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The 2019 Presidential Election and the aftermath
Victor Ivan
Daily FT
Two brothers, two minds: Victor Ivan argues that Mahinda Rajapaksa for all his faults kept a civilian outlook, and that what would follow a Gotabaya victory is government by the barracks.
Victor Ivan looks back at 2010 and 2015 and then at the man on the 2019 ballot, setting out at length what was done to journalists and soldiers during Gotabaya Rajapaksa's years as Defence Secretary.
Nine questions Victor Ivan puts to every presidential candidate — on national security, the assets law, schools, garbage, the killing of journalists, and whether a new constitution will be written by MPs or by the people.
The citizenship case is dismissed and the celebrations begin. Victor Ivan sets the moment against the longer puzzle of a country that has never managed to build a nation out of its own people.
Disabled electoral system and Gotabaya’s candidacy
Victor Ivan
Daily FT
With Gotabaya Rajapaksa's candidacy contested in court over his citizenship, Victor Ivan turns to the machinery of the election itself — an Election Commission without the power to enforce its own rules.
Victor Ivan measures the failure of the state by what has happened to rural life — the collapse of peasant agriculture, the plunder of land, and a school system that sorts children by their parents' means.
Mr. NOTA and understanding the Presidential Election
Victor Ivan
Daily FT
India gives voters a 'None Of The Above' box. Victor Ivan proposes Sri Lanka field Mr. NOTA as a candidate in his own right — a vote for a new constitution rather than for any of the men on the ballot.
A Parliament that cannot legislate, cannot control public finance and will not monitor the executive. Victor Ivan traces the decline from the land reform of the 1970s to members trading with the government they are meant to audit.
The 19th Amendment stripped the president of executive power but left the office elected as if nothing had changed. Victor Ivan argues the country keeps patching its errors instead of correcting them.
A state that knows only how to bulldoze: Victor Ivan runs the argument through garbage, schools, paddy land, caste and fake passports, and concludes that structural reform must come before any election.
The presidency and the dilemma of the Presidential Election
Victor Ivan
Daily FT
J.R. Jayewardene built the presidency to make himself a king; the 19th Amendment hollowed it out but left the crown on. Victor Ivan reads the 2019 field — Gotabaya, the UNP's impasse, the JVP — against that comedy.
From the Old Left's Marxist head on a liberal trunk to the JVP after two insurrections, Victor Ivan asks why the Left has failed — and what the JVP should do with the presidential election in front of it.
The full text of the public appeal to the Supreme Court on MPs who transact business with the state, signed by Victor Ivan and some sixty writers, academics, journalists, lawyers and trade unionists.
The patient needs surgery and the doctors are discussing the election. Victor Ivan sets out what the next president will and will not be able to do, and why the contest itself is in crisis.
The state owns the land, the sea, the rivers and the air — and its custodians have been helping themselves. Victor Ivan traces the licences, the leases and the presidential foundations, and asks the Supreme Court to act.
Why are people who have everything still unhappy? Victor Ivan writes about death, parental care, superstition taught as education, and what Einstein and Freud had to say to each other about it.
Falsehood has become an operating principle, Victor Ivan writes — in what is sold as kithul treacle, in what tourists are offered, in what schools certify, and in what professionals are licensed to do without ever being re-examined.
Readers keep asking Victor Ivan how change is actually to be won. His answer: turn the presidential election into a referendum on the system itself, and civilise a media culture that lives off public frequencies.
Victor Ivan argues that what Sri Lankans eat and how they cook it is a political question — bound up with rural poverty, wasted harvests, crop damage by wild animals, and prohibitions inherited from Anagarika Dharmapala.
Victor Ivan publishes his correspondence with the Speaker of Parliament on MPs who do business with the state — the request, the reply, and his answer to it.
