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Home » ColumnsCan consensus be reached?
My Dear Green Man, I thought of writing to you because everyone seems to have forgotten you these days, what with curfews and the coronavirus taking up all the headlines. It is only people like Gota maama, Mahinda maama, the Police spokesman and Dr Jasinghe that we get to hear or see because of this [...]
The corona mystery: Lanka squanders opportunity to head vital body
The Trump administration has continued to fuel a conspiracy theory that the coronavirus is a biological weapon which leaked out of a laboratory in Wuhan, China. But a credible response to that theory may eventually have to come from the Geneva-based Biological Weapons Convention (BWC) Implementation Support Unit which was to have been chaired by [...]
COVID-19 pandemic should not give rise to pandemic of corruption
Sri Lanka’s economy has not been in the best of health over a long period of time. The reasons for this are many. Over the years successive Governments’ management of the economy has left much to be desired. In more recent times international borrowings for vanity projects involving high investment that did not ensure sufficient [...]
Implications of growing global food security concerns
A global food shortage is imminent. The impending global food shortage could threaten the food security of less developed nations, especially poor people around the world. Deaths In a normal year about 9 million people are estimated to die of starvation and illnesses related to food shortages. Most deaths are in Africa and South Asia. [...]
‘Whoever the rogues in parliament, our fate will be the same’
Despite familiar wiles of lawyers sacrificing the national interest in favour of (political) clients in cases currently being heard at the Supreme Court leading to sensational headlines that Sri Lanka’s topmost health officials had waved the green flag for the holding of the country’s 2020 Presidential Elections, the truth was not so simple, it so [...]
The powerful don’t care for rules
A couple of weeks ago the editorial in this newspaper was headlined “O tempora, O mores” the title of some verses written by Edgar Allan Poe. What times, what customs, it said. What times indeed! Every form of government on this planet suffered or is still trying to recover from the shock each received when [...]
If COVID will leave Lanka crippled, will debt plague leave Lanka dead?
First the good news of Lanka’s remarkable recovery from the coronavirus nightmare that once seemed destined never to end but linger on till a sizable number of her people were dead and some of her democratic institutions and functions were crippled. Last week on May 19, the wind of all the legal arguments for holding [...]
UNP-SJB battle will aggravate when polls campaign begins
Wickremesinghe-led Working Committee calls for explanation from Premadasa nominees,expulsion possible within a week Opposition split boosts SLPP; ruling party leaders’ focus not only on victory but on margin of victory Confusion over re-imposition of curfew today and on June 4 and 5; banking and other sectors concerned about continuing economic instability Last Tuesday, the [...]
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