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Home » ColumnsVijayakala places Mahatma and Prabha on same days
Candidates for the August 17 parliamentary elections in the Jaffna District are still vying with each other to please voters who have hardline political pursuits. The United National Front’s 26 page manifesto – The Five Point Plan for a new country in 60 months” – notwithstanding, its candidate Vijayakala Maheswaran has added one more pledge. [...]
Cheerful President tells Cabinet, “We will meet again after the polls”
PM and UNFGG leaders elated over Sirisena’s pledge that Jan. 8 transformation must continue UPFA concerned that even if it wins Rajapaksa won’t get PM post, secretaries seek urgent meeting with party leader Breakthrough in Thajudeen probe, VVIP wife’s van used in abduction, but no arrest till elections end President Maithripala Sirisena did not hide [...]
Better red than politically dead
My dear Anura Kumara sahodaraya, I thought I must write to you even though you and your rathu sahodarayas are quite busy these days campaigning for an election where you believe you will make a significant impact — or even decide who will be governing the country for the next five years. I must say [...]
Election rhetoric and economic reality: Promises sans finances, vision without policies
Last Sunday’s column asserted that the election manifestos of the two main parties were for most part a catalogue of extravagant promises that were not financially viable. Most persons know that these promises, especially of the UPFA, are not financially feasible. Now that D.E.W. Gunasekera has pointed out that current government revenue was inadequate to [...]
Wasim Thajudeen and a bloodstained state
Deaths of innocents in Sri Lanka have had a long and terrible history. No political party can wash its hands of this blood despite the hypocritical outrage often professed in public. Such fire breathing rhetoric only increases in intensity when an election draws near. But the cold hard truth is that a genuine righting of [...]
‘Hoot’ clue to who’s fit to get UPFA faithful’s hooray vote
Even as the Bellanwila Chief Monk, Ven. Prof. Bellanwila Wimalarathana Thera, appealed to the people on Wednesday to reject tainted candidates, so did President Maithripala Sirisena declare on Friday that the voters had a special responsibility cast on them to elect only qualified and untainted candidates to the next parliament. “People should use their intelligence, [...]
Mother of all elections and promising politicians
In eight days voters will head once more to polling stations this time to elect the country’s 15th parliament. Those who like their perceptions summed up in pithy phrases say this will be the mother of all elections — parliamentary elections that is. Why is this appellation attached to this particular election when the country [...]