Ranjan’s whirlpool and National Anthem
Thirteen thousand recorded phone calls seized from an MP’s house, and a government that wants the national anthem sung only in Sinhala. Victor Ivan reads both as tests of how civil the nation is.
Turning disaster into a blessing
Sri Lanka’s debt, its import bill for dhal, chillies and milk, its fuel and vehicle costs — Victor Ivan argues the disaster is also the opening, if the public rather than the parties takes the lead.
The vicious cycle of revenge
Each government jails the last one’s ministers and is jailed in turn. Victor Ivan calls it a tribal inheritance — a cycle of revenge that has replaced accountability and now protects everyone from investigation.
Darkness and light
A monk asks the diaspora for dollars to keep the government running. Victor Ivan sets the new president’s inheritance against the Yahapalana years and against the murder of S.W.R.D. Bandaranaike.
Roots of the crisis
Not the debt alone. Victor Ivan digs for the roots of the crisis in the subsidies handed out for votes, the language policy, the identity-card system and the corruption that has spread through every institution.
Dilemmas of Sri Lanka
Whatever his history, Gotabaya Rajapaksa now governs those who voted against him too. Victor Ivan turns from the presidency to stray dogs, crop-raiding wildlife, milk and meat — and argues for an agrarian revolution.
Unanswered question
North and east voted one way, the Sinhala south the other. Victor Ivan takes the ethnic arithmetic of the 2019 result as the unanswered question of Sri Lankan politics: how to make one nation out of three electorates.
’56 reborn
Gotabaya Rajapaksa won without the minorities. Victor Ivan reads the result as a second 1956 — a Sinhala-Buddhist revival in new clothes — and asks what kind of leader the country has just demanded.
Securing a People’s Constitution
With a People’s Constitution now in several manifestos, Victor Ivan sets out what the model actually requires: a constitutional assembly drawn from every sector of society, and an honest review of what went wrong before.
Election, the transformative opportunity
Every candidate has a manifesto and none has a vision. Victor Ivan reads the campaign against the religious revivals of the nineteenth century and the failure, ever since, to build one nation.