Downfall of Sri Lanka: The root cause
Not corruption but ignorance, Victor Ivan argues — a literate society that never learned to think. He traces it through the colonial historians, through Dharmapala, and through a constitution violated since 1948 without protest.
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 rough sea, sinking ship and the captain
A novice captain took the helm in the worst weather at sea. Victor Ivan reads Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s presidency that way, then turns to Geiger and the curse laid on kings in the chronicles.
There is no cure for stupidity!
Reading the Budget, Victor Ivan finds no vision in it beyond holding on to power, and repeats that cutting imports is not a solution to a balance of payments crisis — going to the IMF is.
Grand offer of Lanka to Kali Amma
First the fertiliser ban, then the ban on cattle slaughter. Victor Ivan argues the dairy herd is being destroyed to keep a vow, and that a president is a custodian of the country, not its owner.
Deceiving the Sinhala Buddhists
The utopian Sinhala-Buddhist state promised in 2019 and 2020 did not arrive. Victor Ivan argues that of everyone deceived by the racist project, the Sinhala Buddhists themselves were deceived most.
More about the presidential system
Replies came in defending Champika Ranawaka, so Victor Ivan answers them. He calls Champika a genius who is simultaneously philosopher and exorcist, and asks what that contradiction cost the country.
Sri Lanka: Another cause for failure
Dharmapala and Marx, the Soulbury Constitution broken before the ink was dry, and the citizenship of the plantation workers. Victor Ivan traces the decline to the choices made at the moment of independence.
The end of a journey and beginning of a new one
Anti-Muslim feeling, the forced cremations, and what Victor Ivan says the National Intelligence Service did. The column argues the old era has ended and asks what should be built in its place.
More about the ‘end of an era of extremism’
A sequel to the previous week’s column. Victor Ivan goes back to Turnour’s Mahavamsa, to Anagarika Dharmapala and to the growth of literacy to show where Sinhala-Buddhist racism got its history from.