Domestic Debt Optimization (DDO) has been cannibalizing the commentary in recent weeks but I invite the reader to zoom out of this specific aspect of the recovery to focus on the big picture. The current....

In a significant political development last week, some influential members of Tamil civil society in the northern and eastern provinces of Sri Lanka took the initiative to write directly to Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi seeking India’s help i

President Ranil Wickremesinghe’s two-day visit to India on Thursday (20), exactly one year after he was elected President by the Parliament might have kindled many hopes in many groups

President Wickremesinghe in his own words is a man on a mission. His mission ‘...to steady the Lankan ship which just brief year ago was floundering.’

Merrill Joseph Fernando, the visionary founder and CEO of Dilmah Tea, the world renowned Sri Lankan tea brand, passed away on July 20, 2023, at the age of 93. Born on May 6, 1930, in Negombo....

In 2021, the country’s tax revenue as a share of gross domestic product (GDP)reached its lowest level since 1959 – dropping to just 8%. Increasing tax-to-GDP ratio is one of the most important measures....

The recent performances of our athletic team has been an eye-opener. For long years, except for a few individual brilliant performances of individual athletes, we have trailed behind other Asian nations in the field.

Our simple voters, as main stakeholders of a General Election, primarily want to know the Winning Party and the number of seats they have won; Secondarily, the names of the ‘225’ who will represent them in the Supreme Parliament. They are not kee

On a dark day in 1983 *Rajeshwari from Jaffna saw her husband for the last time in her life. But even after that day she has been wearing a pottu with hopes that he would return one day. Forty years later, this pottu...

The Government has decided to lift the ban on five of 11 Islamic organizations that were proscribed after the Easter Sunday attacks on April 21, 2019, according to our sister newspaper Sunday Times. Accordingly...

Sri Lanka has witnessed many political insurrections, a 30-year ethnic conflict, and class struggles up until the most recent people’s resistance (Aragalaya). In each of these uprisings, the oppressed communities sought justice. Or equality, in oth

The month of July has had an uncanny relationship with landmark events in recent Sri Lankan history. The latest took place only last year. A cataclysmic mass movement (“Aragalaya”) resulted in an elected President fleeing the country and being re

Investigations are underway to determine the cause of death of 21-year old Chamodi Sandeepani who died under mysterious circumstances on July 11following the administration of two doses of vaccines while being admitted to the Peradeniya Teaching Hosp

Not so long ago -in the late 1990s the health services of our country was praised by organisations such as the World Health....

Monks, politicians, and environmentalists often exhibit a tendency to extend their passion beyond rational boundaries. Their focus....

Someone in Sri Lanka, right now as I write, is distraught because a child, a parent or a loved one has died, is dying or is seriously....

Nandasena Gotabaya Rajapaksa known as Gotabaya or Gota Rajapaksa made a glorious entry to the pinnacle of political power through a grand victory at the presidential election held on 16 November 2019.

On July 1, Sri Lanka’s Parliament approved, through a majority 122-62 vote, a plan to restructure the government’s domestic debt, which totalled 15.4 trillion Sri Lankan rupees at the end of March 2023.

Just a few years ago, the health service in our country was among the best in the world. Our country provided free medical examination, hospitalisation, and medicines, not only to all of our citizens but even to foreign visitors irrespective of their

A few weeks ago UNESCO inscribed the Mahavamsa onto its ‘Memory of the World (MoW) International Register for 2023. It was not exactly a declaration of the extensive chronicle as a ‘world heritage,’ although....

Sri Lankans have a general attitude that this nation cannot be refined and made a developed country. This thinking or attitude surfaced when former President Gotabaya Rajapaksa- before stepping...

Astonishing revelations have come to the fore as to how the Geological Surveys and Mines Bureau has unheeded cabinet decisions and the subsequent court ruling that ban the exporting of raw vein....

According to reports, several amendments are to be suggested and made at the Committee stage in Parliament on the 19th July, 2023. We, the public are unaware of these amendments.

Our country is gradually pulling itself out of the financial crisis of yester-year. Even though the foreign debt restructing process is not complete, government has pushed ahead with the domestic debt restructuring....

Justice and good decision-making flows in part, from the discipline of public reasoning. The belief in democracy is anchored in the hope of harnessing the power of reasoned decision making that is openly....

An enduring feature of tourism in Sri Lanka has been the Westerners’ fascination with the Sri Lanka Railways (SLR). Foreigners go into raptures over SLR’s old-world carriages, its quaint British-era stations...

A year ago, on July 9th, hundreds of thousands of Sri Lankans, dispossessed by the economic destruction unleashed by a government they elected not long ago, descended on the Capital, Colombo. They stormed the President’s House while President Gotab

Speaker Mahinda Yapa Abeywardena on Thursday named a 14-member Parliamentary Select Committee (PSC) under the Chairmanship of MP Sagara Kariyawasam, the General Secretary of the ruling Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna (SLPP), to probe the country’s fina

July 2023 marks the 40th anniversary of ‘Black July,’ acknowledged as the most horrific episode of ethnic violence in Sri Lanka. Around 300-450 lives were lost, more than 40,000 people were reduced to refugee....

Economists, including the Governor of the Central Bank tell us that inflation is down. (When the general price level rises, each unit of currency buys fewer goods and services; inflation corresponds to a reduction....