කැරලිකරුවන් අභිබවා රනිල් ජයගැනීම
Ranil Wickremesinghe has now put down the third revolt against him, and Ivan explains why he
was always going to. The party constitution gives its leader the same absolute power
Sirimavo Bandaranaike used to survive seventeen years out of office — though it cost her the
premiership when the party finally won. The rebels had no agreed leader, and Ranil set
Sajith Premadasa’s name against S.B. Dissanayake’s until neither mattered. They should have
gone after the constitution, not the man.
කර්තෘ සංසදයේ ආචාර ධර්ම හා පුවත්පත් පැමිණිලි කොමිසම
Reading Ian Beales’s review in the Press Complaints Commission’s 2007 annual report, Ivan
sets out a verdict the industry has not answered: four years on, self-regulation stands
still, complaints are few and weak, the newspapers themselves are divided over whether they
want it, and the Editors’ Guild has let its own code go unreviewed. If neither the public it
protects nor the industry that made it believes in it, Beales asks, what future can it have?
එක්සත් ජාතික පක්ෂයේ අර්බුදය
Ivan argues that the UNP’s decline is not Ranil Wickremesinghe’s doing but the working of
the system the party itself built: J.R. Jayewardene designed a machine that would not change
hands, and since 1994 it has kept his party out for fifteen years. Party constitutions
mirror the national one — the leader is above the document, as the president is — and the
party is caught in a trap of its own making.
සාකච්ඡා කිරීම හා සටන් කිරීම
Accused at a public forum of helping the government’s war, Ivan answers by setting out
thirty years of his own dealings with power: the twenty-odd statements he has given the CID,
the night J.R. Jayewardene ordered him to drop a column and the month he obeyed before
resuming it, the raid on the Ravaya office five days after he declined President Premadasa’s
invitation, and the meetings with Chandrika Kumaratunga after attacks on journalists.
Journalists, he argues, should be able to telephone anyone in the country; the fault lies
only in misusing the connection.
ශ්රී ලංකාවේ දෙමළ ජාතික අරගළය
A comprehensive historical analysis reflecting on the defeat of the LTTE and the 25-year armed struggle. Tracing the political history from the colonial Colebrooke-Cameron reforms to the post-independence Sinhala Only Act and university standardization policies, the author examines the root causes of the conflict. The piece argues that while discriminatory policies by Sinhalese governments fueled the crisis, Tamil political leaders also shared blame due to their utopian demands, lack of pragmatic foresight, and early reliance on ethnic nationalism.
ගන්ධබ්බ තත්ත්වයකට පත්ව සිටින ජනමාධ්යවේදීන්
The Sirasa attack and Lasantha’s killing have frightened journalists, some of whom have already left the country, and many now speak of a terrible new era. Ivan argues it is not new: every administration since 1978 has done this. Under Jayewardene no mainstream paper criticised the government even over the opposition leader’s civic rights, the hooting of Supreme Court judges, or the pardon of Gonawala Sunil; only opposition papers did, and they were sealed and prosecuted for criminal defamation. Under Chandrika Kumaratunga, whom journalists helped bring to power, Satana’s editor Rohana Kumara was shot in circumstances close to Lasantha’s, and Lasantha himself was beaten and his house fired on. Yet the press has now cast her as saviour, and made Mangala Samaraweera — once the symbol of media repression, whose effigies they burned — the chief mourner. Journalists forget, and in forgetting protect the system.
ගෝල්ඩන් ක්රෙඩිට් අර්බුදයෙන් රට උගත යුතු පාඩම්
The Ceylinco crisis will hurt more than its owners — depositors’ lives are ruined and employees face losing their jobs, and the damage runs back into the economy. Golden Key took public deposits without registering with the Central Bank, which shows the rule of law is as absent in the private sector as anywhere else. Depositors were not uneducated people; they attended to the high interest rate and ignored the risk, never asking how a rate above the commercial banks could be paid at all. Ivan asks how a monthly package of 6.5 million rupees and six luxury vehicles can be called a salary, and whether those drawing it could not see whose flesh they were living on. When politicians plunder the state and eminent men in the private sector plunder their own depositors, the country has no good future. Golden Key attended to quantity and not quality — the same fault that has damaged tea and education.
ගෝල්ඩන් කී අර්බුදය
Golden Key Credit Card’s failure to pay interest on time has brought depositors to its door and shaken the whole Ceylinco group. The Central Bank has removed Seylan Bank’s board and placed it temporarily under Bank of Ceylon control. Golden Key took deposits and paid 30 per cent annual interest without being a registered financial business — funding those returns, it appears, by lending depositors’ money to Ceylinco property companies, which collapsed with the property market. Ten thousand depositors are owed some 25 billion rupees; the company’s eye hospital, teak plantation and Kirimandala Mawatha land cannot be liquidated quickly and would not cover it anyway. Ivan notes the chief administrative officer’s monthly package of 6.5 million rupees and six luxury vehicles, and argues such payments are extortion rather than salary. He divides depositors into three kinds, the third being people whose money could not safely be placed in a lawful institution.
සමාජ අධ්යාත්මය ඝාතනය කරනු ලැබුවෝ කවුද?
Learning from experience is what separates people from animals, Ivan writes, and Sri Lankan society — literate, pleasant, clean — is at the bottom of the table for it. He tells of showing three professional visitors the published lists of office-holders under two governments, between 86 and 103 in each, and their astonishment; and asks what half-killed the country’s social spirit and what would revive it.
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.