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Home » ColumnsWhy Facebook disabled Minister and BBS
Technology and Research Minister and Jathika Hela Urumaya stalwart Patali Champika Ranawaka on Friday had to create another official Facebook account and page, after they were disabled by Facebook administration. This time, he made sure to display the official Identity Card issued by Parliament that he is an MP. Both sides of the ID have been [...]
Crisis-riddled Govt. goes into denial mode
The UPFA Government seems to be in a state of denial. The latest addition to that syndrome came from External Affairs Minister G.L. Peiris. He was asked in Parliament last Tuesday by Opposition Leader Ranil Wickremesinghe for his response to a reference in the Sunday Times (Political Commentary) of July 6 that the Government has [...]
Satellite on reverse orbit
My Dear Satellite, I thought of writing to you when I heard that you were among those who had attended a meeting calling for the abolition of the Executive Presidency — which was an essential component of JR’s ‘bahubootha vyavasthaawa’ as you used to call it those days. I didn’t know whether I should laugh [...]
Good and bad economics: Economics of infrastructure investment
Helen Hughes an Australian economist once said there were only two types of economics: good economics and bad economics. Bad economics is given various tags such as practical economics, home grown economics, pragmatic economics and self-reliant economics to deviate from sound principles of economics. The laws of economics, most of the time, are like physical [...]
India’s vision for a ‘Commonwealth of Asia’ – where Sri Lanka matters
The assurance given by India’s External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj to her Sri Lankan counterpart Prof G L Peiris recently that India opposed the UN probe on alleged war crimes in Sri Lanka, may have indicated to Colombo that the new dispensation in Delhi wanted better ties with its southern neighbour, looking beyond issues that [...]
Locking the stable door after the horses have bolted
For most of the post-war years, the Rajapaksa Government’s actions have been informed by a strange and intensely contradictory mixture of the classic classroom bully as well as its exact opposite, the sniveling skinny kid who gets picked on in the playground. Devastating consequences of blatant lying So on the one hand, it blustered and [...]
Question Time reveals colossal waste of public funds while masses struggle
Some interesting facts were revealed during Question Time in Parliament this week, but they also exposed the colossal amounts of public funds spent on maintaining a few individuals, as well as how projects on which billions of rupees are spent, do not reap any benefits for the country, while the masses struggle to get by. [...]
Crude foil to bar MPs from oil strike
If the Ceylon Petroleum Corporations’ top officials successfully managed to foil all attempts by the visiting UNP fact finding parliamentary team to enter its oil refinery at Sapugaskanda on July 17 and make any important discovery embedded therein, they succeeded even more in displaying to the entire nation the complete absence of transparency in the [...]