Paradise in Tears
Written from a sick bed after Shehan Karunatilaka praised ‘Paradise in Tears’. Victor Ivan recalls Mangala Samaraweera’s intervention, the Indian investigator who bought three copies, and the ten-year struggle against Sarath Silva.
Putting the country on right track
Victor Ivan answers the anger his defence of Ranil Wickremesinghe provoked, describes how the man’s public image was manufactured against him, and states plainly what his own role in all this has been.
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.
Ranil’s destiny
Victor Ivan describes taking his reform plan to Gotabaya Rajapaksa during the uprising, then makes the case for Ranil Wickremesinghe — a man, he argues, whose character the media deliberately destroyed.
More about the solution for Sri Lanka’s current crisis
Radio frequencies are public property given away for nothing, and MPs are traders in the state they govern. Victor Ivan uses both to argue that a balance-of-payments fix alone will change nothing.
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.
Betrayal of the nation
Going to Geneva is called treachery in Sri Lanka. Victor Ivan, who did it and won, sets out the Tony Fernando case and the judgment Parliament could reverse tomorrow if it chose to.
Is Lanka insane?
A nation, Victor Ivan writes, can go mad the way a person can. The column diagnoses the intellectual paucity behind the debt crisis and sets out what an IMF programme would have to be built on.
Recreating the State
Answering the response to ‘End of an era’, Victor Ivan sets out the changes themselves — an itemised programme for rebuilding the state, from investigating the presidents to regulating the broadcasters.
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.