The Sunday Times Sri Lanka

Columns

Political Column

LLRC report: World awaits Govt. response

It is perhaps the largest wooden table in Sri Lanka though it is not for dining or drinking. Unveiled this week, it would easily be one on which many a decision that enters chapters of Sri Lanka's history is made.

5th Column

Congratulations, you do it in style

My Dear Mahinda Maama,

I thought I should write to you to wish you for your sixty-sixth birthday and I am sure you wouldn’t realise that my wishes come late because everyone is falling over each other in trying to congratulate you on your birthday and get in to your good books.

The Economic Analysis

Budget reverses exchange rate policy, raises inflationary pressures

President Mahinda Rajapaksa, as Minister of Finance, presenting the 2012 Budget made the unexpected announcement that he was devaluing the rupee by 3 percent immediately. He said: "We need to reduce the import cost and increase export revenue. When our currency has strengthened, our trading partners' currencies have depreciated. So I propose to devalue the currency by 3 per cent with effect from today."

Lobby

Mismanaged MPs, misguided missiles overshadow Budget speech

The reason was the growing number of Legislators choosing to resort to physical confrontation over verbal confrontation during debates in the House.

Focus on Rights

Democratic luxuries that we cannot possess

Last week, the spectacle of ordinary people battering on the doors of the Colombo High Court and abusing two of the three judges who sat on the Trial-at-Bar in the White Flag case, which case resulted in the piling up of another jail term of three years on Sri Lanka's former Army Commander, was unprecedented by all accounts even in this country's unfortunately chequered history.

Talk at the Cafe Spectator

Aimed at Ranil, it fell near MR

Officials closely went through video footage of Parliament proceedings on budget day. The purpose was to ascertain the trajectory of a water bottle. It had landed near President Mahinda Rajapaksa's feet splashing some water on him.

From the Sidelines

The multiple ironies of UNP leadership and the IDU

The commotion in Parliament when UNP MPs brought placards and shouted slogans during the presentation of the 2012 Budget offered yet another example of the shameful depths to which government MPs could descend in their conduct. It also came off as yet another fiasco in the UNP's pathetic scorecard as the country's main opposition party. Opposition Leader Ranil Wickremesinghe's 'tactics' just backfired.