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Home » ColumnsEAM leaves President in the cold
Leave alone major diplomatic issues, the fact that the External Affairs Ministry has sunk to such low depths in efficiency, is no secret. Minister G.L. Peiris or his mandarins there were able to correctly advise President Mahinda Rajapaksa that he was arriving in the Kazakhstan capital of Astana in below zero temperatures. That was during [...]
CJ steals the show in Parliament
The first week of Committee Stage debates of the Appropriation Bill, where Government policies and plans for several important ministries for next year were discussed, were largely overshadowed by the visit to Parliament of Chief Justice (CJ) Shirani Bandaranayake on Friday, to appear before the Parliamentary Select Committee (PSC) set up to probe several charges [...]
Legislature and judiciary on collision course
When Emirates flight 231 from Dubai touched down 38 minutes ahead of schedule at Washington’s Dulles International Airport on a chilly Thursday morning, a posse of secret service agents and a motorcade were on the ready. Within minutes, they whisked away President Mahinda Rajapaksa, who arrived in the US capital, to the Four Seasons hotel [...]
Greens miss the wood for the trees
My Dear Green Man and Sajith, I thought I must write to you as both of you prepare for the annual convention of the Greens next Saturday. While we hope that there won’t be a repeat of last year’s unruly scenes, I thought of writing to you to remind both of you on the greater [...]
Tax the rich and spare the poor
The burden of taxation has fallen on the poor in recent years despite the budget 2013 and previous budgets being described as being ‘people friendly’. No doubt there were several specific measures of relief for the poorer sections of society. Yet the sum benefit on the poorer sections is small compared with the taxation measures [...]
A surge of public empathy for a court under siege
The Government’s brushing aside of the Supreme Court’s entirely appropriate order this week requesting Parliament to desist from continuing with the impeachment of the Chief Justice until a final determination was handed down in petitions being heard filed before it, was arrogant but unsurprising. The Bench spoke to the comity that must exist between the [...]