Dive into an archive of over 5,000+ published articles…
Archives: Articles
එකක් කඩතොලු වසා ගන්නට ගොස් දෙකක් කඩතොලු හදා ගැනීම
Victor Ivan
Ravaya
Ahead of the March 2014 Human Rights Council session, where the High Commissioner was to report on Sri Lanka, Ivan warns that the government is making things worse by putting the President himself at the head of the Geneva fight. He compares the two JVP risings and the LTTE war,
Following responses to his column on W.J.T. Small, Ivan asks the Commissioner of Elections to follow Small's example in the provincial council elections. Before the executive presidency, he writes, elections were civil: strict spending limits applied, and courts unseated winners who broke the law, as in the 1947 petition against
Starting from P.B. Jayasekera's first novel, whose hero is a former rebel of the second JVP rising turned political fixer, Ivan traces how a lumpen class has come to dominate Sri Lankan society. A black economy existed before 1977, but the executive presidency, the open economy and patronage let thugs,
Reading the biography of W.J.T. Small, the principal who shaped Richmond College, Galle, Ivan recounts how Small overturned a cricket-captain election won by bribery, setting an example of integrity for the school. He contrasts it with the bribery allegation against the chairman of the Bribery Commission and argues that corruption
This article critically examines the controversial tenure and actions of former Chief Justice Sarath Nanda Silva, detailing his abuse of judicial power for personal and political gain. It outlines his role in imprisoning S.B. Dissanayake to appease President Chandrika Kumaratunga, his subsequent legal betrayal of Kumaratunga following a personal insult
Ceylon Today did not print his reply uncut as promised, Ivan says, and the media that now present Sarath N. Silva as a saviour include owners who won judgments from him when he needed their support. Silva, once slated as the common opposition candidate, still poses as a reformer. Ivan
Former Chief Justice Sarath N. Silva used interviews in Mawbima and Ceylon Today to recast himself and to claim that Ivan's campaign against him grew out of a grudge from the 1971 insurrection trial. Ivan answers point by point: Silva was the most junior of five prosecutors, and Ivan's lawyer
The new Chief Justice's suspension of the Principal of the Law College, reportedly for ensuring his own son passed with distinction, lays bare the rot in the legal community and the examination system, Ivan argues. The principal might well reply that he did the same for the children of the
Nelson Mandela, Ivan writes, is second in greatness only to Gandhi, and in nation-building he surpassed him: he united two races divided for centuries by hatred, making whites part of the nation rather than overthrowing them, then left power when his work was done. Both leaders refused to hate their
A friend who has read Ivan's book on the Lenin Ratnayake affair many times asked him why no newspaper reported the day a remand prisoner struck Magistrate Lenin Ratnayake with a bag of excrement in the Nikaweratiya court, after the magistrate had abused the prisoner's wife. Local reporters, Ivan concludes,
Responding to Kusal Perera's 'In Search of the New Man', Ivan revisits two debates: Newton Gunasinghe's great and little traditions, which suggest Sinhala cultural narrowness belongs to the era of decline rather than all history, and Sarachchandra's claim, contested by Martin Wickramasinghe, that Buddhism does not see art as purifying.
CHOGM exposed the depth of Sri Lanka's crisis, Ivan argues: foreign lawyers were refused visas for a Bar Association event, when Param Cumaraswamy had once come freely to criticise the judiciary. The government cannot investigate war-time abuses because it fears the armed forces it now leans on, and Gotabaya Rajapaksa
After a costly CHOGM that worsened Sri Lanka's standing, Ivan predicts an early presidential election, called before a fragile economy — falling exports, heavy Chinese loans, banks lending to the state instead of business, finance companies near collapse — gives way. The government runs on three wheels, Mahinda, Basil and
Answering officials who disputed details in his series on the bureaucracy, Ivan stands by his accounts and then turns to how deep forgery runs. Using Dayananda Dissanayake's Nuwara Eliya deal, he calculates the Treasury's loss at over Rs. 6.1 million on one plot. Birth certificates without serial numbers, a corrupt
Politicians come and go but officials stay, Ivan argues, and a strong, law-bound bureaucracy is what has kept India's democracy standing. Sri Lanka had one until the 1972 constitution weakened it and the 1978 constitution destroyed it. He traces the result through the forced resignation of Auditor General Wijesuriya, outsiders
Prompted by a reader's tip, Ivan sets out how former Elections Commissioner Dayananda Dissanayake obtained a prime plot in Nuwara Eliya on President Kumaratunga's recommendation for Rs. 30,000 in 1995 and sold most of it five months later for over Rs. 5.2 million. Such favours, he argues, are the bribe
Elections Commissioner Mahinda Deshapriya collected candidates' asset declarations with zeal, Ivan argues, only to lock them away, telling Ravaya that the public needs a court order to see them. The 1988 amendment to the Declaration of Assets and Liabilities Law gives anyone the right to certified copies for a fee.
The true test of democracy, Ivan argues, is whether the opposition has a fair chance of winning power. Before 1977 it did: governments changed at almost every election, spending was capped, election petitions worked and the police stayed neutral. J.R. Jayewardene replaced that with a petrified system in which the
C.W.W. Kannangara and Professor Senaka Bibile, both remembered in the last week of September, meet Ivan's test of the ideal hero: a large but practical dream for the public good, pursued by decent means against powerful opposition. Bibile's drug policy broke the hold of the pharmaceutical companies before it was
The government's wins in two of the three provincial council elections surprise no one, Ivan argues: the post-1977 system is built so that the ruling party, drawing on the power of president, parliament, provincial councils and local bodies at once, almost always wins the elections between presidential polls. Tracing every
