සක්විති රැඟුම්
Sakvithi Ranasinghe deceived the whole country, and titled laymen and monks helped him do it. Ivan’s charge falls on the press: papers took his advertising revenue while he was defrauding their own readers, and the honorifics he bought — Deshamanya, Deshabandu, Chakravarti — are sold by an organised trade. First the media helped fool their readers, then they set about restoring their judgement.
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.
අරාජිකත්වයේ අත්තිවාරම්
Ivan argues that the government, lacking any theory of how rotten the whole system had become by the end of the war, is watching it collapse piece by piece into anarchy. Its answer to a corrupt police — sending the army, as at Rathupaswala — is worse than the disease. Champika Ranawaka’s own column describes a lumpen rich and a super-bureaucracy; the judiciary rotted under Sarath N. Silva; tax collection has collapsed into VAT fraud; and debt-funded infrastructure, the lost GSP+, the DCD milk-powder scare and the anti-fertiliser campaign over kidney disease all speed the slide.
ලලිත් කොතලාවල ප්රහේලිකාවක්ද?
The article examines the downfall of Lalith Kotelawala and the Golden Key Credit Company, questioning whether his philanthropic public image was a deliberate cover for an unregulated, fraudulent financial enterprise. It draws direct parallels between his deposit-taking methods and those of notorious scammers like Sakvithi Ranasinghe and Danduwam Mudalali. The piece further highlights systemic national issues, including the investment of undeclared black money by politicians, exorbitant corporate perks funded by depositors’ money, and the severe lack of regulatory oversight concerning financial operations and advertising in Sri Lanka.
ගෝල්ඩන් කී අර්බුදය
Golden Key Credit Card’s failure to pay interest on time has brought depositors to its door and shaken the whole Ceylinco group. The Central Bank has removed Seylan Bank’s board and placed it temporarily under Bank of Ceylon control. Golden Key took deposits and paid 30 per cent annual interest without being a registered financial business — funding those returns, it appears, by lending depositors’ money to Ceylinco property companies, which collapsed with the property market. Ten thousand depositors are owed some 25 billion rupees; the company’s eye hospital, teak plantation and Kirimandala Mawatha land cannot be liquidated quickly and would not cover it anyway. Ivan notes the chief administrative officer’s monthly package of 6.5 million rupees and six luxury vehicles, and argues such payments are extortion rather than salary. He divides depositors into three kinds, the third being people whose money could not safely be placed in a lawful institution.