The path the professionals should choose
The last column of the run. Victor Ivan turns from politicians to professionals — lawyers, engineers, accountants, auditors — and argues that no one should be trusted to fix the country who has not first fixed their own field.
Another aspect of the crisis
Corruption, not just monetary mismanagement, is what emptied the reserves. Victor Ivan follows the vehicle permits back to J.R. Jayewardene and the predatory system he built around them.
Was there an invisible hand behind the Easter attack?
Cardinal Ranjith goes to the Pope and to Geneva, and Shani Abeysekera sits in a cell. Victor Ivan lays out what he calls the puzzle behind the Easter Sunday attack and asks who benefited from it.
Prime cause of the crisis
On the 74th independence anniversary Victor Ivan finds the public discussion unusually advanced, then argues that Parliament itself is illegally constituted and points to the Jayewardene Centre as the founding example.
President Chandrika and former Chief Justice Shirani Bandaranayke
Chandrika Kumaratunga launches her memoir and Shirani Bandaranayake gives the keynote. Victor Ivan, who wrote a book about Chandrika, listens to the speech and sets the record against it.
Lawful public uprising: Theory and practice
Part three. Victor Ivan explains why leaders who call the presidency corrupt keep it anyway, revisits the common-candidate strategy of 2015, and argues reforms must be won before power is handed over, not after.
Ugly State!
Victor Ivan asks the President, the Chief Justice and the Speaker to shut their eyes and look properly at the state they run — including a Parliament whose members trade with the government they sit in.
Indecency glorified
The land swap, the constitutional frauds, the things presidents do that no civilised country would tolerate. Victor Ivan catalogues indecency raised to the level of ordinary practice.
The puzzles of Sri Lanka’s crisis
Two puzzles put to the leaders who want power: why keep the presidency, and why ban chemical fertiliser? Victor Ivan uses Champika Ranawaka’s answers to both as the test case.
The absence of leaders: A crisis
2015 was the last chance, Victor Ivan writes, and it was spent dishonestly. The column goes back through independence, the 1978 constitution and revolution and counter-revolution to explain the vacuum now left.