Indecency glorified
The land swap, the constitutional frauds, the things presidents do that no civilised country would tolerate. Victor Ivan catalogues indecency raised to the level of ordinary practice.
Lost hopes of freedom
On the 73rd independence anniversary, Victor Ivan traces the country back to 1815 and the Colebrooke reforms to ask how a state that began ahead of Asia ended at the bottom of it.
Making the nation a bunch of morons
A school system built on memorising, and a country that has stopped being able to reason. Victor Ivan argues the damage runs from Grade 1 to the way Sri Lanka has understood the pandemic.
Understanding core issues: The key for solution
Answering readers who asked for a solution, Victor Ivan goes back to the core issues — the limits of the independence Sri Lanka was given, the disenfranchisements that followed, and the nation never built.
Foundations of incivility
Why does a country tolerate constitutional violation after constitutional violation without protest? Victor Ivan looks for the answer in the intellectual poverty of the Left, the language question and the habit of judicial silence.
Ranjan’s whirlpool and National Anthem
Thirteen thousand recorded phone calls seized from an MP’s house, and a government that wants the national anthem sung only in Sinhala. Victor Ivan reads both as tests of how civil the nation is.
The vicious cycle of revenge
Each government jails the last one’s ministers and is jailed in turn. Victor Ivan calls it a tribal inheritance — a cycle of revenge that has replaced accountability and now protects everyone from investigation.
Dilemmas of Sri Lanka
Whatever his history, Gotabaya Rajapaksa now governs those who voted against him too. Victor Ivan turns from the presidency to stray dogs, crop-raiding wildlife, milk and meat — and argues for an agrarian revolution.
Unanswered question
North and east voted one way, the Sinhala south the other. Victor Ivan takes the ethnic arithmetic of the 2019 result as the unanswered question of Sri Lankan politics: how to make one nation out of three electorates.
’56 reborn
Gotabaya Rajapaksa won without the minorities. Victor Ivan reads the result as a second 1956 — a Sinhala-Buddhist revival in new clothes — and asks what kind of leader the country has just demanded.