ජනමාධ්යවල සමාජ වගකීම
The coarseness ruling Sri Lankan politics is equally visible in the media, and in the temple, the church and the courts. Journalists are the teachers of modern society, but teachers without learning, training or reading do damage. Television and radio carry almost nothing of intellectual value: political discussion programmes pick guests the way a cockfight picks birds, and a presenter succeeds by turning the discussion into a brawl. Stations chase audiences with giveaways rather than quality, some pushing the foolish belief that listening all day can make you a millionaire. Ivan argues the media could fill the gap left by the absence of career guidance in schools — European countries want skilled tradesmen more than professionals, and nurses trained here cannot work abroad because their training omits English. Channels teach French and Italian cooking; few Sri Lankans can cook rice properly or make a decent cup of tea.
අශීලාචාර තැනක තිබෙන්නේ දේශපාලනය පමණක්ද?
A satirical column by Vimalanath Weeraratne about Ivan’s role in securing the Lanka editor’s release provoked a crisis at Ravaya: Ivan announced he would stop writing for the paper, and Janaranjana offered to resign as acting head of the editorial board before the matter was settled. Ivan defends his interventions with the President — for the Lanka editor, for Parameshwari, for a detained astrologer — and denies rumours that his son was sent abroad at state expense. He then turns on his own profession, arguing journalists are as disreputable as politicians: the fabricated story of Premadasa bathing in milk drew condemnation for the attack on the printing press but none for the reporting that provoked it, and foreign-registered websites now let anyone publish gutter journalism beyond reach of the law. He closes with his own inquiries into Prageeth Eknaligoda’s disappearance.
යහපත් අනාගතයක් සඳහා
Sri Lanka should not go on manufacturing new conflicts once an old one ends. Fonseka’s arrest looked at first glance like the winner punishing the loser, but the President’s account is that the army authorities wanted to court-martial Fonseka over matters arising from his time as Chief of Defence Staff, and that he instructed them to wait until after the election so it would not appear he was blocking his opponent from standing. If the process cannot be reversed it should at least be transparent, and a conviction could be met with a pardon in view of Fonseka’s war service. With the war over, the President’s duty is to soften his administration: let the opposition campaign unhindered, invite back journalists who fled, investigate the one who disappeared during the campaign, and legislate on torture and children’s rights — which would also restore GSP Plus.
මැතිවරණ ප්රතිඵලය ගැන විවාදය
Opposition leaders claim the declared result was manufactured by the computer unit at the Elections Secretariat rather than summed from the counting centres. Ivan sets out how counting actually works — three stages, roughly eighty officers per centre, party agents present throughout, signed reports in six copies with one posted on the hall noticeboard and one handed to each candidate’s agent, results phoned to headquarters and confirmed back by the Commissioner before being faxed in writing. Any discrepancy between the centre reports and the official figure could be proved in hours, not months. He then checks: UNP organisers in Kesbewa, Moratuwa, Mawanella, Matara and Yatinuwara all report their centre documents matching the declared result, and Sajith Premadasa says the same of Hambantota. Kabir Hashim put a ten-rupee note in every ballot box in Mawanella and found them all at the count. Rather than trying to falsify the public’s genuine preference, Ivan argues, the opposition should ask why it existed.
ජය – පරාජය
The presidential contest can only end with one man winning and the other losing, and the system is built so that struggle runs on hatred rather than argument. Rajapaksa and Fonseka fought Prabhakaran on the same side and praised each other publicly; now each sees a traitor across the field, and the public that cheered both has split into camps that regard the other candidate with the loathing once reserved for Prabhakaran. Given that venom, the losing leader and his senior followers will face reprisal whoever wins. The press profits by fanning it. Beneath this lies a system that keeps one party in power for decades — seventeen years to the first change of government, sixteen so far for this one — long enough for the bureaucracy and police to make common cause with whoever rules.
දූෂණය ගැන වැඩිදුරටත්
Answering replies from Shiral Lakthilaka in Ravaya and Wasantha Wijenayake in Lanka, Ivan denies ever certifying the Rajapaksa administration as clean. His argument was that J.R. Jayewardene’s political system was built to reward plunder, so every ruling party since 1977 has been corrupt by design — and the opposition attacks corruption only to reclaim the right to profit from it. He rejects the claim that corruption cannot be proved without rumour, citing Ravaya’s own documented exposures under previous governments. He then turns to the libel suit Gotabaya Rajapaksa brought against Lasantha Wickrematunge over the MiG procurement story, and states that Wickrematunge’s celebrated posthumous editorial was written after his death by another hand.
යන්නේ කොයිබටද?
The first presidential election after the defeat of Prabhakaran’s de facto state ought to be about what kind of Sri Lanka replaces it, but the campaign has been consumed by trivia and mutual spite. Both main candidates are products of the war they won — Rajapaksa as commander-in-chief, Fonseka as army commander — and neither has said what he would build. Rajapaksa promises a good future without describing it; Fonseka would abolish the executive presidency without saying what succeeds it. Both are asked to address the grievance minorities believe survives Prabhakaran’s defeat, and to explain how corruption can be beaten within a system built to protect it. The press is told to stop staging cockfights.
ගන්ධබ්බ තත්ත්වයකට පත්ව සිටින ජනමාධ්යවේදීන්
The Sirasa attack and Lasantha’s killing have frightened journalists, some of whom have already left the country, and many now speak of a terrible new era. Ivan argues it is not new: every administration since 1978 has done this. Under Jayewardene no mainstream paper criticised the government even over the opposition leader’s civic rights, the hooting of Supreme Court judges, or the pardon of Gonawala Sunil; only opposition papers did, and they were sealed and prosecuted for criminal defamation. Under Chandrika Kumaratunga, whom journalists helped bring to power, Satana’s editor Rohana Kumara was shot in circumstances close to Lasantha’s, and Lasantha himself was beaten and his house fired on. Yet the press has now cast her as saviour, and made Mangala Samaraweera — once the symbol of media repression, whose effigies they burned — the chief mourner. Journalists forget, and in forgetting protect the system.
ලසන්ත වික්රමතුංග
Ten days after the murder, Ivan writes about a friend he had fallen out with. Lasantha was the finest investigative journalist Sri Lanka has produced — the instinct, the persistence, the ability to read what documents concealed — but the politician inside him was a small man, wielding the pen to install a UNP government in which he expected a senior ministry. He exposed his opponents’ corruption without mercy and covered up his own side’s. Ivan recounts the 1999 Town Hall bomb, when both were to be arrested and they packed bags for Singapore until Ranil Wickremesinghe called Lasantha back; Chandrika Kumaratunga’s later claim that she stopped a minister’s plan to kill them; and the quarrel over her interview and Ivan’s book that soured the friendship. Assassination, he writes, gave the life its meaning.
සිරසේ සිරසට පහරදීම
The Claymore detonated inside Sirasa’s operations room symbolises the security forces, whoever ordered it: only the forces and the LTTE hold Claymores or know how to handle them, and if the forces did this the signal it sends is more frightening still. Ivan traces the campaign that preceded it — Wimal Weerawansa’s JVP putting up posters nationwide calling Kili Maharaja and Sirasa a front for the LTTE after Sirasa depicted Weerawansa as a donkey, Mervyn Silva calling the channel a Tiger supporter, and public accusations over its coverage of the airbase attack on the day Kilinochchi fell. The attack was the logical outcome of that campaign. Naming political opponents as LTTE supporters, and rejoicing when they are killed by the LTTE, is an established habit here: SLFP supporters let off firecrackers when Premadasa was assassinated, and UNP supporters painted a pottu on Chandrika’s posters in 1994.