Editorial
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“Hot air”. That’s what many pessimists expect from the Paris Climate Summit next week which over 130 world leaders, including our own President Maithripala Sirisena, will attend. It has been long hyped as the ‘last chance salon’ for Planet Earth before it self-destructs. With the world getting hotter, freak weather patterns causing droughts, floods and [...]
Friday the 13th doublespeak
Pope Francis felt the World War Three had started. Maybe not quite, but the indiscriminate attack on those enjoying a typical Friday night out in gay Paree last week brought the world to the brink of it. World War I began a century ago with a single shot fired in Sarajevo in the former Yugoslavia. [...]
Beyond the Marapana issue
And so, Tilak Marapana, the Law and Order Minister became the sacrificial lamb to safeguard the good name of the Yahapalana Government when he quit this week. One of the few professionals in the Cabinet, Mr. Marapana was a ‘soft target’ in what is increasingly becoming a power game within the National Government. What wrong [...]
Corruption; the same difference
Hardly had the Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs waxed eloquent at the United Nations Convention on Corruption in faraway St. Petersburg on the new Government’s crusade against corruption, did Sri Jayawardhanapura, Kotte reverberate with a thundering speech in Parliament by the leader of the JVP. His, the only party still not tainted by the highly [...]
Tea losing its flavour
‘Ceylon Tea’ — that world famous trademark — had all but lost its brand name and goodwill, to later arrivals; now, the tea industry itself is in the doldrums. Not for the first time, the Plantation Industries Ministry has had to go, hat in hand to the Government, seeking a handout to keep the smallholders and [...]
Justice can be done in SL
The tabling of two reports from domestic inquiries — the Presidential Commission of Inquiry Into Complaints of Abductions and Disappearances (commonly referred to as the Paranagama Commission) and the Presidential Commission of Inquiry to Investigate and Inquire into Alleged Serious Violations of Human Rights (Udalagama Commission) on the by-products of the protracted 30-plus year northern [...]