මැතිවරණ කොමසාරිස්වරයා හා වත්කම් බැරකම් නීතිය
The law requires every candidate to declare the assets and liabilities of themselves, their spouse and their children under eighteen, and the elections commissioner has the power to make nominations conditional on it. Ivan asks why he does not use it, and proposes that the declarations be published on the department’s website so the public can read them.
අගවිනිසුරුට ප්රීතිමත් විශ්රාම ජීවිතයකට සුබ පැතුම්
Continuing the previous week, Ivan asks what a review of Sarath N. Silva’s judgments would
find, and answers with the record of appointments, plunder of public property, the company
he kept and the ambition to become head of state. He reports the meeting at which senior
counsel advised Chandrika Kumaratunga against appointing him — and Aloy Ratnayake’s
prediction that one day he would turn on her — and closes with the long list of lawyers and
judges who signed against him.
මහජනයාගේ පරමාධිපත්ය බලය සමග සෙල්ලම් කිරීම
The elections commissioner has asked voters not to vote for candidates accused of thuggery
and corruption, and Ivan asks how they are supposed to know who those are. India requires
every nomination to carry a sworn statement of assets and of cases pending; Sri Lanka has an
assets law that is not enforced and no ceiling at all on spending, while some Western
Province candidates have spent three or four hundred million rupees.
දුම්රිය ගමන හා වේගය
A commuter’s letter about the two and a half hours from Galle to Colombo sends Ivan through
the history of travelling speed, from the ox cart at eight miles an hour to trains that now
exceed three hundred. Sri Lanka had the best railway in colonial Asia and has since
shortened rather than extended it; nine hundred level crossings on a thousand kilometres of
track are what hold the trains back. He recalls Lalith Athulathmudali’s expressway joining
Hambantota to Jaffna, and finds the same instinct in the Yal Devi announcement.
ලලිත් කොතලාවල ප්රහේලිකාවක්ද?
The article examines the downfall of Lalith Kotelawala and the Golden Key Credit Company, questioning whether his philanthropic public image was a deliberate cover for an unregulated, fraudulent financial enterprise. It draws direct parallels between his deposit-taking methods and those of notorious scammers like Sakvithi Ranasinghe and Danduwam Mudalali. The piece further highlights systemic national issues, including the investment of undeclared black money by politicians, exorbitant corporate perks funded by depositors’ money, and the severe lack of regulatory oversight concerning financial operations and advertising in Sri Lanka.
යුද්ධයෙන් ඔබ්බට
Alongside ending the war and answering Tamil grievances, Ivan argues, the country must
attend to the global downturn reaching it: strengthen reserves, cut the imports it can do
without, encourage bicycles, and teach English to the tradesmen and nurses already trained
but shut out of the Western labour market for want of it. Agriculture, he writes, is the
country’s protection in this crisis.
ඉංග්රීසි භාෂාව හා තොරතුරු තාක්ෂණය
Following the government’s declaration of a year dedicated to Information Technology and English, this article critiques the poor state of digitalization in Sri Lanka’s public sector. Pointing to outdated practices in Parliament, Customs, and the CID, the author advocates for robust e-governance to curb corruption and increase efficiency. Furthermore, it addresses the national failure in English proficiency, contrasting Sri Lanka’s rigid, pronunciation-obsessed approach with India’s practical and fearless adoption of the language.
Political Funds- The Root of corruption
Ivan argues that the absence of any law on party and election funding is the main source of corruption in Sri Lanka. He compares the spending limits and disclosure rules of the United States, France and India with Sri Lanka’s single, unenforced assets law, and describes how candidates repay their backers from public resources.
දේශපාලන අරමුදල් හෙවත් දූෂණයේ මුදුන් මුල
Ivan puts the cost of a Sri Lankan presidential campaign at between 500 million and a
billion rupees and shows that no law governs where any of it comes from, J.R. Jayewardene
having repealed the pre-1978 controls. Setting the American, French and Indian regimes
against the Sri Lankan vacuum, he argues that parties financed by a few men with black money
must repay them from public resources, and calls this the taproot of the country’s
corruption.
ජනමාධ්යවේදීහු සදාචාර අර්බුදයක
Journalists demand information from everyone and are scrutinised by no one, Ivan argues — and when their own affairs come into question, they close ranks. He notes that Ranil Wickremesinghe’s criticism of media conduct went undiscussed, that neither the Centre for Policy Alternatives nor Sunanda Deshapriya explained their dispute publicly, and that people inside the Free Media Movement asked him to help keep its internal investigation out of the press. He then publishes figures: two officers paid 750 euros a month by INSI for journalist safety, whose existence most journalists do not know of; a protection fund paying 5,000 rupees a month to five families of murdered journalists while paying rents of 230,000 and 178,000 to two threatened ones; trainers paid up to 38,400 rupees for a two-day workshop, who also act as coordinators and judge the essay competitions. Four journalists’ November payments are itemised, with monthly incomes reaching 326,530 rupees.