What could be the end of the revolution?
Written in the week of 9 July. Victor Ivan admits the uprising disproved his own forecast, sets out what distinguished it from the JVP insurrections, and asks what it can end in.
Overcoming ideological anarchy
Mao on falling into pits. Victor Ivan argues that neither the protesters nor the opposition parties who borrowed their slogan have worked out whether it can actually be done.
Choosing destruction instead of salvation
COPE’s daily hearings show where the money went. Victor Ivan notes that everyone is shouting at someone to go home and nobody is asking anyone to take charge.
Alleviating the burden of the crisis
Eight practical measures for living through the crisis — fuel rationing, public transport, solar conversion for expatriate-owned homes — inside a case for an all-party government.
A way out of the crisis?
An all-party consensus, and quickly. Victor Ivan offers his reform proposals as a specimen of the scale required rather than a text to be adopted, and warns of the stage below the present one.
Self-ruination or salvation
The country hangs on a cord braided from Gotabaya and Ranil — ugly, absurd, and the only one there is. Victor Ivan asks whose fault it was and what escape would actually require.
Opening doors for reforms
With the President and Prime Minister apparently willing, Victor Ivan sets out the reform plan itself — numbered, sequenced, and to be finished with a referendum inside three years.
Anarchy is more dangerous than dictatorship
Victor Ivan recalls telling an audience the country would go bankrupt, and Mangala Samaraweera rising to accept it. The column argues that anarchy is a worse danger than dictatorship.
Youth struggle; what could be the end?
Ranil Wickremesinghe is appointed Prime Minister and Victor Ivan calls it a good omen. He also tells the youth movement plainly that its slogan cost it the reforms it could have won.
Revisit the strategies
A working document rather than an essay: Victor Ivan’s numbered proposal for an interim administration and an interim constitution, written for a forum of people’s representatives.