Putrefaction and end
With the presidential election set for December, Victor Ivan argues that every major leader has an interest in keeping the country unstable until polling day — and that none of them will touch the reforms that matter.
Crisis of the Constitution
The 19th Amendment stripped the president of executive power but left him elected as though he still held it. Victor Ivan calls the result a country without a working constitution — and warns against going to the polls before fixing it.
The Second Freedom Struggle (Part II)
Victor Ivan returns to 1947-48 to show how the Soulbury Constitution was made and how quickly it was disfigured — the disenfranchisement of the plantation Tamils, the Sinhala Only Act, and the habit of amending away inconvenient safeguards.
Overcoming the crisis: The second freedom struggle
If the collapse of the state cannot now be avoided, what should replace it? Victor Ivan calls for a ‘second freedom struggle’ led by public organisations rather than political parties, aimed at a new constitution.
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.
මෛත්රීපාලගේ භූමිකාව
Using a chess metaphor, Ivan describes Maithripala Sirisena’s defection from the government to become the common opposition candidate as a move the Rajapaksa camp never expected. He assesses the MPs who crossed with him and the split in the SLFP, the roles of Chandrika Kumaratunga and Ranil Wickremesinghe in the anti-Mahinda alliance, and the JVP’s stance. He urges the challengers to avoid lies and communal appeals, credits Mahinda Rajapaksa with defeating Prabhakaran, but argues that his rule has done great harm, including its pro-China policy.
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.
මේ මොහොතේ කළහැක්කේ කුමක්ද?
Contrasting the prosecution of Tamil Nadu Chief Minister Jayalalithaa with the removal of Chief Justice Shirani Bandaranayake, Ivan compares India, whose leaders built a nation and a democracy, with Sri Lanka, where independence brought ethnic, religious and caste conflict. With a presidential election near, he weighs the idea of a common candidate against Ranil Wickremesinghe’s own bid and his promise to abolish the presidency, and floats the idea of a third social movement for system change, inviting readers to write to a dedicated email address.
ජවිපෙ ප්රහාරයට පිළිතුරක් (ලංකා පුවත්පතේ පළවූ විවේචන දෙකට පිළිතුරකි.)
Ivan answers two attacks in the JVP paper Lanka by a writer calling himself ‘Kasakaraya’ (the flogger), who branded him a fraud and accused him of preparing the ground for Ranil Wickremesinghe as he had for Chandrika Kumaratunga in 1994. Calmly, he replies that he began writing books in prison after 1971, recalls Ravaya’s 25th anniversary, explains that the Kaha Pati campaign arose from the violent North Western provincial election of 1999, and states that his aim is not to install any leader but to win a framework for changing the political system.
යූඇන්පියේ ආණ්ඩු ප්රතිසංස්කරණ යෝජනා
Ivan warns that neither the government’s belief in its permanence nor the opposition’s hope of winning an election reckons with a third possibility: collapse into anarchy, as happened in the Tamil North. The country is in deep darkness over the rule of law, nation-building and constitutional reform. He sets out how the executive presidency distorted the state, from Jayewardene’s undated resignation letters and the 1982 referendum onwards, and argues that the UNP’s new constitutional proposals will not be credible until the party honestly admits its own responsibility for creating the system.