බලය සඳහා සිහින දැකීම
The political forces are changing shape and nobody can say what it will mean. Ivan reads the JVP stepping back from its alliance, the UNP losing members to the government, and the all-party proposals that would make the executive president answerable to parliament — and notes what it would cost the president’s opponents if he actually did it. Premadasa played the villain once; it is Mahinda Rajapaksa’s turn.
මංගලගේ නිම නොවූ විප්ලවය
Mangala Samaraweera is the newest hero of Sri Lankan politics, and Ivan reads his revolt as a cavalry charge that went one step and then two steps back. He puts the counter-charges: a crore from council funds for his mother’s benefit, the PSD used against opponents in Chandrika Kumaratunga’s time with his blessing, and the hired killers whose part in it he now forgets.
දඩිබිඩි විප්ලවය හා අයවැයේ ජය පරාජය
The attempt to defeat the budget ended in a damp squib. It had two aims — bringing the government down, and taking eight government members across to leave it a minority dependent on the JVP — and achieved neither. Ivan reads the episode as proof of how far the political system has rotted: the man bold enough to fire the first shot of an internal revolt could not keep the nerve to vote against the budget when the moment came.
2005-2010 දක්වා ආපසු හැරී බැලීමක්
The years 2005 to 2010 were a period crowded with events: a great war between the government and the LTTE, and alongside it a great conflict between the government and the opposition movements. Ivan had wanted for some time to write a review of the conflict between those two sides in those five years, and of his own part in it.
විද්යුත් කැලෑ පත්තර සදාචාරය
It was reported that the telecommunications regulatory commission had made the e-News website hard to reach, and a number of local and foreign media organisations protested, as did the American and European Union missions. Ivan’s article is about what those websites do and about the freedom they claim.
දූෂණය සනාථ කළයුත්තේ කටකථාවලින් නොව නිශ්චිත සාක්ෂිවලිනි
Corruption is the loudest subject of the campaign and the worst argued. Ivan says any administration’s corruption deserves scrutiny at an election, then insists the opposition move from rumour to specific proof — and gives his own examples, among them a broadcasting licence written into a regulator’s own name and sold on. Assets declarations filed with nominations, he notes, are documents anyone may examine.
සාකච්ඡා කිරීම හා සටන් කිරීම
Accused at a public forum of helping the government’s war, Ivan answers by setting out
thirty years of his own dealings with power: the twenty-odd statements he has given the CID,
the night J.R. Jayewardene ordered him to drop a column and the month he obeyed before
resuming it, the raid on the Ravaya office five days after he declined President Premadasa’s
invitation, and the meetings with Chandrika Kumaratunga after attacks on journalists.
Journalists, he argues, should be able to telephone anyone in the country; the fault lies
only in misusing the connection.
Mangala’s Unfinished Revolution
Mangala Samaraweera’s revolt against President Rajapaksa has hurt the regime, but Ivan finds it neither consistent nor honest. He compares it with the 1991 impeachment move by Athulathmudali and Dissanayake, and reminds readers of the share Samaraweera took under Kumaratunga and of the waste in the institutions he controlled.
ස්වාධීන කොමිෂන් ගැන ජනාධිපතිනියගේ වැදි බණ
The President has lectured the Constitutional Council that commission members must be honest, impartial and free of corruption charges, while objecting to some nominees and saying Human Rights Commission members she appointed stay until March 2003. Ivan contrasts this with her own appointments: an acting Elections Commissioner during her own election, Sarath N. Silva as Chief Justice while under inquiry, Harry Jayawardena and Sripathi Suriyarachchi. He proposes a parliamentary committee to hear objections, criticises Faiz Mustapha’s conduct as HRC chairman, and argues the old commissions lapsed under the 17th Amendment.
එජාප ආණ්ඩුවක් යටතේ රාවය ක්රියාකරන්නට යන්නේ කෙසේද?
Ivan sets out Ravaya’s stance after the change of government. He rejects the claim that the paper makes and unmakes governments, explains why it backed the SLFP before 1994 and turned against Chandrika Kumaratunga after the 1997 and Wayamba election violence, and states its positions on the UNP government, the People’s Alliance, whose ruling clique he names, and the JVP. He also contests a Press Council ruling he says Mangala Samaraweera and Wijeyadasa Rajapakshe engineered.