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Home » ColumnsRocky honeymoon for marriage of political convenience
A month after the landmark Jan. 8 election that put the UNP in office, the uneasy arrangement of working with an Opposition which has more members in Parliament than the Government side, is proving to be a challenge. The decision by the UNP-led Government to support the ouster of Mohan Peiris from the post of Chief [...]
National carrier rapped for safety lapses
Civil Aviation Director General H.M.C. Nimalasiri has rapped the country’s national carrier, SriLankan Airlines, over what he calls its pilots deactivating “certain functional and vital flight instruments/engines” in flights engaged in commercial operations. In other words, they were trying to practise simulated conditions with passengers on board. This, he has said in a note to [...]
Rs. 172 billion Chinese Port City project still in stormy seas
Mangala contradicts Senaratne, says Cabinet did not decide to go ahead with the huge controversial project PM and FM tell China’s special envoy decision will be taken after comprehensive review New Govt. cancels Rajapaksa’s order for a castle in the sky through national carrier, billions spent on luxury Russian helicopters for VIPs Foreign Minister Mangala [...]
Justice: Just his own undoing
My dear Mohan, I thought I must write to you because I am as confused as you are. They tell me that you have been removed from office, or to be more precise, you never held office at all. You must pardon us for being puzzled because we must be the only country which had [...]
Interim budget’s new thrusts in fiscal policy
Five features of the Interim Budget are new thrusts in fiscal policy. There is clear reversal of regressive taxation, elimination of wasteful and ostentatious public spending, imposition of heavy taxes on conspicuous spending, recognition of the need to invest more on social expenditure and targeting of a lower fiscal deficit of 4.2 percent of GDP. [...]
Following a foreign policy of the ‘middle path’- the challenges ahead
President Maithripala Sirisena in his Independence Day address to the nation on Wednesday said “We make a clear commitment towards following a foreign policy of the middle path, in friendship with all nations.” The challenges involved in treading such a delicate path are already becoming evident. There have been several high level contacts between Colombo [...]
Phantom of the Supreme Court
It is in his pathetic attempt to portray himself as the victim of injustice a man terribly wronged; it is in his audacious bid to raise himself to the heights of a former Chief Justice, the much respected Neville Samarakoon; and it is in his bare faced bizarre avowal that the maintenance of the dignity [...]
British arrogance and ignorance live on
Hardly had the Sirisena-Wickremesinghe government taken its seat when the two western powers mainly responsible for the resolution at the UNHRC most critical of Sri Lanka sent their diplomatic path-finders to sound out where the new Government stood and where it is going. The first to arrive a few days ago was Britain’s Foreign Office [...]