ස්වභාවික ව්‍යසන යන්ගෙන් වන හානිය උග්‍ර කරන දේශපාලන සාධක
The damage done to the Northern, Eastern and North Central provinces by the flooding is enormous. Measured against the tsunami the loss of life is far smaller and the loss of property is larger: tanks destroyed wholly or in part, newly built and newly repaired highways damaged, and heavy losses to paddy and vegetable crops.
අවිධිමත්භාවයට මහජනයා වන්දි ගෙවීම
Among the bad features native to this political system, one of the most important is that there is no orderly way of weighing the good and the bad of a state transaction — sometimes worth hundreds of millions — before final approval is given to it. The article works through the hedging agreements, the purchase of electricity from the private sector, and how risk and return are shared between the private and the state sectors.
මහත්මා ගාන්ධි ඝාතනයේ 63 වැනි සංවත්සරය වෙනුවෙනි. ගාන්ධි ශ්‍රී ලාංකික අපට අදාළවන්නේ කෙසේද?
Gandhi can be called the greatest theorist the world has produced on popular struggle for social justice, and its greatest fighter. Before he introduced his non-violent tradition the world had only a method of fighting evil with evil; he gave it a way of defeating evil without becoming evil, and proved it worked by testing it in an enormous and complicated society.
වසන්ත සමයේ අවසානය
Because of the absolute power the presidency gives, leaders who reach it fall in love with the system as a matter of habit. But it was never properly made, and the oppression built into it works not only on the opposition and the public but on the president himself — and what a leader who reaches the office can see is only the sweetness of absolute power, never the poison hidden under it.
විදුලි මිල හා ප්‍රශ්න
Raising the price of electricity is destructive not only to ordinary people but to manufacturers and businesses. Widening the concession from 90 units to 120 relieves ordinary households and settles nothing for industry: in ceramics and similar trades electricity is about half the cost of production, and the rise limits what some industries can compete at.
වේගවත් ඉදිරිගමනක් සඳහා දූෂණයට වැට බැඳිය යුතුය
Sri Lanka can only move quickly after the war if it reforms the political and institutional obstacles in its way, and cutting the cabinet to thirty-five is a start. Ivan attacks a convention he traces to J.R. Jayewardene: letting ministers and office-holders enrich themselves from the transactions of the ministries beneath them, which drains the treasury and turns politics from a matter of honour into a squalid way of making money. He questions the privileges — two vehicle permits for a six-year term when one car easily lasts six years, permits for officials who already have official cars, ministers running fleets, backup vehicles for bodyguards now the war is over. Corruption is not confined to politics: Customs collects perhaps a quarter of what it should, and Inland Revenue, Motor Traffic and Excise are no different. Information technology could triple that revenue at modest cost.
සාමකාමී හා ශිෂ්ටසම්පන්නවීමේ වැදගත්කම
Elections are the highest exercise of popular sovereignty and a measure of a country’s political civility — and on that measure Sri Lanka’s record since 1977 offers only cause for shame. Every administration has used state resources and state media for its campaign; only once has election law been followed to the letter, and only because the Supreme Court intervened. People die at every election, the educated speak of it with distress, and everyone forgets once polling closes. Sri Lanka may be the only country with no law controlling party and campaign funds, yet a leading presidential candidate can spend over 1,500 million rupees, and even a parliamentary candidate 100 million. That money is other people’s and must be repaid in some form: this is the foundation of corruption. Whoever wins, both candidates must pledge there will be no reprisals.
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.
අල්ලස හා දූෂණය
The challenge corruption poses to the country’s progress is larger and more tangled than terrorism was. Ivan traces the machinery from the old bribery department to the commission that replaced it in 1994, and then shows what it is up against by following a television station sealed by the defence ministry, a fundamental rights petition heard by the chief justice, and the chief justice’s own name on the resulting company’s board — entered in the register as a social worker.
විධායක ජනාධිපති ක්‍රමය ගැන තවදුරටත්
Ranil Wickremesinghe has written an affectionate essay for J.R. Jayewardene’s 103rd birthday while his party’s official position is that Jayewardene’s creation should be abolished. Ivan takes the essay apart against the record — the referendum, the pardon of Gonawala Sunil, the 1982 district council election run by the ruling party rather than the commissioner, and a bribery commission that in thirty years has convicted nobody.