Will the pandemic gorge up democracy?
India and Sri Lanka took the democratic road together at independence. Victor Ivan asks whether the pandemic will let a nominal president govern as a real one, and whether the courts will stop it.
Power and the pandemic
If Gotabaya Rajapaksa wanted the power to govern, Victor Ivan argues, he contested the wrong office — and the gap between the image built for him and the powers he actually holds is now deepening the crisis.
End of an era?
The pandemic is an accident, not a conspiracy. Victor Ivan argues it has merely accelerated a collapse already under way, and asks whether what is ending is a government or an era.
Added to the pandemic, a constitutional crisis
Parliament dissolved, an election impossible, and the president’s spending power expiring on 30 April. Victor Ivan sets out the constitutional deadlock the pandemic created, alongside the communal poison it released.
Parliamentary Election and anarchy
Behind the carnival of a parliamentary election, Victor Ivan sees anarchy: soldiers doing police work, a constitution honoured informally, and a central bank robbed with no one held to account.
Anarchy and the Judiciary
The new government wants the corruption cases withdrawn and the courts will not oblige. Victor Ivan reads the resulting cold war as the one place in the state where something is still being defended.
Withering of expectations and prospects of new ones
The younger brother is president, the elder is prime minister, and the powers do not sit where the voters think they do. Victor Ivan argues that changing the occupants will not change the system.
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.
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.