අභ්යන්තර කුළල් කාගැනීම්
Not having enough internal unity is a large challenge Sri Lanka faced in the past and faces now, and it can be seen not in one place but everywhere. The country needs a strong government, and equally an opposition with the strength to control a government’s wrong actions; there must be a contest between them, and there must also be a mutual understanding for the common good.
ගාන්ධි නූතන ශ්රී ලංකාවට ගෙන්වා ගැනීම
Suppose Gandhi could be met, brought to Sri Lanka and asked to look into the country as it now is, and to give his guidance on the main problems it faces and how they should be settled. What analysis would he make of Sri Lanka, and what roads would he recommend to us for settling the first-rank problems we face as a country?
ඒකාධිපති පාලකයන්ට එරෙහිව අරාබි ලෝකයෙන් හමන සුළි සුළඟ
What will the large-scale risings against the autocratic rulers of the Muslim world — beginning in Tunisia, passing through Egypt and into North Africa and the Middle East — do to that world and then to the whole world? What is the social background of those struggles, and what are their main characteristics?
ඊජිප්තුව, ශ්රී ලංකාව හා දේශපාලන ක්රමය පිළිබඳ ප්රශ්නය
The risings in Tunisia and then Egypt have made the autocratic rulers of both countries give up power, and the wave may spread through the Middle East. Risings like these have happened before — Iran drove out the Shah, the Philippines drove out Marcos, eastern Europe followed the fall of the Berlin wall — and Ivan’s question is what any of them actually replaced.
වෙනස් වෙමින් තිබෙන අධ්යාපනය
Amid heated argument the shape of education is changing and being changed. Serious changes are visible in higher and vocational education; at school level Ivan can see no such change yet, and the national education commission’s proposals for what school education needs are still proposals.
වසන්ත සමයේ අවසානය
Because of the absolute power the presidency gives, leaders who reach it fall in love with the system as a matter of habit. But it was never properly made, and the oppression built into it works not only on the opposition and the public but on the president himself — and what a leader who reaches the office can see is only the sweetness of absolute power, never the poison hidden under it.
නව ආණ්ඩුක්රම ව්යවස්ථාවක් ඇතිකර ගැනීම
Constitutional reform deserves more of the public’s attention than the parliamentary election itself. The government asks for a two-thirds majority to change the system, but Ivan argues it does not need one: a constitution is a social contract, and no single party represents the whole of a society made up of the SLFP, the UNP, the JVP, the Tamil National Alliance, the Hela Urumaya and much else. Sri Lanka’s record here is poor — three constitutions since independence and now a fourth, where countries write them to last centuries. America has the world’s shortest and has not tired of it in two hundred years; India has the longest and credits it with meeting each challenge. Bandaranaike in 1970 and Jayewardene in 1977 both used their majorities to exclude the opposition; Nehru, with a comparable majority, spent three and a half years including everyone. Rajapaksa should not repeat their mistake.
ඡන්ද ක්රමය සේම දේශපාලන ක්රමයද වෙනස් විය යුතුය
Rajapaksa promised during the campaign to change the preferential voting system before the next parliamentary election. Changing the electoral system alone is not enough — the political system must change with it, and for the country’s good rather than a party’s. An executive president answerable to parliament and the courts between elections is possible; so is subjecting every presidential act to judicial review, as in the United States. The president should hold no ministry, lose the power to dissolve parliament at will after a year and to call an early election after four, and face a cap on cabinet size. A mixed proportional and constituency system will only work if the parties themselves are made internally democratic, since the present arrangement gives each leader autocratic power. India requires parties to file accounts with the election commission and auditor general, and candidates to declare assets with their nominations. Any amendment must rest on agreement across all parties, not be built for the ruling party as in 1972 and 1977.
විය යුත්තේ කුමක්ද?
Two days before the poll, Ivan states plainly that he does not want Fonseka to win — not because Rajapaksa’s administration deserves protection, but because a change driven by hatred rather than a vision would leave the country in disorder, and anarchy is worse than bad government. Defeat would not finish Fonseka: he would become opposition leader and could acquire the political schooling he lacks, having entered politics straight from the battlefield and now flying on wings borrowed from two other parties. Ivan argues the opposition’s deeper failure is squandering parliament’s committee system, where members sign the attendance sheet for the allowance and leave, breaking quorum and sending summoned officials home with their files unopened. He sets out what Rajapaksa must change: shed the relatives beyond Chamal, Gotabaya and Basil, build an anti-corruption commission on the Hong Kong model, and stop overriding the independent commissions.
දූෂණය ගැන වැඩිදුරටත්
Answering replies from Shiral Lakthilaka in Ravaya and Wasantha Wijenayake in Lanka, Ivan denies ever certifying the Rajapaksa administration as clean. His argument was that J.R. Jayewardene’s political system was built to reward plunder, so every ruling party since 1977 has been corrupt by design — and the opposition attacks corruption only to reclaim the right to profit from it. He rejects the claim that corruption cannot be proved without rumour, citing Ravaya’s own documented exposures under previous governments. He then turns to the libel suit Gotabaya Rajapaksa brought against Lasantha Wickrematunge over the MiG procurement story, and states that Wickrematunge’s celebrated posthumous editorial was written after his death by another hand.