Photo via wx135 The announcement that Maithripala Sirisena, General Secretary of the Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP) and Minister of Health in the Rajapaksa regime is to be The Common Candidate of the Opposition to Mahinda Rajapaksa has turned the Presidential Election of 15th January 2015 into a contest. Moreover the electoral arithmetic, most popularly […]
Every single one of the nearly 36,600+ tweets published to date by Groundviews as @groundviews can be downloaded as a ZIP file from here. The archive, generated by Twitter, is fully searchable. All the tweets can be downloaded as a CSV file from here (10.3Mb). The archive is also accessible online here. The archive is […]
Groundviews published over 300 articles in 2014. Since its launch in 2006, the most amount of traffic to the website was generated over May this year, around the compelling content featured in the End of War: 5 Years On Special Edition. Selecting the most engaging content from this vast selection is impossible – all of the articles […]
Photograph courtesy Api Sri Lankan On 20th Nov. 2014, the President of Sri Lanka officially proclaimed his intention to hold presidential elections and seek a third term. This was when there was two more years to hold presidential elections. It was widely believed that the reasons for premature elections was the fading popularity of the […]
JAFFNA. “Even though the war is over and the guns are silent…it doesn’t change a thing. We still face threats. We are still feeling the fear,” said 35 year old Thevanayagam Premananth, the editor of Uthayan newspapers. We talked in his office, part of the compound that had once been the torture chambers of the […]
Photo courtesy The Sunday Leader A Twitter Q&A with the JHU’s Champika Ranawaka was conducted at 7pm yesterday, generating hundreds of tweets with questions for the Minister ranging from his hate speech, endorsement of astrology, open calls to violence, politics and religious extremism to the up-coming presidential elections, corruption and governance in general. A cursory […]
Photograph via VOA News The irony of the present political moment in Sri Lanka is that it appears the message of both Mahinda and Maithripala is essentially the same: ‘there is no substitute’. Both build their politics on how dangerous the other is, seeking to thrive on a politics of anxiety. And for these reasons alone […]
Photo courtesy The Daily Beast Your Highness, I am writing to be Informing you that my wife is leaving home today, threatening to be joining the Opposition. Please do not be thinking she is traitor. She is still very much devoted to you and is thinking the Opposition is way too common for the liking […]
Photo courtesy Asian Tribune When the Berlin Wall fell as a result of continuous and determined efforts of the people of then East Germany, and the Perestroika initiated by Gorbechev, it was not only a watershed moment in Europe but an inspiring, momentous event characterised by the sufferings and future aspirations of millions of East […]
Groundviews is archiving every single tweet with the hashtag #PresPollSL, used by mainstream media, leading civic media and citizen journalism initiatives in Sri Lanka to post updates around the up-coming Presidential Election. The archive is currently updated every hour, 24/7. Given the unprecedented use of the #PresPollSL hashtag in just a week since the creation of […]
Image courtesy Asian Tribune At last, the Supreme Court’s opinion on the President’s reference has seen the light of day, albeit unofficially, and it makes for miserable reading. The feature that stands out in the opinion is not only the unctuous tone which the Court has adopted in responding to the President’s request for an opinion, […]
Photo courtesy the Daily Beast A long awaited concerted action has now been initiated by the opposition parties in their identification of a common candidate for the upcoming presidential elections, and the agenda for action. Understandably, the opposition needs a simple yet mass rallying slogan for their campaign. The abolishing of the executive presidential system […]
Photo by AFP PHOTO/ Ishara S.KODIKARA via The Japan Times This analyst has always maintained that the formulae for the defeat of the Rajapakse regime, was a divided government and a unified opposition. Given the absolute fragmented disarray in which the main opposition United National Party was in, only a very short while ago, it was […]
Photo courtesy Sri Lanka Brief Kalana Senaratne’s characteristically perceptive article on the implications of Maithripala Sirisena’s common candidacy for the upcoming Presidential election flags the Tamil question: what role do Tamils and issues of concern to them play in the politics of the election? Kalana deems the Tamils the ‘forgotten other’ of the upcoming campaign, […]
Photograph via VOA News It had to happen that way, and the break was only possible with a serious split within the regime. The moment had come for members of the SLFP to take the plunge. And when finally Vasantha Senanayake, MP, crossed over (the first member of the brave ‘suicide squad’) and mentioned that […]