DARE WE DREAM?
Unveiling his political vision for a ‘new Sri Lankan order’ this week, Mangala Samaraweera challenged Sri Lankans to envision a better future. Dare, he said, to dream which, as a rallying cry…
Author: Asanga Welikala
SRI LANKAN DEMOCRACY IN PRACTICE: 1997 – 2007
On 27th June 2007, Tony Blair leaves office after a little over a decade as the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. He leaves office a reviled figure, largely due to the…
THE GOVERNMENT IN THE NUDE: A REVOLTING SIGHT
News from Sri Lanka had been disquieting for the last several months with the escalation of conflict, the collapse of the rule of law and the protection of fundamental human rights. It…
THE MAY DAY TRAGI-COMEDY
“If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.†– George Orwell As an example of monumental irrelevance for the cause…
TOLERATING THE INTOLERABLE: AN EPILOGUE TO UVINDU
Uvindu Kurukulasuriya’s inaugural piece in Groundviews is an aptly Niemölleresque exhortation to greater civic responsibility in the defence of political freedom, civil liberties and the Rule of Law. It comes at a…
THE CRI DE COEUR OF A WOUNDED TIGER OR ‘TIGER IN THE NIGHT’?
The statement of the LTTE marking the unhappy 5th Anniversary of the CFA is a remarkable document. Admittedly, one has to get used to the slightly disconcerting effect of talon, tush and…
THE CHALLENGE BEFORE THE UNP
Ranil Wickremasinghe made, I think, what he thinks is a speech of statesman-like prophesy, not to mention dignified grace in the face of political cuckoldry, when Parliament reconvened this week following the…
THE OSLO DECLARATION: REPORTS OF ITS DEATH ARE NOT GREATLY EXAGGERATED
The Morning Leader (31st January 2007) carries a report of the first press conference given yesterday by the Hon. G. L. Peiris M. P., the new Minister of Export Promotion and International…
SAM THE INIMITABLE
Rajavarothayam Sampanthan M.P. (TNA/ITAK, Trincomalee District) gave Sri Lankans a wistful and even poignant glimpse of the ghost of parliamentary democracy a fortnight ago, when he delivered an incisive exposition of the…
BETWEEN SCYLLA AND CHARYBDIS, THE HAPLESS MR. VITHARANA
At the empennage of ghastly and gruesome 2006, the Majority Report of the Experts Panel was dismissed in these pages as inadequate, predictable and hesitant. In the light of what has gone…
LOOKING INTO THE ABYSS
The unsurprising minority report of the APRC Experts Panel is a lawyerly representation of 1956-style Sinhala Buddhist nationalism. It is the legal prototype of the JVP/JHU political rhetoric. As such, it is…
QUO VADIS, MAJORITY REPORT?
Dayan Jayatilleke in the Lanka Academic has attempted a rather more refined apologia for the discordant cacophony that passes for government in respect of conflict resolution and peace nowadays, than the government…