Cutting the umbilical cord for a new birth
Whoever wins in August, the country reaches a crossroads. Victor Ivan sets out participatory constitution-making as practised elsewhere and argues Sri Lanka must cut the cord to be born again.
Silver line in pitch darkness
Mangala Samaraweera walks away from traditional politics, and Victor Ivan reads the decision as the first crack of light — an established figure joining the argument for system change.
The Executive, the Legislature and the Judiciary
A primer on the three pillars — what the legislature, the executive and the judiciary are each for, what judicial review means, and how far Sri Lanka’s institutions have drifted from the description.
Understanding core issues: The key for solution
Answering readers who asked for a solution, Victor Ivan goes back to the core issues — the limits of the independence Sri Lanka was given, the disenfranchisements that followed, and the nation never built.
Sri Lanka: Out of the frying pan into the fire
Seventy-two years in four phases, each worse than the last. Victor Ivan totals the debt against government revenue and argues the country has passed from the frying pan into the fire.
The role of journalism
Asked why he proposed closing Ravaya, Victor Ivan answers with an account of what the paper was for — the battle against Sarath Nanda Silva, the criminal defamation law, and the case he took to the United Nations.
Stark darkness
The voters believed they were electing a strongman who would rescue them. Victor Ivan describes a country sliding into a bottomless pit while neither its navigators nor its passengers can see what is ahead.
Will the pandemic gorge up democracy?
India and Sri Lanka took the democratic road together at independence. Victor Ivan asks whether the pandemic will let a nominal president govern as a real one, and whether the courts will stop it.
Power and the pandemic
If Gotabaya Rajapaksa wanted the power to govern, Victor Ivan argues, he contested the wrong office — and the gap between the image built for him and the powers he actually holds is now deepening the crisis.
End of an era?
The pandemic is an accident, not a conspiracy. Victor Ivan argues it has merely accelerated a collapse already under way, and asks whether what is ending is a government or an era.