What is happening?
The patient needs surgery and the doctors are discussing the election. Victor Ivan sets out what the next president will and will not be able to do, and why the contest itself is in crisis.
Acquiring the desired change
Readers keep asking Victor Ivan how change is actually to be won. His answer: turn the presidential election into a referendum on the system itself, and civilise a media culture that lives off public frequencies.
Laundering the Parliament
Victor Ivan publishes his correspondence with the Speaker of Parliament on MPs who do business with the state — the request, the reply, and his answer to it.
Plunder of public property by rulers
Victor Ivan sets out how the plunder of public property was built into the state: laws left unenforced after 1977, permits handed to relatives and cronies, and MPs unseated by the courts then reappointed by their leaders.
Putrefaction and end
With the presidential election set for December, Victor Ivan argues that every major leader has an interest in keeping the country unstable until polling day — and that none of them will touch the reforms that matter.
Avoiding essential reforms
The surface fire is out; the fire under the ashes is not. Victor Ivan compares Sri Lanka’s failure to build a nation with Gandhi’s approach in India, and asks why the necessary reforms are still being avoided.
Sri Lanka needs urgent surgery!
Sri Lanka needs emergency surgery, not an election, Victor Ivan writes — and he is careful to say what he means by surgery, what diagnosis must come first, and what the next president will actually be able to do.
The crisis and constitutional violations
Every branch of the state has broken the Constitution, Victor Ivan argues — and he traces the habit from the disenfranchisement of the plantation Tamils under Soulbury to the amendments that followed 1977.
Overcoming wretchedness
What the country needs now is not an election but structural change, Victor Ivan argues — and he describes trying, and failing, to get that point onto the agenda of a meeting of party leaders.
The reality of Nagananda’s Constitution
Nagananda Kodituwakku’s ‘autochthonous’ constitution would let every incoming ruler write his own, Victor Ivan argues — a recipe for constitutional chaos dressed up as home-grown independence.