It is no secret now that Chief Prelate of the Malwatte Chapter, the Most Venerable Thibbatuwawe Sumangala Thero actively supported the presidential bid of Sarath Fonseka. After Fonseka lost and was subsequently arrested, the Mahanayaka Haamuduruwoprotested to the President and clearly chagrined by the President’s refusal to respond went on to mobilize the other Mahanayakas and issue a joint statement ...
There are certain things that just won’t stay under. Like rubber balls. In water. They pop up. It has to do with the properties of matter. Laws of physics. Like nationalist sentiments, i.e. sentiments associated with identity, let’s say. No, it’s not about the LTTE. Certain things die and are not reborn. Like the JVP. The name can survive and ...
Those who love him are not concerned about 'comeback' but 'comeback' is a survival 'must' for those who 'love' himA group of essentially one-man parties have organized a rally. They’ve invited the 5.8 million who voted for Mahinda Rajapaksa in a losing cause on January 8, 2015 to attend. They have asked for a show of force. Vasudeva Nanayakkara, Dinesh ...
There’s a term that has consistently defined electoral politics in Sri Lanka: default option. We’ve heard it before. We vote people and parties out. Naturally other people and parties get voted in. It’s a pay-back option for a people whose franchise is mostly about reflecting for a few moments before a ballot box before deciding to pick from a ...
He prays for those who died, We prays for recovery from selective blindness and memory-lossThe United States of America has a huge HR problem. Actually it has two HR problems to deal with. The first refers to its problematic fascination with ‘human rights’ issues all over the world even as the very eyes that scour the world and note rights ...
It is easy to condemn an attack on anyone. It is typical for there to be widespread condemnation the more public visibility that a victim has. It is easy for relevant ministers (and politicians in the opposition too) to visit the victim. It is easy for the executive to add to condemnation a directive to investigate. It is easy to ...
The area around the Borella Kanatte turned into a battlefield one late afternoon in late April, 1993. Crowds attending the funeral of the assassinated Lalith Athulathmudali turned violent. The Police responded with tear gas. There was a pitched battle with enterprising individuals tossing half empty teargas canisters back at the Police. At one point an Army truck arrived. The crowds ...
[In a parallel universe called ‘Humility’…] It would be nice if all candidates walked the talk, but niceties aside all candidates talk and all candidates walk. Walking leads to talking because that’s how solicitation of vote takes place. This is how C.V. Wigneswaran met a man called Kandiah Maheswaran in a village called Chankanai not too far from Jaffna ...
The Australian cricket captain Steve Smith was understandably down in the mouth when he faced the media after Cameron Bancroft was caught on camera tampering the cricket ball. He acknowledged wrongdoing, apologized and promised that it will not happen under his watch ever again. Through it all, he kept referring to a ‘leadership group’.Now we have had players referring ...
The word on the street thanks to President Maithripala Sirisena is 'science'. The cabinet reshuffle, Sirisena said, would be done scientifically this time. He went on to say that he had discussed (presumably scientifically) about it and made changes. He implies that Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe submitted to the power of his (Sirisena's) science or else the two, together, ...
Has anyone seen Sarath Fonseka?This Uva election has been dubbed as a testing of the waters for bigger elections, such as the Presidential. This is why the ruling party and the main opposition party, the UNP,were so very vocal...or 'louder than usual'. The JVP also made , but they've not been loud-mouthed or uncouth. Disciplined. But what happened to the ...
Once the final CHOGM document is released we will be in post-CHOGM Sri Lanka. The Commonwealth hasn’t changed much since it was formed and given realities it is unlikely that the Colombo Summit would see change in color, tone or substance. That’s no fault of the host or the participants; it is, as a wit put it, akin to an ...
‘Never in our days’ is a frequently uttered ‘observation’ by those who have left an institution, a country or profession. It is something that one hears whenever past pupils of a school gather to reminisce about days gone by. They also talk about how things are in the old school and spend an inordinate amount of time lamenting things-as-they-are-now. If ...
The love that the British have for Sri Lanka is of such magnitude that one wonders if Sri Lankans should bother to love their country. They so loved this island, let us not forget, that they pillaged, burnt, robbed and perpetrated genocide and ethnic cleansing of a kind that even the LTTE in its most terrible days couldn’t come close ...
A judge cannot, or rather is not supposed to, sit in judgment on himself or herself. That’s called ‘conflict of interest’. Take any Annual Report of any large company or business entity that aspires to become a bigger player in the relevant field and you will find a section on ‘Corporate Governance’, where statements are made pertaining to compliance. ...
One person is not a front. Sometimes a single person can make a big difference, but if you want radical social transformation that (hopefully) lasts, you will need some pals. The problem is that when you do need people, they are not there or they are not ready to ‘take the streets’. Issues have a way of arriving when we ...
Malaka Silva, son of Mervin Silva, Minister of Public Relations and Public Affairs is a thug. He is rumored to be involved in drug trafficking but rumor is not fact. If indeed he is, there is either a lack of information to warrant investigation or there’s pressure from above to keep things quiet or the investigation is being carried ...
These are moving-around days. There’s talk of people crossing party lines. There are people plotting regime-change. There are people getting ready to counter such moves. People are talking to people. We have the Constitution Abolishers. We have the Constitution Amenders. Then there are people trying to cobble together parties and other political groups as well as prominent personalities in a ...
Last week I wrote that Wilpattu should be the core issue of the forthcoming local government elections because the said election has taken on a national character and because ‘Wilpattu’ is a national issue.I defined Wilpattu thus: “‘Wilpattu’ in the sense the term is used here is not a forest reserve located in the North Western Province. Wilpattu is every ...
What transpired in Geneva at the Human Rights Council sessions clearly indicates where the anti-Sri Lankan forces are going. Ban Ki-moon tabled the report authored by a panel appointed by him (illegally), against all norms of protocol. Legitimacy was obtained by tabling the said report (flawed, malicious and clearly designed to hurt Sri Lanka with very little support of claims ...
