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.
Overcoming the crisis
A programme in two phases: go to the IMF, bring the Government into a reform process, pass an interim constitution, and complete the new one by referendum. Written as the queues were forming.
Seeking a path to get out of the morass
A proposed way out of the trap: an interim constitution, a constituent assembly, and the observation — from Colvin R. de Silva — that removing even an insane president would take more than two years.
Victory over the puzzle
Sri Lanka as an unsolvable puzzle. Victor Ivan names the crash and dates it — roughly a year away, before the next presidential election — and asks what could be put in place before then.
Transforming Gota to a Botha
Answering a critic in Anidda who called the People’s Constitution a myth, Victor Ivan turns to South Africa: P.W. Botha’s successor negotiated a transition from a position of strength, and Sri Lanka’s president could do the same.
Agenda for transformation
Written out of Victor Ivan’s last conversations with Mangala Samaraweera: a numbered basic document of reform principles and a system of governance to replace the one that failed.
Crisis and the nation’s survival
Some disasters are avoidable. Victor Ivan argues this one still is, and that going to the IMF — even on its conditions, even if that means selling SriLankan Airlines — is part of how.
Pandemic and crimes
Sri Lanka had every advantage against the pandemic and squandered them. Victor Ivan reads the COVID statistics, the discrepancies in them, and a set of crimes he calls mysterious.
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.
Changing the nation’s fate
Not a manifesto but a method: Victor Ivan sets out how a mass of citizens could file fundamental rights petitions together, and what a Centre of Public Movement built on that would be able to do.