Acquiring the desired change
Readers keep asking Victor Ivan how change is actually to be won. His answer: turn the presidential election into a referendum on the system itself, and civilise a media culture that lives off public frequencies.
Putrefaction and end
With the presidential election set for December, Victor Ivan argues that every major leader has an interest in keeping the country unstable until polling day — and that none of them will touch the reforms that matter.
Sri Lanka needs urgent surgery!
Sri Lanka needs emergency surgery, not an election, Victor Ivan writes — and he is careful to say what he means by surgery, what diagnosis must come first, and what the next president will actually be able to do.
Overcoming wretchedness
What the country needs now is not an election but structural change, Victor Ivan argues — and he describes trying, and failing, to get that point onto the agenda of a meeting of party leaders.
The reality of Nagananda’s Constitution
Nagananda Kodituwakku’s ‘autochthonous’ constitution would let every incoming ruler write his own, Victor Ivan argues — a recipe for constitutional chaos dressed up as home-grown independence.
Can Sri Lanka be saved?
Neither the government nor the opposition, Victor Ivan argues, but a third option: he describes what the Punarudaya Movement has actually tried in villages and meeting halls, and what it learned.
Making way for a people’s constitution
A numbered case for taking constitution-making out of the hands of a Parliament that Victor Ivan judges incapable of passing an ordinary Act, let alone founding a state.
Next choice of Sri Lanka, a People’s Constitution
Forty-six people’s organisations met in Colombo on 19 January and agreed how a new constitution should be framed. Victor Ivan sets out that consensus and the international-law argument for participatory constitution-making.
Making a People’s Constitution for Sri Lanka
Having argued that the Constitution has lost its spirit, Victor Ivan sets out what a replacement should do: build the nation, empower the people directly, and put constitution-making beyond the reach of the Executive alone.
The second freedom struggle (III)
From John Locke to the South African transition, Victor Ivan surveys how constitutions have actually been made — and concludes that Sri Lanka’s own expertise on the subject is thin, outdated and confined to a narrow elite.