The elephant, goat and the rope
Rohan Samarajiva answers back, so Victor Ivan sets out the case against independent commissions in detail, drawing on India and Hong Kong to show what an appointing body has to be before it can work.
Some insights into the NMSJ’s proposed constitutional reforms
The National Movement for Social Justice publishes its reform proposals, and Victor Ivan finds the shadow of the 19th Amendment over them — another attempt, he argues, to tie down a president who remains above the law.
The rule of law
Dicey on the rule of law, applied to a president who stands above it. Victor Ivan reads the pandemic regulations and the Easter Sunday investigations as the same failure in two settings.
Constitutionality and Basil Rajapaksa
Basil Rajapaksa’s National List seat, examined against the Constitution and the international covenant Sri Lanka has already been found to have breached. Victor Ivan asks whether the law will simply be ignored.
More about the presidential system
Replies came in defending Champika Ranawaka, so Victor Ivan answers them. He calls Champika a genius who is simultaneously philosopher and exorcist, and asks what that contradiction cost the country.
2015, a dilemma; 2020, a flummox
Victor Ivan reads the Gotabaya government as the logical product of the good-governance years that preceded it — the narrowed agenda, the black money, the commissions that never worked.
True status of the Judiciary
A court that approves the removal of the people’s own instruments of sovereignty. Victor Ivan sets the Indian Supreme Court beside the Sri Lankan bench and returns to the years he spent fighting Sarath Nanda Silva.
Prime factors of the crisis
The pandemic did not cause this. Victor Ivan takes the crisis apart into its four components — the social order, the riots, the political system and the economy — and gives the remedy for each in brief.
Anarchy, dictatorship and the Constitution
Everyone is watching the 20th Amendment; Victor Ivan is watching the whirlwind behind it, which he expects to destroy both the remaining democracy and the dictatorial ambitions at once.
Comprehending the puzzles of 19th and 20th Amendments
Both amendments are pickpockets, Victor Ivan writes — one in democratic dress, one in a dictator’s robe. What neither touches is the president’s licence to treat public property as his own.