Dive into an archive of over 5,000+ published articles…
Archives: Articles
තොණ්ඩමන් ගනුදෙනුවේ ඇත්ත කුමක් ද?
Victor Ivan
Ravaya
Reports in the Sunday Leader and the Sunday Times link Arumugam Thondaman's move to the government to a Water Board IT contract with an Indian company that he approved as a minister. The editorial asks for the facts and warns that a system which buys political support by protecting such
With Arumugam Thondaman's Ceylon Workers' Congress and its eight MPs on board, the alliance government has overcome its lack of a parliamentary majority. The editorial says the President's hardest task now is to satisfy both Velupillai Prabhakaran and Wimal Weerawansa at once.
Ivan contrasts the international significance of the Human Rights Committee's ruling on a newspaper's fundamental rights petition with the way much of the Sri Lankan press ignored or belittled it. He describes how his struggle helped push the government to repeal criminal defamation, and calls for an end to the
A Sinhala translation of the Views of the UN Human Rights Committee in Victor Ivan's complaint against Sri Lanka (CCPR/C/81/D/909/2000) over the criminal defamation indictments brought against him. It sets out the complaint, the State party's observations and the author's replies on admissibility and merits, and the Committee's findings.
Ivan welcomes the Human Rights Committee's ruling as historic: the first time a Sri Lankan Supreme Court judgment in a fundamental rights case has been answered by an international body. He recounts the criminal defamation indictments brought against him before and after 1994, the Attorney General Sarath N. Silva's role,
In a country without leaders who love it, understand its problems or want to lift it up, the Mahanayake of Malwatte has spoken fearlessly: ready for talks with the LTTE, urging both the LTTE and the JVP to avoid extremes, and taking a moderate line on conversions. The editorial sees
Thondaman's CWC has brought eight MPs to the Alliance, and with three from the SLMC and one JHU monk the government reaches 118 — enough to govern, but thirty-two short of what the President actually wants. Victor Ivan credits her nerve: she dissolved a parliament the UNP controlled, broke her
The government promised all public servants a 70 per cent pay rise but has raised only the salaries of appellate and Supreme Court judges, on the ground of an anomaly with High Court judges. The editorial also asks how arrears for lower-court judges were paid without Parliament approving a supplementary
Like the floating rupee, the country has been left to drift. The government lacks a majority and agrees on nothing fundamental, and its talk of self-sufficiency recalls the United Front government of 1970–77. The editorial warns of a slide into full crisis.
Victor Ivan traces the trap the UPFA government has built for itself. Resuming peace talks would solve both its problems at once — the TNA would support it at least from outside, curing the parliamentary shortfall, and the international aid package would ease the economic squeeze. But the JVP promised
Victor Ivan argues that neither the UPFA nor the UNP read the 2004 election result correctly: the government took a near-tie as a mandate, the opposition as a victory, when both should have read it as a demand for consensus. Parliament has sat three times since the election, spending those
Two months after the 2004 general election the UPFA still lacks 113 seats, and Victor Ivan sets out why it may never reach them. Thondaman's CWC is gone, the TNA route is closed by the JVP's line on the LTTE, and the crossover rule strips defecting MPs of their seats
Reading the April 2004 election result, Victor Ivan opens with a fable of three fish: the green fish stripped of its dominance by a blue-and-red alliance, and the victors fused into one distorted creature, the red fish triumphant but immobilised by the half of the blue fish it cannot finish
Writing days before the April 2004 parliamentary election, Victor Ivan argues that no result can reduce the country's instability. Two nationalist blocs have each split — the Jathika Hela Urumaya's monks drawing away from the JVP's claim to represent Sinhala nationalism, and Karuna's break dividing the Tamil National Alliance between
In this article, Victor Ivan examines the mutual political opportunism and power struggle between President Chandrika Kumaratunga and Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe leading up to the dissolution of parliament. Ivan argues that Kumaratunga’s political strategy—including formalizing a permanent alliance with the JVP, taking over key ministries, and shrewdly calculating her
A country divided by party loyalty sees only good in its own side. Ivan examines the undemocratic record of the UNP, the SLFP and the JVP, from the 1982 referendum that extended Parliament's life, which Sirimavo Bandaranaike opposed, to their handling of the independent commissions under the 17th Amendment.
An analysis of the April 2004 general election. Taking peace, the cost of living and corruption as the issues voters care about, Ivan works through the 2001 results district by district, adding PA and JVP votes together, to estimate whether the new alliance can beat the UNP and what that
Ivan traces how the Sinhala people formed from many tribal groups, with Buddhism as the force that united them under one language and faith, how Tamil-speaking groups from South India settled alongside them, and how Muslim trading settlements grew from about the eighth century under tolerant Sinhala kings who also
Neither main bloc looks able to win enough seats to govern alone. The editorial warns that a constitution shaped for one-man rule has bent every institution to it, leaving a country without wise leaders, an independent public service, an independent judiciary or a responsible press.
The President's takeover of three ministries and dissolution of Parliament were undemocratic and arbitrary, but Ranil Wickremesinghe's handling of the crisis was not strong either. Ivan weighs the Prime Minister's record, including his peace initiative, and asks whether he will now fight the system itself or simply try to oust
