වර්ගවාදය හා නායකත්වයේ අර්බුදය
Lee Kuan Yew was right, this piece argues, that Sri Lanka failed because its leaders could not manage racial passions. Bandaranaike knew Sinhala Only without provision for Tamil was unjust, yet tore up his pact with Chelvanayakam under pressure from militant monks; Dudley Senanayake lacked the courage to see his own pact through; J.R. Jayewardene legislated District Development Councils but could not bear to see the TULF win Jaffna. Mahinda Rajapaksa had the golden chance after the war and let it pass. The Northern Provincial Council election is a silver lining, if leaders on all sides stop inciting their people.
පිල්ලේගේ නිරීක්ෂණ
Whatever Sri Lanka gained by inviting Navi Pillay, Ivan argues, it lost through a media campaign that painted her as a blood-drinking demon and a minister’s lewd offer to marry her — insults recalling Premadasa’s jibe at Indira Gandhi. The government undoes its own good work, as in the North, and rules through a giant among dwarfs, unlike Sirimavo Bandaranaike’s or even J.R.’s cabinets. Pillay spoke within the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which Sri Lanka signed; her warning of drift towards authoritarianism is one Sri Lankans themselves can see.
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.
බැරැක්ක සංවර්ධනය
Unlike after 1971 and 1989, when troops returned quickly to barracks, the defeat of the LTTE brought glorification of the forces and a steady military creep into civilian life: officers as governors and secretaries, soldiers running what they build, principals given military ranks. Ivan argues that soldiers and rulers who ended the war did their paid duty and the public owes them thanks, not debt. Command without question suits armies, not societies. The army’s shooting of unarmed villagers protesting polluted water at Rathupaswala, Weliweriya, shows the cost of barrack rule.
විග්නේශ්වරන් මුවහමක් කරගැනීම
Answering Sinhala nationalist attacks on C.V. Wigneswaran, the TNA’s Northern chief ministerial candidate, as a new Anton Balasingham, Ivan argues that the dream of Eelam died with the LTTE. The TNA’s surviving leaders were hostages of Prabhakaran, not his followers, and signalled goodwill that the victors ignored. Wigneswaran — a retired Supreme Court judge who refused to bow to Sarath N. Silva, never an LTTE sympathiser, with children married to Sinhalese — should be welcomed. As Europe learned after the Thirty Years’ War, racial and religious extremism is losing its hold in Sri Lanka too.
රජිව් ගාන්ධි ලංකාවේ වීරයෙක්ද? ද්රෝහියෙක්ද?
After a brief tribute to the Elections Commissioner for requiring asset declarations with nominations, Ivan marks the Accord’s 26th anniversary by defending Rajiv Gandhi against the Sinhala view of him as a scheming invader. Drawing on J.N. Dixit, he recounts Rajiv’s insistence on signing amid riots, his calm after a sailor’s rifle-butt blow, his concessions to Prabhakaran and the IPKF operations that led to his assassination. The IPKF, he argues, saved the state from two simultaneous insurgencies until Premadasa armed the LTTE; Sri Lanka should honour Rajiv with a statue.
ඉන්දු-ලංකා ගිවිසුම ආපසු හැරී බැලීමක්
As the government retreats from diluting the Thirteenth Amendment before the Northern Provincial Council election, Ivan argues that the Indo-Lanka Accord is an international treaty that cannot be changed unilaterally — and that after the war India, as Shivshankar Menon told him, would have backed a better devolution scheme. Drawing on K.M. de Silva and J.N. Dixit, he corrects the popular belief that the Accord was forced on Sri Lanka by the 1987 airdrop: it grew from the 1985 Delhi Accord, and without the IPKF the state might not have survived two insurgencies.
බිත්තරය සහ ගොළුබෙල්ලා
Ivan argues that Sri Lanka is turning its back on a globalised world in which two million of its people already work abroad and foreign workers fill jobs at home. Rather than despise young people’s dream of emigrating, the state should equip them with vocational training and English to go legally; the nursing schools, still teaching a 1935 syllabus in Sinhala, are his case in point. Those abroad must learn to live with other faiths and foods — the man who retches at snails peeled like eggs will not last — and Sri Lanka’s image, damaged by triumphalism, follows them.
අරාජිකත්වයේ අභියෝගය
Ivan reads the weeks since Vesak as signs of a country drifting into anarchy: rotten institutions are collapsing with nothing to replace them. A monk’s staged self-immolation, sold to television by a journalist as an exclusive; a Deputy Inspector General, Vass Gunawardena, exposed as a kidnapper and contract killer; the fusion of politicians and the criminals who guarded them during the insurgencies; and a push to scrap the Thirteenth Amendment unilaterally. He traces Indo-Lankan hostility to the UNP’s 1977 insults to Indira Gandhi and warns that breaking the Accord would complete the slide.