පිළිකාවේ සදාචාරය හා සදාචාරයේ පිළිකාව
The death of a village teacher, a neighbour and relative, from cancer, and the difficulty of recovering her body, lead Ivan to examine the state of cancer care and medical ethics in Sri Lanka. Drawing on a conversation with his daughter, a professor’s account of radiation equipment, his family’s own hospital experiences and a doctor he respects, he describes failing diagnostic equipment, the dominance of private channelling, rushed surgery in state hospitals and a change in the class character of the medical profession.
ගෝඨාභයගේ හෙවණැල්ල
Ivan credits Defence Secretary Gotabaya Rajapaksa with driving the war to a conclusion, but argues that he failed at what must follow the defeat of an internal rebellion: the humane rehabilitation of the defeated, as after 1971 and 1989, and letting a people mourn its dead. His gravest wrongs, Ivan writes, were the killing of criminals without trial, which continued after the war, and his patronage of extremist groups, from the halal campaign to the Beruwala and Aluthgama violence, which threatens to undo the peace won by defeating Prabhakaran.
වැට් වංචාවේ හෙළි නොවූ රහස්
As the VAT fraud case ended with a verdict on a former Inland Revenue commissioner, one of thirteen accused of whom only five were ever arrested, Ivan recalls that Ravaya first exposed the fraud, the largest tax fraud in a South Asian state institution, on 26 June 2005, because the authorities had failed to act. He criticises the incomplete investigation, the ease with which an accused obtained travel documents and left, as in the forged-passport case of Rizana Nafeek, and the failure to honour the Auditor-General’s officer who uncovered the fraud.
නාගරික දේපොළ කොල්ලකෑම
Ivan describes the organised gangs that seize valuable urban land and houses, often with political protection, and gives examples: a wealthy donor’s Cinnamon Gardens property left to the Maharagama Cancer Hospital that was taken after his death, and a land fraud at Malabe in which a woman scientist who bought land was cheated, until police finally arrested a man who had become a multi-millionaire through such deals and then released him after a statement.
සමාජ පාදඩකරණය
Starting from P.B. Jayasekera’s first novel, whose hero is a former rebel of the second JVP rising turned political fixer, Ivan traces how a lumpen class has come to dominate Sri Lankan society. A black economy existed before 1977, but the executive presidency, the open economy and patronage let thugs, criminals and politicians form an alliance, strengthened by the private militias of the 1988–89 terror and the war. The LTTE was defeated, he writes, yet violent crime has become an everyday event, and he asks where the country is heading.
දූෂණ මර්දනය හා ස්මෝල්ගේ ආදර්ශය
Reading the biography of W.J.T. Small, the principal who shaped Richmond College, Galle, Ivan recounts how Small overturned a cricket-captain election won by bribery, setting an example of integrity for the school. He contrasts it with the bribery allegation against the chairman of the Bribery Commission and argues that corruption is built into the executive presidency itself. Examples from his own experience follow: Lalith Athulathmudali’s account of how wealth flows from the presidency, a senior official’s confession, a customs officer punished for enforcing the law, and a young political star.
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.
නීති විද්යාලයේ විදුහල්පති ගෙදර යැවීම
The new Chief Justice’s suspension of the Principal of the Law College, reportedly for ensuring his own son passed with distinction, lays bare the rot in the legal community and the examination system, Ivan argues. The principal might well reply that he did the same for the children of the powerful for years without complaint. Ivan recalls a deputy examinations commissioner jailed for fixing A-level results, a Supreme Court bench that ordered a judge’s daughter admitted to law school without the marks, the Attorney General’s Department as a preserve of elite families, and principals who justify admission bribes by the lifestyle their schools demand.
කූට ලේඛන සංස්කෘතිය (ජාතික හැඳුනුම්පත හා ගමන් බලපත්රය)
Answering officials who disputed details in his series on the bureaucracy, Ivan stands by his accounts and then turns to how deep forgery runs. Using Dayananda Dissanayake’s Nuwara Eliya deal, he calculates the Treasury’s loss at over Rs. 6.1 million on one plot. Birth certificates without serial numbers, a corrupt identity-card office that issued LTTE suicide bombers genuine-looking cards, and a passport office that keeps no copies have created an industry, fed above all by the trade in underage and overage housemaids for the Middle East. Forgery, he says, now runs from school admissions to medical licences and doctorates.
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.