topic: State Failure & Crisis

ප්‍රතිසන්ධානය හා ගෝඨාභය සාධකය

Ivan rejects Uvindu Kurukulasuriya’s website report that at a dinner with Minister DEW Gunasekera he had plotted to save the government and blamed Gotabaya Rajapaksa for every problem; the report, he says, rested on a third-hand source. The talks were among many long one-to-one discussions he held with politicians of all sides to test support for a national programme to rebuild the state and nation, which he believes many would accept. Leaders need not be ideal — South Africa’s transition, Cromwell and Lenin show that — so the chance must not be missed. He credits Gotabaya Rajapaksa with the war’s strategy, with bringing Sarath Fonseka forward, and with resettlement and rehabilitation, but says abductions, including of Frontline Socialist Party activists, and extra-legal drives against drug dealers are squandering that honour; he must adapt to peace or lose everything.

ජිනීවා අර්බුදය-

Sri Lanka was right to oppose the US resolution at the Human Rights Council, Ivan writes, but its campaign damaged the country’s name — ending with Minister Mervyn Silva’s boast that he had Poddala Jayantha beaten and would punish others who went to Geneva. He warns against the view that the balance of power is shifting to China, arguing that India, soon larger and younger and closer to Western values, matters more to a country that lives ‘in India’s mouth’. National sovereignty is relative: as a UN member bound by the ICCPR, Sri Lanka cannot treat the Council’s action as unlawful. The war was fought within a civilised framework, but the Foreign Ministry lost the propaganda war, letting support fall from 32 votes in 2009 to 15 in 2012. The best course is to go beyond the resolution with a national programme to rebuild the state.

ඥානාන්විත වියයුතු තරමට ඥානාන්විත නොවීම

The government’s counter-campaign against the US resolution at the UN Human Rights Council, Ivan argues, damaged Sri Lanka’s image. It had a clear strategy to win the war but none for what followed: an angry Tamil diaspora that saw the defeat as genocide, a rift with the US after Colombo first agreed and then refused a plan to evacuate Prabhakaran and other leaders, and a drift towards China, Iran and Russia. Just as Western pressure eased to a call to implement the LLRC’s recommendations, the government failed to adapt. He names four failures: no nation-building reorganisation after the war, neglect of relations with the Western markets, broken promises to India over 13-plus, and slowness in restoring normality, ending abductions and withdrawing the forces from civilian life.

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.