Perfecting the failure
Gotabaya is failing, Victor Ivan writes, but so is the state he inherited. The column ends on the case of Shani Abeysekera and what happens to a country when its courts stop administering justice.
Comprehending the puzzles of 19th and 20th Amendments
Both amendments are pickpockets, Victor Ivan writes — one in democratic dress, one in a dictator’s robe. What neither touches is the president’s licence to treat public property as his own.
Ignoring the crisis
A throne speech that never mentions the crisis. Victor Ivan sets the President’s words against the World Bank’s forecasts, the collapse of state revenue and the half-million jobs about to be lost in the Gulf.
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.
Seducing the Parliament
How Parliament was bought: Victor Ivan traces the estates, contracts and licences J.R. Jayewardene handed his MPs, and asks whether the new House will break the silence its predecessors kept.
Parliamentary Polls and the two centres of power
Two centres of power inside one ruling family, an election held under the shadow of a second COVID wave, and a Supreme Court that let MPs cross the floor without losing their seats.
Recreation of the State
The promised remedy: Victor Ivan’s blueprint for rebuilding the state — a judiciary with the power of judicial review, a reformed legislature and executive, and an end to the plunder of public property.
The Executive, the Legislature and the Judiciary
A primer on the three pillars — what the legislature, the executive and the judiciary are each for, what judicial review means, and how far Sri Lanka’s institutions have drifted from the description.
The role of journalism
Asked why he proposed closing Ravaya, Victor Ivan answers with an account of what the paper was for — the battle against Sarath Nanda Silva, the criminal defamation law, and the case he took to the United Nations.
Added to the pandemic, a constitutional crisis
Parliament dissolved, an election impossible, and the president’s spending power expiring on 30 April. Victor Ivan sets out the constitutional deadlock the pandemic created, alongside the communal poison it released.