ඒකාධිපති පාලකයන්ට එරෙහිව අරාබි ලෝකයෙන් හමන සුළි සුළඟ
What will the large-scale risings against the autocratic rulers of the Muslim world — beginning in Tunisia, passing through Egypt and into North Africa and the Middle East — do to that world and then to the whole world? What is the social background of those struggles, and what are their main characteristics?
ඊජිප්තුව, ශ්‍රී ලංකාව හා දේශපාලන ක්‍රමය පිළිබඳ ප්‍රශ්නය
The risings in Tunisia and then Egypt have made the autocratic rulers of both countries give up power, and the wave may spread through the Middle East. Risings like these have happened before — Iran drove out the Shah, the Philippines drove out Marcos, eastern Europe followed the fall of the Berlin wall — and Ivan’s question is what any of them actually replaced.
තරුණ වෛරය සහ අසහනය
There have been three violent insurrections in Sri Lanka since independence, all of them youth insurrections, two Sinhala and one Tamil. The JVP’s 1971 rising was the first attempt by a political organisation to seize power by armed revolt, and a simple one that the forces put down easily in under a month. What follows is Ivan’s reckoning of where Wijeweera and Prabhakaran belong, and of what there is in all this to be shaken by.
සිරසට එල්ල වූ ප්‍රහාරය හා ඉදිරිය දැකීම
The attack on Sirasa’s head office in Braybrooke Place makes an ugly picture for the government, which has clashed with the network since the war and appeared to want it punished. Whatever set off this second attack, it looks like a campaign by the government or people connected to it against a media house that backed the opposition at the presidential election. Ivan concedes the government could argue Sirasa obstructed the war — a state may suspend most fundamental rights in wartime, and the power to wage war rests with the state, not with journalists — and notes that the press did not obstruct the campaigns against the two JVP insurrections, saving criticism until afterwards. But the war ended more than six months ago and the President has since won the election too. Supporting Fonseka was not illegal, and the winner is the one who should let old grudges go.
ආපසු හැරී බැලීමක් සමග ඉදිරිය දැකීමක්
Ivan sets out his own positions and why they left him isolated. He held that the Tamil rebellion was inseparable from Tamil grievances and had to be settled by negotiation — until it became clear the LTTE would accept nothing short of a separate state or confederation, at which point he supported defeating it militarily. He backed the war publicly and predicted the LTTE’s defeat while most of Ravaya’s own writers argued it could not be won. On the killing and beating of journalists he told colleagues the blame could not be laid wholly on a government unable to move against its army commander mid-war, and was angrily rejected by Sunanda Deshapriya. He records that this was the third insurrection he supported suppressing, including the 1971 rising he took part in himself. At the presidential election his loyalty was to Rajapaksa, whose remaining task he defines as remaking the state and political system.
ජයග්‍රහණයේ වටිනාකම බොඳ කරගැනීම
Fonseka’s arrest, whatever the grounds, dulls the shine of Rajapaksa’s victory and can be read as a move to head off an election petition. Ivan sets out the opposition’s crisis at that moment: Fonseka wanted to keep the swan symbol and the leadership that came with it, believing he had lifted the UNP’s base from two million votes to 4.1 million, while Wickremesinghe insisted on the elephant. Privately, Ivan writes, Wickremesinghe was relieved by the scale of the defeat — a narrow loss would have made Fonseka unchallengeable — and on the day of the arrest sent word through Mangala Samaraweera offering nomination under the elephant. The JVP is in the deeper crisis, having first approached Sarath Nanda Silva before settling on Fonseka, and may now win no seats at all. Ivan judges them the most remarkable political movement in the country, undone by an inability to revise an old doctrine for a changed world.
ජනරාල් මුහුණදී තිබෙන දේශපාලන උභතෝකෝටිකය
The General’s arrival lifted the anti-government forces but has not yet built him a position to win from. Ivan reads the signs — the JVP still absent from his poster campaign, the UNP machine uneasy beneath its enthusiasm, no answer on the minorities or on abolishing the executive presidency — and says a man flying on two borrowed wings that beat in opposite directions may not fly straight.
යුද වීරයන් දෙදෙනකු අතර කෙරෙන්නට නියමිත ශුද්ධ වූ සංග්‍රාමය
The victory over the LTTE made Mahinda Rajapaksa a giant and every other politician a dwarf, so the opposition answered a hero with a hero. Ivan weighs General Fonseka’s candidacy — the silence about what he stands for, the JVP’s and the UNP’s incompatible expectations of him, and the record of soldiers who entered politics and did not stay democrats.
වැඩවර්ජනවල සාධාරණත්වය!
The right to strike is a fundamental trade union right, Ivan writes, but it is a weapon to be used with social responsibility and at a decisive moment, not for narrow party ends. He reads the work-to-rule at petroleum, electricity and the ports as a campaign run through union structures for the coming election, and asks why parties confident of winning in January will not simply wait and settle the wage claims themselves.
13 වැනි සංශෝධනය
With the war won, the only voice still raised against the 13th Amendment is the JVP’s — a party that once killed people for supporting provincial councils, then contested them, and is now trying to rise again through them. Ivan notes that the president promised to implement the amendment fully and is doing so from a position the JVP cannot easily inflame.