does not trust; and a president dependent on the JVP is trapped in its framework, as Chandrika Kumaratunga discovered. Neither party can transform the other, so nothing moves without the JVP’s consent. Ivan sees the same deadlock between the government and the LTTE, each blocked by India — which will permit neither the oppression of Tamils in the north and east nor a separate state. He puts the negotiating gap in a simile: the LTTE asked for tens of thousands of buns, was offered thousands, refused, and is now invited to the table for one. A government proposing decentralisation within a unitary framework is offering less than the Bandaranaike-Chelvanayakam Pact of 1958, and cannot raise the offer while the JVP and Hela Urumaya hold it in place. With no negotiated route left, Ivan warns the LTTE may settle accounts by war and may seek borders drawn by community — an attack on the Sinhalese of the East making it impossible for Tamils to live in the south, and opening the way to massacre and mutual slaughter.
චන්ද්රිකා හා රනිල් ගැන වැඩිදුරටත්
Ivan is glad his articles on Ranil Wickremesinghe and Chandrika Kumaratunga have stirred debate. One reader told him why Wickremesinghe protected her: she published the Batalanda Commission report without a chapter concerning him, and videos of abuses ordered from the President’s House are said to exist.
රනිල් වික්රමසිංහ සහ එක්සත් ජාතික පක්ෂය
Ranil Wickremesinghe’s handling of the revolt against his leadership is remarkable: twice before he saw off rebellions by handing out sweets. Ivan explains how party leaders reap hundreds of millions in black money at elections, and applies Mick Moore’s analysis to both Wickremesinghe and his challengers.
රණ බෙර වැයීමෙන් විය හැක්කේ විනාශයකි
As a newspaper, Ravaya has always stood for peace, not war. Both Chandrika Kumaratunga’s and Ranil Wickremesinghe’s peace efforts failed, but the editorial warns that a new war would be more destructive than any before, whoever won, and that only the public can change the picture.
ලැජ්ජා නැතිකමේ දේශපාලනය
Even after Mahinda Rajapaksa’s election, Chandrika Kumaratunga will not give up the party leadership, and Ranil Wickremesinghe clings to his despite telling friends he would quit. Ivan recounts what a CID officer told him in confidence during the terror that followed the 1999 election, and ends by wishing that she not be jailed and made to suffer for what was done in her eleven years of rule.
වේළුපිල්ලේ ප්රභාකරන් හා රනිල් වික්රමසිංහ
The LTTE is turning from talks back to war, and it is still unexplained why it wanted Ranil Wickremesinghe defeated. Wickremesinghe trusted the TNA and the Tamils to back him without conditions; Ivan concludes that a Prabhakaran who was half-way to good has been pushed somewhere worse, and Wickremesinghe can no longer claim to be the leader who won Tamil trust.