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Home » ColumnsThe good, the bad and the deadly: Daily official info flow on COVID
The spread of news over COVID -19 in Sri Lanka is as fast as the deadly coronavirus. Whilst the only formal source for the public is the Government, reporting accounts which are diametrically opposite and often correct, is the social media. Sri Lankans discerning enough can gauge that in this age of new technology, including [...]
Time for SLFP to use the ‘’remote control’’ in the country’s interest
The shifting Sri Lankan political landscape has many implications for the country—right now and in the future. Right up to 1956 the United National Party (UNP) dominated the polity with the left parties such as the Lanka Sama Samaja Party (LSSP) and the Communist Party functioning as the ideologically strong but numerically small political parties. [...]
Quite an energetic minister these days
My dear Udaya, I write to you because you seem to be at the centre of the controversial fuel price increase, a decision which will raise the price of almost everything in the market, and make many people forget even the current crisis with the coronavirus and the prolonged lockdown. What is puzzling is the [...]
Scapegoat Gammanpila turns the tables on SLPP
Energy Minister Gammanpila found himself stranded on the government highway and left holding the can for the oil hike, after the governing party secretary accused him last Saturday of being responsible for the increase and called for his immediate resignation. In a letter sent last week to Gammanpila, the Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna Secretary, Sagara [...]
Fertiliser shift: when Haste makes more than waste
The current controversy over the ban on chemical fertiliser and pesticides and the consequences of this policy move remind me of the days long gone by when I used to write on agriculture for the Daily News. This was way back in the second half of the 1960s when the then Prime Minister Dudley Senanayake [...]
On the singular importance of judicial courage under fire
Even as arrests of Sri Lankan social media critics and opposition protestors continue in a covid-afflicted nation with an oppressive net slowly tightening on democratic spaces, the appellate court’s acting in revision to grant bail to former head of the country’s Criminal Investigation Department (CID) Shani Abeysekera this week is akin to a deep and [...]
Growing concerns in external finances
The external finances of the country are in a perilous state. External reserves have fallen, the trade deficit is widening, the balance of payments deficit is increasing and there are foreign debt repayments of about US$ four billion during the rest of the year. External reserves External reserves that were US$ 4.47 billion at the [...]
The pitfalls of the major fuel price hike
Cabinet of Ministers kept in the dark Rumblings within government ranks A caucus within ruling alliance calls for relief measures for poor Relaxation of measures against COVID-19 may lead to more revenue ‘Carnival’ of contradictions continues Sri Lankans — men, women and children now confined indoors due to the lockdown — were mostly asleep when [...]
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