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Next choice of Sri Lanka, a People’s Constitution
Victor Ivan
Daily FT
Forty-six people's organisations met in Colombo on 19 January and agreed how a new constitution should be framed. Victor Ivan sets out that consensus and the international-law argument for participatory constitution-making.
Investigating corruption of the Yahapalana Government
Victor Ivan
Daily FT
The Yahapalana government's flagship anti-corruption inquiry was chaired, Victor Ivan notes, by a former Chief Justice whose own record he sets out at length. A column about who is trusted to investigate whom.
Duty-free vehicle permits, business with the state, staffing rackets: Victor Ivan lists what a new constitution would have to prohibit outright, and points to Hong Kong's anti-corruption commission as a working model.
Corruption in Sri Lanka is not a failure of individual character but a system built deliberately, Victor Ivan argues — traced here from J.R. Jayewardene's admiration for Napoleon to the party machinery that now depends on it.
Having argued that the Constitution has lost its spirit, Victor Ivan sets out what a replacement should do: build the nation, empower the people directly, and put constitution-making beyond the reach of the Executive alone.
From John Locke to the South African transition, Victor Ivan surveys how constitutions have actually been made — and concludes that Sri Lanka's own expertise on the subject is thin, outdated and confined to a narrow elite.
Victor Ivan returns to 1947-48 to show how the Soulbury Constitution was made and how quickly it was disfigured — the disenfranchisement of the plantation Tamils, the Sinhala Only Act, and the habit of amending away inconvenient safeguards.
Overcoming the crisis: The second freedom struggle
Victor Ivan
Daily FT
If the collapse of the state cannot now be avoided, what should replace it? Victor Ivan calls for a 'second freedom struggle' led by public organisations rather than political parties, aimed at a new constitution.
The Executive and the Legislature have disintegrated; the Judiciary may yet find its orders ignored. Victor Ivan reads the state as a machine whose faults were visible, and whose remaining life could have been predicted, long ago.
The collapse Victor Ivan sees around him did not begin in October 2018. He traces it to the failure, from independence onward, to build a single nation out of Sri Lanka's ethnic, caste and religious divisions.
The present crisis is likely to end up in a serious disaster
Victor Ivan
Daily FT
Sirisena has sacked one Prime Minister, sworn in another and moved to dissolve Parliament using powers the 19th Amendment took away from him. Victor Ivan argues the courts alone cannot arrest what follows.
As one uncivilised era nears its end, Ivan answers those who still defend the presidency. Israel and India, he shows, keep a nominal president under a parliamentary system, and India's model of devolution works within it. He describes how the old parliamentary system made MPs answerable and governments changeable, how
When Chandrika Kumaratunga returned to politics to back Maithripala Sirisena, the state-owned Lake House papers began serialising, without Ivan's permission, his book Chaura Rajina ('The Queen of Deceit'), written against her. Ivan compares the two presidents, arguing that Mahinda did more harm than Chandrika. He reveals that he refused Mahinda
Ivan frames the January 2015 election as a choice about the country's future. After defeating a rebellion a state must heal, not keep ruling by fear; yet after Prabhakaran's defeat the Rajapaksa government had no vision for repairing the damage to people, infrastructure, society and institutions, and turned the victory
Ivan names the institutions the January 2015 election will test. The judiciary has already bent, approving a third term. The state media have been turned into campaign tools, with attacks on Maithripala Sirisena's rallies such as at Polonnaruwa. The Commissioner of Elections faces abuses such as in the Polpithigama division,
Using a chess metaphor, Ivan describes Maithripala Sirisena's defection from the government to become the common opposition candidate as a move the Rajapaksa camp never expected. He assesses the MPs who crossed with him and the split in the SLFP, the roles of Chandrika Kumaratunga and Ranil Wickremesinghe in the
Ivan warns that full anarchy, the end state of a system without civility, is frightening, and that the coming election is a historic chance to defeat the Rajapaksa regime. Comparing the JVP's support for Mahinda in 2005 with today, he assesses the roles of the Venerable Sobitha's movement for a
Ivan examines how the President resolved the Eighteenth Amendment dispute by seeking the Supreme Court's opinion on 5 November 2014, which he says shows a judiciary tamed since the impeachment of Shirani Bandaranayake, recalling J.R. Jayewardene's treatment of the courts. He criticises the Commissioner of Elections' passivity over the election's
As the January 2015 campaign begins informally, Ivan argues that a third-term candidacy under the Eighteenth Amendment shows a government that has lost all shame. He recalls the Kalawana case after 1977, when an election petition by Sarath Muttetuwegama unseated the UNP's Pilapitiya and Speaker Bakeer Markar's ruling produced two
Ivan describes the response to Ravaya's public petition for reform of government: calls and emails on the day it went on sale from Gamini Viyangoda, Chandra Jayaratne, a professional association and ordinary readers. Ravaya's readers, he writes, are an unusual constituency; the petition's aim is to win a political framework
