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Home » ColumnsParliamentary democracy in the gutter as SLPP MPs run amok
The events of this week in Sri Lanka’s Parliament will no doubt be remembered for a long time to come for its infamy, but it will also be remembered for the extreme courage with which Speaker Karu Jayasuriya and Parliamentary officials who, in the face of unprecedented violence directed at them, braved it all to [...]
Karu’s courage: One man’s battle to save democracy
My dear Karu, I thought of writing to you because you too are writing letters and issuing statements, while this paradise of ours continues to stumble from one crisis to another, thanks to Aiyo Sirisena’s foolish and hasty actions which are motivated by his desire to cling on to the top job for another five [...]
SriLankan’s new Chairman could not even take off
Bad memories were revived and the image of Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa took a beating.It was over an announcement that the former controversial Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Kapila Chandrasena had been named the Chairman of SriLankan Airlines, the national carrier. One source said the move came on the recommendation of Parliamentarian Namal Rajapaksa, though this [...]
Political crisis and pressures severe blow to fiscal consolidation
The political confusion of the last three weeks has been a severe setback to fiscal consolidation that is crucial for economic stability and economic growth. In whatever way the political crisis is resolved political compulsions would drive the country to the brink of a fiscal cliff. Why fiscal consolidation? Large fiscal deficits affect every facet [...]
The palpable horror in the house by the Diyawanna
As pro-Rajapaksa parliamentarians threw water lethally spiced with red chillie into the eyes of unarmed police officers valiantly guarding Speaker Karu Jayasuriya, the seventy-eight year old Speaker may take heart that his grace under fire will stand out as the most remarkable example of steadfastness in Sri Lanka’s parliamentary history. Images of him resolutely facing [...]
Wallowing in this chaos called politics
It was Karl Marx who famously said in the Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Napoleon that history repeats itself first as tragedy and then as farce. Even a cursory look at Sri Lanka’s political scene in the last couple of years shows that Marx was correct. Never has the country’s politics degenerated into an utter farce [...]
Violent orgy rules supreme in the Nation’s Bleak House of Bedlam
Democracy rose from the ashes this Tuesday evening when the Supreme Court salvaged its moribund corpus from the flames the Executive had engulfed it in, only to be plunged into worse hellfire on Thursday morn when an unruly parliamentary mob turned the bleak House to a house of bedlam, in their attempt to gain, through [...]
Sirisena’s only strategy is resorting to ad hocism
Crisis meetings today in bid to end political turmoil that has engulfed the country President’s move brings unity to the once divided UNP; Sajith again refuses offer to be PM Numbers issue showing signs of friction between Sirisena and Rajapaksa groups Be it for good or bad, right or wrong, there is perhaps no [...]
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