Editorial
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When President R. Premadasa declared open the first South Asian Regional Cooperation for Law (SAARCLAW) conference in Colombo in 1991, Sri Lanka’s then Chief Justice sat next to him. Neither uttered a word to each other throughout the proceedings as an election petition was being heard against the President by the country’s apex court. Such [...]
LNG and the President’s visit to Qatar
The President leaves on a state visit to Qatar next Wednesday (Oct. 25), a country diplomatically isolated by its Arab neighbours over accusations that it is funding terrorism in the region. Arguably, the richest country in the world per-capita-wise, Qatar’s Emir is the only West Asian Head of State to have visited Sri Lanka in [...]
Special Rapporteurs: More problems than solutions
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs has taken great pains to explain why a UN Special Rapporteur with the imposing title ‘For the Promotion of Truth, Justice, Reparation and Guarantees of Non-Recurrence’ is in Sri Lanka these days. Appointed by the UNHRC (United Nations Human Rights Council), everyone is keen to say he is not on [...]
Supreme Parliament, Sovereign People
Parliament decided to celebrate 70 years of Parliamentary democracy in Sri Lanka this week, ironically in the shadow of a former Chief Justice going to the Judiciary complaining that the Legislature acted against the law of the land. He is alluding to the recent passage of amendments to the Provincial Council Elections Act controversially passed [...]
Instead of jiggery-pokery, fix the PC system
There is a pithy local saying ‘nangi pennala akka dunna’ (showed the younger sister and palmed off the elder one) to describe what happened before an arranged marriage where the marriage broker or the prospective groom was conned and taken for a ride. Whether this is indicative of what the Government did last week in [...]
Sri Lanka and the changing world order
The United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) begins its annual sessions in New York tomorrow overshadowed by the threat of one of its trigger-happy member-states, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (North Korea) going ballistic, threatening a nuclear catastrophe with global implications. President Maithripala Sirisena is billed to speak on day two – Tuesday, September 19. [...]