The crisis and constitutional violations
Every branch of the state has broken the Constitution, Victor Ivan argues — and he traces the habit from the disenfranchisement of the plantation Tamils under Soulbury to the amendments that followed 1977.
Overcoming wretchedness
What the country needs now is not an election but structural change, Victor Ivan argues — and he describes trying, and failing, to get that point onto the agenda of a meeting of party leaders.
What went wrong with Sri Lanka? (Part II)
Sri Lanka’s independence movement, Victor Ivan argues, was never a movement for liberation — and the elite that inherited the state kept caste and ethnicity as instruments of politics rather than dismantling them.
Elimination of bribery and corruption
Duty-free vehicle permits, business with the state, staffing rackets: Victor Ivan lists what a new constitution would have to prohibit outright, and points to Hong Kong’s anti-corruption commission as a working model.
Roots of bribery and corruption
Corruption in Sri Lanka is not a failure of individual character but a system built deliberately, Victor Ivan argues — traced here from J.R. Jayewardene’s admiration for Napoleon to the party machinery that now depends on it.
Anarchy and the collapse of the State
The Executive and the Legislature have disintegrated; the Judiciary may yet find its orders ignored. Victor Ivan reads the state as a machine whose faults were visible, and whose remaining life could have been predicted, long ago.
The present crisis is likely to end up in a serious disaster
Sirisena has sacked one Prime Minister, sworn in another and moved to dissolve Parliament using powers the 19th Amendment took away from him. Victor Ivan argues the courts alone cannot arrest what follows.
ජනාධිපතිවරණයේ ගති ලක්ෂණ
Ivan examines how the President resolved the Eighteenth Amendment dispute by seeking the Supreme Court’s opinion on 5 November 2014, which he says shows a judiciary tamed since the impeachment of Shirani Bandaranayake, recalling J.R. Jayewardene’s treatment of the courts. He criticises the Commissioner of Elections’ passivity over the election’s timing and the Pope’s visit, and warns that the opposition’s disunity and factionalism could hand the government a third term and push the country towards anarchy.
අශීලාචාර 18 පරාජය කිරීම
Following up the previous column, Ivan tests Sarath Silva’s argument against the constitution. Transitional provisions in Chapter XXI of the 1978 constitution, including Article 160, show how J.R. Jayewardene was specially made eligible, and the Eighteenth Amendment, rushed through on the wave of war victory, has a technical flaw that is not easily corrected. Seeking a favourable ruling from the Supreme Court would put the judges in a trap; opposing injustice is a human duty, and all who want change should unite to defeat the Eighteenth.
දර්ශනයේ දුප්පත්කම
A reply to C.A. Dissanayake’s Ravaya article defending limited constitutional reform, which Ivan links to Dr Jayampathy Wickramaratne’s thinking. He questions who ‘Dissanayake’ really is, rebuts his account of J.R. Jayewardene’s Second Amendment to the 1972 constitution, which created the presidency, and argues that the executive presidency changed the whole character of Parliament: the old MP elected by a small constituency served the people, while today’s MPs, chosen under preferential voting, depend on money and patronage.