Image: File photo of beautiful Austrian countryside © Sunanda Deshapriya. ‘Come for Christmas, this invitation is in my heart’, Oma said on a day when I was wondering how to spend the December holidays. It was her grandson who explained to me to get off at the small railway station where she lives, climb the stairs, […]
Sri Lanka Brief. - Post Presidential Election Update No 03/16 December 2019. Special Presidential Commission of Inquiry Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa presented a cabinet paper in the first week of December for the establishment of a Special Presidential Commission of Inquiry (SPCOI), under the SPCOI Law (1978) to investigate government officials who had conducted ‘witch hunts’ […]
Image: Gotabaya Rajapaksa, Sri Lanka's newly elected president, center, greeting supporters after his swearing-in ceremony in Anuradhapura, Sri Lanka, this month.Credit...Eranga Jayawardena/Associated Press. A Swiss Embassy employee is abducted and asked about asylum applications an.d investigators are banned from leaving just days after Gotabaya Rajapaksa is elected. By Maria Abi-Habib and Sameer Yasir. Fears of a potential crackdown on […]
Sri Lanka Brief Presidential Election Update No 02. Polarised vote The president elect Gotabaya Rajapaksa (GR) of SLPP and Sajith Premadasa (SP) of NDF respectively received 52.25% & 41.99 of the total votes polled in the presidential election held on 16 November 2019. This numbers could be misleading. The result shows unprecedented level of polarisation […]
Sri Lanka’s eighth presidential election held last Sunday has produced an outcome that has surprised the winners, the losers as well as the observers. The most obvious, and arguably disquieting, and utterly unanticipated trend that became immediately visible is the re-sharpening of the majority-minority divide in the citizens’ electoral choices across the country. Mr Gotabhaya […]
FILE- In this May 23, 2008 file photo, Sri Lankan journalists shout slogans during a protest demanding the government investigate into abduction and assault of fellow journalist Keith Noyahr in Colombo, Sri Lanka. Forced to flee their country a decade ago to escape allegedly state-sponsored killer squads, Sri Lankan journalists living in exile doubt they’ll […]
Many of us were hoping for a new dawn in 2015. The hope for a ‘Yahapalanaya’ Government now leaves ashes in the mouth of many people. It is true they brought us back our freedom and strengthened independent institutions but they failed fundamentally in convincing people that democracy and freedom should be the pillars of […]
Say, who will be the happiest over the US 'travel ban' on army chief, Lt-Gen Shavendra Silva – and more so, when it comes to the timing of the American announcement? Not, not even the Sri Lankan Tamil community or the TNA. It's not even the SLT Diaspora, which has persisted with their anti-Rajapaksa since […]
During an address to senior Buddhists leaders at the Vibhajjavadi Dhamma Symposium and Maha Tripitaka Pooja on 4 January, Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa stated that the defence of the Buddhist order is central to ensuring unity and the protection of religious freedom of Sri Lankans who profess other faiths. Just one day prior, his brother, […]
An insightful writer I follow had written that the corruption revealed in the Airbus case, technically described as a deferred prosecution agreement, is intrinsic to capitalism or to the market system. The implication is that it may not be intrinsic to not-capitalism, usually described as socialism. But all one has to do is to read […]
“Let me bow before you my country, where It is ordained that none will walk the streets with his head held high.” Faiz (Let me bow before you) On the 72nd anniversary of Sri Lanka’s independence, President Gotabaya Rajapaksa conferred the rank of major general on 17 brigadiers. The list included Deshapriya Gunawardane, the commanding officer […]
Image: Attorney General (left) and Navy Commander Admiral Wasantha Karannagoda (right) at the 70th Independence Day celebration. One of the stranger if not outlandish manifestations of the upending of Sri Lanka’s legal order is the ongoing tussle between the Attorney General and the Presidential Commission inquiring into alleged incidents of political victimisation of public servants […]
