Neglect of essential reforms
The Aragalaya put system change at the centre of the argument and then the moment passed. Victor Ivan asks why the Opposition and the JVP both want no part of a reform programme.
Whither ends the Sri Lankan crisis?
Even with an IMF package the hardest part is still ahead. Victor Ivan returns to the JVP’s second insurrection for what it shows about how a power struggle turns into a bloodbath.
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.
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.
The crisis and Anura Kumara
Anura Kumara Dissanayake says the JVP is ready to lead. Victor Ivan, who knows the party’s history from the inside, weighs that claim against what its violence did to the country.
Lawful public uprising! (2)
Part two turns to why liberalism never took here. Victor Ivan sets the JVP and the LTTE side by side as movements that drove their own communities into racism.
What if everyone fails?
With every institution of the state failed, Victor Ivan asks who is left. He measures Champika Ranawaka against the standard and finds an educated man who is still, in his judgment, a tribal leader.
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.
The presidency and the dilemma of the Presidential Election
J.R. Jayewardene built the presidency to make himself a king; the 19th Amendment hollowed it out but left the crown on. Victor Ivan reads the 2019 field — Gotabaya, the UNP’s impasse, the JVP — against that comedy.
Failure of the Left Movement
From the Old Left’s Marxist head on a liberal trunk to the JVP after two insurrections, Victor Ivan asks why the Left has failed — and what the JVP should do with the presidential election in front of it.