ජාතික ගීතය හා දෙමළ සන්ධානය
The Tamil National Alliance’s councillors in Vavuniya took their oaths to the national anthem, which Ivan reads as an important signal. He traces the anthem’s rejection to the Vaddukoddai resolution of 1976, after which the Federal Party and the Tamil United Liberation Front stopped using it and the LTTE banned it in northern schools, and asks the alliance not to stop there.
යුද්ධය ජයගැනීමෙන් පමණක් රටට ඉදිරියට යා හැකිද?
The victory opened a space the country has not used well. Ivan grants the president the larger share of the credit and then turns to the West’s changed policy, to the covenant on civil and political rights the country has signed, and to Vietnam — which defeated a great power militarily and then spent decades as one of the poorest countries on earth. Jayewardene, he ends, made a hat to fit his own head; Rajapaksa’s task is to make one that fits the country’s.
විදේශ ප්රතිපත්තිය නැවත සලකා බැලිය යුතුයි
The foreign secretary was told to appear in person for a British visa, which the government reads as a breach of diplomatic courtesy. Ivan agrees the government’s position is right and argues that being right is not enough: a small country gains nothing by quarrelling with the Western world, and he recalls what calling Indira Gandhi a cow cost the country under Premadasa.
විධායක ජනාධිපති ක්රමය අවශ්ය නම් එය ප්රතිසංවිධානය කළ යුතුය
A change to the system can only be had if government and opposition both want it for its own sake rather than as a way of unseating each other. Ivan sets the American presidency against the Sri Lankan one point by point — an electoral college rather than a direct vote, no power to dissolve the legislature or to call an early election, an impeachment that can actually remove — and argues that ours was written so that none of those checks bite.
තිස්සනායගම් නඩුවේ තීන්දුව ගැන
Twenty years’ rigorous imprisonment for J.S. Tissainayagam has drawn the world’s attention as his detention did. Ivan argues that judges must sentence in proportion to the gravity of the offence and within the law, lists earlier judgments where that was not done, and notes that most of the complaints against Sri Lanka in Geneva were aimed not at the government but at the former chief justice — and that the country, not he, is paying for them.
දේශපාලන ක්රමයේ වෙනසක් අත්යවශ්යය
With the UNP now for abolishing the executive presidency and the JVP back to its old position, Ivan turns to how a constitution should be made rather than what it should say. Taking the failures of 1972 and 1977 as the warning, he sets out the conditions: not done in haste, not built around the ruling party’s convenience, everyone who should be at the table actually there.
සරල දේශපාලනයෙන් ඔබ්බට සිතීම
Every outlet but one spoke with a single voice over the Malabe abduction, and Ivan credits that with the arrests that followed. He turns to a pattern in the reporting of the suicide attacks — on Jeyaraj Fernandopulle, on the president, on Sarath Fonseka — in which the bomber was brought to the place by someone inside, and asks whether the parties can think past defeating each other.
කේ පී අසුවීම
Taking KP abroad and bringing him to Sri Lanka is a considerable victory, Ivan writes, not only because he led the diaspora’s notional state after Prabhakaran but because he ran the LTTE’s arms purchasing — and everyone in custody now talks. He notes that the low turnout at the two northern council elections shows the Tamil people’s unease is not over.
ගවේෂණාත්මක වාර්තාකරණය
Reviewing the first award for investigative journalism at the editors’ excellence ceremony, Ivan sets the winning work — a case that the Accelerated Mahaweli Programme destroyed the Rajarata tank ecology and caused the kidney disease there — against what investigative reporting is defined to be, and argues the ecology had broken down before the Mahaweli reached it. He asks to be corrected if he is wrong.
නිල බලය අයථා ලෙස පාවිච්චි කිරීමට ඉඩදිය යුත්තේ ඇයි?
Six junior officers have been transferred over the abduction and assault of a student at the Malabe technology institute, but the head of the Colombo crime division who directed it has faced nothing. Ivan argues the country needs as firm a policy towards educated men who abuse official power as it does towards uneducated criminals, and asks why the police chief has not acted on the defence secretary’s instruction.