Her Vasana chakra spinning other way
President Kumaratunga is drifting towards a political abyss from which there will be no easy return. She did not come to power through commitment, experience or ability but through good fortune, and she became president at a moment when she had been hoping only to become an MP.
Wolves in Sheep’s clothing
An open letter congratulating President Chandrika Kumaratunga on a victory won across all communities. Ivan urges her to settle the ethnic question and to recover what the old regime’s cronies took, naming the Nawaloka land payment, the Airbus deal and the Ruhunu Cement sale, and warns that wolves cannot be taught to eat grass.
Doing the best thing for the worst reasons
Victor Ivan analyses the 1993 Southern Provincial Council election, called after the Government’s attempt to unseat Chief Minister Amarasiri Dodangoda and install M.S. Amarasiri collapsed halfway. He argues the Government has inadvertently done the Opposition a favour: the People’s Alliance had been clinging to a one-vote majority that made every member individually indispensable and produced constant in-fighting over portfolios. Examining vote shares across Galle, Matara and Hambantota, Ivan shows the PA-DUNF combination outpolled the UNP by 61,106 votes yet lost the bonus seats to it, and contends that Gamini Dissanayake’s defection will bring the Government little benefit in a province that has not given the UNP half the vote since 1982.
The best laid plans of government men …
Ten years after Black July, Ivan sets out the official toll of the 1983 riots and records what K. Ganeshalingam, UNP Treasurer and Cyril Mathew’s friend, told him one evening: that the government’s main leaders planned the violence to turn rising Sinhala anger away from themselves, and that UNP men committed election offences in Jaffna in 1981. He explains why he kept the account back for two years.