ආණ්ඩුව ආපසු හැරී බැලීමකට යා යුතුය
Restoring the country’s standing abroad is a challenge for Sri Lanka and not only for the government, and America has now joined the procession suspending aid over human rights, military aid included. Ivan traces it back to the political parties’ refusal to settle the constitutional council dispute honestly, and ends on the garment trade: 65 per cent of export income, four times what tea earns, and the engine of the whole economy.
ගතයුතු මග කුමක්ද?
Everyone knows the country is being pushed towards a great crisis and almost nobody knows where it ends. To the crisis the political system made, Ivan writes, the world oil crisis has now been added, and the weight is doubling. His illustration of what the country has become is the appetite for tax-free luxury vehicles — shared, he notes, by the movement fighting the state.
රට යන්නේ කොයිබට ද?
The country has gone a long time without an agreed policy on anything. Ivan follows the public-sector pay framework as it was abandoned for selected groups, the teachers’ boycott of marking, the courts’ response, and the examination system that is now an insoluble tangle — and reads the slogans on the protest posters as a measure of how far the national spirit has rotted.
ජූලි 10 සංකේත වර්ජනය අසාර්ථක වූයේ ඇයි?
The organisers called it a success; Ivan goes department by department and finds it was not. He explains why: demands that are political rather than occupational make a hartal of a strike under any international standard, the decision was taken at the top rather than on the ground, and Sri Lanka’s unions are as out of date as its parties.
හෙජින් ගිවිසුම හා ඇමතිගේ කරුණු පැහැදිලි කිරීම
The popular story and the real one are far apart. On the minister’s account in parliament, the hedging agreement was recommended to the corporation and the cabinet by the governor of the central bank, reviewed by a committee of senior officials, and then disowned when it went wrong — and the chairman of the corporation became the scapegoat for all of it.
තෙල් මිල, විධායකය හා අධිකරණය
The Supreme Court ordered petrol cut to 100 rupees from midnight on the 17th and the government did not do it, deciding to wait for the written judgment. Ivan understands why the public are delighted and still says the deeper problem is structural: in this system the executive misbehaves, the legislature misbehaves, and the judiciary misbehaves too — everyone discharging someone else’s responsibility instead of their own.
ඉදිරියේ එන ආර්ථික ව්යසනයට එක්සත්ව මුහුණදීමේ වැදගත්කම
Written for the last Ravaya of 2008, on the economic collapse coming towards the country and the case for meeting it as one rather than as parties.
Earning a system change
The World Bank, the IMF and the EU all say the political crisis must be solved alongside the economic one. Victor Ivan says the opposition parties are the obstacle, and calls this a golden opportunity being wasted.
Whither ends the Sri Lankan crisis?
Even with an IMF package the hardest part is still ahead. Victor Ivan returns to the JVP’s second insurrection for what it shows about how a power struggle turns into a bloodbath.
Making expectations realistic
The Aragalaya had a sensitive heart and no mature brain. Victor Ivan sets out what it achieved, why it failed, and what compromise the country would now have to reach.