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Whither Justice?
Victor Ivan
Business Today
A retired army commander and a respected engineer petitioned the Supreme Court over judicial appointments made without constitutional council approval. Victor Ivan records what happened: a bench including the Chief Justice heard the petition and then directed the Attorney General to establish whether the petitioners had abused the judiciary by
Victor Ivan finds the President immobilised. He cannot abandon the JVP after the support it gave him at the presidential election, yet dropping it would mean placing full faith in Ranil Wickremesinghe, whom he does not trust; and a president dependent on the JVP is trapped in its framework, as
Victor Ivan argues that unless Mahinda Rajapaksa resumes talks in defiance of the memoranda he signed with the JVP and the Jathika Hela Urumaya, war will return. He has already tested the limits: Norway remains facilitator despite an undertaking to remove it, talks look likely outside Asia against a condition
A critical assessment of Chandrika Kumaratunga's presidency: her half-hearted support for Mahinda Rajapaksa, the Cabinet decision to give her land beside Parliament, property dealings in Britain and France, her failure ever to declare her assets, her habits in office, her handling of the peace process and the 'war for peace',
Like it or not, the Sri Lankan state is close to complete collapse, and what can be done depends on understanding why. Ivan works through examples of institutional failure, adding the Chief Justice, the Public Trustee and the Commissioner of Registration of Persons to cases already discussed, to show that
Victor Ivan returns to Johan Galtung's warning that Sri Lanka might end up temporarily under United Nations administration if it fails to manage its crises. Having read Ivan's An Unfinished Struggle, Galtung reasoned that a judiciary decayed to that degree implied equal decay elsewhere, and that only a failing state
A year after the tsunami killed 40,000 and displaced a million, the editorial says the country owes the survivors a quick return to normal life, assesses what has and has not been done, and compares the JVP's politics without arms to the LTTE's politics with them.
Ranil Wickremesinghe's handling of the revolt against his leadership is remarkable: twice before he saw off rebellions by handing out sweets. Ivan explains how party leaders reap hundreds of millions in black money at elections, and applies Mick Moore's analysis to both Wickremesinghe and his challengers.
Ivan is glad his articles on Ranil Wickremesinghe and Chandrika Kumaratunga have stirred debate. One reader told him why Wickremesinghe protected her: she published the Batalanda Commission report without a chapter concerning him, and videos of abuses ordered from the President's House are said to exist.
Does Sri Lanka need a new social and political movement, and what vision and form should it take? Ivan reports on a discussion on the 17th that brought together artists, professionals and others across ideology, class, religion and language, and on the 'Prayatna' initiative, arguing that a country that never
Even after Mahinda Rajapaksa's election, Chandrika Kumaratunga will not give up the party leadership, and Ranil Wickremesinghe clings to his despite telling friends he would quit. Ivan recounts what a CID officer told him in confidence during the terror that followed the 1999 election, and ends by wishing that she
As a newspaper, Ravaya has always stood for peace, not war. Both Chandrika Kumaratunga's and Ranil Wickremesinghe's peace efforts failed, but the editorial warns that a new war would be more destructive than any before, whoever won, and that only the public can change the picture.
The LTTE is turning from talks back to war, and it is still unexplained why it wanted Ranil Wickremesinghe defeated. Wickremesinghe trusted the TNA and the Tamils to back him without conditions; Ivan concludes that a Prabhakaran who was half-way to good has been pushed somewhere worse, and Wickremesinghe can
Ivan recalls a private celebration at Temple Trees after the 1994 election, and Chandrika Kumaratunga's repeated public claims of personal purity, including that she never stole a cent, and sets them against the record. He argues that had Ranil Wickremesinghe treated her as he treated Anuruddha Ratwatte, things might have
Ravaya explains its decision to go to court against the special privileges planned for former President Chandrika Kumaratunga and on other matters. Because presidential immunity prevents scrutiny in office, it argues, retiring presidents must be examined; it recalls its long pursuit of her assets declarations, her children's foreign education and
President Rajapaksa reads Prabhakaran's Heroes' Day speech as an offer of friendship. Ivan argues that it was Prabhakaran, not the Sinhala voters or the SLFP, JVP or Hela Urumaya, who decided the election, blocking Ranil Wickremesinghe's 'peace with traps' in favour of a candidate of 'pure war', and warns of
For all her failings, Chandrika Kumaratunga was unmatched in courage. Ivan tells how he learned of the Suriyakanda mass graves from a young engineer who came to Ravaya in 1993, how the exposure unfolded, and reproduces the verse appeal to mothers, sisters and daughters that she signed; he concludes that
Many people who voted at earlier elections found their names missing from the register this time. The editorial says the official explanation is not a fair answer and calls on the Elections Commissioner to find out what happened, who is responsible, and explain it to the country.
Victor Ivan argues that the 2005 presidential election was decided not by the Sinhala people, the SLFP, the JVP or the Hela Urumaya but by Prabhakaran, who spoke on Heroes' Day only after the result of his decision had been announced. Reading that speech, he traces why the LTTE leader
The country has a new President, but the search for a peaceful settlement has stalled. Rajapaksa's win was a win of the Sinhala majority in which minorities had no share; by electing forces that would not grant the Tamils even the tsunami mechanism, the south has signalled that it will
