Reforms or a revolution?
With the Rajapaksa brothers gone, the power struggle has taken a stranger shape. Victor Ivan examines the arrest of Wasantha Mudalige, the militant wing of the Aragalaya, and what lies outside the constitutional framework.
Scope of Aragalaya and future of SL
With the protest camp cleared, Victor Ivan weighs the repression against the anarchy it forestalled, examines the detentions under the PTA, and judges the morality of the Aragalaya itself.
Dismissing Ranil
Answering the critics of ‘Ranil’s destiny’. Victor Ivan asks who else was available for the presidency, weighs the charges against Wickremesinghe one by one, and returns to the shortage of mature leaders.
The mass uprising: What could be the outcome?
Written a week after Mirihana. Victor Ivan reads the protest movement as a direct democratic uprising and asks what it can actually win, beyond removing one man.
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.
Crisis of Sri Lanka: Champika and Anura
Champika Ranawaka and Anura Kumara Dissanayake, judged side by side. Victor Ivan credits both where their proposals are sound and faults both for saying nothing about the judiciary or Parliament.
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.
Judiciary and the crisis
How the spine of the judiciary was broken. Victor Ivan follows the line from the taming of Parliament through Neville Samarakoon to Sarath Silva, and asks what a court could still do in a crisis like this.
Lawful public uprising!
The first of three parts. Victor Ivan builds a case for a lawful uprising out of republicanism, the sovereignty of the people, and a 1991 UN Human Rights Committee judgment from Canada.
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.