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It’s ‘All Systems Go’ for CHOGM 2013. The Government has shooed away all those wanting to have conferences during this period, held its rehearsals and is furiously overseeing the last-minute dressing up of the city of Colombo for the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting this week. The preparations are akin to a village wedding ceremony [...]
Look before you leap, casino ills run deep
The Government has had second thoughts on the concessions it is to give to the prospective investors in casinos — euphemistically called ‘strategic investment projects’; but has not abandoned the bigger issue — the opening of big-time casinos. The voices of religious leaders opposing the setting up of casinos are muted now; the mainstream Opposition [...]
The celluloid politics of Tamil Nadu
In all likelihood, the Indian Prime Minister is now unlikely to attend next month’s CHOGM in Sri Lanka. It is clear that he has had to yield to domestic political compulsions, but it might not be a case of performing Hamlet without the Prince of Denmark, really. So much then for Sri Lanka’s India policy [...]
Casinos: Cusp of a new era
No Sri Lankan President has ever won an election on the back of a campaign promoting the vices entrenched in society. Mahinda Rajapaksa assumed power in 2005 in fact vowing to rid the country of liquor, cigarettes and narcotics through a state-backed temperance programme. The Government’s ‘Mathata Thitha’ initiative had ambitious objectives that were supported [...]
India has her say and gets her way
And so, the visiting Indian Minister of External Affairs was here, and on cue performed the role of virtual attesting witness to the marriage his Government had brokered, not without coercion, between the Sri Lankan Government and the Tamil National Alliance (TNA) in the creation of the Northern Provincial Council. It is not an exaggeration [...]
Vital agenda for India’s EAM
The Indian Minister of External Affairs is scheduled to arrive in Sri Lanka tomorrow (Oct. 7); and every such visit is of significance given the twists and turns in the bi-lateral relations between the two South Asian neighbours. A former President of Sri Lanka on touching down at New Delhi’s Palam airport (since renamed) said [...]
PC polls: Bitter-sweet outcome for Govt.
“Two States; Two Parties” exclaimed a wag punning on yesteryear’s famous quote of a famous man, Dr. Colvin R. De Silva – “One Language; Two States/Two Languages; One State” to describe the North-South divide of the time. What the wag was referring to, of course, was the overwhelming electoral victories in the South by the ruling [...]
Finance Companies: The same old story
That this country has suffered several rounds of finance company collapses is a published fact. Each time one falls, and thousands of families are left in the lurch, the role of the Central Bank of Sri Lanka (CBSL), which purportedly regulates these institutions, comes under intense scrutiny. Industry experts have repeatedly highlighted the weaknesses of [...]
Ghosts of the past
As the campaigning for the Northern Province Provincial Council election builds up steam in this final week, the front-runner for the post of Chief Minister is sending smoke signals that are going to cause serious alarm. The Tamil National Alliance (TNA)’s chief ministerial candidate C. V. Wigneswaran is going around praising the LTTE’s slain leader [...]
Pillorying Pillay
The bombshell that the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights left behind last week on the eve of her departure after a week-long tour ought not really to have been a great shock. That the Government made a mess of her visit, not entirely, but in part is even admitted by the highest in the [...]
Dealing with the world’s dictator
The situation in Syria has brought the world once again to the brink of war. The United States, the self-appointed world policeman, says it has “credible evidence” that the Syrian regime used chemical weapons against its own people in what — whoever did it — was a despicable act and indeed a crime against humanity. [...]
Welcome Ms. Pillay
Today’s arrival in Sri Lanka of the Geneva-based UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (UNHCHR) bears testimony to the stark reality that the modern world is framed in such a way that countries that dare stand up to the economically and militarily more powerful Western nations, especially the US, are condemned to be scrutinised down [...]
Food and drink: State must ensure quality
The imported milk food crisis that is playing all over the media these days has now been elevated to a cabinet-level committee with doctors, dieticians, nutritionists, sports medicine specialists, public health inspectors, milk producers, exporters and importers, Health Ministry officials, GMOA frontliners all in the fray. The bottom line seems to be that one of [...]
Release the police from their political prison
Seers predict that in the future, like in the past, wars will be fought over water. For water is life. In ancient times, the Buddha had to engage in conflict resolution time and again between the many clans in northern India over water issues. Once, he told the Litcchavi clan how to settle a dispute [...]
Casinos may turn tables on Lanka
Four years after the war ended, Sri Lanka is far from achieving its tourism targets. Revenue from the sector is flat and none of the usual gimmicks has worked. Investment isn’t booming either other than from two competing state actors, India and China. These are, of course, “investments” of a different kind. So the Government [...]
The choice of leaders; not people
An Opposition MP defected to the Government ranks on Wednesday in what was purportedly ‘news’ only because the widely expected ‘jump’ was strenuously denied all along by the young lawmaker. He said he was quitting his seat in Parliament to contest the forthcoming provincial elections on behalf of the ruling party, opting to be a [...]
Let’s go beyond the ethnic issue
It was during a week like this, 30 years ago (July 23, 1983), that this country experienced a game-changer; a watershed in its modern history. This was the July 1983 riots triggered from the ambush and killing of 13 soldiers, including a young officer at Thinnaveli in Jaffna by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). [...]
Review the ‘coerced’ Indo-Lanka Accord
The visit by the Indian National Security Advisor Shivshankar Menon, a one-time High Commissioner in Colombo, was the ‘umpteenth’ visit by an Indian diplomat — from the days of G. Parthasarathy and Romesh Bhandari three decades ago to now, carrying New Delhi’s veiled directives on how the Government in Colombo must carry out its business. [...]
Watch your step when dealing with India
Politics is a bundle of contradictions and double-speak and it was on display in full this week as President Mahinda Rajapaksa sent his brother, Basil as a special envoy to brief the Government of India on the 13th Amendment (13A) having said earlier in the week that he gave promises only to the Sri Lankan [...]
Education: Time to right the wrongs
A recent joint UNESCO/UNICEF report on secondary education, i.e. school-going children, has rightfully caught the attention of the media. Having done a survey, the report states that 98 per cent of Sri Lanka’s children do attend school. That indeed is a proud achievement, if a rare one, for the country. Sri Lanka’s ‘Free Education’ policy [...]
Poson reflections: Save our heritage
Week after week, the country’s archaeological sites, our national heritage, are ransacked by organised gangs. Treasure hunters in Sri Lanka no longer waste their time furtively chipping away at ancient monuments with rudimentary implements. They hire large, conspicuous, backhoes. They also bring a kattadiya who conducts rituals to appease the deities before the dastardly deed [...]
13th Amendment: Let the people decide
It would seem that the Government has got into a right royal jam with the 13th Amendment (13A) to the Constitution. Under pressure from India once again, and the Western countries on the one side, and counter-pressure from domestic forces adamantly opposing its continuance, the Government of President Mahinda Rajapaksa has been boxed into a corner. [...]