ජවිපෙට සිදුවුණේ කුමක් ද?
Ivan argues that the President used alliance talks with the JVP to strengthen her own hand, while the JVP paid any price, even abandoning its opposition to the executive presidency, before realising it had been deceived. Contrasting the JVP’s shallow leadership with the traditional Left, which taught the country democracy and won lasting social reforms, he says the party remains where it was in 1971. Further sections attack Mahinda Wijesekara’s claim that developing countries have too much democracy and question Mangala Samaraweera’s leadership of a media-freedom protest.
ප්රචණ්ඩ අරගලයේ දුෂ්ට චක්රය
Writing in the first person, Ivan defends a view that angered Tamil intellectuals at a seminar: that the LTTE’s demand for absolute power should be met but confined to Tamil areas. He argues that every violent movement ends by devouring its own dissenters, citing Lenin, Stalin, Trotsky and Bukharin, the JVP’s killing of former comrades and the LTTE’s murder of Amirthalingam and Neelan Tiruchelvam, and advises dissident Tamils to stand aside while Prabhakaran is judged by the Tamil people.
ඉදිරි පළාත් සභා මැතිවරණයේ ගමන් මග
Ivan weighs the President’s plan to test her strength in early provincial elections, comparing the 2001 parliamentary results with the later local government polls, in which the JVP fell from about a million votes to under 600,000. Recalling vote-rigging by the UNP from 1977 to 1994, the 1982 referendum and the PA’s North Western Province poll, he argues that all three main parties prefer a ‘thieves’ system’ of election plunder, and reads the President’s remarks to editors about using thuggery as a sign of a looming fight to the death.
බල අරගලයේ කෙළවර කුමක් ද?
Barred from a third term, Chandrika Kumaratunga now wants the executive presidency she once enjoyed reformed so she can keep her party leadership, while Ranil Wickremesinghe wants it untouched until he inherits it. Ivan traces her options, from a JVP alliance and a snap dissolution to a caretaker cabinet, and warns that with Sarath N. Silva controlling the courts the rivalry could slide into a civil conflict decided by which side the police and army take.
රටට අමතක වී ඇති විධායක ජනාධිපති ක්රමය
The editorial notes that the once-powerful campaign to abolish or reform the executive presidency, begun by N.M. Perera and carried forward by Lalith Athulathmudali, Gamini Dissanayake, Chandrika Kumaratunga and the JVP, has fallen silent. With the President’s second term ending in 2005 and the Prime Minister hoping to succeed her, it argues that at minimum presidential immunity should be confined to official acts and removal for deliberate constitutional violations made easier.
ආරක්ෂෂාව සඳහා පිස්තෝල ඉල්ලීම
PA members of the Southern Provincial Council are reported to be seeking pistols from the President. The editorial notes that Sri Lanka alone arms its legislators, a practice begun during the 1989–90 JVP insurrection and never stopped, and argues that it cheapens representative democracy and fuels violence and crime by MPs’ guards; protection should come from the police, and the promised disarming of MPs has not happened.
ස්වයං විනාශයකට යෑම
Ivan asks why the LTTE demands an interim administration it knows the government cannot grant, and argues that it seeks recognition as an equal state, as it did when excluded from the Indo-Lanka Accord. He recalls that the Accord already conceded much the Sinhalese now resent, and that the JVP, which bombed Parliament in 1987, now backs the President’s resistance. Examining Sinhala Mahavamsa myths and the Tamil claim to the East, he warns that both leaderships are steering the country towards anarchy.
Conscience Benumbed
In this article, Victor Ivan argues that decades of mass violence and rampant political corruption have paralyzed the collective conscience of Sri Lankan society. Drawing heavily on the psychological trauma outlined in Prof. Daya Somasunderam’s book Scarred Minds, Ivan asserts that the psychological damage seen in the Tamil community is reflective of a wider distortion affecting all Sri Lankans—victims, perpetrators, and witnesses alike. Using the commercialization and resulting decline of Sri Lankan cricket as an analogy for the state of the nation, the author critiques how governance has become a mechanism for public plunder. Specifically, Ivan highlights the failure of the 17th Amendment, pointing out that constitutional safeguards and independent commissions (such as the Elections, Police, and Bribery Commissions) have been deliberately sabotaged or stalled by the President, with little to no resistance from the judiciary, the political opposition, or a benumbed public.
මුට්ටියට පෙර හොරා යැවීම
Ivan describes Mangala Samaraweera’s push for the President to seize power quickly, possibly driven by a pending case over an attack on poster-pasting youths during the last election, and reads her takeover of the Development Lottery Board as a test of the Prime Minister. He warns that a clash between presidential and parliamentary power could turn bloody, and urges a French-style cohabitation in which the President leaves domestic government to the majority, while faulting the JVP, PA and UNP for opportunism over the 1978 Constitution and the independent commissions.
සාම කතාවල අනාගතය
With the talks stalled but likely to resume, the editorial calls the ‘carrot’ approach, peace for aid, the weakest element of the process: peace is needed because relations between communities have been uncivilised. It argues that a settlement must address wider democratic problems, since anti-democratic conduct is not confined to Prabhakaran, citing the PA’s Wayamba poll and J.R. Jayewardene’s 1982 election, and must reach the grassroots and win UNP–PA agreement.