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Home » ColumnsWaste of paradise by SriLankan Chairman
Diverting an aircraft on a scheduled flight from one country to yet another is an exclusive privilege enjoyed by Heads of State or Government. However, in Sri Lanka it is a different story. Even the Chairman of SriLankan Airlines, can do it by merely making a telephone call. Chairman Nishantha Wickremesinghe, his wife and a guest [...]
Foreign mire and people’s ire, will there be voter fire
Rejection of informal Government overtures to Opposition political parties to forge a common front has forced the ruling UPFA into a panic driven dual track diplomatic initiative to counter the issues before the March sessions of the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva. Moves to obtain Opposition support for a bi-partisan strategy have proved futile. [...]
Spin doctor in a whirlpool
My Dear Mangala, I thought I must write to you because you seem to be in the news once again even if it is for all the wrong reasons — having your house burgled and then finding yourself becoming the accused instead of the victim, if some of the media reports are anything to go [...]
No room for complacency in export development
“There’s a tide in the affairs of men, when taken at the flood can lead on to good fortune”. This Shakespearean introspection on humanity is as applicable to nations and economies. A nation too has good years and lean years; years of high production and low output; years of external and internal shocks and years [...]
Geneva 2014: Is the government falling into a trap?
The exclusion of intellectuals and their input in the making of public policy — foreign policy in particular — and the consequences thereof, was a recurring theme at a recent public discussion on the upcoming UN Human Rights Council session in March 2014. Nativist, xenophobic tendencies were coming to the fore and “We don’t know [...]
‘Taming and vanquishing’ of the judiciary
In the wake of the untimely demise of Justice S. Sriskandarajah, President of Sri Lanka’s Court of Appeal this week, it may be opportune to look at the state of the Sri Lankan judiciary one year after the 2013 impeachment of Sri Lanka 43rd Chief Justice Shirani Bandaranayake. The late Justice Sriskandarajah had presided over [...]
Another body blow to the public’s Right to Information
A step in the right direction that Speaker Chamal Rajapaksa took last December, to make parliamentary proceedings more accessible to the public, by allowing live telecast of proceedings over a cable network, came to an abrupt end this week, with the announcement that the transmission was being stopped. Deputy Speaker Chandima Weerakkody, in the absence [...]
Freedoms India won and Lanka squandered
Even as Lanka readies to celebrate 66 years of independence from the British Raj in nine days’ time, it is clear that 400 years and more of foreign domination have left the once proud Lankan spirit broken and her psyche irretrievably damaged. From the time the Portuguese landed on Lanka’s western shores, infighting among the [...]