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Home » ColumnsFormer service chiefs summoned: President expresses regret
President Maithripala Sirisena was to summon and then express his regrets to four former armed forces chiefs last Tuesday for the FCID summoning them for questioning. They served as heads of Sri Lanka diplomatic missions under the former regime. The FCID questioning was on the circumstances under which, and the reasons for returning to Sri [...]
Avant Garde loses monopoly; Navy takes over weapons
Other companies also can apply for maritime security operations; President’s intervention ends controversy, but money laundering and bribes probes continue Since 2012, Navy lost Rs. 1.2 billion a year, because of privileges given to AGMSL; Rajitha and Wijeyadasa in fierce battle over issue The Sri Lanka Navy on Friday took charge of all weapons held [...]
Vision Lanka: Mission unaccomplished
Hamuduruwane, It was with shock and great sadness that we woke up last Sunday to the news that you had left us. We knew that you had been sick for a few weeks and that you had been flown to Singapore for treatment but we hoped that you would return to carry on the good [...]
Economic stabilisation and reforms imperative for economic development
The stabilisation of macroeconomic fundamentals by reducing the fiscal deficit, addressing the serious balance of payments crisis and containing the onerous debt burden is the immediate imperative. These have to be addressed by new directions in macroeconomic policies. The external financial crisis requires assistance from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to tide over the balance [...]
The loss of Sri Lanka’s ‘truth-telling’ monk
George Orwell once reminded us that ‘in a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act.’ That powerful injunction came immediately to mind even as the flames dimmed this Thursday over the funeral pyre of Sri Lanka’s inimitable ‘truth teller’, the Most Ven Maduluwawe Sobitha who led the ‘yahapalanaya’ (good governance) upsurge [...]
Marapana falls on sword but others cling on
Students of Shakespeare know that his plays were meant to be performed, originally on the Elizabethan stage. So there were stage directions. Having watched the unfolding drama over La Affaire Avant Garde, if one may call it that, and the hara kiri by Law and Order Minister Tilak Marapana induced from within his own ranks, [...]
Death stills Lanka’s moral voice but may the echoes long resound
Last Sunday morning, the nation awoke to the grim news. Sobitha, the Most Venerable Maduluwawe Sobitha Thera, was dead. Three hours before the sun rose on Lanka, the monk who had been pivotal in breaking a new dawn, had died in a Singapore hospital at the age of 73. The firebrand monk whose charismatic spirit [...]