Youth struggle; what could be the end?
Ranil Wickremesinghe is appointed Prime Minister and Victor Ivan calls it a good omen. He also tells the youth movement plainly that its slogan cost it the reforms it could have won.
Alas, Sri Lanka!
Victor Ivan recounts taking the collapse of the state to the Speaker, to the Auditor General and finally to the Supreme Court with 62 signatures behind him, and being met each time with silence.
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.
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.
Laundering the Parliament
Victor Ivan publishes his correspondence with the Speaker of Parliament on MPs who do business with the state — the request, the reply, and his answer to it.
විරුද්ධ පක්ෂ ව්යාපාර අරාජිකත්වයේ සෙවණැලි
Ivan warns that full anarchy, the end state of a system without civility, is frightening, and that the coming election is a historic chance to defeat the Rajapaksa regime. Comparing the JVP’s support for Mahinda in 2005 with today, he assesses the roles of the Venerable Sobitha’s movement for a just society, Karu Jayasuriya, the UNP, the JVP and the Jathika Hela Urumaya, and argues frankly that Ranil Wickremesinghe, who has never won an election and lacks Mahinda’s charisma, should not be the challenger.
සරත් සිල්වා ගැන වැඩිදුරටත්
Ceylon Today did not print his reply uncut as promised, Ivan says, and the media that now present Sarath N. Silva as a saviour include owners who won judgments from him when he needed their support. Silva, once slated as the common opposition candidate, still poses as a reformer. Ivan contrasts Justice Mark Fernando’s rulings, which forced the only free and fair election since 1977, with Silva’s court, which turned away election petitioners. Four of six UN Human Rights Committee findings against Sri Lanka concern Silva’s judgments, among them S.B. Dissanayake’s and Tony Fernando’s, jailed for contempt after petitioning a bench Silva himself led.
චෝගම්වලින් පසු ජනාධිපතිවරණයක්!
After a costly CHOGM that worsened Sri Lanka’s standing, Ivan predicts an early presidential election, called before a fragile economy — falling exports, heavy Chinese loans, banks lending to the state instead of business, finance companies near collapse — gives way. The government runs on three wheels, Mahinda, Basil and Gotabaya Rajapaksa, and the family is fraying over succession, as D.S. Senanayake’s preference for Dudley once split the UNP. With discontent in the SLFP, the JHU and all communities, he foresees a three-cornered contest: Karu Jayasuriya on a system-change platform, Chandrika Kumaratunga seeking to reclaim the SLFP, and an unpredictable royal battle.
කරුගේ ඇස් පෑදීම
Ivan welcomes Karu Jayasuriya’s call for the fragmented opposition to unite under a common banner to abolish the executive presidency, noting that for the first time Jayasuriya speaks of the political system as a whole. A statement is not enough, he argues, without a working programme, and he sets out six observations: the system has run its historical course; it fragments the opposition; it has lost legitimacy; it lets ruling groups drain the country’s wealth; it encourages corruption by removing old safeguards such as the ban on MPs doing business with the state; and it makes the rule of law, urged by the Lessons Learnt commission, impossible to achieve.
පාර්ලිමේන්තුවේ පරිහානිය හා එය ජයගැනීම
Ivan’s submission to the parliamentary select committee on the conduct and discipline of MPs. He cites a survey in which only 12% of people trusted Parliament, and traces the decline through land grabs and permits, thugs and private militias, and black money in elections, contrasting today’s spending with the limits of 1965 and 1970. He recalls the L.M.D. de Silva and Thalgodapitiya commissions, which led to MPs being expelled, and argues that the assets and liabilities law should be enforced, with declarations published on a parliament website. He also proposes a German-style mixed electoral system instead of the plan of the Dinesh Gunawardena committee.