ආරක්ෂක සම්බාධක ලිහිල් කිරීමේ අවශ්යතාව
Lifting the restrictions on travel south from the Jaffna peninsula is a good first step, Ivan writes, and the high security zones should go the same way now that the threat that justified them is gone. He asks for the military atmosphere to be dismantled rather than displayed, and for the journalists who left the country for their safety to be invited back.
මා විචාරකයකු මිස ගැලවුම්කාරයකු නොවේ ෂෂ
Answering Nirmalda Soysa’s observations about him, Ivan sets out his own position at length: why his reading of the executive presidency goes beyond the constitutional analyses of N.M. Perera and Colvin R. de Silva to take in how the system has actually worked, what he asked each of the two candidates privately at the last presidential election, and why a man who does not believe in violent revolution is left placing his trust in conventional leaders.
ජනමාධ්ය මර්දනය
Six media organisations held a meeting against the revival of the Press Council at which the main speakers were not journalists but Ranil Wickremesinghe and Mangala Samaraweera. Ivan reads it as a party turning a media platform into its own, and argues that repression is native to this political system but is sharpened by the media’s own misjudgements — including, during the war, forgetting that the power to decide questions of war and peace rests with an elected government.
මැතිවරණ නීති උල්ලංඝනය
Cut-outs and posters after nominations are illegal, and Ivan asks how the law came to be enforced only when the president ordered the police chief to enforce it. He returns to the assets declarations the commissioner could make compulsory and does not, and ends on the death threats to Paikiasothy Saravanamuttu, which cost the country goodwill it cannot spare.
අදහස් පළකිරීමේ නිදහසට තහංචි නොපැනවිය යුතුය
With the war over, Ivan argues, every restriction placed on expression directly or indirectly should go — including the freedom to criticise the government, which a government put in place by the people must hear. On the Press Council revival he finds neither option good, and points to India, where the regulator is built from the media organisations and Parliament together.
අවුල් විසඳා ගැනීම
The pleasure of the victory is already evaporating, Ivan warns, and a second term will be harder than the first. On GSP+ he points out that the tangle was made by the courts rather than the government — the moment a chief justice traded the country’s future for his own protection — and that releasing two LTTE leaders on bail while Tissainayagam serves twenty years cannot be explained to anyone.
තිස්සනායගම් නඩුවේ තීන්දුව ගැන
Twenty years’ rigorous imprisonment for J.S. Tissainayagam has drawn the world’s attention as his detention did. Ivan argues that judges must sentence in proportion to the gravity of the offence and within the law, lists earlier judgments where that was not done, and notes that most of the complaints against Sri Lanka in Geneva were aimed not at the government but at the former chief justice — and that the country, not he, is paying for them.
සරල දේශපාලනයෙන් ඔබ්බට සිතීම
Every outlet but one spoke with a single voice over the Malabe abduction, and Ivan credits that with the arrests that followed. He turns to a pattern in the reporting of the suicide attacks — on Jeyaraj Fernandopulle, on the president, on Sarath Fonseka — in which the bomber was brought to the place by someone inside, and asks whether the parties can think past defeating each other.
ගවේෂණාත්මක වාර්තාකරණය
Reviewing the first award for investigative journalism at the editors’ excellence ceremony, Ivan sets the winning work — a case that the Accelerated Mahaweli Programme destroyed the Rajarata tank ecology and caused the kidney disease there — against what investigative reporting is defined to be, and argues the ecology had broken down before the Mahaweli reached it. He asks to be corrected if he is wrong.
ආරක්ෂක ලේකම්ගේ වන්දි නඩුව හා සන්ඩේ ලීඩර් පුවත්පත
The defence secretary has sued the Sunday Leader for a billion rupees over an article on the MiG purchase. Ivan accepts his right to sue — criminal defamation was repealed on the argument that civil damages would suffice — but argues that the paper’s right to be represented by counsel of its choice is part of a fair trial, and describes how its lawyers came to withdraw.