Whither ends the Sri Lankan crisis?
Even with an IMF package the hardest part is still ahead. Victor Ivan returns to the JVP’s second insurrection for what it shows about how a power struggle turns into a bloodbath.
Sri Lanka on the brink of anarchy
Written weeks before the fuel queues turned into protests. Victor Ivan traces the fertiliser theory back to the two men who sold it, and says the country will soon be declared bankrupt.
Dr. Neville Fernando and Lankan politics
A conversation from 1991 with Dr. Neville Fernando, recalled at his death, in which a government backbencher explained how Parliament was bought — and why, Victor Ivan argues, it has never recovered.
What if everyone fails?
With every institution of the state failed, Victor Ivan asks who is left. He measures Champika Ranawaka against the standard and finds an educated man who is still, in his judgment, a tribal leader.
The reality of the system
Duty-free permits, super-grade vehicles and an assets law with two open loopholes. Victor Ivan uses the perks of Parliament to show how the system really works — including his own part in prising the declarations open.
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.
The vicious cycle of revenge
Each government jails the last one’s ministers and is jailed in turn. Victor Ivan calls it a tribal inheritance — a cycle of revenge that has replaced accountability and now protects everyone from investigation.
Ours is a failed state
Victor Ivan measures the failure of the state by what has happened to rural life — the collapse of peasant agriculture, the plunder of land, and a school system that sorts children by their parents’ means.
The Parliament stands naked
A Parliament that cannot legislate, cannot control public finance and will not monitor the executive. Victor Ivan traces the decline from the land reform of the 1970s to members trading with the government they are meant to audit.
Acquiring the desired change
Readers keep asking Victor Ivan how change is actually to be won. His answer: turn the presidential election into a referendum on the system itself, and civilise a media culture that lives off public frequencies.