දේශපාලන ප්රතිසංස්කරණ කොයිබටද?
The chairman of the All Party Conference says the government will put its political proposals only after the presidential and parliamentary elections. Ivan notes that every party has criticised the executive presidency while in opposition except the one that created it, and warns that a constitution written from a two-thirds majority is written one-sidedly, as in 1972 and 1977.
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.
ත්රස්තවාදය ජයගැනීමෙන් නොනැවතී දේශපාලන ක්රමය ජයගත යුතුය
The Western Province result leaves the government stronger after three years than when it
began, the UNP down from 39 seats to 30 and the JVP from 22 to three. Ivan argues that the
moment to press for a change in the political system is precisely when the opposition cannot
win power by ordinary means, and that the president’s own promise to abolish the executive
presidency is the lever the opposition should use.
The Elections Commission and the 17th Amendment
Provincial elections are being held without the Elections Commission the 17th Amendment promised. Ivan recalls Ranil Wickremesinghe’s conduct on the Constitutional Council, including his objection to Justice K.M.M.B. Kulatunga, compares India’s Election Commission, and argues that the amendment’s authors did not understand the presidential system it had to work within.
පෞද්ගලික වෛද්ය විද්යාල ප්රශ්නය ගැන වැඩිදුරටත්
Replying to a Peradeniya medical student who objected to his earlier column, Ivan asks why
selling medical services is acceptable if selling medical education is not, and sets World
Health Organization figures for doctors, nurses and pharmacists per ten thousand people
against those of Bangladesh, India, Malaysia, Korea and Europe. Two per cent of Sri Lankan
children who start school reach a degree, against forty in Korea; the state holds a monopoly
on universities it cannot fund, and twenty-two billion rupees a year leaves the country with
the students it turns away.
ප්රතිවාදී නායකයන් අඟුටුමිට්ටන් බවට පත්වී ජනාධිපති යෝධයකු බවට පත්වීම
An analysis of the Sri Lankan political landscape following the 2009 provincial council elections. The article discusses how Mahinda Rajapaksa solidified his power, rendering opposition leaders like Ranil Wickremesinghe politically impotent and crippling the UNP and JVP. The author urges the President not to misuse this massive mandate like J.R. Jayewardene did, but instead use it to dismantle the corrupt political system, establish private universities, eradicate ethnic divisions, and build a truly democratic nation.
අලුතෙන් හිතන්නට කාලය පැමිණ තිබේ
Sri Lanka is close to winning one of the two decisive questions before it. Where every previous approach had failed and the country was stuck with no end in sight, Rajapaksa made a reckless attempt, staking his own survival and the country’s on fighting the LTTE to a military defeat, and went on down that road against opposition at home and abroad. The world thought he would destroy the country and himself; instead he reached the post he aimed at. The world is changed by those who swim upstream, and until they arrive they are taken for madmen rather than heroes. Military defeat will not settle the ethnic question by itself, but it creates conditions in which it can be settled — and doing so is the shared responsibility of everyone, with the opposition’s duty being to help rather than obstruct. The second question, replacing a disordered political system, needs the same cooperation.
අචේ විසඳුම ම ශ්රී ලංකාවට ද ගැලපේ
Prabhakaran can stop the war as surely as the president can, Ivan writes, and the main obstacle to a negotiated settlement is the Thimpu principles, framed to make negotiation impossible and since treated as its precondition. He sets out the Aceh settlement and what its equivalent would look like here: disarmament, the withdrawal of the additional forces, the high security zones gone, people back on their land and an interim administration until a provincial election.
කළ හැක්කේ කුමක්ද?
Addressed to a coalition of civil organisations: agree on the aim before anything else, and make it a large one. Ivan proposes a Sri Lanka whose political system treats every citizen as an equal regardless of race, religion, language, caste or sex, works out which three demands to begin with, and sets out a campaign — posters, workshops, interviews, lunch-hour pickets, sermons — to carry them.
Whither Justice?
A retired army commander and a respected engineer petitioned the Supreme Court over judicial appointments made without constitutional council approval. Victor Ivan records what happened: a bench including the Chief Justice heard the petition and then directed the Attorney General to establish whether the petitioners had abused the judiciary by bringing it. The message, as he reads it, is that nothing the President does may be questioned, and that asking is itself an offence. Neither man belonged to the UNP or sought party advantage; they went to the last place open to a citizen with a grievance about governance. The Court’s first duty is to defend the constitution against an executive assuming powers it does not have, and by making the protection of the President its duty instead it has annulled the constitution without replacing it — leaving the country, Ivan writes, with no fundamental law at all. Similar cases from the Organization of Professional Associations and the People’s Movement for Good Governance have met the same immunity ruling. What strikes him most is who is fighting: citizens who know they will lose, while the UNP, the JVP and the Jathika Hela Urumaya say nothing and parliament will not even debate it. A judiciary that abandons its supervision of the executive, he concludes, brings the country closer to Prabhakaran’s Reich, where no authority may investigate Prabhakaran.