A year ago I was in Angola, and on May 14th I saw the Kalandula Falls. They were quite magnificient, discovered by chance when I was exploring Angola on the internet, not mentioned in my usually trusty Lonely Planet guidebook. The rock formations nearby were also fantastic, I loved the sunsets on that Atlantic coast, the old colonial buildings, the ...

I am posting this late today because today my monthly internet problem kicked in: I have limited data here at the cottage, and the day quota for the month has expired though I can still access the internet early morning. But I thought it best to keep going with pictures every day, so I have come next door, where I ...

50 years ago I visited Nepal, on the long expedition to India I undertook when I was just 15. I have only small black and white pictures from those days, and they are back at home. But I was in Nepal again a couple of years ago, and actually ventured further afield which I had not done in 1970 except to take a bus back to India.

I had planned to post pictures from five countries every week, from five different parts of the world. But it seemed better to have a daily display, so I thought to use Mondays and Fridays for themes. Today features waterfalls, the first two the spectacular but little known Kalandula Falls in Angola, then the Victoria Falls from Zambia, then two ...

I move for this second posting to Europe, though Malta does show traces of very early influences from further east. The range was wonderful, the ancient temples, the art and archaelogical museums, the glorious views including the Azure Window that looks like Sri Lanka, the exquisitely decorated palace, the churches.

I have been posting travel narratives three times a week on my Facebook page – Rajiva Wijesinha – but at this time of lockdown I thought of a daily dose. Monday and Tuesday and Thursday and Saturday then I have pictures there of different countries, with just short accounts. These are all my own, taken over the last few years ...

I was back in the Eastern Province last week after an absence of over three years. Before that, since I was told 30 years ago by the British Council to manage a furniture project for schools initiated by the British government after the Indo-Lankan Accord, I had been a constant visitor there. Though the scope of the project had ...

I used to have very good relations with the Japanese embassy in the period between 2007 and 2014. This began with my appreciation of their support for Sri Lanka during the war period, as explained in the first of the articles about my time at the Secretariat for Coordinating the Peace Process, the series that appears in this newspaper ...

President Sirisena’s query from the Supreme Court as to whether he was entitled to a six year term was both sad and silly. It was sad because it suggested that he was anxious to go on for longer than the reduced period laid down in the 19th Amendment for which he had claimed great credit. Since his raison d’etre, ...

It was profoundly ironic that the funeral of Ranjith Atapattu took place the day after the appalling spectacle in Parliament. My attention was drawn to this by the former Secretary General, Nihal Seneviratne, the launch of whose book about better days was one of the last public events that Ranjith had attended. I saw Nihal at the funeral, where ...

I looked last week at Nalaka Godahewa’s account of why Mahinda Rajapaksa lost, which he attributed to the excessive influence of eight people who ‘were not listening to the voices of the grassroots anymore’. Though an intelligent analysis of some aspects of the last years of the Rajapaksa administration, the article failed to distinguish between positive influences and those ...

‘Surrounded by cronies and not listening to those who mattered’ is the explanation Nalaka Godahewa gave in an article in Ceylon Today on why Mahinda Rajapaksa lost. I found it most interesting, with added value from the fact that Godahewa was close to the former President, and indeed came to his rescue when both Indrani Sugathadasa and Tilak Karunaratne ...

As we move towards the end of the dispensation that came in with the Presidential election of 2015, I feel immensely sorry for the President. It is true that many of the problems he now faces he brought on himself, but this was because of weakness, and because he relied on those who had no interest in ensuring he succeeded. ...

I was asked last week by the European Union to an exhibition about ‘Celebrating Partnerships’, and attended, though I left early when the speeches began. I was not sure why I was asked, since the invitation was for development partners and the TVEC was not involved in the project. But as I looked round the exhibition, I realized that, as ...

While there is much uncertainty now about what will happen to the country, certain certainties are assured. Chief amongst them is the headlong destruction of his reputation that Ranil has precipitated in the last three years. I do not refer only to his unashamed capers with regard to the bond scam, the continuing defence and harbouring of Mahendran and now ...

I was a bit startled to find on Saturday that those who had been arrested at Gintota a couple of weeks back, and then remanded on November 18th until the 30th, had then been remanded again. No one was allowed bail, and they have been put back in prison for a further two weeks. Sadly, I could find no reports ...

Some years back, when I thought Ranil was honest, I said he would have been an admirable politician had he entered politics under Dudley Senanayake rather than J R Jayewardene. Though I had welcomed Jayewardene’s opening up of the economy, I was increasingly worried about the authoritarianism he sought to entrench, using violence for the purpose. The treatment of the ...

A couple of weeks back I suggested that the Speaker introduce a provision whereby all Members of Parliament should be required to get Tax Clearance Certificates, when they enter Parliament and then subsequently each year. I do not think any Member can claim they were not liable for tax when they were elected, given the amounts they spend to ...

The saddest casualty of the Yahapalanaya government determination to abandon all pretence of promoting democracy, let alone good governance, has been Karu Jayasuriya. I once thought of him as a decent man, weak but never doing dastardly deeds on his own. When he first started abusing the office of Speaker, I made excuses for him, and even wrote to apologize ...

A couple of months back the retiring Canadian High Commissioner introduced me to the German Ambassador, whose country has been doing much helpful work in vocational education. He seemed a nice young man, but as it turned out he was cross with me because, in an article in this series about six months back, I had been critical of some ...