Was the last presidential election a fraud?
Nagananda Kodithuwakku’s petition asks whether Gotabaya Rajapaksa was qualified to stand at all. Victor Ivan follows the citizenship question and asks why neither rival candidate ever raised it.
Defeating the spurious constitution
Against the constitution being written by a committee the President appointed. Victor Ivan sets out what a participatory constitution would require and how a mass agitation could win one.
Paving the way for a transformation
A social-media questionnaire on how to choose a leader turned into a public argument, so Victor Ivan sets out the philosophy behind it: a transitional constitution, a constitutional assembly, and power returned to the people.
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.
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.
The dilemma of the victory
A two-thirds majority and no idea what to do with it. Victor Ivan reads the 2020 landslide as a dilemma for the winners — and reserves his sharpest analysis for what became of the UNP and the JVP.
Criminalisation of politics
India counts the criminal cases against its MPs; Sri Lanka does not count at all. Victor Ivan sets the two countries’ records side by side and asks why no one here has thought the question worth asking.
Will the pandemic gorge up democracy?
India and Sri Lanka took the democratic road together at independence. Victor Ivan asks whether the pandemic will let a nominal president govern as a real one, and whether the courts will stop it.
Disabled electoral system and Gotabaya’s candidacy
With Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s candidacy contested in court over his citizenship, Victor Ivan turns to the machinery of the election itself — an Election Commission without the power to enforce its own rules.
Mr. NOTA and understanding the Presidential Election
India gives voters a ‘None Of The Above’ box. Victor Ivan proposes Sri Lanka field Mr. NOTA as a candidate in his own right — a vote for a new constitution rather than for any of the men on the ballot.