නව ව්යවස්ථාව ගැන
Continuing his response to the draft Nineteenth Amendment, Ivan sets out how a new constitution should be made: first agree the principles with the public, as South Africa and India did, then draft. He argues it must define a Sri Lankan nation of equal peoples and outlaw caste discrimination; return to a reformed parliamentary system with a mixed electoral system, a Senate and an Indian-style election commission; devolve power to village and district councils; bind governments to national policy frameworks, above all a foreign policy that respects India; and make the state secular.
ජාතියේ හා ආගමේ නාමයෙන් රට රැගෙන යන්නේ කොයිබටද?
Ivan warns that the anti-Muslim campaign now being led by groups of monks mirrors the climate before 1915, 1958 and 1983. He retells the 1915 Sinhala–Muslim riots, rooted in Dharmapala’s revival and Sinhala traders’ envy of Muslim commerce, and traces the Muslims’ long history in the island. Such a riot now, he argues, would be ruinous, and its premise betrays Buddhism itself: from the Kalama Sutta and the parable of the raft to Asoka’s edicts and Walpola Rahula, the Buddha’s teaching is one of free inquiry and tolerance.
අන්තෝ ජටා බහි ජටා
Ivan asks why more than a hundred thousand deaths in two insurrections have left so little mark on Sri Lankan thought and literature, recalling conversations with Simon Navagattegama and Ediriweera Sarachchandra and a sharp exchange with Sugathapala de Silva. He argues that caste, not only race and class, drove both rebellions: Wijeweera and Prabhakaran came from parallel non-dominant castes and drew their foot soldiers from oppressed ones. Only Premadasa grasped this, and the chance to rebuild society after the LTTE’s defeat has been squandered.
බොරුව හා රැවටිල්ල ජාතික ලක්ෂණයක්ද?
Ivan asks whether deceit is a national habit, and finds it at every turn of modern history: D.S. Senanayake’s staged ‘farmers’ and the governor-generalship promised to Lord Soulbury, the 1962 ‘gin-and-tonic’ coup plot, S.W.R.D. Bandaranaike’s Sinhala Only opportunism, and John D’Oyly’s bloodless capture of Kandy in 1815, whose native helpers’ descendants became the independence elite. Drawing on Marshall Singer, Henpitagedara Gnanaseeha and Robert Knox, he argues that leaders and people have deceived each other on language and religion until the country fell into an abyss.
ආණ්ඩුවේ ඉදිරි දැක්ම හා කාර්ය සාධනය
Ivan assesses the Rajapaksa government from its narrow 2005 victory to its unrivalled post-war dominance, crediting the defeat of the LTTE and real progress in resettlement and rehabilitation. He argues that the UNP’s opposition to the war destroyed its own base, that the government has given Tamils everything except their dignity, and that leaning towards China while breaking promises to India ignores the island’s geopolitical position. Mahinda Rajapaksa, he concludes, dreams like Lee Kuan Yew, Mahathir or J.R. Jayewardene of development without democracy.
නයාට ගසා පොල්ල වරද්දා ගැනීම
Ivan argues that the government’s impeachment of Chief Justice Shirani Bandaranayake has backfired: it expected her to resign, but the weak charges, the backing she has won from lawyers and the public, and international scrutiny ahead of the March Human Rights Council session have put it on the defensive. He lists this as the fourth clash between executive and judiciary under the 1978 system, after Neville Samarakoon’s time and Mark Fernando’s under Kumaratunga, and warns of a constitutional crisis if Parliament ignores a Supreme Court order, while noting that the judiciary is not blameless for the decline it now suffers.
රාජපක්ෂ ආණ්ඩුවට වැරදුණේ කොතැනද?
Ivan warns that Sri Lanka is again drifting into conflict with India, repeating J.R. Jayewardene’s mistake of the 1980s, when the Vadamarachchi operation led to Indian intervention. The Rajapaksa government, he argues, rightly won the war but had no vision for peace: it failed to account for the losses of war and allegations of atrocities, forgot that it had defeated a domestic group rather than a foreign army, and did not keep its promise to India of a political solution. Much has been done for resettlement and rehabilitation, but not what was essential — reform of the whole system of government.
ආචාර්ය නිර්මාල්ගේ දයලෙක්තික අච්චාරුවාදය
Ivan replies to Nirmal Ranjith Dewasiri’s critique (17 June) of his column ‘Is the Thirteenth Amendment the Best Solution?’. Listing his earlier Ravaya pieces on the national question from 2006 onwards and his debate with Kumar David, he rejects the charge that he has turned against devolution, and cites the Asia Foundation survey and the ICES study ‘Seeking Space for State Reform’, in which about 80% of Sinhalese backed reform, to argue that a solution must be built with, not against, public opinion.
දෙමළ ප්රශ්නය හා වියළි කලාපීය ගොවි ජනපද ව්යාපාර
Following his column on the homeland concept, Ivan examines the Tamil leaders’ charge that dry-zone colonisation schemes were designed to change the ethnic make-up of the North-East. He traces the real causes: malaria’s depopulation of the ancient heartland; the Crown Lands Encroachment Ordinance of 1840, which let the state sell 1.8 million acres to planters; the import of South Indian labour, which changed the composition of the hill country; and the resulting land hunger among wet-zone Sinhala peasants — 44% landless in the districts Das Gupta surveyed — as well as in Jaffna. The 1927 Land Commission and the 1935 Land Development Ordinance made the state a trustee of land for the landless, and DDT opened the dry zone after 1946. Colonisation, he concludes, served a national purpose and gave priority to local landless people.
වැරදුණේ කොතැනද? පැරණි වම හා නව වම
Marking N.M. Perera’s 106th birth anniversary, Ivan rejects the view — shared by the Frontline Socialists about the JVP — that the Left failed by abandoning class struggle for coalition politics. The old Left’s leaders were middle-class intellectuals of great learning, as Mick Moore described, and able administrators: Anil Moonesinghe made the CTB profitable and handed commission cars to the board, while Leslie Goonewardene refused Yugoslav money. The LSSP might have beaten the UNP in 1947 had it not opposed the war and fled to India, and lacked a Gandhi to hold it together. Its real error was believing socialism could be built through coalitions and abandoning its minority-rights policies; Colvin R. de Silva told Ivan the 1978 Constitution was better for minorities than his own of 1972. The JVP had devotion but no study, and should use parliamentary politics to pursue achievable reforms.