Can Sri Lanka be saved?
Neither the government nor the opposition, Victor Ivan argues, but a third option: he describes what the Punarudaya Movement has actually tried in villages and meeting halls, and what it learned.
Making way for a people’s constitution
A numbered case for taking constitution-making out of the hands of a Parliament that Victor Ivan judges incapable of passing an ordinary Act, let alone founding a state.
Crisis of the Constitution
The 19th Amendment stripped the president of executive power but left him elected as though he still held it. Victor Ivan calls the result a country without a working constitution — and warns against going to the polls before fixing it.
Next choice of Sri Lanka, a People’s Constitution
Forty-six people’s organisations met in Colombo on 19 January and agreed how a new constitution should be framed. Victor Ivan sets out that consensus and the international-law argument for participatory constitution-making.
Elimination of bribery and corruption
Duty-free vehicle permits, business with the state, staffing rackets: Victor Ivan lists what a new constitution would have to prohibit outright, and points to Hong Kong’s anti-corruption commission as a working model.
Roots of bribery and corruption
Corruption in Sri Lanka is not a failure of individual character but a system built deliberately, Victor Ivan argues — traced here from J.R. Jayewardene’s admiration for Napoleon to the party machinery that now depends on it.
Making a People’s Constitution for Sri Lanka
Having argued that the Constitution has lost its spirit, Victor Ivan sets out what a replacement should do: build the nation, empower the people directly, and put constitution-making beyond the reach of the Executive alone.
The second freedom struggle (III)
From John Locke to the South African transition, Victor Ivan surveys how constitutions have actually been made — and concludes that Sri Lanka’s own expertise on the subject is thin, outdated and confined to a narrow elite.
The Second Freedom Struggle (Part II)
Victor Ivan returns to 1947-48 to show how the Soulbury Constitution was made and how quickly it was disfigured — the disenfranchisement of the plantation Tamils, the Sinhala Only Act, and the habit of amending away inconvenient safeguards.
Overcoming the crisis: The second freedom struggle
If the collapse of the state cannot now be avoided, what should replace it? Victor Ivan calls for a ‘second freedom struggle’ led by public organisations rather than political parties, aimed at a new constitution.