ඇමරිකාව හා ශ්රී ලංකාව
Bin Laden was a terrorist leader who had become a great threat to America, and America had the right to destroy him — we can be glad of it too. But America paid an enormous price for a partial victory: it overthrew the governments of two countries, and hundreds of thousands had to be killed to put down the unrest that followed.
අභියෝගය ජයගැනීම
Whatever the wrongs and shortcomings within the counter-campaigns launched to defeat the terrorist war Prabhakaran led and the terrorist war Wijeweera led, had those campaigns failed and those two movements won, what could have followed was a great destruction. In that sense, Ivan writes, whatever their faults, those campaigns protected the country’s existence.
මූන්ට හෝ මූන්ගේ කමිටුවට හෝ බැණවැදීම අර්බුදයට විසඳුමක් වන්නේ නැත
If Sri Lanka fails to overcome the confusion the report of the Secretary-General’s advisory committee has created, and will go on creating, then all the great hopes the victory in the war gave the country will collapse. The government should make meeting this crisis with self-confidence the first and largest item on its political agenda.
ජනාධිපති මහින්ද රාජපක්ෂ, දෙමළ අර්බුදය හා එක්සත් ජාතීන්ගේ සංවිධානය
The disagreement between Sri Lanka and the United Nations over the war against the LTTE is ripening into something that will go a long way, and personal factors have influenced its growth more than they should have. The way Sri Lanka responded when the UN asked its questions of a member state was neither right nor fair: what was needed instead of anger was a calm explanation.
ප්රඥාවන්ත ප්රවේශයක අවශ්යතාව
The recommendations of the panel of experts appointed by the UN Secretary-General may work as a factor damaging Sri Lanka’s progress, and the challenge arising from them may be as large as the one Prabhakaran posed and more complicated than that. It can still be settled to our advantage, or with the damage kept small, and doing that means changing the whole approach.
කිරි කළයට ගොම දැමීම
The prime minister told parliament during the emergency debate that the intelligence services had information about training at three secret camps in Tamil Nadu, aimed at killing Indian leaders and re-establishing the LTTE in Sri Lanka. If there is no true basis for it, Ivan replies, talk of that kind can do the country real harm — it can discourage the foreign investment Sri Lanka is hoping for.
සීසර්ගේ දේ සීසර්ටම දිය යුතුය
A member of the Tamil alliance charged in parliament that 200 of the 500 tractors India gave to farmers in the north had been handed to two state institutions. If that is true it is a wrong, and putting it right is the government’s responsibility. Resettlement and the projects planned for that region must be carried forward without a break, and life there brought back to normal quickly.
වාර්ගික සමගිය ශක්තිමත් කිරීම
On the morning of the 13th there was a friendly but heated exchange of views between the president and the newspaper editors and heads of media institutions, and one thing the president said with feeling deserves everyone’s attention. From there Ivan works through the defeat of Prabhakaran, the war crimes allegations, and the need to be rid of the politics of division.
තරුණ වෛරය සහ අසහනය
There have been three violent insurrections in Sri Lanka since independence, all of them youth insurrections, two Sinhala and one Tamil. The JVP’s 1971 rising was the first attempt by a political organisation to seize power by armed revolt, and a simple one that the forces put down easily in under a month. What follows is Ivan’s reckoning of where Wijeweera and Prabhakaran belong, and of what there is in all this to be shaken by.
සිරසට එල්ල වූ ප්රහාරය හා ඉදිරිය දැකීම
The attack on Sirasa’s head office in Braybrooke Place makes an ugly picture for the government, which has clashed with the network since the war and appeared to want it punished. Whatever set off this second attack, it looks like a campaign by the government or people connected to it against a media house that backed the opposition at the presidential election. Ivan concedes the government could argue Sirasa obstructed the war — a state may suspend most fundamental rights in wartime, and the power to wage war rests with the state, not with journalists — and notes that the press did not obstruct the campaigns against the two JVP insurrections, saving criticism until afterwards. But the war ended more than six months ago and the President has since won the election too. Supporting Fonseka was not illegal, and the winner is the one who should let old grudges go.