How the law is used to silence the truth
Ivan lists the 27 defamation suits brought against Ravaya in its first six years and recounts three: a Minister’s criminal case heard before a partial judge, Attorney General Thilak Marapone’s indictment in the W.A.K. Silva affair after a Bribery Commissioner was removed, and an ex parte suit served to the wrong court. He calls for reform of the criminal defamation law.
WANTED: An organized civil movement
This article delivers a scathing critique of “crony capitalism” in Sri Lanka, a deeply entrenched system of state plunder initiated under former President J.R. Jayewardene. The author expresses profound disillusionment with the newly elected People’s Alliance government, arguing that instead of dismantling this corrupt network and recovering stolen national wealth, the new leadership has simply embraced the same wealthy elites who bankrolled their rise to power, leaving the public’s demand for justice unfulfilled.
Wolves in Sheep’s clothing
An open letter congratulating President Chandrika Kumaratunga on a victory won across all communities. Ivan urges her to settle the ethnic question and to recover what the old regime’s cronies took, naming the Nawaloka land payment, the Airbus deal and the Ruhunu Cement sale, and warns that wolves cannot be taught to eat grass.
Thwarting the people’s will can be disastrous
On the eve of the August 1994 parliamentary election, Ivan warns of a plan to use the President’s power over the choice of Prime Minister to name Sirimavo Bandaranaike rather than Chandrika Kumaratunga and split the People’s Alliance. He calls on Mrs Bandaranaike to speak, and predicts the tide against the UNP cannot be stopped.
Doing the best thing for the worst reasons
Victor Ivan analyses the 1993 Southern Provincial Council election, called after the Government’s attempt to unseat Chief Minister Amarasiri Dodangoda and install M.S. Amarasiri collapsed halfway. He argues the Government has inadvertently done the Opposition a favour: the People’s Alliance had been clinging to a one-vote majority that made every member individually indispensable and produced constant in-fighting over portfolios. Examining vote shares across Galle, Matara and Hambantota, Ivan shows the PA-DUNF combination outpolled the UNP by 61,106 votes yet lost the bonus seats to it, and contends that Gamini Dissanayake’s defection will bring the Government little benefit in a province that has not given the UNP half the vote since 1982.
JVP legacy that of Pol Pot and Prabhakaran
Answering JVP writers who now praise the party’s programme and compare its 1989 hartal to that of 1953, Ivan argues the 1989 hartal was enforced by killing, likens the JVP’s record to Pol Pot and Prabhakaran, and dismisses its manifesto as unworkable. He allows that a party can reform, but sees no sign of repentance.
The best laid plans of government men …
Ten years after Black July, Ivan sets out the official toll of the 1983 riots and records what K. Ganeshalingam, UNP Treasurer and Cyril Mathew’s friend, told him one evening: that the government’s main leaders planned the violence to turn rising Sinhala anger away from themselves, and that UNP men committed election offences in Jaffna in 1981. He explains why he kept the account back for two years.
Caste oppression and youth unrest
Writing on the twenty-second anniversary of the 1971 rebellion, Victor Ivan argues that caste oppression has been an underrated driver of youth revolt in both the south and the north. Drawing on Gananath Obeyesekera, Janice Jiggins and Bryce Ryan’s Caste in Modern Ceylon, he shows that JVP strength concentrated in areas where oppressed castes — Wahumpura, Bathgama, Nekathi — were dense, a pattern the Presidential Commission on Youth Unrest also recorded. These groups entered the capitalist economy late, gained education late, and remain under-represented in Parliament. Ivan extends the analysis to the Tamil militancy, reading it as a struggle against Vellala domination as much as for national freedom, and suggests that both movements refuse to disarm because returning to democratic politics would mean returning to high-caste dominance. A Ravaya reader survey finding the JVP still esteemed by a tenth of Sinhala society leads him to warn of room for a third uprising.