Scenes never before played out in the more than two and a half decades of separatist war are being enacted in the Wanni, the theatre of bitter battles between the security forces and Tiger guerrillas.
On the military front, troops are on the doorstep of one of the Tiger dens or their political stronghold, Kilinochchi.
The problems that the country would face owing to an ageing population are not confined to the issue of the retirement age that we discussed last Sunday. The challenges posed by the ageing of the country’s population concern health policies, caring of the elderly and coping with a high old age dependency. The ageing of the population in Sri Lanka is very rapid and at a pace unprecedented in world history.
This week's explanation by Minister DEW Gunesekera, (according to an uncontradicted lead news item in the Daily Mirror of September 15, 2008), as to why the Constitutional Council (CC) cannot be immediately reactivated despite all the nominations being sent to the President, is astounding for its flamboyantly incorrect summation of the current law as well as for the disingenuous manner in which this is used to justify the continued delay in putting the CC into place.
When the emir of Qatar, the leader of one of the world's richest countries, was asked about the security of his investments, Sheik Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani remarked: "The day our oil and gas will finish, we will not go back to our camels."
