topic: Recreating the state

රාවයේ 25 වෙනි සංවත්සරය වෙනුවෙන් පවත්වන ලද කතාව

In the address given at Ravaya’s 25th anniversary gathering, attended by the President, the Leader of the Opposition, and the leaders of the TNA and the Muslim Congress, Ivan explains why the paper convened such an assembly. Sri Lanka, he says, stands at a historic turning point: half of its 64 years of independence were spent in bloodshed, society itself is wounded, and the political system has decayed because the country never built a united nation and a democratic society. The defeat of the JVP in 1989 and the LTTE in 2009 has removed the main obstacle to reform and exposed the system’s rot. The alternative to a destructive revolution is a national reorganisation agreed by government and opposition, including a solution to the ethnic question and the LLRC’s recommendations.

රට තිබෙන්නේ අර්බුදයක මුවවිටය

Ivan credits the government with six years of growth, infrastructure and controlled inflation, but says it was bought with borrowing and an expensive defence of the rupee. Floating the rupee and sharply raising fuel prices marks a forced change of course, yet the government is patching one or two parts of a worn-out engine. The Petroleum Corporation’s losses from political price-fixing, subsidies and corruption, and grossly one-sided thermal-power contracts at the Electricity Board, are symptoms of a wider decay. A falling rupee and rising prices could bring inflation, closures and political unrest. The opposition should not treat the crisis as a chance to topple the government; only a national reorganisation of the political and administrative system, with all parties, can save the country.

පූර්ණ ප්‍රතිසංවිධානයක අවශ්‍යතාව

Ivan argues that Sri Lanka’s schools of thought still see the ethnic question as they did while Prabhakaran lived, arguing only over how much of the 13th Amendment to grant. The root problem, he says, is the failure after 1948 to build a united nation and a democratic society to sustain the state and democracy inherited from Britain: Burghers were driven out, Indian Tamil plantation workers lost their citizenship, Tamils lost language rights, and the 1972 and 1978 constitutions completed the decay of governance. With terrorism defeated, the rot is visible and the moment has come to rebuild nation and state together. He sets out an eighteen-point agenda — from abolishing caste discrimination and fixing national policies to curbing corruption, criminalised politics and inequality — for a four-to-five-year national programme involving all parties.

කොමිෂන් සභා නිර්දේශ

Publishing the Lessons Learnt Commission’s report, and holding a census to find the true number of those who died in the final war in which the LTTE was defeated, can be counted two very important forward steps.

යුද්ධය ගැන ආපසු හැරී බැලීමක්

Ivan had planned to write about the war as the subject connected to his review of 2005 to 2010 — the de facto state the LTTE ran, the war that ended its existence, and the great changes it has made in the social, economic and political picture. The leadership contest between Ranil and Karu tempted him to write about that instead, and he judged the war the more important thing for understanding the political picture.

2005-2010 දක්වා ආපසු හැරී බැලීමක්

The years 2005 to 2010 were a period crowded with events: a great war between the government and the LTTE, and alongside it a great conflict between the government and the opposition movements. Ivan had wanted for some time to write a review of the conflict between those two sides in those five years, and of his own part in it.

උගත් පාඩම් කොමිසම හා උගතයුතු පාඩම්

The Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission’s report has been handed to the president, and what it finds and recommends is not yet clear. It is a commission that drew international attention: the British foreign secretary said Sri Lanka should show its honesty by making the report public, and the government says it will be put before parliament in December.

විකෘති වී තිබෙන දේශපාලන සංස්කෘතිය ප්‍රකෘති කිරීමේ අවශ්‍යතාව

Until the Kolonnawa tragedy on polling day, the political society saw the problems to be settled after the war as the visible ones — the disappeared, the displaced, the destroyed houses and infrastructure. What made them see that the great distortions the war worked on social life are a large problem too was what happened between Bharatha Lakshman and Duminda at Kolonnawa.

කොළඹ නගර සංවර්ධන විවාදය

Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s Colombo development programme is heavily criticised by the opposition, and at first sight what Ivan sees is a good change that can be felt: the city is cleaner than it has ever been, the rubbish heaps along the main roads have stopped, and not only Colombo 7 where the rich live but Borella and Wanathamulla where the poor live are clean, with the traffic much eased.