ජිනීවා යෝජනාවේ ප්රතිවිපාක ගැන
After the Human Rights Council’s March 2014 resolution on accountability and reconciliation, Ivan argues that in the modern world no war, internal or external, ends without an accounting. Stirring patriotic feeling is easy, but the public, used to the open economy since 1977, will not bear the cost of sanctions. If the government keeps acting headstrong, sanctions will follow, and the ruin of the country will be written against Mahinda Rajapaksa’s name.
චෝගම්වලින් පසු ජනාධිපතිවරණයක්!
After a costly CHOGM that worsened Sri Lanka’s standing, Ivan predicts an early presidential election, called before a fragile economy — falling exports, heavy Chinese loans, banks lending to the state instead of business, finance companies near collapse — gives way. The government runs on three wheels, Mahinda, Basil and Gotabaya Rajapaksa, and the family is fraying over succession, as D.S. Senanayake’s preference for Dudley once split the UNP. With discontent in the SLFP, the JHU and all communities, he foresees a three-cornered contest: Karu Jayasuriya on a system-change platform, Chandrika Kumaratunga seeking to reclaim the SLFP, and an unpredictable royal battle.
පමාවී ඇස් ඇරීම
The government’s invitation to UN High Commissioner Navi Pillay, a new commission on disappearances and arrests over the Trincomalee killings show, Ivan says, that it has finally grasped world realities — too late. Firmness during the war was right; afterwards it should have changed gear and cooperated with the UN as any member must, like a cricket board with the ICC. Instead, swayed by extremists who believed a China–Russia–Iran bloc was rising, it picked fights with the West and India. He recounts the meeting after the Darusman report where that line prevailed.
පළාත් සභා මැතිවරණය ගැන
As the first Northern Provincial Council election approaches alongside polls in the North Western and Central provinces, Ivan warns the government not to repeat the blunder of the 1981 Jaffna District Development Council election, when its all-out bid to win led to violence, the burning of the Jaffna library and, with the 1982 referendum, the road to Black July and two insurrections. He expects the government to win in the South but with eroding support, as debt-funded white elephants, a squeezed economy, lost GSP+ and a rotting system shed flesh like a decaying body.
අරාජිකත්වයේ අත්තිවාරම්
Ivan argues that the government, lacking any theory of how rotten the whole system had become by the end of the war, is watching it collapse piece by piece into anarchy. Its answer to a corrupt police — sending the army, as at Rathupaswala — is worse than the disease. Champika Ranawaka’s own column describes a lumpen rich and a super-bureaucracy; the judiciary rotted under Sarath N. Silva; tax collection has collapsed into VAT fraud; and debt-funded infrastructure, the lost GSP+, the DCD milk-powder scare and the anti-fertiliser campaign over kidney disease all speed the slide.
අධිවේග මාර්ග හා දැක්මේ තිබෙන පුංචිකම
Recalling Lalith Athulathmudali’s dream of an expressway joining Hambantota and Jaffna through Colombo, Ivan contrasts the British road and rail network, the best in South Asia at independence, with the neglect that followed, as J.R. Jayewardene poured money into an airline against Lee Kuan Yew’s advice. The Southern Expressway is fast, he says, but serves the car-owning rich; built over a modernised double-track railway it would have needed no land acquisition and served the poor too. On his reckoning it will take two centuries to repay.
ක්රමයේ අර්බුදය උග්ර කරන පළාත් සභා මැතිවරණ
Hearing Sajith Premadasa promise better welfare for the rural poor under a UNP president, Ivan reflects that no change of president can rescue a system that has outlived its time. Prabhakaran’s defeat left the traditional political system without its enemy and exposed its decay: an economic crisis alongside lavish infrastructure spending, chaos in the energy sector, and mass recruitment of young people into state jobs to buy support. Holding provincial council elections piecemeal before their terms end, he argues, shows how deep the government’s crisis is.
රට තිබෙන්නේ අර්බුදයක මුවවිටය
Ivan credits the government with six years of growth, infrastructure and controlled inflation, but says it was bought with borrowing and an expensive defence of the rupee. Floating the rupee and sharply raising fuel prices marks a forced change of course, yet the government is patching one or two parts of a worn-out engine. The Petroleum Corporation’s losses from political price-fixing, subsidies and corruption, and grossly one-sided thermal-power contracts at the Electricity Board, are symptoms of a wider decay. A falling rupee and rising prices could bring inflation, closures and political unrest. The opposition should not treat the crisis as a chance to topple the government; only a national reorganisation of the political and administrative system, with all parties, can save the country.
දඩිබිඩි එළවළු විප්ලවය
It is not a lie that vegetables carried in sacks are crushed and bruised and that the waste is large; investigations into it began as far back as the 1970s. The waste needs preventing, and the way it is being tackled is not good: first identify the problem properly, then find the right remedy, then explain its value to every party concerned, and then try it in selected places rather than nationally at one stroke.
ව්යාපාර පවරා ගැනීමේ පනත
Two newspapers, one Sinhala and one English, led on the report that the government is moving to legislate in haste an act for taking over failed private sector businesses. Not all the government’s own businesses are profitable, Ivan points out: if every business must be profitable, the government should bring all of its own to profit before it puts a hand on the private sector.