Crisis of Sri Lanka: Champika and Anura
Champika Ranawaka and Anura Kumara Dissanayake, judged side by side. Victor Ivan credits both where their proposals are sound and faults both for saying nothing about the judiciary or Parliament.
Lawful public uprising! (2)
Part two turns to why liberalism never took here. Victor Ivan sets the JVP and the LTTE side by side as movements that drove their own communities into racism.
Crisis and the nation’s survival
Some disasters are avoidable. Victor Ivan argues this one still is, and that going to the IMF — even on its conditions, even if that means selling SriLankan Airlines — is part of how.
The end of an era of extremism
From the Mahavamsa to Gotabaya Rajapaksa, Victor Ivan follows one line of thought through Sri Lankan history and argues that the era it produced is now, at last, ending.
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.
අශීලාචාර තත්ත්වය පවත්වාගෙන යමුද? ශීලාචාර රටක් ඇතිකර ගමුද?
Ivan frames the January 2015 election as a choice about the country’s future. After defeating a rebellion a state must heal, not keep ruling by fear; yet after Prabhakaran’s defeat the Rajapaksa government had no vision for repairing the damage to people, infrastructure, society and institutions, and turned the victory to its own ends, using the forces for power. He asks why the rebellions arose and argues that re-electing Mahinda Rajapaksa would entrench an uncivilised state.
කළයුත්තේ කුමක්ද?
Quoting Mao that falling into a pit teaches the mind, Ivan asks whether Sri Lankan society learns from its disasters. After defeating Wijeweera’s rising and then Prabhakaran, the country had a chance for an Asoka-like turn from war to reconciliation, but the victor was blinded by triumph. The crisis has taken a new form, hidden behind an illusion of development built on infrastructure and debt. The Rajapaksa government has lost its moral right to rule; the opposition’s first task is a common programme agreed through open negotiation.
ගෝඨාභයගේ හෙවණැල්ල
Ivan credits Defence Secretary Gotabaya Rajapaksa with driving the war to a conclusion, but argues that he failed at what must follow the defeat of an internal rebellion: the humane rehabilitation of the defeated, as after 1971 and 1989, and letting a people mourn its dead. His gravest wrongs, Ivan writes, were the killing of criminals without trial, which continued after the war, and his patronage of extremist groups, from the halal campaign to the Beruwala and Aluthgama violence, which threatens to undo the peace won by defeating Prabhakaran.
චෝගම් ආශ්රයෙන් උගත හැකි පාඩම්
CHOGM exposed the depth of Sri Lanka’s crisis, Ivan argues: foreign lawyers were refused visas for a Bar Association event, when Param Cumaraswamy had once come freely to criticise the judiciary. The government cannot investigate war-time abuses because it fears the armed forces it now leans on, and Gotabaya Rajapaksa would not welcome it. Every insurrection and its suppression was brutal; Ivan judges the army’s conduct against the LTTE less savage than in 1989 and rejects the 40,000 figure, yet accepts crimes such as the Trincomalee killings. Sirimavo Bandaranaike prosecuted Premawathie Manamperi’s killers; Mahinda Rajapaksa has shown no such courage.
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.