The Richard factor in the FMM
A mention of Richard de Zoysa in an earlier article, questioning the purpose of a government photographic exhibition, has become a great controversy. This is Ivan’s answer to it, and the most personally exposed thing he wrote in the Sunday Times.
Democratising a rotten system
The political system has fallen so low that reforms are now demanded not only by political parties but by civic organisations. What is on the table — the commissions, the media provisions, the end of the rule that costs an expelled member his seat — and what it would take to get agreement on it.
Criminal defamation Vs. Media freedom
Media freedom is treated as an essential part of a democratic system, and by accepted standards Sri Lanka is among the countries with least of it. The media minister told his first press conference that the government had been brought to power mainly by the media.
Election under a commission
The ban on meetings and demonstrations has been lifted, and so has the censorship of foreign news — but publishing in the local media what the foreign media print about the war is still forbidden. The world outside has been given the right to know the truth about the war in the north.
Against whom are the draconian laws?
The government has declared military rule with a parliamentary election due before the end of August. Conditions in the coming period may be worse than they are now, and the government still cannot, under any circumstances, refrain from holding the election.
Circle of a crisis
Sri Lanka has become a country caught in a vicious circle of crises with no way out, and the special feature of that circle is that each crisis is bigger and more dangerous than the one before it. Five passages of this column were removed by the censor and stand in the printed text as the single word Censored.
Truth of all truths!
With the French Ambassador entering the argument about the President’s educational qualifications, the debate has gone beyond Sri Lanka. An explanation from someone in that position ought to be impartial, Ivan writes, and hers is not.
Why president’s office sent an angry reply to me
There is no disgrace for an elephant who breaks his tusks on a diamond rock. Reading the reply the President’s office sent to his answer to her January interview, Ivan writes, he felt they were living in an abuddassa age, in which the diamond rock pursues the elephant in anger and hatred.
A new age of terror
The government called the harassment of the singers Rukantha Gunatilaka and Chandralekha Perera a robbery, and the levelling of Anoja Weerasinghe’s house at Moneragala a personal grudge. Set those explanations beside each other, Ivan argues, and a pattern appears that the country has seen before.
This is what happened
There are occasions when a foolish friend can be more dangerous than a vicious enemy. The longest piece in the archive: Ivan’s point-by-point answer to the account the President gave of him in a televised interview, setting out what actually passed between them from the founding of Ravaya onwards.