ආධාර කණ්ඩායමේ නව ස්ථාවරය රටට යහපත්ය
Reading the Co-Chairs’ call on the LTTE to lay down its arms, Ivan notes that the European
Union, Japan, the United States and Norway — the parties most opposed to the war — now
accept that the LTTE has been militarily defeated and say nothing of political talks with
it, and argues that their duty is to release the promised aid and help the country with what
follows.
අලුතෙන් හිතන්නට කාලය පැමිණ තිබේ
Sri Lanka is close to winning one of the two decisive questions before it. Where every previous approach had failed and the country was stuck with no end in sight, Rajapaksa made a reckless attempt, staking his own survival and the country’s on fighting the LTTE to a military defeat, and went on down that road against opposition at home and abroad. The world thought he would destroy the country and himself; instead he reached the post he aimed at. The world is changed by those who swim upstream, and until they arrive they are taken for madmen rather than heroes. Military defeat will not settle the ethnic question by itself, but it creates conditions in which it can be settled — and doing so is the shared responsibility of everyone, with the opposition’s duty being to help rather than obstruct. The second question, replacing a disordered political system, needs the same cooperation.
අඳුරු වලා මැද රිදී රේඛා
Ivan argues the coming military victory will change the picture of the country. The decision to fight the LTTE to a military defeat broke with every previous government’s policy, taken against a recognised ceasefire, an established belief that only negotiation could work, and the near-universal opposition of the donor group — and Rajapaksa’s resolve in holding to it under sustained pressure was, he writes, unequalled. He will enter history as the first leader in the modern world to prove a terrorist movement can be defeated by war, and if he also answers Tamil grievances, as one who did both. The gains will follow: aid for the north and east, tourism, paramilitaries disarmed, the army turned to building roads, high security zones released to their owners. Credit belongs to the service chiefs, above all the army commander, and to a Defence Secretary who could obtain whatever he asked because he was the President’s brother.
යුද්ධයේ අවසානය අත ළඟය, ඊළඟට කුමක්ද?
The war is near its end. The LTTE will have to abandon the civilians it holds and flee to the jungle within days, and nothing remains to it but surrender or destruction, whether or not Prabhakaran is still in the country. Defeating what Ivan calls the strongest and most terrible separatist terrorist movement in the world should earn the forces the respect of Sri Lankans and the world — and he names those to whom it belongs: army commander Sarath Fonseka, the navy and air force commanders, the Defence Secretary who coordinated it, and the President. This was a merciless war against the LTTE but not a war against Tamils, though it caused them temporary suffering and produced excesses, as the campaign against the JVP in the south did. No war can be fought with human rights wholly intact. With every Tamil leader killed by the LTTE, that people is now left without leaders of its own, and must be cared for until they have some.
GSP+
The country faces losing the European tariff concession its garment exports depend on, and the political argument about it is being conducted without knowledge of the subject. Ivan explains what the concession is, what it is worth, why the crisis arose, how the conditions are being interpreted, and why a foreign policy still shaped by Cold War loyalties cannot handle it.
සහල් අර්බුදය
Rice disappeared from the market as soon as a controlled price was set. Ivan explains why — no paddy left in the marketing board, buying entirely through private traders, and no reason for a miller to sell below what he paid — adds the floods and the export restrictions in the rice-growing countries, and argues the moment is an opening for agriculture rather than only a shortage.
ජීවන වියදම් ගින්නෙන් දැවෙන ජනතාව
Ivan lays out the year’s price rises item by item from the agriculture department’s own figures — red raw rice from 39.34 rupees a kilo to over 70, samba to over 80, a coconut from 19 to 45, dhal from 86.48 to 160 — and asks what relief the government intends. His answers are practical: put uncultivated land to use, encourage home gardens, control crop damage by monkeys, and find something for those living on wages alone.
ඇඟලුම් කර්මාන්තය ආරක්ෂා කරගැනීම ජාතික වගකීමකි
Germany’s warning that the GSP+ concession could be withdrawn if the country does not meet the conditions it signed up to should be taken seriously, Ivan writes, and not enjoyed by the opposition as damage to the government. Garments drive the economy and employ village women; protecting the concession is the country’s responsibility, and if we have done wrong the answer is to put it right without delay.
කළ හැක්කේ කුමක්ද?
Addressed to a coalition of civil organisations: agree on the aim before anything else, and make it a large one. Ivan proposes a Sri Lanka whose political system treats every citizen as an equal regardless of race, religion, language, caste or sex, works out which three demands to begin with, and sets out a campaign — posters, workshops, interviews, lunch-hour pickets, sermons — to carry them.
රෝමය ගිනි ගනිද්දි නීරෝ වීණා වාදනය කළා සේ, රටට ඉතිරි වී ඇත්තේ ද වීණා වාදනය පමණය
Like it or not, the Sri Lankan state is close to complete collapse, and what can be done depends on understanding why. Ivan works through examples of institutional failure, adding the Chief Justice, the Public Trustee and the Commissioner of Registration of Persons to cases already discussed, to show that every arm of the state is breaking down.