What Can Happen?
Reading the April 2004 election result, Victor Ivan opens with a fable of three fish: the green fish stripped of its dominance by a blue-and-red alliance, and the victors fused into one distorted creature, the red fish triumphant but immobilised by the half of the blue fish it cannot finish swallowing. Beneath the allegory he argues that a real change has begun — the system in which either main party’s turn in office amounted to an official permit to plunder public property may not survive the JVP’s new strength. But he judges the JVP’s positions on the economy and the ethnic question neither progressive nor practical: it accepts decentralisation while rejecting devolution, when only maximum devolution can settle the war, and its coercive route to constitutional change invites Prabhakaran to conclude that a minority may also impose its way. With the SLFP reduced to a dwarf and both leaders’ ambitions evaporating, Ivan proposes an all-party interim administration on an agreed reform programme.
What is going to happen?
Writing days before the April 2004 parliamentary election, Victor Ivan argues that no result can reduce the country’s instability. Two nationalist blocs have each split — the Jathika Hela Urumaya’s monks drawing away from the JVP’s claim to represent Sinhala nationalism, and Karuna’s break dividing the Tamil National Alliance between north and east. If no party reaches 105 seats, the balancing seats cannot come from the TNA, since courting Prabhakaran means fighting Karuna and courting Karuna means fighting Prabhakaran. Ivan sets out the manoeuvres open to Chandrika Kumaratunga and Ranil Wickremesinghe in each scenario, warns that a prolonged failure to form a government would weaken the economy and the rule of law and choke off international aid, and notes that Prabhakaran — who had watched the earlier crisis with amusement — is now as bogged down as the two leaders he was observing.
Will a Parliamentary Election be a Solution to the Problem?
Victor Ivan evaluates whether holding a parliamentary general election will resolve the political deadlock between the President and the Prime Minister. Using electoral data under Sri Lanka’s Proportional Representation system, Ivan projects that neither a PA-JVP alliance nor the UNF can win an absolute parliamentary majority on its own. Consequently, any future government will be forced to rely on Tamil representatives from the North and East—most notably the LTTE-backed TNA—to form a majority. Ivan warns that this creates a severe governance paradox: a government reliant on LTTE-aligned MPs for its survival would struggle to credibly negotiate peace with the LTTE while maintaining public trust, ultimately leading to an even deeper political stalemate than before.
Towards A Solution
In this article, Victor Ivan analyzes the constitutional deadlock resulting from President Chandrika Kumaratunga’s takeover of three cabinet ministries, arguing that the crisis stems from structural flaws in a system where executive power and parliamentary control belong to opposing parties. Ivan critiques Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe for attempting to sideline the Executive President and leveraging the peace process primarily to fuel his own 2005 presidential ambitions. The author notes the irony in the President now calling for independent commissions and state media oversight—reforms the Prime Minister failed to enact earlier—while demanding an equal seat at the table in peace negotiations. Ultimately, Ivan asserts that the only way to avert national catastrophe is to establish a bipartisan power-sharing agreement that includes the President in decision-making on peace.
What must happen
In this article, Victor Ivan addresses the major constitutional crisis triggered by President Chandrika Kumaratunga’s unilateral takeover of three key government ministries—including the Defense Ministry—while Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe was abroad. Ivan characterizes the President’s actions as an immoral, well-planned “constitutional coup,” while simultaneously criticizing the Prime Minister and cabinet for sabotaging political co-habitation by attempting to marginalize the President while willingly cooperating with LTTE leader Velupillai Prabhakaran. Warning that the deadlock threatens both the national economy and the peace process, Ivan asserts that the crisis cannot be solved through street protests or snap elections. Instead, he argues that the crisis must serve as a catalyst for a bipartisan agreement on structural constitutional reforms, electoral changes, and the revitalization of independent commissions.
How will the struggle for power end?
In this article, Victor Ivan analyzes the escalating power struggle between President Chandrika Kumaratunga and Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe. Facing the end of her term and unable to contest the next presidential election, the President seeks to overhaul the executive presidency to secure her continued political dominance, potentially by aligning with the JVP or utilizing Parliament as a constituent assembly. Conversely, the Prime Minister is determined to preserve the current system to claim the executive presidency for himself, plotting to render the President politically irrelevant. Ivan warns that this clash of ambitions, coupled with a lack of faith in the impartiality of the judiciary under Chief Justice Sarath Nanda Silva, risks plunging the nation into an extra-constitutional crisis and potential civil conflict.
A Snap Election
In a climate where peace hangs by a thread, the looming threat of a snap election promises not a democratic transition, but a destructive contest of death. Caught in a bitter, bilateral deadlock, the Executive President and the Prime Minister are poised to drag the nation into a mad struggle for supremacy. With the LTTE watching warily from the wings, an election waged in the “law of the jungle” risks plunging the exhausted country back into anarchy. To prevent this impending peril, civil society must forcefully demand a civilized consensus—a unified, all-party commitment to structural reform, independent electoral oversight, and a non-military resolution—before the ballot box is completely broken by the barrel of a gun.
About the Budget
While this article credits the UNF Government for stabilizing a collapsing economy through strict financial control, it heavily criticizes the administration’s lack of a broader economic vision. The author argues that Sri Lanka must stop thinking like a small island and instead integrate its education and workforce into the global market. Rather than passively relying on the remittances of unskilled laborers while simultaneously exploiting them with excessive passport and agency fees, the government should actively train its youth for skilled international professions—such as nursing—and facilitate affordable foreign education to alleviate local bottlenecks and maximize global economic opportunities.
Who is More Responsible for Corruption: the Politician or the Bureaucrat?
This article argues that Sri Lanka’s greatest existential threat is not the war waged by Prabhakaran, but the pervasive cancer of state-level corruption and waste that has been rotting the country from within. Challenging the popular narrative that blames corruption entirely on politicians, the author places heavy responsibility on permanent state bureaucrats. Rather than acting as the legal backbone of the state, these officials frequently collude with temporary politicians for personal gain. The author concludes that until both corrupt politicians and their complicit bureaucratic enablers are prosecuted and imprisoned, Sri Lanka will never develop a strong, independent administrative service capable of upholding the rule of law.
WANTED: An organized civil movement
This article delivers a scathing critique of “crony capitalism” in Sri Lanka, a deeply entrenched system of state plunder initiated under former President J.R. Jayewardene. The author expresses profound disillusionment with the newly elected People’s Alliance government, arguing that instead of dismantling this corrupt network and recovering stolen national wealth, the new leadership has simply embraced the same wealthy elites who bankrolled their rise to power, leaving the public’s demand for justice unfulfilled.