Challenges of Development: The Next Phase
It is over. We have a winner, and we have a loser. The margin of victory has many messages. In mature democracies, play leading up to the climax is performed in a…
Year: 2010
President’s second term: Two options before the Supreme Court
There is, at present, much excitement over the question of when re-elected President Mahinda Rajapaksa’s second (and new) term begins. Various news reports concerning the matter have been published in the print…
ELECTORAL NANDIKADAL: NATIONAL-POPULAR vs. NEO-COMPRADOR
“ It is easy to be wise after the event, so I usually try to be wise before it. In a piece originally entitled ‘Crisis 2010: The post election scenario’ published over…
Outcome of presidential elections in Sri Lanka: Is there anything to analyse?
On the day after elections, I sat in the afternoon to write this amidst phone calls and text messages inquiring and informing about “strong” rumours on “result rigging” by the Rajapaksa regime.…
The loud and clear message from the voter turnout and the voters in the North and East
I wrote on the 30th of December in a post to ) that the assertion that the Tamil people would be deciders in the Presidential election would be a myth. There was…
An Ode to a Bright Future
I hear the crack of a whip, you tell me it’s the sound of peace. I don’t believe you. Speak for yourself. Not for me. I heard them coming. They have no…
Open letter to the President of Sri Lanka
January 28, 2010 Dear Mr. President, Congratulations on your land slide victory which, like most Colombo elites, I was stunned by. Your spokesperson Dr R Wijesinghe quite rightly described us as shallow…
10 reasons why you should celebrate Mahinda Rajapaksa’s victory
Sarath Fonseka lost. We no longer need to stress ourselves to a level requiring medication worrying about what he might do if he wins. We can stop pretending to like him. Mahinda…
Dear Mr. President
Dear Mr. President, I’d like to congratulate you in advance for your impending victory of the Presidential election in the following days to come. With the SLFP consolidating their power through the…
Post-election updates from Colombo
I’ve been tweeting from around 3am this morning on what’s going on in Colombo after the elections, and in particular what is at the time of writing a rather tense situation around…
People’s immediate post election responsibility on “corruption†promises
The presidential campaigns concluded officially a day ago and the “Programme for Protection of Public Property” (4P) calculated and exposed the cost of advertisements by each of the two main presidential candidates.…
A bizarre polling card: Evidence of a flawed election?
We feature this video captured by today without any additional comment because it is abundantly clear which candidate the sign stapled on to this anomalous polling card refers to. It is also…
From here to nowhere and to an ‘Ahmadinejadian’ end?
“We vote to get president. We get president. But where our vote, we don’t know” was a line that I had saved from a news report on the Iranian presidential polls in…
Sri Lanka at Cross Roads: What a Victory for the UNF will Mean
It appears to be the most powerful electoral alliance that has ever been formed in the country.A political phenomenon, a coalition containing diametrically opposed political views led by someone without any formal…
