Editorial
Home » EditorialOne more ‘HR day’ and one more ‘HR mission’
As yet another International Human Rights Day is marked today on the annual calendar, yet another group of international observers is visiting Sri Lanka, apparently for the purposes of ‘assessing the situation regarding the deprivation of liberty.’ This time it is a three-member delegation from the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention. The group [...]
A matter of ‘commissions’ and omissions
The Budget vote for independent commissions in Parliament earlier this month has led to Sri Lanka’s new Right to Information (RTI) Commission finally getting its own fund to the relief of the anxious people who have been ceaselessly bombarding the Commission with information requests. The RTI Act required the Fund to be in place at [...]
Parliament’s honour at stake
The Commission of Inquiry on the Central Bank Bond scam concluded its public hearings earlier this week and as they say in legal circles, it unearthed some exhilarating evidence ‘beyond a shadow of doubt’. It will now be the onerous duty of the Commission to distil that evidence and pronounce its recommendations. A powerful Cabinet [...]
Beer, Booze and the new intoxicants
The ‘Mangala Budget’ of the new Finance Minister ran into two or three obstacles – from shipping agents, and also those opposing his move to reduce beer prices aimed at weaning people from hard liquor. In the first cases, it was more the lobby wanting protectionism and in the latter, those who believe prohibition is [...]
The best laid plans of mice and men often go awry
The petrol crisis was something the Finance Minister could have done without as a forerunner to what he famously called his ‘designer Budget’. The shortages hit all parts of the country throwing grave doubts over the management skills of the Government. When Sri Lanka’s economy was in the doldrums in the 1970s, it was referred [...]
The Russian Revolution; from Vladimir Lenin to Vladimir Putin
Next Tuesday, November 7, marks the centenary of an event that changed the course of world history for the better part of the 20th century – the Russian Revolution of 1917. It was the good ship ‘Aurora’ anchored on the river Nev, flying the Red flag of the revolutionaries, which fired the first salvo into [...]
SAARCLAW: What it means to the people
When President R. Premadasa declared open the first South Asian Regional Cooperation for Law (SAARCLAW) conference in Colombo in 1991, Sri Lanka’s then Chief Justice sat next to him. Neither uttered a word to each other throughout the proceedings as an election petition was being heard against the President by the country’s apex court. Such [...]