කරුගේ ඇස් පෑදීම
Ivan welcomes Karu Jayasuriya’s call for the fragmented opposition to unite under a common banner to abolish the executive presidency, noting that for the first time Jayasuriya speaks of the political system as a whole. A statement is not enough, he argues, without a working programme, and he sets out six observations: the system has run its historical course; it fragments the opposition; it has lost legitimacy; it lets ruling groups drain the country’s wealth; it encourages corruption by removing old safeguards such as the ban on MPs doing business with the state; and it makes the rule of law, urged by the Lessons Learnt commission, impossible to achieve.
අධ්යාපන පරිපාලනය මස්ත බාල්දු කිරීම
Ivan criticises the absorption of 810 people without the required qualifications into the Sri Lanka Education Administrative Service at a time when 20,000 candidates sat an examination for 410 posts. He argues that such political favours degrade the service that runs the school system, and links the decision to wider failures in primary-school policy and the Z-score dispute over university admissions.
පාර්ලිමේන්තුවේ පරිහානිය හා එය ජයගැනීම
Ivan’s submission to the parliamentary select committee on the conduct and discipline of MPs. He cites a survey in which only 12% of people trusted Parliament, and traces the decline through land grabs and permits, thugs and private militias, and black money in elections, contrasting today’s spending with the limits of 1965 and 1970. He recalls the L.M.D. de Silva and Thalgodapitiya commissions, which led to MPs being expelled, and argues that the assets and liabilities law should be enforced, with declarations published on a parliament website. He also proposes a German-style mixed electoral system instead of the plan of the Dinesh Gunawardena committee.
දේශපාලන ප්රතිසංස්කරණ මගහැරයෑමේ හැකියාවක් නැත
Had the country reorganised itself after the war, Ivan argues, it would have satisfied its people and reduced foreign pressure. Three insurrections have cost over 100,000 lives and many of the best leaders — a foreign scholar told a friend that no comparable country had lost so many — yet the causes were never addressed and the Youth Commission’s findings, including on caste, were ignored. Every institution has decayed: Parliament, a discredited judiciary with a 4% conviction rate, schools reliant on tuition, hospitals short of drugs, chaotic buses, a tangled public pay system. Taxes on flour and fuel fall on ordinary people without matching services; corruption is built into a system of black-money elections; and the President stands above the law, which is why the 13th and 17th Amendments were never binding. Only a fundamental reorganisation, including a fair settlement with the Tamils, can prevent permanent division.
ප්රතිසංස්කරණය හා ප්රතිනිර්මාණය
Answering lawyer Sudarshana Gunawardana of Rights Now and the Platform for Freedom, who wrote in Samabima that Ivan merely preaches to the ruler, Ivan says he never believed sermons to leaders could change the system. Rejecting violent revolution, he sees two peaceful routes — persuading lawmakers, the quicker one, or building an alternative within the old system, as set out in his book on saving Sri Lanka — and argues reform must come now, not after the next change of government, because terrorism is gone, the system is exposed and exhausted, and black money is taking over. He calls for a broad national reform agenda drafted as carefully as India’s constitution, dismisses the Platform as a foreign-funded project with a narrow base and no theory, and describes his own books on the political system, caste and religion as the result of long study.
විශාඛාව හා නිදහස් අධ්යාපනය
Ivan reproduces the list of charges — Rs 8,320 for two years, including a security fund, electricity and prize-giving — that Visakha Vidyalaya’s principal asked A/L students to pay at once, and asks whether this applies only to elite schools or to all. Even then, pupils will spend thousands a month on tuition. He describes a neighbour in Galle, a former military policeman now driving a three-wheeler, who spends almost all his earnings on tuition for his two daughters, who are home only at night. If children cannot pass exams without paid tuition, he concludes, the free school system is failing in its basic duty.
ඉතිරි කිරීමේ බැංකුවේ කම්බා හොරකම
On the chairman’s orders, the National Savings Bank agreed to buy 13% of The Finance Company for Rs 390 million from four individuals — two of them directors — at about Rs 50 a share when the market price was Rs 30–32 and the real value perhaps under Rs 15, handing them some Rs 140 million. A senior officer alerted the Treasury Secretary and the President and the cheque was stopped, but the sellers were paid through Sampath Bank. The chairman, Pradeep Kariyawasam, is a political appointee and the husband of Chief Justice Shirani Bandaranayake, whom the government had placated with state posts for him when it passed her over for Asoka de Silva. Ivan warns that the case cannot be handled fairly, recalls how Sarath N. Silva destroyed the judiciary’s standing, and says no ethnic solution matters without a trustworthy judiciary.
දියර කිරි හා කිරිපිටි
The government’s answer to the dairy crisis — raising the price of powdered milk and the import duty to Rs 92 a kilo — may ease farmers’ problems but will mainly burden consumers and fill the Treasury, unless the revenue goes to dairy development. Urging people to drink local liquid milk instead of imported powder is an appealing patriotic slogan that ignores habits, Ivan argues: the country produces only 15% of its milk and spends Rs 36 billion on powder imports, so the goal must be to produce all its milk powder at home from large farms with high-yielding cows, with long-life milk made locally. He also suggests curd-based dishes and drinks on Indian lines, a cheap nutritious national meal, promotion of wild boar meat, and easing gun rules for farmers to control crop pests.
තේ කර්මාන්තය නගා සිටුවීම
Tea, the editorial recalls, transformed Sri Lanka: it brought South Indian labour, roads and railways, and created the fortunes of low-country families such as Jeronis de Soysa, whose descendants’ wealth funded schools and hospitals. Nationalisation under Sirimavo Bandaranaike failed, and land-reform holdings became a pool for politicians’ land grabs, while privatisation sold estates cheaply. Smallholders from the south saved the industry, with double the yields of large estates. Since plantation workers’ children are leaving, the editorial proposes making workers smallholders on inalienable land, with companies limited to processing and marketing, and urges value-added exports on the Dilmah model and strict laws against blending inferior tea, as India and China turn to domestic consumption.
එළවළු සහ කිරි හරක්
Like vegetable farmers at the New Year, dairy farmers are now pouring away milk as Nestlé, yoghurt makers and the state-owned Milco limit purchases. Ivan argues that the government’s enthusiasm for food production, including the Divi Neguma home-garden drive, lacks a plan for surpluses. He suggests changing eating habits — more vegetables, soups, juices and local fruits such as jambu — linking tourist hotels with supplier villages, building storage through large companies, and national crop planning on the Israeli model with an eye to export markets in the Maldives and the Middle East. For milk, citing a dairy expert, he proposes large company-run farms with high-yielding cows on the country’s abandoned paddy land, leased from owners, to produce powdered milk at home.