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Home » ColumnsSajith demands ministry’s full budgetary allocation
Housing and Construction Minister Sajith Premadasa, deputy leader of the United National Party (UNP), raised many an eyebrow at last Tuesday’s weekly ministerial meeting. He threatened to resign if a major grievance he faced was not rectified. His grievance – Parliament had allocated six billion rupees to his Ministry of Housing and Construction. However, the [...]
Poverty elimination: Rhetoric and policy imperatives
The Government declared 2017 as the year of poverty alleviation and President Maithripala Sirisena has appointed a special committee to work for the eradication of poverty in the country. Sri Lanka is expected to be poverty free by 2020. The elimination of poverty has been a popular promise among political leaders in Sri Lanka. Despite [...]
Let us be wise and virtuous
The feelings and the activities of people vary from person to person. In some instances, those activities are good and virtuous. In other instances, they are bad, vicious or evil. To mitigate the harsher effects of the variance, we need to discipline our tongues and bodies and minds. We understand good and evil as the [...]
A storm in that ‘human rights action plan’ teacup
An unseemly and wholly unnecessary uproar arose this week over a proposed clause in Sri Lanka’s National Human Rights Action Plan (NHRAP, 2017-2021), which had apparently mentioned the need for a two-thirds majority in Parliament to pass a State of Emergency. NHRAP limited to grand expectations Ministers loyal to President Maithripala Sirisena indulged in a [...]
UNP, SLFP poles apart on Constitutional reforms
President authorises party ministers to discuss their position with different sections of society, ACBC endorses position Cabinet approves revised draft of National Human Rights Action Plan By Our Political Editor President Maithripala Sirisena has given the green light to Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP) ministers to convey their January 3 decisions on constitutional reforms to [...]
Don’t go with family in tow
My dear Donald, I am writing to you to congratulate you on assuming office as the 45th President of the United States of America. What is so special about this is that just a few months ago, no one thought it would be possible and Hillary’s win was a foregone conclusion. For us in Paradise, [...]
This beggar’s opera and Malik’s frolics
There is an old African saying (I think it originated in the Kikuyu tribe though there are variants of it) that when elephants fight it is the grass that is trampled. It is simple enough to understand. When beasts the size of pachyderms fight it is the small animals inadvertently caught up in the tussle [...]
GSP sour grapes: GL tries alchemy to turn Rajapaksa copper to gold
Hopes rise GSP wine will soon fill Lanka’s export chalice but there’s  many a slip between champagne coupe and lip Poor Professor Peiris! Once he was the savant of property law churning out volume after volume on the land rights of the people. Now he is the servant of fallen politicians, the porter of past [...]