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Ilankai Tamil Arasu Katchchi (ITAK) frontliner and Jaffna district parliamentarian M.A. Sumanthiran was at the Presidential Secretariat on Thursday for a private meeting with President Ranil Wickremesinghe.

As he walked in, he noticed Speaker Mahinda Yapa Abeywardena was leaving the office following a meeting.

Among the critical issues the Jaffna politician discussed with President Wickremesinghe was the ongoing controversy and potential constitutional crisis looming over the appointment of an Acting Inspector General of Police (IGP).

President Wickremesinghe said he was also willing to hear the legal opinion of President’s Counsel Sumanthiran, who is regarded as an expert in constitutional law.

President Wickremesinghe explained that he was unable to implement the order issued by the Supreme Court to appoint an acting IGP until hearings were concluded in the case against incumbent Police Chief Deshabandu Tennakoon. The President said if he were to implement the court decision, he might face legal challenges in the form of election violation petitions since he is also one of the candidates in the upcoming presidential election.

The President’s remarks came after the Supreme Court indicated that it would not be involved in any talks with the Speaker on the issue as suggested by the President last week.

Mr. Sumanthiran explained that as a constitutional appointing authority, the President is duty-bound to make the appointment, indicating instances of the IGP post becoming vacant due to a voluntary resignation or sudden death of an IGP.

If the President believes that he might face legal consequences if he is to appoint a new IGP, Sumanthiran PC suggested that the President could convene a meeting of political party leaders represented in Parliament and request them to nominate persons, and those names can be forwarded for approval to the Constitutional Council.

By adopting this mechanism, the President can omit being subjected to legal challenges of election violations, the President was told. President Wickremesinghe, who listened carefully, said he would look into that aspect as well.

26 Lankans arrested in Kuwait after JVP-linked event

Twenty-six Sri Lankans who attended an event organised by the JVP-led Ethara Api organisation have been arrested in Kuwait, according to Labour and Foreign Employment Minister Manusha Nanayakkara.

The Minister, in a post on X, formerly Twitter, said he had been notified about the arrest.

“I have contacted our embassy, and they are working with Kuwaiti officials to secure their release as soon as possible,” he said.

Those arrested include organisers and musicians.

They had been arrested by the Kuwaiti Crime Department for organising a community event called “Sri Lanka Day” without obtaining prior permission from the Kuwait Ministry of Interior.

Of the arrested 26 persons 24 had been released while two of the organisers have been detained. Among the musicians arrested were Samanali Fonseka, Upekha Nirmani, Indrachapa Liyanage, Appukutti Chandraratna Silva and Thiloma Amalanga.

Wickremabahu’s death: AKD told shooting was partly responsible

The recent death of veteran socialist leader Dr. Wickremabahu Karunaratne became another ‘photo op’ for some of the presidential candidates and local politicians.

They wanted to make them look appealing to the masses with socialist ideas considering the upcoming presidential election and other elections to follow.

Dr. Karunaratne, the leader of the Nawa Sama Samaja Party (NSSP), passed away last Thursday. He was 81.

NPP leader Anura Kumara Dissanayake (extreme right) paying his last respects to veteran left leader Wickremabahu Karunaratne

Presidential candidate and Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna-led National People’s Power leader Anura Kumara Dissanayake was among the politicians who turned up at a private funeral parlour to pay his last respects to one of the last surviving socialist leaders who stood his ground even though some of his ideological stands made him unpopular among some segments of the people.

As a matter of courtesy, the JVP leader enquired from NSSP comrades about the poor health condition Karunaratne underwent for quite some time. One NSSP comrade told him that a shooting incident involving a JVP gang in Kadawatte had a lasting impact on the health of the late Karunaratne.

As part of the JVP terror campaign of intimidating non-JVP leftist leaders during the 1988 presidential election, a gang using a light machine gun shot at Dr. Karunaratne while he was addressing a rally in support of candidate Ossie Abeygoonesekera. Dr. Karunaratne suffered severe injuries in his abdomen.

Under a huge security risk, his NSSP comrades took the late Dr. Karunaratne to the hospital immediately, but drama artist Deva Bandara Senarathne was killed in the shooting incident.

The JVP leader was speechless for a while listening to the tragic side of his party, which it is still struggling to address to this day.

Sri Lankan-American content creator Cynthia Victor redefining
beauty standards for plus-size brown women

Cynthia: Pic by Rony Anthony

A 25-year-old plus-size Sri Lankan-American content creator who lives in New Jersey, United States, is redefining beauty standards for plus-size brown women.

Born in Montreal, Canada, Cynthia Victor was only one when her parents migrated to the US where she has lived ever since. Her parents fled Sri Lanka during the height of the war.

In an article that appeared in the Images magazine, Cynthia shares her passion for creating social media content to empower women who looked like her — plus size, brown-skinned and South Asian.

Growing up, she said faced an identity. “I thought I was Indian for such a long time,” Cynthia said. “Where I live, particularly finding out how I can be American as well as equally Sri Lankan has been difficult.”

Despite the identity crisis she experienced, Cynthia never felt alone in her journey of finding her ethnic roots as a Tamil woman, says the article’s writer Haider Rifaat.

After deciding to take the leap to become a social media celebrity, she came across many individuals who felt the same way she felt about losing connection to her cultural heritage. “Even if they’re not Sri Lankan, they’re still going through the identity crisis of being able to balance their own culture with wherever they live,” Cynthia explained.

Through social media, Cynthia was able to find acceptance for who she was as a Sri Lankan-American. She could easily clear misconceptions about being stereotyped as an Indian or, more broadly, a South Asian, simply for being brown when she was equally a well-spoken Canadian living the American dream in New Jersey.

IndiGo expected to bring tourism boom to Jaffna

The recent announcement by Indian low-cost airline IndiGo on the newest addition to its international route network—starting non-stop daily flights between Chennai and Jaffna from September 1—would be a game changer for the province.

For IndiGo, Jaffna will be the second destination in Sri Lanka after Colombo, and the bookings for flights opened on Thursday.

With Indian tourists making up a significant market for international tourist arrivals into the country, this will pave the way for more people from both countries to travel across the Palk Strait for religious tourism, leisure and investments.

The demand for travel between Chennai and Jaffna is evident, with more than 21,000 passengers flying the route in just nine months last year, IndiGo said in a statement at the launch of the new route.

This 75-minute flight would significantly reduce travel time, making Jaffna even more accessible to many, including diaspora communities, to travel frequently to the province. The one-way fare is fixed at around Rs 30,000 along with a 30 kg check-in bag allowance and a 7 kg cabin bag allowance.

In Jaffna town, a local textile vendor said that nowadays, diaspora-based individuals who were visiting their relatives back home would transit via Chennai for shopping and return here rather than coming via Colombo.

Lankan academic Sasanka Perera

Academic freedom in India questioned after Lankan don’s resignation

In local academic circles, academic freedom allowed in India has become a talking point after the recent resignation of a Sri Lankan scholar who was supervising a doctoral scholar at an Indian university.

The controversy was over the citation of American linguist and world-renowned scholar Noam Chomsky’s criticism of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government.

The doctoral research proposal has resulted in a show-cause notice for the Indian PhD scholar and a disciplinary inquiry against Supervisor Perera by the South Asian University (SAU) in New Delhi. This prompted Dr. Perera, who teaches sociology and is a founding member of the sociology department at SAU, to resign from the university, according to Indian media reports.

In November last year, the doctoral scholar submitted a proposal on Kashmir’s ethnography and politics, which was approved by his supervisor before being sent to the university’s Dean of Social Sciences.

In the notice, the PhD candidate was asked to explain the citation of the private YouTube video he uploaded in his research proposal.

The video was a personal recording of an interview the student did with Noam Chomsky, in which the well-known intellectual reportedly said that Modi “comes from a “radical Hindutva tradition” and was attempting to “dismantle Indian secular democracy” and “impose Hindu technocracy”, according to the Indian media reports.

Wallapatta racket: Look-alike plant makes detection difficult

Forest Department officials revealed a new obstacle in cracking down on the illegal trade in the highly valuable Wallapatta plant, which is endemic to Sri Lanka. Sought after by the perfume industry, the plant is used for medicinal and therapeutic purposes.

The officials expressed their concerns when they appeared before the Committee on Public Accounts (COPA).

While there is no bar on Wallapatta cultivation, it is illegal to remove Wallapatta trees from forests and transport them without a permit. Yet, the illegal practice is common.

The officials revealed that the imported plant called Aquilaria had the same characteristics as the Wallapatta plant, and cultivation of the plant has already started in Sri Lanka.

Since it is difficult to tell the two plants apart, racketeers are now trying to pass off Wallapatta plants cut down from forests as Aquilaria plants obtained from private plantations.

Forest Department officials told COPA that they were relying on scientific methods to identify the two plants as a means to overcome the deception.