13 වැනි සංශෝධනයේ අනාගතය
The Jathika Hela Urumaya’s ministers have said they will leave the government if police and land powers are devolved, and that the Tamil people’s problems amount to food, clothing, shelter and social dignity. Ivan answers that the amendment’s value is symbolic as much as practical, and that a country which fought a merciless war and then says the Tamils are its own brothers has to show it.
එල්ටීටීඊ පරාජය හා දෙමළ ජනතාව යුද්ධයේ අවසානය හා රටේ අනාගතය
Because the war ended with the whole LTTE leadership destroyed rather than with a remnant intact, Ivan argues, the movement lost both the capacity and the confidence to regroup — which is why Prabhakaran’s death brought no violent reaction. He turns from there to what the peace should be used for: relaxing security, rebuilding villages, and setting the army to public works.
විසඳුම කුමක්ද?
Before the argument about what solution the Tamils are to be given, Ivan writes, comes the
question of the displaced: three hundred thousand people to be housed and fed, with
sanitation and water the immediate problem and disease the risk behind it. Everyone agrees
on equal rights for all citizens regardless of race, religion or caste; the disagreement
begins after that, and on a question of this weight the country needs a common position.
පෝද්දල ජයන්තට පහරදීම
After a television programme used footage of Poddala Jayantha and Sunanda Deshapriya while
alleging that some journalists were paid by the LTTE, Poddala came to Ivan and asked him to
intervene. Ivan describes what he did, what the president said when the question was put to
him, and why he thinks naming such journalists would have been ruinous — and argues that the
fault can only be corrected by looking critically back at the policy that produced it.
What Next?
Written after the LTTE’s defeat in May 2009, the piece credits Mahinda Rajapaksa, Sarath Fonseka and Gotabhaya Rajapaksa with the victory and turns to what remains: uniting a people divided by race, religion and caste, and settling the ethnic question. Ivan blames the Tamil leaders who first proposed a separate state as much as Prabhakaran, and argues that 1956 could have been handled differently.
අපි ජයගත්තෙමු. එය ප්රමාණවත් ද?
Twenty-nine of the forty-seven members of the Human Rights Council in Geneva voted with Sri
Lanka and twelve against, which Ivan counts an important victory in the international
argument. Some violation of rights is unavoidable in any war and more so against a terrorist
movement; but the victory has created a humanitarian problem the country cannot solve
without the world’s help, and on that question it should speak with one voice.
අවතැන්වූවන් පිළිබඳ ප්රශ්න
Ivan calls the UN Secretary-General’s remark to CNN — that he had never seen camps as bad
anywhere — a bad statement, and notes that the Swedish opposition leader who visited the
same day was far less harsh. Housing three hundred thousand people is neither simple nor
quick; the camps are improving rather than worsening, the identification of cadres has to
finish before the army can hand them over, and the contractors’ opportunities to profit
should be cut back.
ආරම්භ වී තිබෙන නව පරිච්ඡේදය අර්ථවත් කරගැනීම
A movement that held a large part of the country by force for close to three decades has
been destroyed, and Ivan writes that in every one of the three armed rebellions the state
has put down, the enemy was its own citizens. What the country owes itself now is to find
the social, economic and political causes that keep producing them, and to use the opening
the victory has made rather than waste it as earlier openings were wasted.
ශ්රේෂ්ඨත්වය පරිපූර්ණ කිරීම
Judging by the weapons taken and the infrastructure found, Ivan writes, another decade of
the LTTE would have been past imagining — and both the wars and the peace talks had
strengthened its de facto state rather than dissolving it. Mahinda Rajapaksa is therefore
the greatest of the country’s leaders since independence; but the greatness is not complete,
and completing it means opening every window to a national argument about what Sri Lanka
should now become.
ප්රභාකරන්ගේ විනාශය
Prabhakaran’s organisation was thought unbeatable and fell like a great tree. Ivan argues
that had he accepted defeat as Hitler did — taking his own life to release his followers —
the war could have ended without harm to the civilians, and that instead he made them his
shield. Setting him beside Wijeweera, he finds two able men whom a particular political
climate turned cruel, and asks what kind of country would not have done that to them.