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.
The 2019 Presidential Election and the aftermath
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.
Reflections on Presidential Elections
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.
Puzzles of Sri Lanka
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
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.
The presidency and the dilemma of the Presidential Election
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.
Wounding the social psyche
A lawsuit filed in Los Angeles by Lasantha Wickrematunge’s daughter opens Victor Ivan’s account of the wounds left on Sri Lankan society by abductions, disappearances and unpunished political murder.
ජාතියේ අන්ධ ගමන
On 15 July 2014 the President appointed foreign experts, including Sir Desmond de Silva, Sir Geoffrey Nice and David Crane, to advise the Paranagama commission, a sudden reversal of the government’s stand against foreign involvement. Ivan asks what the move is for, given the Defence Secretary’s long hostility, and argues that the government failed to foresee that accountability after the war could not be avoided. Having leaned on China and adopted an anti-Western line, Sri Lanka is on a blind journey that its strategic position makes dangerous.