Living Happily Off Loans

President Ranil Wickremesinghe presented his latest policy statement while opening the new Parliament session on February 7. Contrary to his previous policy statements and special statements on the economy it did not contain so many plans that his government is going to implement, yet it has much food for thought. Wickremesinghe at the outset painted a rosy picture on the situation. He said that the inflation, which stood at a daunting 50.6 per

Putting Fetters on Live-In Relationships

Earlier this month, the Legislative Assembly of Uttarakhand, a North Indian State at the foot of the Himalayas, passed a Uniform Civil Code (UCC). While most of the provisions were progressive, there were some which put fetters on “live-in” relationships, to the extent of criminalizing them. These provisions have come in for much criticism on the grounds that they invade privacy and individual liberty guaranteed by the Indian constitution. The

Apologetic Marxists: Yanis Varoufakis and Techno-Feudalism

In 2015, Yanis Varoufakis was appointed Finance Minister of Greece by socialist Premier, Alexis Tsipras. The Euro debt crisis crippled.....

An Election’s A Brewing, Will We See JVP Policy Changes? - EDITORIAL

India’s invitation to the JVP/NPP and its leader, Anura Kumara Dissanayake – popularly known as AKD – has made political....

Generals & General Elections: Retired Military Officers in the Politics of SJB and JVP

“The follower is always far behind the winner” emphasizes the idea that those who follow, copy or imitate are usually not as successful....

JVP’s Love-Hate Relationship with India

When Opposition Leader, Sajith Premadasa criticized the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP) citing a clause in the latter’s “Policy Declaration” published in 1977 about confiscating “means of production” belonged to private institutions, the leader of the JVP and the National People’s Power (NPP), Anura Kumara Dissanayake advised him to get himself updated as it was a document published about half a century ago when there was a socialist bloc of coun

Darkness in the Midst of a Heatwave

We are in the midst of a heatwave. Temperatures are rising, the days are bright, but for the majority of our people, this is a very dark era. Dark, because they can see no way to break out of the stark poverty-stricken situation they find themselves in. Since the Covid-19 pandemic hit the country in January 2020, the numbers of people who found themselves out of employment rose to an astounding 500,000, according to figures provided by the Centr

The Kaithady Explosion that Rocked the LTTE on Valentine’s Day

“The best laid schemes of mice and men often go awry,” penned the Scottish bard, Robert Burns in his poem, “To A Mouse”. This truth was brought home in an explosive manner to the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), 37 years ago, when a massive explosion rocked the Kaithady area in the Thenmaratchi division of the Jaffna peninsula.

When the ‘Weight’ of Bread is Too Much to Bear! - EDITORIAL

The study of the history of bread in Sri Lanka provides us with an interesting story. Despite Sri Lankan homes trying to dissuade eating bread - stating that such foods invite disease early in life...

Covering Gaza: The imperialistic media deception

Do as I say, not as I do. This is the mantra with which the imperialist West keeps its colonial or neo-colonial projects going. This duplicity is also evident in the imperialists’ media policy. Often....

Racism Degrades both the Perpetrator and the Victim

Opening a new session of Parliament on Wednesday, President Ranil Wickremesinghe outlined a policy statement, amid indications that the country is recovering from one of its worst economic and debt crises, but whole lot of other issues need to be tackled, including the disruptive factor of racial discrimination which has plagued Sri Lanka since independence in 1948. In this area, there were and still are several issues – Tamil Congress leader, G.

New Delhi Focuses On Exploring Unknown NPP

There was a time when people in this island nation feared the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP). That was a time known as the ‘insurgency’. We saw the worst of this insurgency in the late 1980s, and this was a time when there was an Indian Peace Keeping Force in this island; sent here to help the Sri Lankan security forces in the fight against terrorism. Fast forward the clock to 2024, and now the JVP has grown to form an alliance (National People

Has The JVP Come Of Age Or Is It Bluffing? - EDITORIAL

Anura Kumara Dissanayake is presently in India. The head of the JVP/NPP alliance is actually on an official visit to India, at the invitation...

ITAK’s New Leader is an Unabashed LTTE Apologist

When pro-Palestinian groups planned protests on Armistice Day last year, policymakers in Europe were livid, calling, rightly...

Takeaways and giveaways of NPP’s visit to India

The National People’s Power (NPP), the political alliance led by the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP), undertook a tour of India...

How to restore SLT’s role to ride on the tide of information Technology

Sri Lanka is in the IT Age equivalent of the ancient “Silk Route”; hence it is up to us to take advantage from the future of technological...

Unveiling the ‘Cultural Mosaic’ A tapestry of Tamil Christian art and architecture

Art enthusiasts and cultural admirers in Northern Sri Lanka have the unique opportunity to immerse themselves in the rich....

Are Politicians Above The Law?

Following months of allegations of mismanagement of the health sector against him, former Health Minister Keheliya Rambukwella was arrested by the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) on Friday over an alleged scam involving the importation of substandard human immunoglobulin vials to Sri Lanka. On Thursday, Maligakanda Magistrate, Lochani Abeywickrama ordered him to appear before the CID on February 2, after he had failed to do so on Wednesda

Solution for Somali Piracy has to be found on Land, not at Sea

The SalamaFikira (FP) Group, a leading global security and risk management firm, warned in January, that despite a perceived decline in Somali piracy, recent incidents indicate that the menace has not been eradicated and remains a formidable challenge. By January 2011, 736 people were taken as hostages and 32 ships were captured by pirates. Piracy impeded the delivery of shipments and increased shipping expenses, costing an estimated US $ 6.9 bil

Police Action Alone is Insufficient to Combat Rising Crime - EDITORIAL

Since 2021, there has been a serious uptick in the crime rate in our country. Statistics show criminal activity in our land has seen a dramatic rise since 2021. Data from the Police Department....

Independence and Self-Sufficiency: Co-operation in Times of Crisis

For close to a decade and a half I have been studying co-operatives, particularly as I was preoccupied with questions about the post-war reconstruction of Jaffna. As I watched the failure of development....

Unlocking Independence and Freedom within Yourself

The 76th ‘February 4th’ has passed, marked by four days of aerobatics, consuming considerable aviation fuel and time. This prompts questions about resource usage during such events. The primary....

Will ITAK New Chief, Sritharan put the Tamil Movement on a Radical Path?

Although Jaffna district Member of Parliament, Sivagnanam Sritharan had told the media on what principles he would lead the struggle for the political rights of the Tamil people after being elected...

Dialog Television celebrates Independence weekend by offering access to the full bouquet of channels without any additional charge

Sri Lanka’s #1 Pay-TV service provider, Dialog Television, has announced access to its extensive array of channels at no additional charge to all viewers from 2nd - 5th February 2024, targeting....

SJB Protest Turns Out A Damp Squib

Electioneering is in the air. The usual rounds of protests are commencing. The NPP/JVP combine commenced their programme to ‘educate’ the electorate of issues at hand some time ago. On Tuesday, the main opposition party (SJB) held what it expected to be a massive demonstration against the ‘Online Safety Bill’ (OSB), the imposition of taxes, various price hikes and a skyrocketing cost of living. The party expected to bring into Colombo 50,000 p

Celebrating the Deaths of ‘Others’

How did you feel when the news about the tragic death of State Minister Sanath Nishantha first reached you? Did it make you feel sorrow or happy? Indeed, we all might have felt either one of the two, though sometimes we might have regretted rejoicing over the tragedy later. There is a debate now going on in social media over celebrating deaths, after the same social media circulated a lot of cheery posts on the death of Sanath Nishantha. The gene

Fund cuts for UNRWA point to a clash of civilisations

Peace-loving people worldwide are probably sick and tired of seeing and hearing the triumph of evil and injustice. Each time they hoped for a ceasefire in the Gaza Strip so that the besieged...

Being Used in a Nation that Forgets - EDITORIAL

Sri Lankans are known for forgetting their history fast. This piece of writing is not about dementia or amnesia. It’s about history that fades away quite fast in our brains, because the subject matter....

Wetlands: Nature’s Sponges, Vital For Our Well-Being

The government last week put through the Online Safety Bill despite protests that it is a drastic step towards curbing dissent. Opposition speakers said that the Supreme Court had proposed 13 changes but they had not been included. They asked the Speaker not to sign the Bill, but the Speaker later announced that the Supreme Court changes had been included and he would sign it. While focusing on issues such as online safety, the government in thi

Wanted: An Authentic Minister of Finance Sri Lanka Has Not Had One, For Three And A Half Decades

Congratulations to the Supreme Court for finding three Rajapaksa brothers, two former Central Bank Governors and two former Treasury Secretaries guilty of the sustained economic mismanagement that led to the 2022 economic-cum-debt crisis. The judgement is at the frontier of jurisprudence. There is no precedent for this kind of ruling about such a broad and complex policy question. But the incompetence was so gross and visible that the court could