Prabhakaran and the Presidential Election
Victor Ivan argues that the 2005 presidential election was decided not by the Sinhala people, the SLFP, the JVP or the Hela Urumaya but by Prabhakaran, who spoke on Heroes’ Day only after the result of his decision had been announced. Reading that speech, he traces why the LTTE leader wanted Wickremesinghe beaten: the ceasefire began boldly on both sides — roadblocks lifted, the ban withdrawn, a strategic route opened, demining agreed — but the Sri Lankan government would not even press for the Washington aid summit to be held on neutral ground, and talk of a ‘safety net’ confirmed a suspicion that nets are for catching fish. Campaigning on defeating separatism, invoking the lion flag while discussing federalism, and never once appealing on behalf of the Tamil people, Wickremesinghe lost, in Ivan’s phrase, both the branch he held and the branch he stood on. Prabhakaran instead installed the man the Sinhala people had chosen as their Dutugemunu against him. Ivan runs the Dutugemunu-Elara parallel through to its limits — this Elara is the younger man and will not request a duel — and sets out the options open to him, noting the warning that this was a final notice before a decisive struggle in the coming year.
Sinhala Buddhist Vote Base and the Presidential Election
Six weeks before the 2005 presidential election, Victor Ivan works through whether it can be won on Sinhala Buddhist votes alone. He begins by conceding the JVP’s pre-2004 argument was arithmetically sound: had the SLFP, JVP and EPDP contested together in 2001 they would have outpolled the UNP-led alliance by 27,579 votes. Contesting as one in 2004 they gained only 5,019 votes on their separate 2001 total, took 108 seats without a majority, and were outpolled by the combined opposition by some seven lakhs — 46.04% against 53.96%. But a presidential election is a different instrument: two contenders, one national constituency, and a winner who must clear half the vote. Ivan estimates the Sinhala Buddhist electorate at 6,094,667 of roughly 9.16 million valid votes, meaning a candidate relying on it alone would need 75% of it — a target he does not think easily attainable. He notes too why minorities prefer the presidential system: with the Sinhala vote split between the main parties, their votes can decide who becomes head of state.
An Utterly Complicated Situation
In this article, Victor Ivan examines the volatile political maneuvering between the Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP) and the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP). Driven by factions eager to topple the ruling government, efforts to form a JVP-SLFP alliance ultimately stalled due to President Chandrika Kumaratunga’s reluctance to commit to a permanent coalition. Ivan draws a historical parallel to the President’s father, S.W.R.D. Bandaranaike, who was forced by chauvinist pressures to tear up the Bandaranaike-Chelvanayagam Pact. The author highlights the JVP’s alarming ideological shift away from Marxism toward blatant racism and Sinhalese chauvinism, explicitly demanding that the SLFP abandon its policies on the devolution of power. Meanwhile, Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe is criticized for remaining passively silent, hoping the President loses credibility—a dangerous strategy that Ivan warns could empower racist factions, destroy the peace process, and ultimately result in a divided and bleeding nation.
Silence Must End
This article addresses Sri Lanka’s intellectual stagnation, arguing that high literacy rates mask a deeply backward social consciousness starved of meaningful public debate. Contrasting Sri Lanka’s superficial modernism with Europe’s Enlightenment and India’s inclusive movement under Mahatma Gandhi, the author criticizes Sri Lanka’s past reform attempts for fragmenting society along racial, religious, and class lines. The text delivers a sharp warning to the educated class, asserting that their persistent silence and fear of controversy create a dangerous vacuum—one historically filled by violent extremists like Wijeweera and Prabhakaran—and calls on intellectuals to fulfill their civic duty by sparking dynamic social discussion across all areas of national life.
ද්රවිඩ ජනයා – ලංකාවේ වමට අභියෝගයක්!
Writing in 1979, Victor Ivan challenges Sri Lanka’s Marxists — reformist and radical alike — over their deliberate silence on the Tamil national struggle in the north. They mount poster campaigns and solidarity rallies for oppressed nations abroad, he observes, yet stand mute before a struggle on their own doorstep. He tests their consistency against Bangladesh: the Awami League was no Marxist movement, but the Left correctly backed its independence struggle, measuring the case by whether the people were oppressed rather than by the class character of their leadership. Why, he asks, does that yardstick stop at Jaffna? Rejecting the equation of oppressor and oppressed nationalism — one cannot equate the Black Panthers with the Klan — Ivan argues that the Left’s opportunist alliance with Sinhala-Buddhist chauvinism is what makes it unable to support a just demand, and that only by joining the struggle rather than lecturing it from outside can Marxists rebuild the broken Sinhala-Tamil unity.