Let’s dream of a renaissance in Sri Lanka - EDITORIAL

These are times when parents and even politicians are promoting the thought of quality education because when pursuing a goal in life ambition must match skill. Just the other day...

Gaza war and the planned exodus of Palestinians, according to scripture

As Israel kills a child every ten minutes in the Gaza Strip, the world’s biggest open prison, it’s revolting to see that the horror has still not drawn condemnation from the United States....

WHAT ARE WE THINKING? Socio-economic crisis in SL - who’s to blame?

Facts do not change. Feelings do and our feelings about ‘THE MESS’ (as the country’s situation is commonly referred to) vary from anger to despair, depending on income, social status, or career. I do not pretend to know what the citizens of disaster areas think. Can anyone imagine what depths to which they must plummet at these moments of unimaginable disaster? Desperation must be their commonest emotion I would imagine. So let me try and encap

The Earth does not belong to us: we belong to the Earth

With armed conflicts raging in the Middle East and in the war between Russia and Ukraine, we need to ponder deeply on the reflections of the United Nations on the International Day for Preventing the Exploitation of the Environment in War and Armed Conflict. Even Sri Lanka was severely affected by this during the 30-year war against the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) and other terror groups. The war left hundreds of thousands of people

Beware of pitfalls! Digitalisation with laws that have no protection for owners

With reference to the article by Citizen Perera on the IMF attempting to destroy the country’s deeds and archival records while relying solely on a digital register, yes, as the....

Rumblings, grumblings and possible elections - EDITORIAL

Earlier this month, 21 October to be exact, President Wickremesinghe announced presidential elections would be conducted next year (2024). He added parliamentary elections and provincial....

‘Good terrorists’ and ‘bad terrorists’

In the immediate aftermath of the Hamas attack on Israel on October 7, I wrote in these pages why many who feel outrage at the Hamas barbarism may still hesitate for an unqualified condemnation...

SL’s peace-religious groups Showing a lion heart for battered Palestine

Brother Lionel Peiris, an Anglican Franciscan, stepped into the Embassy of Palestine in Sri Lanka by stating, “Now we are in Palestine.” He was a member of a group of peace-loving citizens who together with a collective of multi-religious leaders that gathered at the Church of Ceylon, Bauddaloka Mawatha in Colombo on October 23. The members of this group and the religious leaders then walked from the Church of Ceylon to the Embassy of Palestine i

Address root causes to defuse dissent

The government is deserved to be commended if we can rely on the media reports that it has withdrawn the Online Safety Bill to refashion and present it again, since it has drawn much criticism from the local and international right groups. However, the very fact that an “Online Safety Act” is to come under the purview of the Public Security Ministry tells volumes and is questionable. This is the second Bill prepared by the government under Pres

How the CID ‘Grilled’ a Journalist on the 4th Floor

The first and second parts of this article published on 14 and 21 October respectively narrated the story of how I was arrested by the CID in October 1987 and detained on the 4th floor for having exposed....

Is Sri Lanka addicted to missing revenue targets?

It is all too familiar that Sri Lanka has a problem in meeting its budgeted revenue targets. Recently, a government member of parliament (MP) who voted in favour of the budget last....

Hate speech and rabble rousing -will we ever learn? - EDITORIAL

Just over a year ago, our country declared itself bankrupt. In turn, our country was not considered credit-worthy by international lending institutions. With expenditure far exceeding import....

Israel-Gaza crisis: Seeking diplomacy and peace

Eugene Burdick’s The Ugly American, -1958 is a political novel with a plot based on American foreign policy; it offers a pointed critique of US actions in Southeast....

A community without a permanent address

There are many individuals in Sri Lanka who do not have a place to call his/her home and thereby do not have a permanent address. They either live in rented houses or share a home with another family, but without any ownership for the place where they reside in.

Human Rights violations-different standards for different nations - EDITORIAL

In March 2021 The UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) adopted a resolution giving UN Rights Chief Michelle Bachelet a mandate to collect and preserve information and evidence of war crimes committed during Sri Lanka’s nearly 30-year-long civil war, which ended in 2009.

Saying ‘yes’ to tourism growth and ‘no’ to visa - EDITORIAL

Many are of the opinion that profits can be made from tourism in this pearl of an island even if businesses related to this industry are badly run. This is a myth according to experts in the tourism....

Ethnic cleansing in Gaza as brutish global order returns

What is happening in Gaza is a violent act of ethnic cleansing. Period. It is happening in full view of the international community, while those who have the capability to prevent it are allowing...

Free media, the lifeblood of democracy

With President Ranil Wickremesinghe and the Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna (SLPP) Government reportedly planning to introduce bills to restrict media freedom and impose checks on social media networks, independent analysts are warning of the repercussions because a free media is one of the pillars of democracy as it involves the people’s sovereignty, the right to information and expression. In this context, our political leaders need to contemplate

Protecting the independence of the Judiciary

Public concerns about the independence of the Judiciary in Sri Lanka were the focus of a recent conference of the Lawyers Collective. Following certain statements made by the executive and in Parliament the Lawyers Collective asserted that the independence of the Judiciary is at stake and that unless action is taken the sovereignty of the people would be at stake The sovereignty of the people is explained in Article 4 of the Constitution as being

Unconscionable tariff hikes and restructuring the CEB - EDITORIAL

The Ceylon Electricity Board has done it again. Electricity tariffs have been raised by a whopping 18%. At this moment according....

Imposters of Aragalaya

If you keep yourself up to date with local news, you are also likely to be bombarded with an overdose of negativity, which might make....

Sri Lanka’s strategic embrace of Blue Economy in the Indo-Pacific

Let me gently remind all of you that this theme merely does not reflect the immediate considerations of the current situation of the maritime...

Take follow-up action on frauds revealed by the COPE - EDITORIAL

There are allegations that the Parliament’s committees on Public Accounts (COPA) and Public Enterprises (COPE) are toothless tigers at a time when corruption has engulfed the entire state machinery from top to bottom of almost all pubic institutions. We read about frauds involving millions if not billions of rupees in national newspapers everyday but rarely hear about follow-up actions taken by the authorities to penalize the culprits or to recov

The place of crossovers in democracies

Sri Lanka’s Environment Minister and MP of the Sri Lanka Muslim Congress (SLMC) Naseer Ahamed was recently ousted from his parliamentary membership by the Supreme Court for defying the party whip and joining the government of President Ranil Wickremesinghe. This brought back into public focus the controversial, if not unsavoury, phenomenon of inter-party crossovers in Sri Lanka. The Supreme Court unseated Naseer Ahamed on the grounds that he h

Parliament, Members of Parliament and lawlessness among law makers - EDITORIAL

Parliament is the highest legislative body in a country. In other words, it makes the laws of the land. It has three functions; representing the electorate, making laws, and overseeing the work....

‘…Yeah, We Wept, When We Remembered Zion’

472 people lost their lives in Ahli Arab Hospital in Gaza; thousands suffered injuries in a highly contentious air raid on the hospital. Approximately one-third of Gaza’s population consists....

How I Went on a Hunger Strike in CID Custody on the 4th Floor

As stated last week, the CID director DIG Bennet Perera showed me the letter written by Defence Secretary Gen. Sepala Attygalle instructing the Police to question me for information regarding the murder of four Rupavahini employees in Jaffna.

Unending electoral reforms

President Ranil Wickremesinghe through a Gazette Notice on October 16 appointed a nine-member Commission headed by former Chief Justice Priyasath Dep to make recommendations on electoral reforms.

Do we have a plan to repay our foreign debt? - EDITORIAL

It never rains but pours, the age-old adage goes. On April 21, 2019, terrorists carried out a heinous attack on innocents at three churches and tourist hotels in Sri Lanka. The attack killed over 250 civilians and included a number of foreigners. The tourist industry which had just begun to raise its head in the aftermath of the ethnic conflict took a hard hit.

Crafty lawmakers and the ‘gap’ they maintain - EDITORIAL

Politics in this country is represented through the gap between those who have and the ones who don’t. This is the reality whether we like it or not. Occasionally we’ve heard stories about less affluent...