නැගෙනහිර ඡන්දය
The Eastern provincial council election is a turning point in the ethnic conflict, held in the territory the LTTE claimed while the war against it goes on. Ivan works through the demography district by district — no community holds a majority in the province — and the 2004 parliamentary results party by party, and shows why the chief ministership is the point of the dispute.
GSP+
The country faces losing the European tariff concession its garment exports depend on, and the political argument about it is being conducted without knowledge of the subject. Ivan explains what the concession is, what it is worth, why the crisis arose, how the conditions are being interpreted, and why a foreign policy still shaped by Cold War loyalties cannot handle it.
ඇඟලුම් කර්මාන්තය ආරක්ෂා කරගැනීම ජාතික වගකීමකි
Germany’s warning that the GSP+ concession could be withdrawn if the country does not meet the conditions it signed up to should be taken seriously, Ivan writes, and not enjoyed by the opposition as damage to the government. Garments drive the economy and employ village women; protecting the concession is the country’s responsibility, and if we have done wrong the answer is to put it right without delay.
අචේ විසඳුම ම ශ්රී ලංකාවට ද ගැලපේ
Prabhakaran can stop the war as surely as the president can, Ivan writes, and the main obstacle to a negotiated settlement is the Thimpu principles, framed to make negotiation impossible and since treated as its precondition. He sets out the Aceh settlement and what its equivalent would look like here: disarmament, the withdrawal of the additional forces, the high security zones gone, people back on their land and an interim administration until a provincial election.
මහින්ද හා ප්රභාකරන්
The sky is filling with the war’s black cloud and killing as much as possible has become its positive quality. Ivan asks where it ends — whether Mahinda brings Prabhakaran to his knees or the reverse — and answers that the honourable name goes to whichever leader is willing to admit that an injustice was done to the Tamil people and to put it right.
එල්ල වී තිබෙන අභියෝගයට එක්සත්ව මුහුණ දිය යුතුය
The war has entered a new phase and the LTTE has answered by attacking civilians in the south. Ivan distinguishes civilian deaths from air strikes, which may happen, from attacks aimed at civilians, which are chosen — then says the danger now is a second Black July, and that neither suppressing the opposition nor destabilising the government can be justified against it.
13 වැනි සංශෝධනය ක්රියාත්මක කිරීම
The government has decided to give provincial councils the full powers the 13th Amendment already allows. Ivan calls it arguable but better than doing nothing, and adds what costs nothing and is not being done either: making it possible to deal with state offices in Tamil in the north and east and in the Western and Central provinces, recruiting the staff for it, and rewarding bilingualism.
රට තීරණාත්මක තැනක
Ivan puts the decisions facing the country as a numbered list: whether to keep the All Party Representative Committee going and produce a settlement, whether to protect the European trade concession the garment industry depends on, and what the UNP is for if it will not take a far-sighted position on either.
2008 ආණ්ඩුවට තීරණාත්මකය
Opening the 2008 columns, Ivan reads the year ahead as the test of the Rajapaksa administration. The military advantage over the LTTE is its strongest asset and simultaneously its greatest liability — it strengthens the government’s standing while eroding the rule of law, its human rights standing and the household economy, and the tax structure it has built cannot absorb any of that.
තත්ත්වය ඛේදජනකයි
The year opened with the killing of a member of parliament — the third since the government took office, and all three Tamil. Ivan sets out what is alleged about the reduction of the murdered member’s guard after he voted against the budget, and asks how a country’s human rights position can improve when members must leave it to stay alive.