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Home » ColumnsOutcome of tomorrow’s poll crucial for Lanka
Both major alliances confident, but dramatic internal battle rages within UPFA Sirisena’s suspension of two party secretaries apparently linked to dispute over National List nominees International Crisis Group says resolution of ethnic issue depends on what happens at elections When a messenger from the Presidential Secretariat arrived at former President Mahinda Rajapaksa’s temporary residence in [...]
Confused voter at the crossroads
My dear Chandadaayakaya, I thought I must write to you as you will be making a very important decision tomorrow. Also, writing letters appear to have become a fashionable thing to do these days with Maithri writing to Mahinda maama and Mahinda maama sending him a reply — and both of them sending copies for [...]
Political stability vital for governance and development
The election of a politically stable government is crucial for good governance, national solidarity and economic development. Only a stable government can ensure social harmony, law and order, the rule of law and good governance that are prerequisites to economic development. An unstable government would not be in a position to take bold and often [...]
Give the President his January 2015 mandate
Once upon a time in this resplendent isle, a Commissioner of Elections broke down and cried before the public on national television in the midst of announcing the 2010 Presidential election ‘result.’ The public consensus was that this weak but essentially decent public servant had been broken under the Rajapaksa Presidency, then at the post-war [...]
Lanka’s VIPs bust millions to watch movies, including porn, in New York
Whenever Sri Lankan delegates made their annual pilgrimage to the United Nations in September, they flew business class and were virtually armed with blank cheques. No expenses were spared — be it five-star luxury hotels, unlimited overseas calls, room service, laundry valet, late night refreshments, a fully-stocked refrigerator and in-room movies. Last week we revealed [...]
Will Lanka answer the trumpet call or swallow the betel juice mocktail?
Tomorrow morning we will awake to perform a task that goes beyond the call of duty. We, the sovereign people of Lanka, will be called upon to decide the nation’s future. But unlike elections past, tomorrow’s general election will be momentous. We shall not be engaged in merely voting into Parliament a group of 225-members [...]
Beware of Blair bearing fibs
A public with eyes and ears understandably focused on the climactic days of the parliamentary election might have missed media reports on the arrival of former British prime minister Tony Blair and his family for a Sri Lankan holiday. So brief was the news item and so similar and bland that one might be excused [...]