මහින්ද රාජපක්ෂගේ හතර අවුරුද්ද
The president may call an election as soon as four years of his term are done — a power added to the constitution by amendment for the benefit of the incumbent and now enjoyed by all of them. Ivan takes stock of the four years: the LTTE gone with not even a ghost of Prabhakaran left, the whole territory in the state’s hands, and the question of whether the respect of opponents as well as supporters can be won.
යුද්ධය අවසානයි ඒ බව දැනෙන්නට සැලැස්විය යුතුය
Ending a thirty-year war is a great thing, Ivan writes, but the public has to be able to feel it: the harshness of wartime relaxed, the money once spent on ammunition visibly turned to development, and the A9 open to ordinary travellers. Free and fair local elections in the north would do more for Tamil confidence than any declaration.
දස දහසක් මල් පිපෙන්නට ඉඩදෙමු
Detainees who once bit a cyanide capsule now tell the forces everything they know, which is why weapons caches and LTTE documents are being found in quantity. With no fear of a guerrilla revival, Ivan argues, the restrictions imposed for the war should go, the aid and the IMF loan will follow, and the country can turn to the political reforms that would make it the richest in the region.
ජයග්රහණයේ ඵල උපරිම කරගැනීම
The economy will grow simply for the war having ended, but Ivan argues the gains have to be worked for: security relaxed by stages, the paramilitaries and everyone else holding weapons disarmed, and the obstacles foreign investors face — the months an application takes and the bribes paid at each stage — cleared away. The world food crisis, he adds, can be turned to the country’s advantage.
එල්ටීටීඊ පරාජය හා දෙමළ ජනතාව යුද්ධයේ අවසානය හා රටේ අනාගතය
Because the war ended with the whole LTTE leadership destroyed rather than with a remnant intact, Ivan argues, the movement lost both the capacity and the confidence to regroup — which is why Prabhakaran’s death brought no violent reaction. He turns from there to what the peace should be used for: relaxing security, rebuilding villages, and setting the army to public works.
විසඳුම කුමක්ද?
Before the argument about what solution the Tamils are to be given, Ivan writes, comes the
question of the displaced: three hundred thousand people to be housed and fed, with
sanitation and water the immediate problem and disease the risk behind it. Everyone agrees
on equal rights for all citizens regardless of race, religion or caste; the disagreement
begins after that, and on a question of this weight the country needs a common position.
ජාතිවාදය බෙදුම්වාදය හා කල්ලිවාදය
Ivan takes the president’s promise that there will be no more room for separatism — and,
importantly, for racism — as the right formula, since each feeds the other. The victory
should produce humility rather than triumph, and the test of it is whether wrong opinions
are defeated by argument rather than by threat, and whether thinkers, journalists and
artists can say what they think without fear for their lives.
අපි ජයගත්තෙමු. එය ප්රමාණවත් ද?
Twenty-nine of the forty-seven members of the Human Rights Council in Geneva voted with Sri
Lanka and twelve against, which Ivan counts an important victory in the international
argument. Some violation of rights is unavoidable in any war and more so against a terrorist
movement; but the victory has created a humanitarian problem the country cannot solve
without the world’s help, and on that question it should speak with one voice.
අවතැන්වූවන් පිළිබඳ ප්රශ්න
Ivan calls the UN Secretary-General’s remark to CNN — that he had never seen camps as bad
anywhere — a bad statement, and notes that the Swedish opposition leader who visited the
same day was far less harsh. Housing three hundred thousand people is neither simple nor
quick; the camps are improving rather than worsening, the identification of cadres has to
finish before the army can hand them over, and the contractors’ opportunities to profit
should be cut back.
ආරම්භ වී තිබෙන නව පරිච්ඡේදය අර්ථවත් කරගැනීම
A movement that held a large part of the country by force for close to three decades has
been destroyed, and Ivan writes that in every one of the three armed rebellions the state
has put down, the enemy was its own citizens. What the country owes itself now is to find
the social, economic and political causes that keep producing them, and to use the opening
the victory has made rather than waste it as earlier openings were wasted.