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යාපනේ පුස්තකාලයට ගිනි තැබුවේ කවුද?
Victor Ivan
Ravaya
Ivan revisits the burning of the Jaffna Public Library during the 1981 District Development Council election, when the ruling party had made itself a contender in the North. Jaffna believed the police were responsible, and in private talk senior circles pointed to DIG Edward Gunawardena, then in charge there. Ivan
A seventeen-point plan for a joint opposition movement with one aim: a new constitution. Parties would unite around a common programme rather than a common candidate, keep that unity until the constitution is drafted and passed within an agreed time, decide by consensus rather than majority vote, agree first on
Part 9 turns to the opposition's idea of a common presidential candidate who would deliver a new constitution within six months. Ivan questions whether the Seventeenth Amendment belongs in a new constitution, shows that some constitutions were written quickly but most were not, and argues that instead of a common
Part 8 holds up South Africa as a model. After de Klerk freed Nelson Mandela in February 1990, multi-party talks from 1991 agreed a two-stage transition: an interim constitution, elections in 1994, and a constitutional assembly given two years to draft a final text, with wide public participation through theme
As the VAT fraud case ended with a verdict on a former Inland Revenue commissioner, one of thirteen accused of whom only five were ever arrested, Ivan recalls that Ravaya first exposed the fraud, the largest tax fraud in a South Asian state institution, on 26 June 2005, because the
Part 7 traces how written constitutions arose as the grip of theology broke in Europe. Ivan sets out ten principles of the liberal idea of the nation-state, from popular sovereignty and the separation of powers to equality before the law, protection of minorities and a secular state, then contrasts Britain's
Part 6 examines judicial review. Under Articles 120 to 124 of the 1978 constitution the Supreme Court can review bills only before they pass, so unconstitutional amendments can go through with a two-thirds majority. Parliament has ignored conventions, as in extending its own life by referendum. Contrasting Chief Justice Marshall's
Part 5 compares how constitutions are amended in the United States and India, where fundamental provisions are hard to change and courts have restored constitutions after they were abused, with Sri Lanka, where all three constitutions were made by majority power rather than consensus. He surveys amendments to the 1978
Part 4 examines the 1978 constitution. Holding five-sixths of Parliament after the 1977 election, J.R. Jayewardene rushed through a new constitution without proper public scrutiny, stripping Parliament of supremacy and creating a president above the law, with the power to appoint and dismiss the cabinet at will. Citing K.M. de
A short note to readers on the constitution series. Ivan explains the plan he set himself over the New Year holiday: to cover the history of Sri Lanka's constitutions, what kind of constitution the country now needs and what it must achieve, which will take several more articles. He asks
The third part of Ivan's series on constitution-making examines the Soulbury constitution, drafted around D.S. Senanayake's wishes by Ivor Jennings, whose weak safeguards for minorities Lord Soulbury later regretted, and Colvin R. de Silva's 1972 republican constitution, whose unitary state, primacy for Buddhism and Sinhala-only laws the Federal Party rejected.
Reading the March 2014 Western and Southern provincial council results, Ivan finds that the government's vote, once rock-solid, has begun to melt, most of all in the populous Western Province. The UNP remains divided and the rise of General Fonseka's party is notable. He warns that the government is playing
After the Human Rights Council's March 2014 resolution on accountability and reconciliation, Ivan argues that in the modern world no war, internal or external, ends without an accounting. Stirring patriotic feeling is easy, but the public, used to the open economy since 1977, will not bear the cost of sanctions.
Ivan describes the organised gangs that seize valuable urban land and houses, often with political protection, and gives examples: a wealthy donor's Cinnamon Gardens property left to the Maharagama Cancer Hospital that was taken after his death, and a land fraud at Malabe in which a woman scientist who bought
Ivan argues that once the country turned to violence, both rebels and the state came to rule through fear and to believe only their own convictions. The state crushed the Sinhala youth rebellion, then the Tamil one, and in the process the South killed Wijeweera and many of its own.
A tribute to Asoka, one of the three founding staff of Ravaya and its chief artist for twenty years. Ivan first met him at Sarvodaya's Vishva Lekha press, recalls how his village of Hungama linked him to young rebels during the 1987–89 years, how he designed the pages of all
Ivan divides the post-independence period into two eras and traces the second, from 1977: a government that could not be changed, thuggery institutionalised in the universities and unions, Black July and the JVP ban, and the violent era of 1985 to 2009, including Indian intervention and the state's brutal suppression
Replying to a reader who said he blames everything on the executive presidency, Ivan traces the crisis further back, to a crisis of thought. Buddhism became confined to the Sinhalese, and independence came without a mass struggle, so the new state inherited narrow limits. He follows the distortions through to
As the March 2014 Geneva resolution approaches, Ivan argues that a head of state is the country's temporary trustee, not its owner, and that the President is gambling the nation's fate. The media and religious leaders are failing to explain the danger, and the government's claim of a Western conspiracy
Ivan warns that neither the government's belief in its permanence nor the opposition's hope of winning an election reckons with a third possibility: collapse into anarchy, as happened in the Tamil North. The country is in deep darkness over the rule of law, nation-building and constitutional reform. He sets out
