භූමිය පමණක් නොව ජනතාවද එක්සේසත් කළ යුතුය
Had the margin been three thousand votes rather than a landslide, Ivan argues, supporters of the two camps would have turned on each other and the country would have run with blood. He traces how every Elections Commissioner has worked under duress: Jayasekera resigned after the 1981 Jaffna district council poll was taken over by the Defence Secretary, Chandananda de Silva could not publish his referendum report for five years, and in 2001 Chandrika Kumaratunga tried to arrest the Commissioner on Sarath Nanda Silva’s advice. The raid on Fonseka’s hotel after the result dulled the victory’s lustre. Ivan closes with eleven questions any constitutional reform must answer — on ethnic identity, rule of law, limits on presidential power, corruption, money in elections, party democracy and access to justice — and warns against repeating 1972 and 1977, when a governing party wrote a constitution alone.
බල තරගයේ හැඩතල
The picture has changed from one in which the government would win any election easily to one in which it must fight for them. Ivan traces the crisis to the scale of the president’s own coming victory, and argues that the country turned a policy of taking help from the anti-American world into publicly campaigning for it — going so far as to attack Obama, which even China, Iran and Venezuela did not do.
දකුණේ මැතිවරණ ප්රතිඵලය දෙස බැලීමක්
The government won the south well but less well than it had announced it would, which cheapened the win. Ivan reads the numbers as showing the president’s standing still strong, and argues that what the government must now protect is what the country is already receiving: settle the quarrels with the West, send home everyone in the camps except the LTTE’s active supporters, and let foreign aid flow.
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.
සමගිය හා ප්රඥාව
The politicians are looking at the southern council election and the presidential one, while the country faces war crimes allegations, the GSP+ question and the displaced. Ivan argues these can only be met if the parties set their divisions aside — and that the voice the country used during the war does not suit the moment. We are no longer entangled with Prabhakaran, he writes, but with the powers of the world.
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.
ජාතික ගීතය හා දෙමළ සන්ධානය
The Tamil National Alliance’s councillors in Vavuniya took their oaths to the national anthem, which Ivan reads as an important signal. He traces the anthem’s rejection to the Vaddukoddai resolution of 1976, after which the Federal Party and the Tamil United Liberation Front stopped using it and the LTTE banned it in northern schools, and asks the alliance not to stop there.
යුද්ධය ජයගැනීමෙන් පමණක් රටට ඉදිරියට යා හැකිද?
The victory opened a space the country has not used well. Ivan grants the president the larger share of the credit and then turns to the West’s changed policy, to the covenant on civil and political rights the country has signed, and to Vietnam — which defeated a great power militarily and then spent decades as one of the poorest countries on earth. Jayewardene, he ends, made a hat to fit his own head; Rajapaksa’s task is to make one that fits the country’s.
විදේශ ප්රතිපත්තිය නැවත සලකා බැලිය යුතුයි
The foreign secretary was told to appear in person for a British visa, which the government reads as a breach of diplomatic courtesy. Ivan agrees the government’s position is right and argues that being right is not enough: a small country gains nothing by quarrelling with the Western world, and he recalls what calling Indira Gandhi a cow cost the country under Premadasa.
කේ පී අසුවීම
Taking KP abroad and bringing him to Sri Lanka is a considerable victory, Ivan writes, not only because he led the diaspora’s notional state after Prabhakaran but because he ran the LTTE’s arms purchasing — and everyone in custody now talks. He notes that the low turnout at the two northern council elections shows the Tamil people’s unease is not over.