Galle – Nomination problems
A Lanka Guardian news background on the left parties’ quarrel over nominations for the 1979 Galle by-election, published the same day as the LSSP’s own campaign leaflet. After the JVP put up Lionel Bopage and SLFP–LSSP talks on a joint candidate fell through, the LSSP “played the ‘Podi Athula’ card”. The paper sketches Victor Ivan as a former JVP leader, one of Wijeweera’s foremost critics at the CJC trial, the author of a book on the April insurrection, and an independent Marxist with friends across the Left. The page ends mid-sentence; the rest of the article ran on the following page.
ගාල්ල අතුරු මැතිවරණය සඳහා ලංකා සමසමාජ පක්ෂයෙන් තරග කරන පොඩි අතුල කවුද?
The Lanka Sama Samaja Party’s campaign leaflet for the 1979 Galle by-election, introducing its candidate Victor Ivan, then best known as Podi Athula. It covers his nearly seven years in prison after the 1971 insurrection and the studies and articles he wrote there under the pen names Jayasena Akmeemana and Chandrasiri Gamage. It also covers his rise in the JVP and his conduct as the seventh suspect in the main insurrection case, his break with the JVP’s politics, and the party’s case for electing him against the UNP government.
7 වැනි සැකකරුගේ ප්රකාශය
The official record of Victor Ivan’s statement, made from the dock as the 7th suspect in the main insurrection case before the Criminal Justice Commission, chaired by Chief Justice H.N.G. Fernando. Ivan, then 24, explains why he chose to make a statement rather than give sworn evidence, warning that politicians outside the court were trying to use the accused as puppets. He traces the JVP’s growth from Wijeweera’s breakaway group of 1965, through its camps and its “military government” thesis, to the arming of 1970–71. He argues that the Attygalle security reports were withheld and that a hidden reactionary force let the movement grow and then provoked the rising. He describes the police killings of young men he had worked with in Galle, and closes by naming those responsible for April 1971: the neo-colonial economic order, the parties that failed to change it, and the JVP leadership, “including me”.