Articles

The blackout resulted from incorrect transmission protection settings and operational errors at major hydro generation facilities, especially Victoria – not rooftop solar excess. It is noted that the official report by the CEB on the blackout has not highlighted any…

Sixteen years after the assassination of The Sunday Leader editor Lasantha Wickrematunge, the Sri Lankan justice system has failed to identify or effectively prosecute those who ordered the killing. Despite intermittent investigative breakthroughs, and intense local…

Cyclone Ditwah didn’t simply wash away Sri Lanka’s railway tracks. It washed away our excuses. For decades, Sri Lanka Railways (SLR) has been the classic state-owned paradox: socially vital, fiscally fragile, structurally neglected – and politically untouchable. When…

There are many dangers on the road ahead as regards ‘rebuilding’ Sri Lanka. These are not the challenges facing state and citizenry as well as other stakeholders in the national interest. But rather the traps into which any of us could fall. And one of these is that…

Where do the vulnerable go from here? The aftermath of Ditwa in the Central Province – Pic by Shehan Gunasekera   And it is not over yet. For there are still painful questions floating downstream with the debris like some moral detritus that no…

Often our resilience is merely the nihilistic vein that runs deep in drowned villages and flooded towns showing up as a resigned adjustment to an otherwise unbearable reality. It didn’t take long for them to show through the velvet glove. Arrogance amongst the…

Volunteerism at its best – Sri Lankans cut across communal lines to stand in solidarity with their fellow citizens in their direst hours – Pix courtesy Aman Ashraff Ditwah has left. Chaos reigns. Yet there is life. Amidst the carnage, confusion and…

It is a crying shame on us all that more than a quarter of the citizenry are still finding it difficult and even impossible to make ends meet. Not even the deflationary milieu that we are slowly but surely coming out of has made a difference to the poor. In the wake…

The other ironies that abound run the gamut from discredited mainstream parties that were once in Government and only recently rejected by the people – not once, but no less than three times in successive polls – protesting against alleged corruption by…

Was it amiable derring-do or dismaying amateurishness that led the president to propose in Budget 2026 supporting the marginalised plantations community with a monthly two-hundred-rupee boost from state coffers?   Today we are in danger of descending from being a…

  Despite the survey also revealing that there has been “a decrease in the performance volume of the currently operating enterprises”, there is only a general policy direction of fast-tracking “the journey towards a production economy”…

There is a widespread perception among these enterprises themselves that this vital sector has been neglected, ignored or poorly served by the nation’s policymakers over the years     The question isn’t as absurd or as dramatic as it sounds. In fact, in the…

Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. It is sweet and fitting to expect that against all faded hopes, justice may still be done Almost every day I make a mental note of some smidgen of armchair wisdom that promises peace if only one would let go, let it go…

Sri Lanka’s chequered history of coalition politics wreaking havoc on the nation’s growth, development progress speaks volumes for the fallout from a lack of such agreement and cohesion In Sri Lanka, in 2024/2025 and beyond, this takes on added emphasis in…

It is power because it consists of the ability of the one or few who are at the top to make others do a number of things (positively or negatively) that they would  not or at least might not have done   We survey the extant literature on political leadership…

The pre-election promises spanning political, social and economic dimensions have been  seemingly kept on a selective basis   A bigger picture emerges on the larger canvas of national political life… it is one in which the relatively few, early,…

That the NPP-dominated House is starting to walk the talk on promises that its leader made on his remarkable campaign trail must redound to the credit of every one of those 159 National People’s Power MPs  As the first year of a House commandeered by the NPP has…

Of course, no lover of a land like no other in their right mind would gainsay what Vijitha Herath told the watching world in the aftermath of the blood moon   The blood moon of the night of 7 September brought with it a panoply of portents for Sri Lanka. A lunar…

On the ground level, where real life trumps dreams and the carnival-like atmosphere of the socio-political circus – things are still hard for the kos polos type of voter   Some days are better by far than others. There you go again then, blithe spirit,…

From star-gazing would-be astronauts to navel-gazing social anthropologists, we’ve had a surfeit of rising stars and setting suns – er, sons – who’ve promised more than they’ve ever delivered. And they continue to take the public, the polity and the parliaments of…

As economy watchers warned only recently, Sri Lanka by dint of its Central Bank’s defence of the latest rate cut is skating on thin ice vis-à-vis a second default   Time is a funny thing that way. To a sad and lonely old man, sitting on a park bench next to a…

If a people’s movement such as the Aragalaya is to actualise ALL of its ambitions, it must be a perpetual revolution   The closing of ranks by a widely despised regime in the aftermath of July 2022 served Sri Lanka in at least one sterling sense. In that those…

Between the events of 14 July 1789, and 9-13 July 2022, lie many commonalities that can and must unite the spirits of any downtrodden people who sought to end – and succeeded in ending, for a significant time at least – their sore oppression by tyrannical…

Until the arguably ultimate objective of the erstwhile Aragalaya – that is to say a truly equitable milieu in city, town and country; nation and state; parliamentary precincts and among the hoi polloi; etc – eventuates, one can never conscionably urge or…

The unforgiving attitudes in the hearts of the once victimised sound a discord in their plaintive wails in the press and at people’s councils islandwide over the years It is the case – and has always been and will always be in its better avatars and more…

Defending, sidelining, covering up human rights abuses has been a national pastime of sorts – for a plethora of reasons spanning the gamut from an exaggerated sense of patriotism overriding regional, global and universal values and norms; to paid hands determined to…

Discredited political ethics apart, the incumbent mayor has a large task ahead of her   The flavour of the week in Colombo is indubitably NPP. While an NPP woman mayor may not be to everyone’s taste, no doubt Vraie Cally Balthazaar (VCB) is the toast of the rest…

One major light at the end of a long dark tunnel is the growing number of judgments and indictments in the pipeline  When troubles come, they come not single spies, but in battalions. Sri Lanka seems to have a sufficiency of such intruders these days.  From…

To give credit where it is due – to the executive as well as the judicial branches of government – corrupt politicos at the upper echelon level are being handed stiff sentences in gaol for the first time since ‘good governance’ put the idea in…

If the agenda for sweeping reforms to nation, state, country, governmental ethos and socio-political culture have failed to materialise, the NPP has to hold itself accountable in the main  When the NPP set its sights on rescuing the republic from the perils it…

Where once hat-in-hand humble and ostensibly on the side of the cost-of-living crippled, footboard-travelling, serially suffering masses, the former opposition is slowly but surely transforming into its own antithesis now that it senses the trappings and traditional…

The NPP’s long and sometimes insidious struggle – as most potently expressed in the impetus it gave the Aragalaya – to critically engage the corrupt regime entrenched at the time has borne a triple-blossomed fruit. First, when AKD clinched the presidency in September…

If the unkept promises of the incumbent administration resulted in the attenuation of its previous popularity, it comes with the opportunity to course-correct   The win this week of the National People’s Power at the 2025 local government elections is not a…

However much potential it still seems to hold as nation, state and country gear up for local government elections, the NPP is but a pale shadow of its former self   Shall we roll up the accountability map of crimes committed and a culture of impunity covering a…

While we will move heaven and earth to punish the perpetrators of such dastardly attacks such as the devastating Easter Sunday bombings of six years ago, there is no guarantee that our probes and our promises will run according to schedule   ‘We will serve…

It is starting to look like falling into danger of being the third successive government to mismanage bringing the plethora of investigations to date to a conclusive, satisfactory and justice-delivering closure Today is D-Day for a still tyro government to stop only…

The problem is that between the slow (probably sustainable) programmatic approach of a tyro government and the grumbling and grousing of a polity that (perhaps falsely) senses it is about to be disappointed (possibly gulled) again, the time is running out for a big…

While the buzz in media circles last week was about senior investigative journalist Namini Wijedasa’s US Secretary of State’s International Women of Courage Award 2025, the slow burn in the same arena was still over a baffling lack of progress in emblematic media…

When the JVP-led NPP was on the campaign trail, it exhibited certain sterling characteristics of a unique creature   For now – as in 2018 with ‘Good Governance’ and as early as late 2020 with ‘Vistas of Prosperity and Splendour’…

Shall we agree that the most pressing lapse perhaps is the stark failure of the government, which when it was incumbent in opposition long and loudly critiqued the dread Prevention of Terrorism Act   Government is walking a tightrope these days, precariously…

The GOSL introduced its fertiliser policy of 2021 to stave off severe forex outflows but did not anticipate the issues angry farmers of all types island-wide would face The primary reasons adduced by most expert observers are that the overnight fertiliser policy was…

Beatrice and Sidney Webb  Virginia and Leonard Woolf   On the 77th anniversary of Sri Lanka’s independence from colonial rule following foreign domination of some four and a half centuries, the focus may well be on liberty from oppression or tyranny, and…

The State Council was to consist of 58 members, of whom 50 would be elected by universal suffrage, and the remaining eight were to be appointed by the then Governor of British Ceylon   On the 77th anniversary of Sri Lanka’s independence from colonial rule,…

Despite having tenuous links with both nations, these Indian-origin Tamils of Ceylon/Sri Lanka found themselves as pawns in a game of chess played by the home country, India, and the country that played host to them under British colonial government, Sri Lanka  …

That this unfortunate community was criminally exploited for hundreds of years by British and then Ceylonese, as well as Sri Lankan plantation companies later, is a public secret; as is the fact that these Tamils were discriminated against by colonial and native…

A vision to develop Sri Lanka’s railway infrastructure is the need of the hour even now, over four years after the island nation arbitrarily terminated a project that would meet its creaking infrastructural needs at concessionary terms from a friendly nation’s…

GOSL decided to terminate the project with no alternative solution to the traffic congestion issue being proposed On 27 December, the railway community in Sri Lanka as well as national-minded islanders commemorate the day on which the inaugural Ceylon Government…

Even a cursory glance at the presidential and parliamentary elections of 2024 will amply demonstrate that the earth has well and truly moved under our feet Politics is the art of the possible. And more often than not, the gradual erosion of the political soil by the…

The power of that cross must slowly but surely transform the nature, principles and practice of power in the land. Else it would be only a transactional double-cross fit for the dustbin of history – Pic by Shehan Gunasekara In the run-up to the Presidential…

Here’s wishing Anura Kumara Dissanayake heartiest congratulations on behalf of all those bleeding hearts that yearned for systemic change    The ‘too close to call’ Presidential poll has been called and lo, the name of Anura Kumara Dissanayake (AKD) heads…

Vote wisely, and well then, with an eye on the general elections to follow – Pic by Shehan Gunasekara A radical point has been made often enough: It is an election like no other in our nation’s history. On one hand, the first election since the flaring up and fading…

We can only trust and hope that an electorate that has repeatedly suffered from the fallout of racial politicking that burned towns and cremated the dead against their religious convictions has learned the lessons of history and won’t provoke the fates by any attempt…

 The ‘Red Brigade’ has been of late the target of a series of vendettas on social media   How many times does the JVP have to, hat in hand, apologise for its mayhem that laid waste to a nation before the plantation community in particular, whose…

Is it the sad sorry case for the sake of a more sterling democracy in our present state that the UNP and the SJB are not much more than each other’s mirror image – save that one is nicer to know and the other statelier to look at? Or are there deeply differentiated…

Is it bearable, this oppression by reactionary elites who have captured the state, for the sake of ostensible stability in the short term… even if exploring the alternatives – and there is a raft of these – means facing and overcoming the ‘fear…

The citizenry vote for politicians in the vain hope that ‘this time there will be change for the better’ – Pic by Shehan Gunasekara   Despite the critical engagement of scholars and other writers in the mainstream media attempting to introduce leadership models…

As April showed this year, Easter – together with Eid and Aluth Avurudu – can be entertained in ecumenical hearts,  without breaching the undivided peace that prevailed in the hearts of most people of an island race keen to live in harmony …

Beaten, broken and bruised: but carrying on with courage and compassion ‘beyond checkpoints’  In a nation notorious for not remembering many matters of importance beyond the news cycle, remembering right becomes a sacred trust and duty. Sri Lanka has faced many…

There was evident cause for concern that other demographics in our isle could be subject to the potential  At a recent public seminar on the Online Safety Act (OSA), a policy perspective under the title ‘OSA: Why The Rush?’ was presented by the academics and…

It sings of a stauncher freedom and untrammelled liberty, which we earnestly desire but often find to be out of reach year after year, generation after generation – Pic by Ruwan Walpola As Sri Lanka parades past its 76th milepost on a journey of independence from…

It was an eye-opener, and an open invitation to other ethnics – indeed, the ethnic other – to similarly turn the lens of scrutiny upon themselves  English-Language Theatre (ELT) in Sri Lanka has great potential as a tool for civil society to engage…

In trying times, it is theatre’s duty – and its privilege – to step up to the plate, where other actors in civil society have dropped the ball in terms of finding an alternative to our much needed ‘right of recall’ For a while now, it would seem English-Language…

In a new year ahead, we hope for a sea-change into something rich and strange It has long been the contention of this writer that English-Language Theatre (ELT) in Sri Lanka has great potential as a vehicle to engage with civics and government critically in the larger…

Not for the first time, I went to a certain graveside this warm January morning, to observe a chronic grief as the year shifts gears into election mode later in 2024. Many other fellow travellers and companionable pilgrims on journalism’s journey were there. As always…

In their vastly entertaining satire ‘1066 And All That’, presented as “A memorable history of England”, coauthors W.C. Sellar and R.J. Yeatman argue that “history is not what happened – it is what you can remember”.  At…

Let the curtain fall on this unsavoury topic with a last look at one facet that the two stages of theatrics share to the detriment of the national interest  Over the years, we have noted old Ceylon go down the drain from being a proudly independent Commonwealth…

The play is the thing – but in its present form, only a welcome diversion from the state of the nation… Where have all the heavyweights gone? When will ELT take the stage as an influencer?   A funny thing happened on the way to the forum. I went to a…

A year after the events of 9–13 July, there are more questions than answers to the hoary issues of our unprecedented ‘People’s Revolution’. Who – if any single individual or parties with vested interests acting in collusion –…

Austerity measures imposed and enforced; more moral than fiscal bankruptcy; corruption unaddressed amidst the old guard ensconced in secure, self-serving domains at the expense of the poor… now, truly, is the winter of our discontent! With, unhappily, no ‘Son of…

There has been a falling of darkness across the publicly-orientated shrine-rooms of Sri Lanka’s sundry faiths of late. On one hand, a clutch of false prophets has brought a guest religion to its knees before angry hosts. On the other, secular critics of a philosophy…

While we welcome the vision, really and truly, the wishful thinking embedded therein may have left some of us feeling that the Prez had missed a trick or two, canny politico though he may be – Pic by Shehan Gunasekara    By now, you would know that the…

Happy Celebrate, Investigate, Aggravate day – Pic by Shehan Gunasekara    I don’t mean to trifle with you as some folks may say that bankruptcy will help us build back better if only they’re given more time. Not enough, the past almost 50…

Let us not walk blindly, bound to the grave that our silence on state crimes is digging for all of us   I went to a certain graveside one sunny January morning to observe a chronic grief as the year shifted gears to get going into muddier ground. Not so much to…

NEW LAWS OR OLD? – as long as there are ‘truth’ and ‘trust’ deficits in the socio-political systems, ‘economic assassins’ among others inimical to the national interest will not be brought to book   Sri Lanka is on the cusp of a major ‘spiritual’…

TRESPASSERS WILL BE PERSECUTED – the setting up of High Security Zones in the heart of the commercial capital shows up the insecurity of a government that majors on legality and minors in legitimacy, whilst showcasing the insecure state of the powers that be,…

TOUGH POISE – in purely psychological terms, it’s a pose to conceal insecurity; introduce the paradigm of politics into the stance, and it becomes a position that’s violated with impunity    A funny thing happened on the way to the forum….

DRACONIAN – the Damocles sword of the PTA  The acid test of a ‘National Security Act’ is that it must make the nation more secure. It is the same with a ‘Prevention of Terrorism Act’, in that it must go more than some distance…

The polity, the political Opposition and the people’s movement of protest are caught between the rock of an implacable regime that won’t rest until it has its pound of flesh and the hard pace of possibly worsening hardships if the IMF hatches…

‘IDPs’ – internally-displaced protestors   Much ink has been spilled over the people’s struggle movement (‘Aragalaya’) that has brought popular sovereignty to the fore like never before perhaps. Most of it has focussed on…

RED-LETTER DAY FOR REPUBLICANISM – but beware the bloody excesses of the rebellion in the wrong hands     Today, 14 July 2022, marks the 233rd anniversary of the Storming of the Bastille, which iconic event in 1789 triggered the French Revolution…

MARCH on!     It has been a very long time indeed in coming. Only yesterday, it seemed as if many if not most Sri Lankans were slaves to their political masters, in one way or another. But today, the worm has well and truly turned. And our elected…

ONCE MORE INTO THE BREACH? But exercising extreme caution on 9 July… and beyond if necessary – It remains vital that the infrastructure of state stands to host a critical ‘early election’ that’s imperative to revive democracy; restore the…

DRIVERS AND CONDUCTORS – ON THE BUS in a state, system and society where privileged passengers ride free and with ease while the public forfeits safety, security and comfort; let alone the privileges of the political elite in the VIP section. Not to quibble too much…

RUING THE DAY? Regret is a part of life… the key is to keep it a small part…!    The English writer D.H. Lawrence once wrote: “If only we could live two lives: the first, in which to make one’s mistakes; and the second, in which to…

In a sad song that tugs at the heartstrings, Sinéad O’Connor sings that “it’s been 7 hours and 15 days since you took your love away”. She’s particularly distraught because “nothing can take away these blues” and “nothing compares to you”. But there’s a silver lining…

  SOME DAY, when our crying’s done… Until then, Sri Lanka shows the world how to wear a smile and walk in the sun – despite the deluge of disasters pouring down like rain… Instead of the justice we so vociferously demand and so richly deserve…

A TROJAN HORSE IN TANDEM – reversed? There are few words that fall more explosively into the wells of consciousness than speech after long silence. That the most recent televised misadventures came as something of an anticlimax is cause for much relief. The unkindest…

APOCALYPSE NOW? – Armageddon can be avoided by carefully nurturing another type of flame! – Pix by Ruwan Walpola   Sri Lanka is being reborn. Inch by painful inch at Galle Face green, which is rising from the dirty-grey ashes of reprehensible…

UNHOLY TRINITY – three views of what’s going on: the people continue to protest; their Parliament persists in horse-trading; the President and the Prime Minister remain agnostic to the antipathy they’ve roused in both ‘Houses’ of Parliament and homes of people …

VILLAGE PEOPLE – It may take more than even a nation on the march to move the parasites out of the corridors of power… Pic by Ruwan Walpola I, like you maybe, have been blown away by what has been happening at the barricades. So much so – that between noisy marches on…

The ‘Struggle’ of the few on behalf of the many is in its umpteenth day/week/month today. Its exact duration to date depends on when you start counting the ‘People’s Quiet Revolution’ as having begun. And the wave upon wave of the ‘Occupy Galle Face’ movement is but…

STANDING – and withstanding   Like never before, politics as it is practised in Sri Lanka has come under scrutiny by virtually all its stakeholders acting at the same time.  What began in a darkened suburb as a candlelit protest against untenable power…

ONCE MORE INTO THE BREACH – while ‘big match’ energy and paparé-band millennial vibes fuel that feel-good feeling at the protests, feeling is that civil society must protect the essence of an apolitical, peaceful, organic grassroots movement that has so far best…

TREND apolitical   I and my ‘village’ of islanders of all ilks did not go to Mirihana (‘Gotaland’). But we did conduct a peaceful protest at the top of our road in the environs of Nugegoda (Mahinda’s erstwhile stamping grounds for politically charged rallies) on…

ANGER or ‘extremism’?   A funny thing happened on the way to the president’s residence. The angry crowd found that the man they had asked to ‘go home’ had, in fact, acceded to their courteous request. He was in situ. It was one of the few promises that our head…

Thank you to the academy – er, academics… and professionals and business leaders: you certainly know how to pick a winner. You Chris Rock, you really do. Where there’s a Will, there’s a busy Smith or four… forging their, ugh, our…

HEART OF DARKNESS – a few quiet words on the blacked-out streets may do more to bring some light (in the long run) to our present plight      What do you do to show you’re not happy – with the un-pretty pass we’ve come to as a people?  Do you rant…

VENI, VIDI, VICI – sadly, to many of his erstwhile supporters (some of whom admire him – despite, or perhaps because of, the flak on social media barrages), this translates into ‘weany, weedy and weaky’… a powerful president with a panoply of powers who has…

CRY, ‘HAVOC!’ – there is a tide in the affairs of the nation, which, if taken at the flood, lead on to fame… and fortune – and a fate still to be decided as far as the food-less, forex-less, fertiliser-less masses go – Pic by Shehan Gunasekara I, like you…

  STONE THE CROWS – is it only a flight of fancy that in a democracy which respects its longstanding tradition of erudite statesmen, accommodation must be made for those whose argot runs more to absurdity?    In a 19th Century book written by…

CRY, “FREEDOM!” – in the heart of darkness at noon with power cuts being threatened as much as their immediacy denied, plus an enforced embargo on the spirit (literally) of liberty, the people of Sri Lanka may feel they have little to celebrate as their nation-state…

DOWN TO A SUNLESS SEA – driven though we may be by multiplex contingencies like never before, shall we forget the common humanity that connects and challenges us, as an island race?    I love the beach. There is no other place like it. Sea! Sand! Sun!…

WAITING FOR GODOT – while the Church only too often is as much a club as is the State, protecting and protesting on behalf of only its own, there is a feeling that there are not nearly enough citizens at the barricades these days, with the nation at large…

DESPERATE TIMES CALL FOR DESPERATE MEASURES – between a Government politicising the pandemic to stifle democratic dissent under the guise of maintaining law and order to protect public health and safety – and a political opposition irresponsibly…

REVELATIONS – history is not what happened: rather, it is what – and how – we choose to remember; but if we forget or opt to recall wrong, history as we know it may well be at an end   Where were you when the bombs went off on Easter Sunday…

LIPID profile – Liberal, Inclusivist, Pluralist, Iconoclast, Democrat; the more likeable side of an ambitious paradox of a politico: realist with a dream, a player of realpolitik who was the joker in the pack   The late honourable Mangala Samaraweera was anything…

HANDS-ON: Conflating public health and safety with carte blanche for punitive police action – while ignoring the present plight of a host of communities in crisis – could lead to a meltdown of law and order   If you have seen it once, you’ve…

UNHOLY TRINITY – Not what you think! But rather: the triad of farming, fisher and fuel-consuming citizenries. And given the inordinate number of them who comprise our society – it’s time to rethink – Pic by Shehan Gunasekara   Has civil society lost its spark? In…

  Fresh ideas – or old, borrowed, hat?   Who does Dr. Harsha de Silva think he is? A sharp-eyed economist with bright ideas no one in their right mind dreams of? Or a socio-political savant of some sort or the other? Or he is a dullard and a humbug,…

Sri Lanka was born free – of blood and bigotry – but everywhere is in chains. We found ourselves liberated from the shackles of colonialism some 73 years ago. It is a liberty we have squandered through licence to war on our fellow citizens, growing lawlessness amidst…

Ready? First of all stop. Then take a deep cleansing breath. And check your pulse. Heart beating? Blood pumping? Still breathing? Congratulations – you’re alive. Still. Barely. Perhaps clinically. As the poet said: “For man, the vast marvel is to be alive. For man, as…

The so-called COVID-19 cure demonstrated that we’re living in a land of honey, if not one where the milk of human kindness has all but evaporated  The days are growing shorter, the nights longer. And there is an awful finality in the air, like the last sober…

A FEBRILE FANTASY – pilot whales beach themselves; while a rudderless ship runs down to a sunless sea… in the very panic that was pre-empted by our once far more rational rulers then! Now evidently gone to pot and reliant on superstition or pseudo-religion than…

A LAND LIKE NO OTHER – towards a truly far more inclusive pluralistic and yet peaceful inclusive nationality: not predicated on race or religion; but the reality of being bounded by an ocean of other-ness – Pic by Shehan Gunasekara  There is an…

Imagine that you lived in a country where there was One Law. Not that this would be anything like that other salutary nation-state where there is – or is to be – One Country, One Law. But rather, it would be an overarching law that transcended and superseded all other…

  Humankind cannot bear too much reality. Rest and relax far from the madding crowd is a mantra that has a special appeal to many if not most members of the human race. Maybe much of humanity is SORRY – work-to-do! introverted at heart and we all need our…

Question for the house – has the Opposition forgotten the people? – Pic by Shehan Gunasekara  In a recent television interview, a Member of Parliament reminded me of Marie Antoinette. Not because he was a type of cheerful queen inviting the hoi polloi…

I think it is an old idea: senior generals serve civil society best when they’re civilians at heart. The classical Greek civilisation and Roman republic before Augustus grasped the mantle of the Caesars abound with examples. Modernity is much less teeming with such…

A man for all seasons save this; after the salt has lost its savour, no one wonders why the elephant hasn’t left the room… yet, still  I’m not a fan of clambering aboard passing bandwagons, but this Ranil-bashing business can be a tad ticklish and…

POWER – consolidated   The recently-concluded General Election has been taken on board in a variety of ways. From apathy to unadulterated joy, it has touched just about everyone from Medamulana to the Magul Maduwa. There has been a panoply of celebrants to…

POWER – people’s – Pic by Shehan Gunasekara Tomorrow, you could be able to shape destiny. Not your fated lives alone. But those of your children, loved ones, and unborn generations of Sri Lankans, as well as others whom we blessed islanders may influence… should we…

Once more, into the breach! – For better, or worse? In a few days’ time, we as a nation may make choices that will last at least a generation; and likely, your lifetime and mine. On balance or the surface of things, it appears good to be prepared. And best…

THE BEST LACK ALL CONVICTION – While the worst are full of passionate intensity. Or insist that others around them maintain a stoic silence at dastardly goings-on in a whispered-about state…– Courtesy: DAILYSIGNAL   There is only one thing worse than being talked…

PRIME CANDIDATE – While the Constitution formally spells out procedure to be followed in a national emergency, the present PM’s hosting of past MPs at an informal political forum this week may be a move from an anti-democratic power-game playbook …

Incipient setback from a viral enemy – or on the fast track to a political train wreck? – Pic by Shehan Gunasekara The last month or so has had Sri Lanka united and divided on a broad front of pandemic-related issues. Our nation-state both benefited and…

In a far more carefree world, today would have been full of light-hearted laughter. COVID-19 has put paid to all the pranks. Even Comedy Central has grown dull with heavy commentary on the mess world politicians are making of a global pandemic. The exceptions to the…

LESSONS IN THE TIME OF CORONA – what centuries of colonisation couldn’t do, COVID-19 has taught the (former Ceylonese) native to do: standing as (modern Sri Lankan) citizens are now doing; practising social distancing and respecting personal space like never before in…

They say that character is who you are when no one’s looking. Maybe it’s also what you do and say when everyone’s watching you.  Perhaps the president was not aware that all eyes were on him. Not only that of his electorate or that of the once and future prime…

POSEUR – passionate – Pic by Shehan Gunasekara   ‘Love in the Time of Cholera’ is a well-known novel by Gabriel García Márquez, the Nobel prize-winning Colombian author. It is a complex tale, cleverly weaving in divergent…

A funny thing happened on the way to the Roy-Tho. The WHO declared COVID-19 to be a pandemic.  So there – one would imagine – went ‘the’ Big Match. Any sensible citizen with half a pint of civic consciousness or a social conscience would…

SPORT – politicking   So, it’s that time of the year again. Yes, it’s the silly season that comes around once too often for some tastes. But hang on. If you’re not sure whether we mean cricket or politics un-loverly politics – well, join the club. Because it’s…

FAIR STOOD THE WIND FOR SRI LANKA – It’s not cricket when cultural angst overshadows basic civility. Nor is territorial integrity or national pride threatened by flag-waving fandom… unless representatives of our ancient culture feel under threat when form…

DISSENT IS NOT ANTI-NATIONAL – So says a Supreme Court Justice in India, a land set ablaze by bigotry today. Can ‘Little Brother’ across the shallow waters benefit from keeping an open mind about critical engagement with the powers that be, before a similar…

So that saintly MP has thrown a spanner in government’s works again. The pious member lashed out against a battery of citizens from journalists and lawyers to members of his own estate. Last week, much of his grievance was about the silence of the media and the…

CLARION CALL: In a marketplace crowded with jingoistic voices, the sweet flow of reason that was once national integration is bound to be drowned out – Pic by Shehan Gunasekara   A cabbie in the Colombo suburbs leads a double life. He has a wife in…

I keep trying to detox myself from Facebook. But like other middling addictives – such as sweet food, the cold juice (you know which), Twitter – it often won’t stay flushed. Since the surest way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it sometimes, I logged in like…

LIBERTY: Taken in vain? – Pic by Lahiru Harshana Don’t look now, but there’s a shadow across the noonday sun. It’s not big or dark enough for bright eyes filled with the beauty of the world to see it on this of all days. But if you stop being…

  Light – dawns I didn’t get a new year’s greeting from the President this year. But I’m not complaining because it’s rather reassuring that our Chief Executive won’t stoop to conquer, unlike many of his presidential predecessors. Since our new Head of…

LIFE CAN BE A BEACH – but even the balmiest tropical-island-nation can encounter stormy weather at times. Sri Lanka is sitting pretty in the tourism stakes at least, and a short- to medium-term strategic growth spurt at best… maybe if and when it can sort…

 Rapid development under a robust growth-oriented regime is the new mantra resonating with a nation fed up with retarded progress and developmental prospects compromised by rampant crony capitalism. However, maybe the erstwhile champions of systemic reform did…

Is this the real life? Or is it just fantasy? The potential state of the nation towers over a country hovering at the crossroads…   I live in two worlds. In one, everything is clear, sharp, light. The new President has lots of potential to boost Sri Lanka…

YOUTH: new hope – Pic by Shehan Gunasekara   WE HOLD THE TRUTH TO BE SELF-EVIDENT. That Sri Lanka is still a sovereign state despite power-hungry eyes watching us. And its people are paramount over political playbooks despite the worst efforts of its…

The truth outs – Pic by Chamila Karunaratne What is past is past … except when it makes the present – and future – tense. The findings of the Parliamentary Select Committee (PSC) probing the Easter Sunday attacks of April 2019 has set several cats among the pigeons….

A funny thing happened on the way to the forum. Where once we had a paucity of presidential candidates, we now have a superfluity of them. You would think that from this panoply of contenders who’ve thrown their hat in the ring, we’d be spoilt for choice. On closer…

THE END OF THE WORLD IS NIGH… while the likes of Donald Trump have accused Greta Thunberg – a Swedish schoolgirl campaigning her heart out against global warming’s irreversible damage – of fronting a conspiracy, the worse than schoolboyish…

WHERE WERE YOU WHEN THE LIGHTS CAME ON AT THE LOTUS TOWER? Wait, what? Are you being serious? Do you mean in the midst of our sea of troubles – from addressing poverty to abolishing presidencies – a singular erection has stolen their thunder? (I promise not to make…

Meanwhile, in other news… THERE ARE THREE KINDS OF PEOPLE: those who make things happen; those who watch while things happen; and those who wonder what happened! The first of these are perhaps evenly split between the best and worst of them… while most of us fall…

ERASE THE VILE THING – To be fair by the UNP, at least they’re mouthing the ‘right’ platitudes. To be fair by the SLPP, they’re not deceiving anyone by making their sentiments about 18A known, nor their hope in presidentialism. To be fair…

THE ONLY CONSTANT? – They say that the more things change, the more they stay the same. But one or two courageous champions of genuine transformation would make a world of difference in a tried and tested political game that has failed the polity time and again….

ELEPHANT IN THE ROOM – Not quite united! But still national enough to be the best bet for a pluralistic inclusive democracy? And if the polity proves willing to forgive past scams and evergreen arrogance especially after the coup – only the palace coup now…

NEW GAME IN TOWN – ‘My rally is larger than yours’ is the fishy new one-upmanship in the political pond. If only appearances matter, other contenders might do well to be a tad anxious at this sea of red. And even if the JVP challenge turns out to be…

GOTABAYA RAJAPAKSA – grim reaper, gremlin reinvented or grossly represented? NO OFFENCE, BUT THE QUESTION BEGS ITSELF. In a piece titled ‘Who is afraid of Gotabaya (sic) Rajapaksa?’ Daily FT contributor Sarath de Alwis made a cogent argument as to why he was not…

ERASE THE VILE THING – Not a bad thing in and of itself, this constitutional presidency; as minorities fighting shy of majoritarian politics may think or feel? But hideous in the hands of hypocrites and charlatans hung up on its corrupting power or influence…

THE USUAL SUSPECTS – or is Sri Lanka on the cusp of a sea-change into something rich and strange, politically-speaking? SOME THINGS ARE HARD TO GET RID OF. Bad habits – like Bruce Willis in the eponymous movies –  ‘die hard’. Even…

 OFF WITH THEIR HEADS – in the coming faceoff, it may well be a time for a sea-change into something rich and strange?   IN THE LEAD UP TO THE PRESIDENTIAL POLL… several trends persuade me that, this time, “something’s gotta…

 ISLAND IN THE SUN WITH NO SHADOW OF THE HEAD AT NOON: From the intimacy of Mother Lanka’s many  womb-like comfort zones (religion, politics, general philosophy in life); it is time to grow up from being insular to bravely facing the intrigue of an…

PLAYING GAMES ANCIENT AND MODERN: In ancient Babylon, the birthplace of ‘an eye for an eye’, society was divided into three classes: superior, commoner, and slave. And only closer examination of their chief lawgiver Hammurabi’s motives helps us to discern a…

 GAMES: Stark   All good things must come to an end. Good Governance, ‘Avengers,’ ‘Game of Thrones’. While the first was not very good and the second went mostly well but was bad in bits with a sad endgame, the last of these got ugly in the season and series…

“AVENGERS, ASSEMBLE!” We’ve followed the antics of our caped crusaders for many moons now and the cliff-hanger final instalment of the franchise brought it all to a head… In real life, however, the anti-climax to which our powers that be have…

ALL THE WORLD’S A STAGE: Many players strut and fret their petty hour on the country’s national stage. While a people torn between peace and justice act with restraint more often than not under constraints whose shackles they thought had been cast off for almost a…

 AND ALSO BREAK DOWN: While terrorism breaks down to destroy, in the wake of Easter Sunday&rsquos carnage in Sri Lanka – it seems that our island-nation must analyse (‘intelligence’ fiascos), breakdown (establishment barriers and political…

I AM THAT MAN: No doubt many mandarins and prelates are thinking (and saying, by playing the blame game) that they’re better than the other whom they pass the buck to. There is, therefore, a greater need than ever before for Sri Lankans of all walks in life to look in…

 ANOTHER CHURCH IS BURNING! Not Notre Dame. But a Christian worship centre at the heart of the Dry Zone. And April is the cruellest month when political apathy is compounded by police ignorance Trial by fire is not a new ordeal to Christian community. It predates…

 LEANING TOGETHER: As far as the larger polity is concerned, the political super-class as a whole comprises mainly straw men. So is it time for a new generation of genuinely national-minded leaders who can respond to a land at a civilisational cross-roads? Time…

 FALSE GOSPEL: Man may be a religious animal. But only the ostensibly pious seem to prevail in unholy politics! And shame be to him or her who thinks evil of such impious hypocrisy as invoking the blessings of gods and guardian deities to cover a multitude of…

 STATE OF THE NATION: grave, when power covers up its crimes, and often even in tandem with its political opposition   What’s worse? A. A hit-and-run where the perp flees the scene; only to surrender himself to the cops the next day; after any evidence of…

 QUICK! Someone tell the president, please! – Pic courtesy AFP Admit it. The headline hooked you. Hope you won’t be disappointed. There are no gory scenes featuring dismembered limbs here. However you might read about the long arm of the law being…

That coach who repeatedly slapped a boy under his care has generated a storm of controversy on social media. On one side are aunties, bleeding hearts, civil rights champions et al who are outraged or at the very least shocked or surprised. On the other are…

It is true, politicians have an extremely poor reputation – but if you assume that every politician is like this, then sad to say, it is devoid of good sense or judgment. If they were, then whole infrastructure would collapse before you could even say…

I despair of our politicos and would-be politicians. Not that they are not all honourable men. From the honourable prime minister to the former defence secretary discharging his duty honourably after premature retirement! But that honour often dresses up the nakedness…

I am celebrating Sri Lanka’s Independence Day – today. Not because I want to be perverse or contrary. But because well-meaning liberals have told me I can if I want to. And that in a democracy the individual has a choice. There are others who have taken the same…

SAME OLD THING: Despite the institutional strengthening of anticorruption agencies following the 19th Amendment, consistent failure in implementation has led to very limited progress in arresting and reversing corrupt trends in Sri Lanka. So it’s no surprise that in…

PARANOID ABOUT CORRUPTION: a week-long anti-drug drive ended yesterday. Civil society would do well to ask how many minnows were netted in the name of political expediency, to prove the care and concern of those who practise realpolitik? Champions of social justice…

 SIEG HEIL? From an under-siege president desperate to gain a moral mandate to a nation-state whose ‘national-socialism’ ranges from drugs to child sex abuse, Sri Lanka has an image militating against that Lonely Planet rose-tint of the prettiest girl on the…

OUT WITH THE USUAL SUSPECTS: From have-been tyrants to would-be statesmen, the usual suspects are lining up for the Great Game. The introduction into the fray of a former speaker, an erstwhile strongman bureaucrat and his parliamentarian sibling may have thrown a…

  PRESS: dead? – Pic by Ruwan Walpola Is there a void in journalistic reporting today? Has the culture of impunity which prevailed, to the detriment of the free press, been successfully arrested and imprisoned – in the past four years since…

LARGER IN THE AFTERLIFE: In his life’s work, the flamboyant journalist cut a swathe through the pretensions of many a political establishment. In death, it may have seemed that his egregious killers cut the carpet from under his feet. If appearances are anything to go…

NEW: hope – Pic by Shehan Gunasekara I write for many of us. But not as many as one would hope. Since we’re badly divided on community, polity, unity. However, it’s false hope at best or flagrant hypocrisy at worst to think anyone has all the answers – and is actually…

The appointment of the Hon. Ravi Karunanayake, MP as the Minister of Power and Energy has set the polecat among the pigeons. It has got a knowing glance from the national press. While setting social media ablaze. And one can see why. But one might also be invited to…

 HOW GREEN WAS MY RALLY: As a triumphalist gesture, it was a great excess for the UNP to indulge in. With that said, it probably sent out all the right signals to the watching world. So the GOP and its savvy grandmaster are back at the great game of global…

JUSTICE, LEAVE THAT CHEAT ALONE: Despite the sterling verdicts handed down by the judiciary in general and the Supreme Court in particular, there may be merit in pragmatically overlooking the puerile shenanigans of a despicable coup machine? Towards stability and in…

 PARADIGM SHIFTS: A range of interpretations can be invoked to explain presidential expressions of late… Which have spanned the gamut from inane to insane – but if a more charitable perspective may be entertained for a moment (refer article below),…

MIND OVER MATTER: Are our leading politicos a sad bunch, or what! Or merely mad, bad and dangerous to know? It’s a matter of the mind… if you don’t mind, it doesn’t matter! – Pic by Shehan Gunasekara I’m not a psychologist. Despite…

COURT IN THE ACT: In time not yet out of mind, to go against the executive arm of government spelled all kinds of trouble – impeachment at best, death at worst – for courageous individuals in the judiciary. And the eviction and extinction of such faithful servants of…

The problem with democracy these days is that it tends to be defined not by the people, but by the politicians they elected to represent them. In both parliament and presidency, the players strut and fret their hours upon the stage. And expect us citizen spectators to…

TANGLED WEB: When first they practised to deceive, our elected representatives may have had a lower-level understanding of their own betrayal of the people’s mandate. But in the warp and weft of shifting loyalties and priorities, our politicians may have been…

  TRIAD: Cloud ‘Coup-Coup’ Land – Pic by Shehan Gunasekara Much has been made of Sri Lanka being a sort of ‘anti-Cloud Cuckoo Land’… a nation in a state of absurdly overoptimistic fantasy or unrealistic idealism where…

  The nation expects the three main actors to resolve this crisis in the best interests of the country and for the generations to come The events that unfolded on 26 October have led the country towards an unprecedented chaos. Almost a month later, we are still…

UNHOLY TRINITY: Not a Mexican standoff between Prez and two Premiers as a trio; nor a troika of brothers from a previous regime. But the triadic playoff between power, corruption, and moral turpitude! And how democracy, republicanism, and good governance (remember…

I have rarely if ever empathised with the Sri Lanka Police Department. But when I saw those hapless cops ducking chilli bombs in Parliament, my heart went out to those whom I had previously seen as simply being PC Plods or Mr Goons. Sorry to say that the aggressors in…

A small step was taken by a sovereign court the day before yesterday. It was a giant leap for the supremacy of the Constitution over all three arms of government in a recently benighted Sri Lanka. As well as being the tangible proof of intra-governmental checks and…

DR. NO: despite the then de facto Foreign Minister’s denials last week, the coup machinery pulled the plug on Parliament – perhaps unseating more than two premiers, but rather the prospect of saving face in the international arena   A college professor of mine…

STATE: riven – Pic by Shehan Gunasekara As we struggle to put it down in black and white today, the writing on the wall is still visible if fading. It suggests that Sri Lanka as an emerging democratic republic has been weighed in the scales and found wanting in…

A scientist is someone who changes his beliefs when confronted by fresh evidence. But a politician is merely someone who believes in the art of the possible. And is prone to be pliant – a mere reed in the wind… so it is heartening to mind the conversion…

CROWDSOURCING A COUP: In an ironic turn of events, the leaders of the constitutional coup conducted a rally to draw support for their cause – a stone’s throw away from the very place that could have demonstrated their Parliamentary majority and silenced…

TRUST: gone   I am a democratic-republican, I believe. I believe in the will of the people as exercised through a majority mandate being invested in elected representatives. The checks and balances that the three arms of government bring, commonly known as division…

LAW OF THE LAND: While republicans playing realpolitik have undermined the people’s mandate, democracy under siege begs the question of who owns the House. The President has proven craven to summon Parliament and its Speaker has proceeded painfully pragmatically. They…

POWER: plays – Pic by Shehan Gunasekara I am not often wrong. But when I err, I sometimes do so in spades. Sorry, but Homer nodded in his last column on many legal grounds. However, a ‘Mistake’ does not become a ‘Sin’ until or unless one refuses to acknowledge and…

I am not a political animal. Not enamoured of personages, I have sought out principled politicians who could or should have rescued Sri Lanka from the mire and turned our blessed isle’s face towards the sun again – after a bitter and brutal war, a failure to actively…

THE ETHIOPIAN HIS SKIN: With his true colours nailed to the mast, the ambitiously driven president has been exposed as being yet another realpolitik-playing politico. And with the naïve and sentimental protestations of an aggrieved prime minister ringing all the way…

YES, PRIME MINISTER! Sorry/State – Pic by Shehan Gunasekara   In politics, as in life, there are no permanent friends – or enemies. All is in flux. When circumstances or situations change, people go with the flow. Rare is the man (or woman) in public…

      ALL THE WORLD’S A STAGE: A sitting president threw down the gauntlet at a public rally recently, challenging his fellow politicos on their corrupt culture. (‘Who can claim to be clean?‘ etc.) While his fusillade did not earn a standing ovation…

ONCE MORE UNTO THE BREECH: In the old days, the maxim among defenders of the Fourth Estate was: “We shall defend to the death your right to be wrong!” Today with the trifecta of politico, publisher and pressman contesting the same space for accuracy and completeness,…

Of late, the deep state has been the least of my worries. It has not kept me awake at night since the doldrums of the post 2015 revolution – fiasco though that has turned out to be. But it is deeper states of mind – to do with faith and philosophy – that concern me…

ON THE FAST TRACK: A new 80+km rail track from Kurunegala to Habarana via Dambulla under the five-year ‘Let’s Awaken Polonnaruwa’ District Development Programme (2016-2020) – note the terminus a quo and terminus post quem – had been identified as “an essential and…

In its most innocent forms, we may all enjoy a bit of ‘fake news’ and go to bed with a lighter heart and clean conscience. A meme on Facebook urging social media consumers to caution – “You can’t believe everything you read on the internet – Abraham Lincoln” – is both…

PEANUT PRESIDENCY: Perhaps it’s not the chief executive’s fault that our national carrier’s cashew procurement process leaves something to be desired. Maybe our head of state on the other hand would consider doing more to ground SriLankan Airlines…

So, the rally was a success. No, it wasn’t. Yes, it was, because it was bigger than ever and everyone knows that bigger is better. Also, beggars can’t be choosers, so we chose some scoundrels off the streets to represent us at the showdown (like the House), and primed…

I heard that a politico wants the people who call on him to address him as ‘sir’. He had put up a notice to that effect outside his office. It made me mad. It made me sad. It made me bad to know. There is only so much that we law-abiding citizens will put…

I am writing in much lighter vein today, having dispensed with the drug mafia last week. But don’t let that weigh heavy on your barometer or allow your windsock to flop. Since there are some smiles in the mix together with the satire. However diabolical these…

DRUG – barren? Some political leaders would hang ’em, other less militant types would have the police investigate errant MPs thoroughly for sundry misdemeanours; all the people can see is Sri Lanka’s “public secret, hidden shame”: a new,…

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times; it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness; it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity; it was the season of light, it was the season of darkness; it was the spring of hope, it was the…

THE L BOARD AT LAST – That the wheels of justice grind slowly but surely has been vouchsafed in half-measure of late. There was the long-drawn-out trial and verdict in the case of a venerable monk behaving venially, which can be interpreted as justice done, in…

Some years ago, when the then President of Sri Lanka came in for calumny for having his son accompany him in a prominent way to a UN summit, a few of us partially sympathised with his plight. I mean to say: if I was head of state of a newly-minted island-nation or…

J’ACCUSE! In an incendiary editorial, a writer once accused the government of his republic of a cover-up as regards the career of an army general staff officer in a scandal that smacked of crimes against state and humanity. While neither such a case nor a time…

There was a time when one might have admired the country’s Grand Old Party (GOP). It was the party of the Grand Old Man (GOM) who put Sri Lanka on the free world’s map as well as earned us a black mark against our name for national crimes committed in the face of…

I had been penning long pieces using what the subeditors at your favourite daily are pleased to call ‘dictionary words’, the idiots – all such words are in a dic! But the error of my ways has been pointed out to me, thank you so much. And I thought…

A wag said on social media recently that the inhabitants of our Blessed Isle must have liked the royal wedding so much that the good lord gave them a double dose of British weather. He didn’t put it quite so well, o ye gods above. And the trolls who inhabit Facebook…

No man is a hero to his wife or cat. Maybe canines pass muster with men because the former idolise the latter. As much as feral strongmen politicos who once cried “Havoc!” and let slip the dogs of war are adored by the rabid masses. And then there are the once…

Two things bother me. More than two, really! But let’s just stick to politics. Shall we? First, who constitutes the true political opposition in Sri Lanka? Is it the Joint Opposition, which carries the biggest stick and has the loudest foul mouth? Or is it the TNA,…

A lamentable trend in national affairs of late has been to interpret reality on the surface of the status quo. If it is managed spectacles like no-confidence motions that divert attention from unpopular fiscal policy, for instance, we pick our horse and (at the risk…

Today, 5 April, as I write, my heart is strangely still at peace since the same time last year. Not because justice has been done… or even looks remotely like it will ever be done in a singular landmark killing on our once war-torn landscape. But because the heart has…

Today (as I write, on 15 March) is a red-letter day for democratic-republicanism. It commemorates the occasion on which a klatch of lean and angry men stabbed Julius Caesar in the back… and front, or all over.  Perhaps Caesar – the first of his name,…

I don’t know when power will come back on, and the people of politico-suburbia be reunited on social media. But at the time of writing, savvier denizens of proscribed internet spaces are beginning to suspect that ‘sinister’ is perhaps a better word to describe this…

Just one thing today. TGIF. Hope together with the rest of pluralism embracing Sri Lanka that Jumma brings some measure of a just peace to the troubled administrative district that is home to the Buddha’s most treasured relict. But who’s to know…

If you live in Sri Lanka and truly love it, what’s happening right now must hurt “real bad” (as the vulgar phrase goes). The hopes and aspirations of a peace-cherishing citizenry have gone up in smoke and flames, or so it seems this week.  What really triggered…

A recent announcement from the retiring editor of a citizen-journalism forum had us reaching for our French dick. It said, “Plus ca change.” The rest should have read, “Plus c’est la meme chose.” What it meant to say is that ‘the more things change they remain the…

I have a confession to make. Yours truly has really lost track of what’s happening in the arena we call national politics. There was an election, you say? Well, that much I know, being a journalist (self aware nod). There was a falling out among star-crossed political…

In the post polls blogosphere, sundry pundits are having a field day. It is open mic session in media, both social and mainstream. To pontificate on what went wrong – or right, as the case may be for some – or prognosticate on the shape of things to come….

By the time you read this heaven knows what other cat our political leadership would have let out of the diplomatic bag. After the Presidential Secretariat reversed the Foreign Ministry’s ruling to recall and discipline an errant ambassadorial official who made…

If members of parliament are O-Level-failed, it’s a failure of the legislature that reflects poorly on the struggling electorate as much as on state education. But when the chief executive demonstrates his grasp of the new math (“70=30”), it’s a triumph of the new…

I feel something queer come over me, as the actress said to the bishop. There’s a certain je ne sais quoi in the air these days… a balmy in wonderland mixture of introspective nostalgia and prospective newness. Maybe it’s all those fumes from myriad aeroplanes flying…

Welcome me back with a stiff one, cheerful reader, I’m coming to this party a little late. While I was away on vacation, naively assuming that the Government had matters well under control during vacation time, it seems that the powers that be have been at the brandy…

In his 1930 poem W. H. Auden issued this challenge: “Let us honour if we can / the vertical man / though we value none / but the horizontal one/”. He meant that humanity worships powerful living fellow creatures and forgets the dull dead.  But we Sri…

Last week I challenged the powers that be to walk the talk on media freedom. Because it had become increasingly obvious that only murder and mayhem separated the present dispensation from the previous regime. Once in power all politicians feel the sharp thorn of the…

I won’t beat about the bush today. I don’t want to talk about stuff and nonsense when there are better things to discuss such as ‘enterprising’ budgets and how this Government’s growth and development initiatives are made of ‘star stuff’. I can’t however ignore the…

I was distraught to discover the other day that our Head of State had allegedly caused some distress to a naïve young politico. Maybe it was because the n. y. p. is not savvy enough yet to know the difference between governance and politics. Perhaps there was some…

One has only to read the wide and varied responses to Budget 2018 (B18) to realise how fissured our society is. Some like it so much as to say that they love it. Others loathe it so much they’re dying of envy, or apoplexy, or both. There is little point in analysing…

It would be punny if it weren’t pathetic. I won’t floor the pedal on the issue – even though it is quite a gas. Because by now (even if your tank is still empty – and especially if it is) you must have had it ‘up to here’ with all the witticisms, silliness, and…

There were a few things that would get us island folk in a flap in days gone by. Cricket, coconut spirits, cost of living – these about cut it then. Today you can add constitutional reform to the heady mix that has us islanders ready to get our sarongs in a…

Every now and again some state mandarin will make a statement that reminds people (ok, me) of Monty Python’s “Flying Circus”. Rather than leave the strutting and fretting to petty functionaries in the Ministry of Silly Walks, these senior ministers take it upon…

Here’s a radical idea. What if – instead of liking it or lumping it as you do for years on end – the voter could hold his or her Member of Parliament accountable for their performance? Not just at election time. But in-between those ‘too-few…

  I think you know what one means. There is always someone else whose fault it is that life sucks.  My recent encounters however with large dangerous predators of the Big Bad Wolf type have been nothing but positive. Food and books? Yum. More of the same, if…

FOURTH ESTATE, OR FIFTH COLUMN? In the good old days, it was said that journalists could be bought for a snifter of bottled sunshine. Today, it’s “sunshine stories” that too many scribes in the so-called free media milieu are bottling for public consumption. While far…

I have been thinking about prison and their inmates a lot recently. Not because it is the pleasantest of subjects. But because I have been bombarded by media, social media, and antisocial elements on the subject. And I’m beginning to smell a rat. Or half a dozen. On…

TO THE VICTOR THE SPOILS: While the vanquished in war languish on the margins of society, the triumphant dominate town hall and headlines with their pitched battles against political opponents. A once-jailed general unceremoniously stripped of war hero status –…

I’m turning the page today. Which is to say: I’m trashing ‘realpolitik’ – which was rubbish in the main anyway – and throwing down the gauntlet. Time to get real… in ‘politics’ – government, journalists, the whole jing-bang – as they say. Sorry if you’ve been at your…

As with many other champions of just causes, Wijeyadasa Rajapakshe may have gone from campaigning for justice to becoming just another crusader out to claim his own rights and privileges. But unlike many other pseudo-democrats who traverse the primrose path from paada…

I am amazed – and amused – by the spate of “ministerial responses” to Ravi’s exit last week. The Prime Minister has promised to expedite the backlog of anticorruption cases his administration appears to have shelved for the nonce. The…

Good things come to those who wait… as the actress said to the bishop. But all this making us wait for the inevitable end is the sublime descending into the ridiculous – as the bishop replied. In the end, the man went… as he could or should have…

One week later, I still know nothing   I am writing this on the morning of the evening when the moon will be full. But I am not sure if the madness which follows has anything to do with lunacy. Since a week or so ago, I have begun to question everything I…

If politics is the art of the possible, governance is the artifice of the sublime being reduced to the ridiculous in slow, sure, steps. Such as that of a republican government degenerating into a parody of the regime it replaced, while arousing the hopes of a once…

Life, as a musically-inclined poet of a previous age once essayed, is what happens when you are planning to do something else. Well, the same may be said for the intentions of Good Governance: that the best-laid plans of mice and men gang aft agley; as another…

If the human race is fallen, politics – perhaps – is where it shows most blushingly. It is, after all, the world’s oldest profession; having thrived before the fall. In the beginning, when God began to create all the other pastimes and vocations,…

With all due respect to those who have been afflicted by it, of course I am. While the desolation of the loss of a loved one to the deadly disease cannot be quantified, my position can be qualified by an argument which one hopes would not be interpreted as…

Maybe the last thing we need is another pseudo-diagnostic comment on the vexed issue of private medical education. For no single piece – article, editorial, news feature – can hope to encompass the gamut of principles, values, passions, afloat in the flooded public…

I was very hopeful when circumstances necessitated a national government of sorts in a hazy summer concatenation now long forgotten. At the time, we all thought the union of two major mainstream mindsets would result in a smorgasbord of good things – governance…

  AWAIT: Godot – while Good Governance was critical of a previous administration bringing the Attorney-General’s Dept. under presidential purview and placing urban development in the hands of the de facto defence minister, is there any real difference…

When troubles come, they come not single spies but in battalions. And these days, the woes of the State as well as those of the Government are legion. Two months ago, the tragic collapse of that colossal trash-heap let loose a stink about the way this and successive…

I’LL DO MY CRYING IN THE RAIN: While the heavens weep, and people go to watery graves, politicians and planners whose principal duty is the welfare of their electorates drown in hypocrisy and cupidity. Then, as the flood waters recede, struggle vainly to defend…

By the time you read this, you would have perused many pieces, no doubt, on the precarious state of the nation of late. The painful memories of April-May – Meethotamulla pitfall and the proposed appointment of a military panjandrum to curb, inter alia, a rising spate…

Today, 5 April, as I write, my heart is strangely at peace. Not because justice has been done… or even looks remotely like it will be done in a singular landmark killing… But because the heart has its own reasons (of which reason knows nothing) –…

The weather these days is a little like the political climate. Early sunshine, clouds on the horizon towards afternoon, scattered thundershowers in the late evening. As far as the incumbent administration goes, the bright patches have scurried over the horizon. Today,…

I don’t often quote the United Nations (UN). Not because they don’t say sensible stuff. But because their sound bites are not as memorable as that which their opposition – rogue states, global terrorists – says. Because the UN, like any international humanitarian…

BOOM AND/OR BUST – on one hand congratulatory enthusiasm by the international monetary and political powers that be, coupled with handouts that underline their largesse as much as global commitment to Sri Lanka’s burgeoning investor and development…

IT’S NOT THE ECONOMY, STUPID – As dismal and discouraging as recent commentary in certain quarters might make Sri Lanka’s past and present financial and fiduciary showing to be, it’s stress and tension in other spheres that’s buckling the Big Tent of our stability…

In the past week or so, two news items of national interest have driven if not dominated some media discussion. The first was when a spokesman for the governing coalition reawakened a country’s dormant interest in the constitutional reform process. This provoked…

FEVER – There is a sense in which tradition (not always defensible on rational grounds) is a rite of passage for politicians as much as for schoolboys in which to “Be (Thou) Forever” means players from all walks of life partake in a sip of fun…

FOURTH ESTATE, OR FIFTH COLUMN – “I may disagree with what you say. But I will to defend to the death your right to say it.” So much has been said and reams written on the nature and scope of the free media in Sri Lanka which does not bear repeating. With that said,…

THE POLITICS OF PRINCIPLED PRECEPTS NOT PRACTISED? – When political messiahs ride to the rescue of a republic tottering under the totalitarianism of an oppressive regime, the people expected to be rescued from repression as much as rotten rhetoric. Sadly for social…

    The crowd is large. The scenery is packed with stormtroopers. The energy of the rally is tangible. In the street, banners defy the breeze. On stage, speakers define the new world order. On closer inspection, it appears to be the old order of things…

THE GREAT DIVIDES – While the powers that be plod the ‘Rubber tyres from Marangoni’ route, a more plebeian opposition is still shouting subversive slogans in the ears of folks for whom ‘Rice from the Moon’ is not too far-fetched. When it…

  I was down south a little over a week ago today. At the increasingly misnamed Galle Literary Festival (GLF): which, in its more recent incarnations particularly, is more ‘culinary’ than ‘literary’! But where, be that nasty aside as it may, an interesting talk…

The sun rises in the south. While Colombo sleeps peacefully and the rest of Sri Lanka slumbers fitfully. Many times before, the first stirrings of dissent have been felt south of the border between patrician illusion and plebeian reality. In time still not out of…

THE USUAL SUSPECTS – While those who committed the media crime of the century still skulk about, an unhappy band of pilgrims continues to make an annual commitment to a graveside vigil. When Government will act with true vigour and despatch is anyone’s…

GOOD GOVERNANCE GIVETH, AND GOOD GOVERNANCE TAKETH AWAY – The unspeakable, unutterable, unfathomable gift was the focus of Christmases past. Maybe as the New Year dawns and the Caravans of Constitutional Republicanism hasten toward the Desert of Nothingness, the…

A DEAD RINGER FOR DUPLICITY – While the republic reels under the regime-normalising deceptiveness of realpolitik, voices from the past speak to their former readership from beyond the grave and their present polity in funereal tones. Be that as it may, Good…

SHIPWRECK? – Between the Scylla of statesmanship turned sour and the Charybdis of allegations of corruption and politicisation, the ship of state is floundering in troubled waters. But it doesn’t have to end in tears; for those helmsmen once seemingly…

‘ISSARAHA BAHINAWAA’ – civil society’s proclivity is bow out of a crowded bus when private interests and partisan agendas win the argument over reason and responsibility; but now, more than ever perhaps, is the time for those who paid the price…

I have a confession to make. A visit to the local constabulary reduces me – never the bravest of scribes, anyway (because I have far too much imagination to be sanguine about such things) – to a gibbering wreck. Of course, to be fair, I have never had to…

My wife earns more than I do. I sometimes feel a worm on account of it. And other times I rationalise the income disparity. To each their own. We all make choices in life. Political, social, economic. One opts to work full-time in the formal economy. The other…

CROSSING GUARD – Perhaps we don’t need to enact new legislation to curb the free flow of dangerous chauvinist traffic into the mainstream of political discourse. Maybe a more meaningful response to moonstruck madness would be to implement the relevant…

Some men lead lives of quiet desperation. Poets, philosophers, people in the street or on plebeian public transport, taxpaying citizens hard-pressed by budgetary policy and burgeoning prices. Far from the cut and thrust of parliamentary politics, safe from the…

DEAD AND ALIVE – The ghosts of a generation of lost journalists still haunt the corridors of power today. Their deaths, or abductions, or disappearances, may have taken place under a previous government’s myopic watch. True enough. However, the 8th of…

The COPE report on the CBSL imbroglio was a shower of blessings. In the end, it was evidently unbiased and unabridged. It looked the chief suspects of the bond scam squarely in the eye, collared them, and didn’t pull its punches. The Full Monty it was: signed, sealed,…

  SIT IT OUT, NOT QUIT IT!? – Concur or conquer, the machinery of state as in CIABOC as much as the engine of legislative oversight per COPE must be paramount over petty politicking and personal agendas. Pity, then, that agents of change have opted to step…

While you were sleeping, some of us dreaming, the world of words changed overnight. Quietly, while almost no one was watching, a superb Sri Lankan expression entered the English language. “Aiyo.” The perfect interjection or exclamation to communicate a…

BOYS WILL BE BOYS? – was once the war-cry of a plethora of pestilential political progeny – it seems the plague isn’t over… and pesky violators of the public peace are perhaps the casus belli of goon-fuelled personal vigilantism on our streets…

History is not what happened. History is what you can – or choose to –remember. However our local history these days is being written by three sets of political actors with a triad of distinct powers of recall. Howbeit this unholy trinity morphs from one…

One government cruelly executes bothersome editors acting as the gadfly conscience of a war-wracked country. Another government carefully – or is it carelessly – exhumes the body. Feels like we have watched the procession of an inquiry into the deadly masquerade long…

Awake, O sleepers, the time to do some real work has come! Admit it. The headline floored you. There you were on a Friday morning muttering “TGIF!” loudly and fervently if you’re the boss… or furtively under bated breath if you’re a wage slave – like me. Then along…

One thing you can count on to see our island-race through some tough times is our legendary sense of resilience. (I’m going to ignore the racists who think there’s more than one race – the human – in our blessed isle.) The other thing is our semi-mythical sense of…

THERE’S A NEW MOON – it’s once in a blue moon that the stars align in Sri Lanka’s favour; and now that the star players in Sri Lanka’s lately shining-in-the-West political firmament have lined up all the major planets favourable to our ascendancy, it only remains for…

WHEN TROUBLES COME – an under-siege chief executive is fast discovering that the singular joy of being the Democratic-Republican project’s cherished common candidate is easily undermined by dint of being the Joint Opposition’s common enemy for target…

  THE X FILES – the more some things change, the more they remain the same… You could think we would know better by now not to make future heroes out of former zeroes. We have had our idolatrous fingers burned by doing precisely the very thing…

  RAGE AGAINST THE DYING OF THE LIGHT – The debacle in the House last Friday pales in comparison with the desolation suffered (and still being experienced) by a lost generation of Sri Lankans today. While passing and/or blocking bills is part of a canny and…

THE LONG MARCH – not so much a blast from the past, but a whimper from the world of wishful thinking? That the juggernaut which once swept everything in its path from Colombo to Kataragama (Pãda Yãthrã 1.0) – and beyond, to the…

  MARCH – Pointless foot-soldiery of a passé regime, or potent force for present and future political-culture change?   When 1.5 million people vote with their feet, governments get noticeably, understandably, agitated. They might, for instance,…

A week and more ago, those of us who remembered celebrated humanity’s greatest adventure yet: our first (manned spacecraft) moon landing on 20 July 1969. And yet a significant segment of web-crawlers still believes that the whole operation was faked as a part of…

NOT BY MIGHT, NOR BY POWER – The spirit of a nascent Sri Lankan nationalism (inclusive, tolerant, Other-embracing) might be compromised if Government and civil society together don’t challenge competing nationalisms Call me cynical, but I live by a maxim as far as…

CORRUPTION – that third C in the triad, not mentioned in the article below with its other two companions: Car-pālanaya and Comrade-principled politics – comes in many forms, shapes, and disguises. Governments touting Good Governance as an emotive pivot on…

Much ink has been spilled over the alleged (we’re still COPE-ing) CBSL bond scam, the stubborn refusal to deal with an issue, power-plays around personalities and preferences rather than principles, and the value of compromise in a republic whose governors hail from a…

The silent treatment It’s the clever young man who writes a column for another newspaper who made me realise for the first time what’s really wrong. He was so clear and très articulate that it hurt, like a bright stab of sunshine hurts one’s vision after the dark…

Drug busts of gargantuan dimensions signal that detection is ongoing, even if a crackdown on crime cartels in the present does not necessarily mean that past offenders will be brought to book by the same measure. Turf wars of yore which remain unresolved to date, with…

 How can the new political culture justify excesses such as supplementary estimates amounting to billions of rupees amidst exigencies such as natural and unnatural disasters burying its people under tragedy, death, and taxes? How a superfluity of opinions and…

The London 2016 Global Anticorruption Summit (GAS) may have supplied practitioners of the classic island defence of retreating to the high moral ground when under attack with fresh inspiration and ammunition to ward off hostile media trying corruption cases in the…

Courtesy: Osho News    Before anything critical of our crumbling republican government (the ‘GG’s) is further essayed, one thing must be said. The dogs may bark, but the caravan moves on majestically and serenely; sans untoward ramifications.  That is…

 APRÈS MOI, LE DÉLUGE! In the aftermath of the Great Flood of 2016, if Sri Lanka is to Build Back Better, the political leadership must be instrumental in syncing Government actors and State agencies in working together with greater integrity and cohesion to more…

There’s a nip in the air these days … and I don’t mean the depressive cyclonic weather that we’ve been flooded by. It’s the windy, heady, overflow of adrenaline that comes once in a while with the joys of being a democratic republic or a…

CAPTAIN SRI LANKA: CIVIL WAR – While the nation struggles to transform itself from a post-war to a post-conflict society, our elected representatives appear to have set an ironic agenda for themselves – to bicker and brawl like the very schoolboys who watched them,…

We hear with some interest the recent argument of the Prime Minister that the free media has a fair share of the blame to bear for the spread of anti-republican “scare-tactic type” rumours. Speaking on the occasion of a day to commemorate press freedom, it…

THE WRITING IS ON THE WALLSTRÖM: Sri Lanka is looking increasingly like the prettiest girl on the beach in this region. Here, Sri Lankan Foreign Minister Mangala Samaraweera and his Swedish counterpart Margot Wallström parley about the island-nation’s…

A time to reflect – and refocus GO EAST, YOUNG MAN/ WOMAN/ AND CHILD! As the sun rises over the shallow waters of Passikudah Bay in Sri Lanka’s once war-torn north-east, the mind’s eye begins to envision what a new nation-state consolidated by its new social contract…

Sri Lanka is on the cusp of something. Not just #avurudu, which is *aluth* every new year… when the sun transits from the House of Mina (Pisces) to the House of Mesha (Aries), metaphorically showing a new face to a world it supposedly rules. But literally in the…

April is the cruellest month, I wrote in these columns last Friday. Not only usually because *aluth avurudda* is a time when the unkindest cuts (power outages, price hikes, pointless protests, pretty little progress in poverty reduction) affect the general populace…

THE WASTE LAND: Government resorting to staging protests, Joint Opposition rallies to regroup split parties with splinter groups, mercurial weather gods, a dry and parched populace bereft of both ‘good’ governance and or ‘bad’ growth to show for it – these prospects…

Power struggles are par for the course in developing political-economies (so they say). People power will be exercised at election time to redress power imbalances (so you hope). Problem is no political party is likely to really want to test the people’s will in that…

Denmark produces some 140% of its power demand from alternative energy sources such as wind power – so much more than its domestic needs that it exports electricity to neighbouring Scandinavia and even Germany. Sri Lanka once envisaged producing sufficient power to…

 Occupy The Square – like its inspiration, Occupy Wall Street – was a flash-movement created on social media and driven by the passionate intensity of a few likeminded liberals sensing that an injustice had been done to civilian liberties. Outcome,…

  Some things change. Some things don’t. Sometimes, the more things change the more they stay the same. Plus ça change. Plus c’est la même chose. The 88th Annual Academy Awards, 2016 – more colloquially ^The Oscars ’16^ – are proof of this multifaceted…

THE KING OF LANKA: Far be it from us to be alarmist! But there may be a move on to tap into the latently mythical psyche of the Lankan soul… And the aggro of road-trippers in a remote village of an ancient kingdom might be a hint and a harbinger of this…

  A legendary Aussie PM once said in a speech to the Australian Labour Party: “I do not mind the liberals, still less do I mind the country party, calling me a b*st*rd. In some circumstances, I am only doing my job if they do! But I hope you will not…

Much ado about nothing? The singing of the national anthem in Tamil on 4 February has generated controversy, constitutional invocations, and no small measure of churlishness, in some quarters of ‘civil’ society. After 68 years of freedom from foreign…

MEN IN THE MEDIA LIMELIGHT: President Sirisena – slated to be Sri Lanka’s last 1978-style chief executive – looks and sounds somewhat uncomfortable under the glare of the unforgiving spotlight these days, despite the press playing no small part in…

TAKES ALL TYPES? There are times when the true nature of leaders leaks through. And then the heart speaks out of the mouth’s abundance. (“Join me, my son!” See copy.) Rest assured however that realpolitik will work with even such mask-slip moments to complete the…

A Constitution is the Supreme Law of the Land. But practice has proven that this truism can be subverted, or subject to interpretation detrimental to the welfare of the nation-state. So it remains an ambition of the democratic movement of the past year and a bit more…

President Maithripala Sirisena, Finance Minister Ravi Karunanayake, Justice Minister Wijeyadasa Rajapakshe. A triad of issues – and not necessarily whether Government brings brigands under past regimes to book – may well enter the lists as the key issues on which good…

The plot thickens: Seven years ago, an iconic senior journalist was brutally slaughtered on Sri Lanka’s post-war mean streets. A year ago – on the sixth anniversary of his slaying – an instrumental change was made to the political landscape of which he was so much a…

  I have a bad feeling about this. Essaying any form of evaluation or assessment of Good Governance’s first year in office (or power, if you are in that mood) is bound to come a-cropper. Too cynical, and the powers that be could be inclined to crucify you. Too…

Today is >Saturnalia, an ancient Roman festival of feasting, mayhem, madness. (Sometimes, still, subtly or subversively, it is observed in Colombo’s bacchanalian quarters!) Tomorrow night, choirs – around Sri Lanka as much as the rest of the Christian world – will…

THE LONG MARCH: Government is good at walking the talk on anti-corruption drives and is no doubt sincere in the main about stemming the rotten tide. However, civil society together with the genuine elements of the powers that be, have to do more than tangibly…

Leadership can be a sinking ship as long as only driven, darkly charismatic leaders who are lacking in character but are very strong-willed and even temperamental do helm the project – without sufficient regard for relational leadership … and the position,…

Legendary model leader Roman republican Cincinnatus prioritised his agricultural acres over the affairs of state – until his country had need of his services. Duty done, this exemplary Consul then laid down his fasces – a symbol of real power – and retired to tending…

Radical budgets call for reinvigorated critical engagement by Civil Society. Governments that dodge bullets and clampdown on media commentaries by their mandarins – culpable of conflicts of interest (or not); or worse, chicanery – may read as an epitaph,…

While the skyline of the modern French Republic, Paris, was recently shrouded in a veil of grief and tears, storms clouds may be hovering over the political hub of a distant island-republic’s ancient commercial port city, as a long-drawn-out maritime and…

    Today, a nation is still struggling to assess the significance of his loss. Tomorrow, many if not most of us will officially mourn his return to the ocean of Samsara – with some aspiring seafarers suspecting that his vessel has crossed the…

The hero seems strangely familiar. He brandishes his weapons of choice in each frame: effortlessly: fearlessly. Built like a nondescript, he wields his truncheon like a ninja.  In one, he’s a Spartan holding the pass at Thermopylae against hordes of…

Say “media freedom” to a seasoned journalist and she will roll her eyes at you. Say it to a veteran editor and it might be your head that rolls. We’ve (all) been there, done that. We’ve (some of us) bandaged war wounds shouting out the very…

   Did the headline confuse you? Good… because, if you’re going to read this article to its end, and to its logical conclusion, keep in mind that everything is not what it seems. There needs to be a slightly satirical frame of mind to see this…

 Now, I’m not sure what names the PM and/or the MP is/are calling each other in their un-Parliamentary thoughts right now. Or, more likely, with what encomiums in their own minds they are congratulating themselves – and, perhaps, each other – on…

Shall the taxpayer have to see and bear a reinstitution of the lionising of local politicos that was par for the course under the previous Caesars?     A funny thing happened on the way to the UNGA forum. Caesar’s wife was invited but couldn’t go, so…

  By now all of Lanka knows the President was accompanied to the UNGA forum by his son, who had no official standing in the Sri Lankan delegation, and that the young man in question was a visible part of the President’s entourage on the Indian leg of our…

A little thinking – like a lot of learning – can be a dangerous thing. An excess of it can be downright subversive. The trinity behind a recent exhibition <Corridors of Power: Drawing & Modelling Sri Lanka’s Tryst with Democracy>…

What has come to pass in the Republic in the name of constitutional game-changing cannot be allowed to pass – to pass into time past by default, and opportunities bypassed by design – without rigorous engagement   When the would-be reformers of our previously…

Did you feel that democracy is the worst form of government? Except, of course, for all the others that have ever been! Could it be, though, that we have seen too little of it, of late, to appreciate it least when it works best… We have experienced less of it…

The Government wants the real Opposition to be part of the Government. A minority party with a minor fraction of our house of commons to its name wants to sit as the main Opposition. And the Legislature is looking increasingly like a charnel-house     Today…

Now it looks as if the next two years at least will be a much more but still compromised benevolent oligarchy in which ‘national government’ means precious little in terms of accountability to the people Politics, like cricket, is a game of glorious…

There is every possibility that the UNP and its partners in constituting the new government might interpret the people’s will as a mandate to implement the plans spelled out in its election manifesto. That would be missing much of the point     An election,…

By the time you read this, most probably, the die would have been cast – together with your vote.  Or is there still the faintest glimmer that you’ll catch a vision of what I’m envisaging, before you rush off to your friendly neighbourhood…

If you were hoping that the post-‘Revolution’ parliamentary election would be fought over matters of principle, you might be quite mistaken – and/or rather disappointed. The chips are down again, and all the customary stops have been pulled out by…

In George Lucas’ classic space trilogy ‘Star Wars’ (actually, a trilogy of trilogies), it was easy to discern who the good guys and the bad guys were… or who were meant to be as such. The idealistic hero with stars in his eyes, literally, Luke…

     It’s been a rude awakening, it has this week. The electorate went to sleep dreaming of good governance and a free and fair election at last, hopefully, but awoke sweating with fright at the sound of gunfire. A tear in the fabric of a…

  This, among other questions, has been on many hearts and minds in the past six months or so. After the initial euphoria of early January 2015 died down, it began to be clear – or, at least, strongly felt – that ‘good governance’ was still very much a…

  Yes, the murders have stopped. No, not even the odd abduction captures the headlines anymore. Even in the good old, bad old days, there was hardly any reportage about corruption or fiscal/fiduciary crime by the powers that be. So, the hues of good governance…

Now that nominations are in and planted, there’s a month to go before the fruit of our voting on them can be ripened, plucked, and harvested. In the short run-up to nominations, and in the long haul before elections, the clarion call has been – and will, no doubt,…

 When the 8 January revolution was launched, it was envisaged that the nascent movement to reintroduce democratic-republicanism to the island would encounter much opposition. The Government at the time – a regime that had been incumbent for a decade –…

Many who take a via media view of the so-called victories won by the passage of 19A see a mixed bag of results. One of the key areas in which the outcome was quite different to what was anticipated by the architects of the cornerstone piece of legislation is the…

 The Government appointed more Ministers recently, pictured here with President Maithripala Sirisena   I think you might have read with some interest – or no small measure of irritation – the news that the Government has appointed five more…

Westminster it isn’t. At least, not in terms of rapier-sharp wit and scintillating repartee! But provoke the firebrand rabble-rousers in Parliament long and hard enough, and sooner or later – out pops the cloven hoof… the forked tongue – and…

 Comparisons are odious. As we said in this column last week, urging a principled government minister not to contrast the administration of which he is a part with the one immediately past. Because the virtue of a republican government must stand on its own…

Today, Jinny and Jonny. Yesterday, Tissa and Sashi and Basil. Who will it be tomorrow, GR and/or MR? That is as far as actual arrests go! There has also been a veritable gallery of alleged rogues hauled in to give account before the dreaded FCID vis-à-vis alleged…

Pinch me, someone: I think I’m dreaming. In the past 120 days, the country has undergone a sea-change into something rich and strange. So much so that not even democracy-loving citizens who went to sleep slaves on 8 January would recognise the republic into which they…

The fact that game-changing nation-saving legislation such as 19A struggled in the womb so much before it could be born is a good thing. At least in the opinion of those who have gotten over the disillusionment of the somewhat dubious ethic that was bipartisan…

President Maithripala Sirisena delivering his address to the nation on Thursday I think the whole country, from casino kings to constitutional tinkers, watched, heard, or read the full text the next day of the President’s address to the nation. It was a simple,…

As the ‘century’ comes up on Good Governance’s scoreboard, there are many sportive questions which beg answers. Was it a classic and flawless knock? Were any serious chances offered, or stunning catches taken? Where could the dawdling run rate have been accelerated?…

It’s almost 1:47 p.m. on 14 April, as I write. The sun is poised to transit – astrologically speaking – from the House of Meena (Pisces) to the House of Mesha (Aries). The star around which we orbit, to put it poetically, is about to show a new face. It’s a propitious…

One of the great expectations of a good-governance-touting administration was that it would bring a whole cabal of lawbreakers of yesteryear to book. But a closer scrutiny of the coalition government’s erstwhile election manifesto reveals that the fine print was not…

Today, on the first day of a new month, my mind goes back to that dawn, no more than three moons ago, when some of us had our legs pulled. It was a dawn of hope in which many democratic-republicans waxed eloquent about the change that was to be. But it – that much…

There are at least three ways to view the sudden swell in the numbers of government ministers earlier this week. The first is a charitable one – that “these things happen” and it’s all to be expected (and even accepted) as par for the course in island politics. The…

There’s a breathless hush in the Close tonight as I write. Not because there’s “ten to make and the match to win” or “ten to make and the last man in”. But because the match – the match that made all the difference to Sri Lanka’s World Cup 2015 hopes – has just been…

  We write with no great sense of surprise, as the Government of half-the-people reaches it more than midway mark, that this administration lacks the desired colour: the one it advertised in its election campaign. In comparison to the previous regime, the…