අඬමුද? සිනාසෙමුද?
This article critically examines the controversial tenure and actions of former Chief Justice Sarath Nanda Silva, detailing his abuse of judicial power for personal and political gain. It outlines his role in imprisoning S.B. Dissanayake to appease President Chandrika Kumaratunga, his subsequent legal betrayal of Kumaratunga following a personal insult regarding his behavior toward women, and his intimidation of treasury officials to secure an abnormally high pension. The author also provides a detailed investigative account of a 2004 incident near Diyawanna Oya, where police allegedly found the Chief Justice half-naked in a parked vehicle with a woman, using the cover-up of this event to highlight the systemic corruption and apathy within Sri Lanka’s political, parliamentary, and judicial systems.
මැන්ඩෙලාගෙන් උගත යුතු පාඩම්
Nelson Mandela, Ivan writes, is second in greatness only to Gandhi, and in nation-building he surpassed him: he united two races divided for centuries by hatred, making whites part of the nation rather than overthrowing them, then left power when his work was done. Both leaders refused to hate their oppressors and kept Marxism within their movements without becoming its prisoners. Sri Lanka’s divisions of race, religion, caste and class are far smaller than South Africa’s; what it lacks is an ideological movement that changes attitudes, which no constitution alone can do.
චෝගම්වලින් පසු ජනාධිපතිවරණයක්!
After a costly CHOGM that worsened Sri Lanka’s standing, Ivan predicts an early presidential election, called before a fragile economy — falling exports, heavy Chinese loans, banks lending to the state instead of business, finance companies near collapse — gives way. The government runs on three wheels, Mahinda, Basil and Gotabaya Rajapaksa, and the family is fraying over succession, as D.S. Senanayake’s preference for Dudley once split the UNP. With discontent in the SLFP, the JHU and all communities, he foresees a three-cornered contest: Karu Jayasuriya on a system-change platform, Chandrika Kumaratunga seeking to reclaim the SLFP, and an unpredictable royal battle.
රාජ්ය නිලධරතන්ත්රය
Politicians come and go but officials stay, Ivan argues, and a strong, law-bound bureaucracy is what has kept India’s democracy standing. Sri Lanka had one until the 1972 constitution weakened it and the 1978 constitution destroyed it. He traces the result through the forced resignation of Auditor General Wijesuriya, outsiders placed over the Elections Department, and Chief Justices chosen for loyalty from Wanasundera’s passing-over to Shirani Bandaranayake’s removal. Reviving the Seventeenth Amendment’s independent commissions is no cure, he says, because they had no power to punish a president who ignored them.
පක්ෂපාතභාවයට කප්පම් ගෙවන අපක්ෂපාතභාවයට දඬුවම් දෙන ක්රමයක්
Prompted by a reader’s tip, Ivan sets out how former Elections Commissioner Dayananda Dissanayake obtained a prime plot in Nuwara Eliya on President Kumaratunga’s recommendation for Rs. 30,000 in 1995 and sold most of it five months later for over Rs. 5.2 million. Such favours, he argues, are the bribe the executive presidency pays for loyalty, continuing the plunder of estate land after 1977. Those who uphold the law are punished instead: Auditor General Wijesuriya forced out, Justices Wanasundera and Mark Fernando passed over, B.C. Perera driven from the Treasury, and Shirani Bandaranayake impeached.
මැතිවරණ තිබීම නිසා පමණක් රටක් ප්රජාතන්ත්රවාදීවන්නේ නැත
The true test of democracy, Ivan argues, is whether the opposition has a fair chance of winning power. Before 1977 it did: governments changed at almost every election, spending was capped, election petitions worked and the police stayed neutral. J.R. Jayewardene replaced that with a petrified system in which the president can call elections at will and turn every contest into a puppet show. Ivan recounts the rigging of the Jaffna Development Council poll, the 1999 installation of an outsider as acting Elections Commissioner, and a commissioner too afraid for his family to investigate forged ballots. The UNP, he says, now reaps what it sowed.
පරමාදර්ශී වීරයන් දෙදෙනකු සැමරීම
C.W.W. Kannangara and Professor Senaka Bibile, both remembered in the last week of September, meet Ivan’s test of the ideal hero: a large but practical dream for the public good, pursued by decent means against powerful opposition. Bibile’s drug policy broke the hold of the pharmaceutical companies before it was killed with him. Kannangara’s free education, won against the churches and D.S. Senanayake, spread literacy across the nation; yet, Ivan argues, it stressed quantity over quality, loaded parents’ duties onto the state, and failed in its stated goals of national unity and a thinking democratic citizenry.
මැතිවරණ ප්රතිඵල, දේශපාලන ක්රමය හා රනිල්
The government’s wins in two of the three provincial council elections surprise no one, Ivan argues: the post-1977 system is built so that the ruling party, drawing on the power of president, parliament, provincial councils and local bodies at once, almost always wins the elections between presidential polls. Tracing every contest from J.R. Jayewardene to Mahinda Rajapaksa, he says Ranil Wickremesinghe’s ridiculed position owes less to his personal failings than to a system that reduced even Sirimavo Bandaranaike to a political joke. The UNP, he concludes, is caught in the trap it set for others.
පිල්ලේගේ නිරීක්ෂණ
Whatever Sri Lanka gained by inviting Navi Pillay, Ivan argues, it lost through a media campaign that painted her as a blood-drinking demon and a minister’s lewd offer to marry her — insults recalling Premadasa’s jibe at Indira Gandhi. The government undoes its own good work, as in the North, and rules through a giant among dwarfs, unlike Sirimavo Bandaranaike’s or even J.R.’s cabinets. Pillay spoke within the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which Sri Lanka signed; her warning of drift towards authoritarianism is one Sri Lankans themselves can see.
ඉන්දු-ලංකා ගිවිසුම ආපසු හැරී බැලීමක්
As the government retreats from diluting the Thirteenth Amendment before the Northern Provincial Council election, Ivan argues that the Indo-Lanka Accord is an international treaty that cannot be changed unilaterally — and that after the war India, as Shivshankar Menon told him, would have backed a better devolution scheme. Drawing on K.M. de Silva and J.N. Dixit, he corrects the popular belief that the Accord was forced on Sri Lanka by the 1987 airdrop: it grew from the 1985 Delhi Accord, and without the IPKF the state might not have survived two insurgencies.