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Home » ColumnsDrama in Room XIII, no one to defend Sri Lanka
Room XIII at the Palais de Naciones in Geneva, home for the UN Human Rights Council, was half packed last Tuesday. It was perhaps the final informal consultation convened by the United States to discuss the improved text of its draft resolution on Sri Lanka. The deadline for amendments was 1 p.m. on Tuesday. Taking [...]
Will India do a Crimea on Lanka?
No ray of hope lights to lift the brooding pall of Geneva’s gloom and a desolate air of uncertainty hangs heavy as the countdown to the crucial vote begins; and Lanka can do no more but clasp her hands in Confucian prayer and, banging her head on wood, hope for the best and expect the [...]
Geneva: What went wrong; is damage control possible?
President Mahinda Rajapaksa on Thursday cautioned External Affairs Minister G.L. Peiris over the release of media statements on important foreign policy issues without proper scrutiny. He said they should be examined carefully before being made public. The move was prompted by an External Affairs Ministry statement personally initiated by Peiris. It was over the crisis [...]
It’s not I, but my telephone!
My dear Rishard, I didn’t even know who you were until I heard about you last week but I thought I must write to you when I heard that you had apologised to a magistrate and to the courts. This must be an extremely rare event for a minister, which is why I thought I [...]
Sustaining economic growth difficult but possible
Can the economic growth momentum of the post-war years be maintained? Paradoxically, it is the manner in which the high growth was achieved that is detrimental to longer term economic growth. Much of the growth was due to reconstruction, infrastructure development and post-war resuscitation of the economy. These activities do not have a self-sustaining momentum. [...]
A government ludicrously at odds with itself
This week, we saw the strange and astonishing saga of two Sri Lankan human rights activists who were peremptorily arrested and detained under the Prevention of Terrorism Act (PTA, 1979) and then released without charges with various branches of the Government differing on almost every circumstance relating to this incident. The sequence of events thereto [...]
Anti-Lanka resolution, Diego Garcia and the Mauritius factor
Apart from its chief architects, the US and the UK, the resolution against Sri Lanka tabled at the UN Human Rights Council earlier this month had the sponsorship of three others — Montenegro, Macedonia and Mauritius. The enlistment of the two Southeast European states is easily explained by the fact that both states are candidates [...]
Opposition in ‘No-Confidence’ motion against Govt. inability to curb proliferation of illicit drugs
A ‘No-Confidence’ motion against the Government, handed over by the main Opposition United National Party (UNP), is to be taken up for debate in May, after a failed attempt by the UNP to secure a two-day debate in early April. UNP Leader Ranil Wickremesinghe said the ‘No-Confidence’ motion, which is based on the failure of the [...]