මහින්ද රාජපක්ෂගේ හතර අවුරුද්ද
The president may call an election as soon as four years of his term are done — a power added to the constitution by amendment for the benefit of the incumbent and now enjoyed by all of them. Ivan takes stock of the four years: the LTTE gone with not even a ghost of Prabhakaran left, the whole territory in the state’s hands, and the question of whether the respect of opponents as well as supporters can be won.
විනිසුරුවරුන්ගේ සදාචාරය
Anonymous broadsheets about the conduct of judges are circulating among lawyers in Hulftsdorp at fifty rupees a copy, and Ivan treats them as a symptom rather than a source. Quoting H.L. de Silva on judicial integrity — that a judge’s moral honesty matters more than his legal skill — he sets out his own complaint against a district judge, the two inquiries that followed, and the protections that make a wayward judge almost untouchable.
පුවත්පත් මණ්ඩල ක්රමය නැවත ඇති කිරීම
The Press Council was left dormant in 2002 so that the industry could regulate itself, and is now being revived. Ivan sets out what is wrong with the law — registration of every owner and editor, renewable yearly — and what is wrong with the self-regulation that replaced it, and concludes that the media organisations’ only course is to negotiate a single institution in which the government also has a share.
අගවිනිසුරුට ප්රීතිමත් විශ්රාම ජීවිතයකට සුබ පැතුම්
Continuing the previous week, Ivan asks what a review of Sarath N. Silva’s judgments would
find, and answers with the record of appointments, plunder of public property, the company
he kept and the ambition to become head of state. He reports the meeting at which senior
counsel advised Chandrika Kumaratunga against appointing him — and Aloy Ratnayake’s
prediction that one day he would turn on her — and closes with the long list of lawyers and
judges who signed against him.
විශ්රාම යන අගවිනිසුරුතුමෙනි. ඔබට ආයුබෝවන්
On the retirement of Sarath N. Silva, Ivan sets out the record: cases of relatives heard and
relieved, enemies punished to the limit, orders issued to the executive and the legislature,
and an injunction obtained against the Speaker through friendly counsel and a friendly bench
to stop an impeachment reaching the House. He goes back to the district court case brought
by a chemical engineer over the judge’s relationship with his wife, and to the officer
promoted before his punishment had expired.
මහින්ද කොයිබටද?
Whether by luck, practical sense or sheer resolve, Ivan writes, Mahinda Rajapaksa will enter
history as the leader who turned modern Sri Lankan politics. But defeating Prabhakaran
militarily is not enough: he must be defeated politically as well, which means bringing the
country’s Tamils to accept that life within the Sri Lankan state is better and fairer than
life in his separate one. A great leader is not satisfied with half a greatness.
දෙමළ කැරැල්ලක් ආවේ ඇයි? සිංහලයින් ද ආපසු හැරී බැලිය යුතුය
Having asked where the Tamil struggle went wrong, Ivan turns the question on his own
community. He puts the direct cost of the war to 1998 alone at 423 billion rupees and traces
the language question from the cross-party agreement of the early fifties — broken when Sir
John Kotelawala promised parity in Jaffna and the backlash swept both major parties into
Sinhala Only — through Bandaranaike’s twenty-four-hour pledge, the fast of F.R. Jayasuriya,
the unimplemented Tamil Language Act and standardisation.
ශ්රී ලංකාවේ දෙමළ ජාතික අරගළය
A comprehensive historical analysis reflecting on the defeat of the LTTE and the 25-year armed struggle. Tracing the political history from the colonial Colebrooke-Cameron reforms to the post-independence Sinhala Only Act and university standardization policies, the author examines the root causes of the conflict. The piece argues that while discriminatory policies by Sinhalese governments fueled the crisis, Tamil political leaders also shared blame due to their utopian demands, lack of pragmatic foresight, and early reliance on ethnic nationalism.
හැරී ගුණතිලක
An obituary for Air Marshal Harry Gunetilleke, who died at seventy-nine. Ivan writes about how honest a man holding office can be, tells the story of the ban a president placed on him and how he had it lifted, and records that having a son as air force commander did not quiet him: he went on saying what he thought in public until he died.
මහින්ද හා ප්රභාකරන්
The sky is filling with the war’s black cloud and killing as much as possible has become its positive quality. Ivan asks where it ends — whether Mahinda brings Prabhakaran to his knees or the reverse — and answers that the honourable name goes to whichever leader is willing to admit that an injustice was done to the Tamil people and to put it right.