The Sunday Times Sri Lanka

Columns

Political Column

There, Colonel Channa Etipola, Staff Officer attached to the Army Provost Marshal's Directorate, handed over to Fonseka a letter. It specified the findings of a General Court Martial (GCM) on August 13 holding him guilty of dabbling in politics whilst in active service, the sentence imposed and the confirmation by the Confirming Authority - President Mahinda Rajapaksa, Commander-in-chief of the armed forces.

5th Column

No-balling keeps snowballing in politics

Thaaththa," Bindu Udagedera asked, "what is all this fuss about a no-ball?"
"Oh," Bindu’s father Percy recalled, "that is something that happened in the cricket match against India..."
"What happened at the match?" Bindu wanted to know.

The Economic Analysis

The questions people ask: Is the economy moving?

Economists are confronted in many different places and asked to explain what is happening in the economy. The diverse and contrary views about the country’s economic performance are no doubt the underlying reason for this. One can hardly satisfy these intelligent appetites in those brief encounters. Meeting an old friend at the Press Institute the other day led to such an encounter on the economy: What’s happening?

Lobby

Fonseka ruling fuels rare opposition fire

Democratic National Alliance (DNA) MP Sarath Fonseka may no longer be a four-star general after being stripped of his rank following the guilty verdict by a military court but his plight helped galvanize the lacklustre opposition in Parliament to make some noise and show some solidarity last week.

Focus on Rights

The quick dying of democracy in Sri Lanka

Last week, we had a retired judge advising the media, in the pages of this newspaper, not to cringe before authority. Eminently valuable as this advice may be (and one is not being irrepressibly sarcastic in this regard), this same exhortation should be directed towards judges and retired judges themselves as well as law enforcement officers and those serving in academia. For whatever it is worth, journalists have been beaten up, killed without compunction and threatened in many other ways.

Talk at the Cafe Spectator

The high-flying Thangavelu Sakvithi

Sri Lankans, particularly those 4,000 or more who placed their money in trust with Sakvithi Investments, may still be unaware of what the alleged swindler did during his missing days. During the past two years, he went under the name Thangavelu Eliyamoolai and held an Indian Passport obtained in Chennai. His wife and two children too had similar passports. The wife's name was Thangavelu Radha.