The Sunday Times Sri Lanka

Columns

Political Column

"President Mahinda Rajapaksa does not trust him enough. He is not spying on us but on Dr. G.L. Peiris," remarked Rauff Hakeem, leader of the Sri Lanka Muslim Congress somewhat jocularly. "It seems so. Otherwise why a security guy should stand behind and watch us deliberating is puzzling," replied his colleague and SLFP-M leader, Mangala Samaraweera.

5th Column

Leaving us with golden memories

I thought I must write to you now that you have scaled cricket’s Mount Everest, taking eight hundred wickets and then hanging up your boots. Congratulations, Murali, but I think it is not what you did that matters most-but how you did it and also what you meant to this country over the last eighteen years.

The Economic Analysis

A balance of payments surplus despite huge merchandise trade deficit?

Despite the country heading for a massive trade deficit, the government’s own forecast is that the country would achieve a small surplus in the balance of payments. These projections are based on expectations that are probably somewhat optimistic.

Lobby

Not Issued with this week

Focus on Rights

Living in the 'shadow of the total lie'

When Otto Rene Castillo (1934-1967), the Guatemalan poet and revolutionary reflected on the ultimate interrogation of the apolitical intellectuals by the 'simplest of our people' as to what they did 'when the poor suffered, when tenderness and life burned out of them' he was stating a powerful truth relevant not only to his country and in that period but across space and across borders.

Talk at the Cafe Spectator

UN panel rolls on

Matthew Lee of the Inner City Press in the UN has been chasing aggressively various stories concerning Sri Lanka. Here is what transpired between him and Martin Nesirky at the UN noon briefing this week. Lee: On Sri Lanka, on this Panel of Experts.