Editorial
Home » EditorialHow indebted is Sri Lanka to China?
China’s President Xi Jinping arrives next week and unlike the hurried arrangements for the Japanese Prime Minister over the long weekend just past, the Mahinda Rajapaksa Government will spare no pains to make President Xi feel ‘at home’. China’s role in modern Sri Lanka is not without controversy. The secrecy, the swiftness and the economy [...]
Sam Wijesinha (1921-2014)
The passing away of Samson Senapala Samarakoon Wijesinha last Sunday at the age of 93, for many Sri Lankans signalled also the end of an epoch. He was Crown Counsel when the Attorney General’s Department was ‘autonomous’ and Secretary General of Parliament when it was ‘supreme’. His was an era when public servants were not [...]
TNA must engage Lankan leaders, not Indian
Last week’s ‘pilgrimage to India’ by the delegation of Tamil National Alliance (TNA) leaders had an element of subservience shrouded in subterfuge. Details of the visit were hard to extract though our Political Editor managed to ferret out most. The TNA issued no statement, and the Indian Prime Minister’s Office issued a standard ‘nothing in [...]
Targetted sanctions;the new weapons of war
Sanctions are the necessary middle ground between war and words, said Kofi Annan, former United Nations Secretary-General. Today, sanctions are widely used as a political tool to impose the will of some countries upon others, without the commitment of troops or military hardware. The United States takes the lead. Its list of designated persons is more [...]
Plunder and squander of public funds
Financial Regulations were referred to as the ‘Bible’ of the public service while Administrative Regulations were no less hallowed. Today, unbeknown to the citizenry, key members of the ruling administration are making a mockery of both. Vital processes are being overruled and overridden, often by persons who have neither legal nor legitimate right to deal [...]
Fish and Tamil Nadu CM’s chips
The Indian state Tamil Nadu’s Chief Minister, a former actress of the silver-screen, has suddenly become oh so prudish that she takes offence at a cartoon illustrating an article posted on Sri Lanka’s Ministry of Defence (MoD) website that depicted her writing ‘love letters’ to the Indian Prime Minister. The reference, she complained, was “highly [...]