The need to identify the enemy within
April 21, Easter Sunday 2019: Some Christians dressed in their Sunday’s best and yet some others trying to enjoy their late breakfast in hotels didn’t live to tell the tale of what they saw and experienced. The video footage of the mass murderers only showed how cruel and inhuman they could be. No amount of [...]
Sri Lanka attacks:
Sri Lanka is still in a state of shock and confusion, trying to understand how a little-known Islamist group may have unleashed the wave of coordinated suicide bombings that resulted in the Easter Sunday carnage – the worst since the end of the separatists war a decade ago. The island nation has experience of such [...]
Donation of chairs
Western Provincial Councillor and UNP Borella organiser Jayantha de Silva is seen donating chairs to the Borella Autorickshaw United Association during its annual general meeting held recently. Mr de Silva said the chairs were bought with money allocated to him by the Provincial Council.
Aaloka Pooja in memory of Easter Sunday massacre victims
The Alumni Association of University of Peradeniya Colombo Chapter (AAUPCC) organised an ‘Aaloka Pooja’ on April 28 at the Ganelanda Raja Maha Viharaya, Welipara, Thalawatugoda to invoke blessings on the people of Sri Lanka, wish for speedy recovery of the injured and bestow merit on those who lost their lives at the tragic massacre on [...]
Sacking the heart specialist
One of my acquaintances – a rich and prominent businessman, one of those chaps who has more rupees than sense and thinks that his money entitles him to do whatever he likes – suffered a serious heart attack a few years ago. Fortunately for him he recovered, although he had to subsequently undergo a triple [...]
A question of police irresponsibility
The terror that shocked Sri Lanka on Easter Sunday was a coordinated attack aimed at killing a large number of people. In the immediate aftermath, social media platforms carried a document from the intelligence section of the Police Department. It contained information passed on by the intelligence agency of a neighbouring country on April 4. [...]
Fallout of power sans responsibility
The few lines reproduced below may provide the guidelines to those who are attempting to affix the blame on particular individuals or parties for the most horrendous tragedy that befell Lanka on Easter Sunday. There was an important job to do and everybody was asked to do it. Everybody was sure somebody had to do [...]
The big picture: Looking beyond me and mine
These are hard and testing times when we feel that our community has failed us; our education, our religions, our leadership, and most certainly our state have failed us. We have to acknowledge that all these fantastic socio-cultural, religious and political systems woven by generations of people have, indeed, failed us. What happens now? We [...]
Where did we go wrong in the Easter Sunday debacle?
‘Intelligence officers never sleep’, is a dictum we (speaking as a former Intelligence officer) proudly claim. Slackness in intelligence is a disaster to a country, for obvious reasons. Intelligence officers are ‘not born, but made’ and should serve a minimum of 10 years in that trade. Intelligence officers (in any nation), have the highest responsibility [...]
The buck stops with the President
Sri Lankans are slowly beginning to come to terms with the reality that they would face another war on terror after enjoying relative peace for 10 years. Much has been said in the last week and much of it in anger, frustration and fear. Political opportunism has reached unprecedented levels, with Gotabaya Rajapaksa announcing his [...]
President bans the burqa: Learn to live in peace
The Sunday Times editorial “Let’s resurrect ourselves from this catastrophe” provides timely advice, since only opportunists would attempt to hijack this calamity to advance their goals. The editor is on target that “this is a terror outfit that can still be tackled with a fingernail before we need a machete”, and is factually correct considering [...]