සුනාමි යාන්ත්රණය හා දේශප්රේමය
The joint mechanism is splitting the country in two. Its opponents say it gives a terrorist group formal recognition; the editorial answers that 60 per cent of the damage was in the North-East, and that those who stand for peace have as much right to be heard as those who call war patriotic.
සෝම හිමියන්ගේ අපවත්වීම, ආගම් භේද හා ශ්රී ලංකාවේ ජාතිකත්ව ගැටලුව – 2
Ivan traces how the Sinhala people formed from many tribal groups, with Buddhism as the force that united them under one language and faith, how Tamil-speaking groups from South India settled alongside them, and how Muslim trading settlements grew from about the eighth century under tolerant Sinhala kings who also endowed Hindu temples.
සෝම හිමිගේ අපවත්වීම, ආගම්භේද හා ශ්රී ලංකාවේ ජාතිකත්ව ගැටලුව
After Soma Thera’s death, fear spread among Christians that they might be attacked, and the old charge of ‘unethical conversions’ became a claim that Christian forces were killing Buddhist leaders. Ivan asks whether religion is becoming an explosive dividing line like race and language, and looks back to Asoka’s empire and the Buddhist idea of the state.
නිසරු නායකයින් නිසා වැනසෙන රටක්
Prompted by commemorations of J.R. Jayewardene, S.W.R.D. Bandaranaike and Sirimavo Bandaranaike, Ivan sets out what makes a great leader and assesses every head of government since independence, from D.S. Senanayake to Chandrika Kumaratunga, finding none who qualifies. Contrasting Nehru, Mahathir Mohamad, Chandrababu Naidu and Lee Kuan Yew, who wrote books setting out their vision, he blames the lack of internal party democracy, family dominance and the belief that a leader must be Sinhala, Buddhist and Govigama.
අන්තෝජටා බහිජටා තත්ත්වයක්
Ivan argues that anti-government and nationalist forces are converging: after the SLFP–JVP alliance talks collapsed, pro-alliance elements in the SLFP are pushing the President back towards the JVP, which now demands through Wimal Weerawansa that the SLFP drop devolution. He likens her position to her father’s after the Bandaranaike–Chelvanayakam pact, notes the JVP’s drift from the red flag to the lion flag, and blames Ranil Wickremesinghe for ceding public debate on reform to nationalists, risking an independent North and a bloodstained South.
An Utterly Complicated Situation
In this article, Victor Ivan examines the volatile political maneuvering between the Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP) and the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP). Driven by factions eager to topple the ruling government, efforts to form a JVP-SLFP alliance ultimately stalled due to President Chandrika Kumaratunga’s reluctance to commit to a permanent coalition. Ivan draws a historical parallel to the President’s father, S.W.R.D. Bandaranaike, who was forced by chauvinist pressures to tear up the Bandaranaike-Chelvanayagam Pact. The author highlights the JVP’s alarming ideological shift away from Marxism toward blatant racism and Sinhalese chauvinism, explicitly demanding that the SLFP abandon its policies on the devolution of power. Meanwhile, Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe is criticized for remaining passively silent, hoping the President loses credibility—a dangerous strategy that Ivan warns could empower racist factions, destroy the peace process, and ultimately result in a divided and bleeding nation.
ස්වයං විනාශයකට යෑම
Ivan asks why the LTTE demands an interim administration it knows the government cannot grant, and argues that it seeks recognition as an equal state, as it did when excluded from the Indo-Lanka Accord. He recalls that the Accord already conceded much the Sinhalese now resent, and that the JVP, which bombed Parliament in 1987, now backs the President’s resistance. Examining Sinhala Mahavamsa myths and the Tamil claim to the East, he warns that both leaderships are steering the country towards anarchy.
අභ්යන්තර තුවාල හඳුනාගැනීම
Writing after a workshop in Austria led by conflict-resolution scholar Johan Galtung, Ivan takes up Galtung’s point that history and myth feed Sri Lanka’s conflict. Drawing on B.H. Farmer’s ‘Ceylon: A Divided Nation’, he traces how the Mahavamsa’s stories of Vijaya, Mahinda and Dutugemunu shaped a Sinhala sense of special origin and of the Tamil as historic enemy, a potential tapped from Dharmapala and S.W.R.D. Bandaranaike to the JVP, and argues that these inner wounds must be treated along with the outer ones.
Silence Must End
This article addresses Sri Lanka’s intellectual stagnation, arguing that high literacy rates mask a deeply backward social consciousness starved of meaningful public debate. Contrasting Sri Lanka’s superficial modernism with Europe’s Enlightenment and India’s inclusive movement under Mahatma Gandhi, the author criticizes Sri Lanka’s past reform attempts for fragmenting society along racial, religious, and class lines. The text delivers a sharp warning to the educated class, asserting that their persistent silence and fear of controversy create a dangerous vacuum—one historically filled by violent extremists like Wijeweera and Prabhakaran—and calls on intellectuals to fulfill their civic duty by sparking dynamic social discussion across all areas of national life.
නරක සංඥාවක්
A young monk who led the Motherland Protection Movement was reportedly abducted, beaten and dumped in a village near Hungama. The editorial says only the government or those it protects could do this, and insists that however mistaken the movement’s views, it must be free to protest within a democratic framework and be answered by argument. Those responsible must face the law.