The Continuing October Revolutions in Sri Lanka
“October Revolution” is a term that used to gladden the hearts of Communist stalwarts the world over, our own left parties included. It was the occasion, more than a century ago, when…
Author: Harim Peiris
Judges, Civil Society and Opposition Push Back Against 20th Amendment
Photo courtesy of Sri Lanka Brief The Rajapakse Administration, by Government gazette, published its proposed 20th Amendment to Sri Lanka’s Constitution and subsequently the Secretary General of Parliament announced that it would…
Election 2020 – An Analysis and Trends
The general election to parliament is concluded and the official results are out. The anticipated landslide victory to the ruling Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna (SLPP) has materialised with the SLPP winning a…
An Agenda to Centralise Power
The ruling Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna (SLPP) handsomely won November’s presidential election with 52% of the popular vote and is accordingly the clear favourite and front runner to secure victory at the…
Black Lives Matter: Sri Lankan Style
Photo courtesy A single death, triggers a worldwide conflict. In 1914, Archduke Franz Ferdinand, the heir to the throne of the Austro-Hungarian empire was assassinated in Serbia and his death triggered the…
The challenge of the second decade of post war reconciliation
Photograph courtesy ‘The Brother’s Grip‘, Global & Mail, by Ishara Kodikara, AFP May 19th 2020, marked the eleventh year of the end of the fighting in Sri Lanka’s civil war. A protracted…
The fight against Covid-19 should not weaken the rule of law
Photo courtesy The Covid-19 pandemic and the resultant shutdown of social and community life has meant that the political debate and dialogue in Sri Lanka, has moved from more traditional forms of…
Reconvening Parliament as polls postponed
Image courtesy Even for a country that coped with and ended a near thirty year long civil war, the Covid-19 pandemic has posed an unprecedented challenge, not merely in the area of…
Emerging Governance Issues amid COVID-19
Image courtesy EY As Sri Lanka heads towards completing nearly a month of lockdown, with first the special public holiday route adopted from 16th March and then curfew from 20th March onwards,…
Nominations close and elections postponed amid Covid-19
Photo: AFP, Ishara S. Kodiikara via Nominations for the parliamentary elections of 2020 closed late last week and barely an hour after the close of nominations, the Elections Commission made its widely…
Is Sajith slowly pulling ahead as Gota fails to gain traction?
The 2019 presidential election, rather predictably is shaping up politically, very similar to its precedent in 2015. On that occasion, the then ruling Rajapakses’ sought an unprecedented third term and was rebuffed…
Chief Minister Wigneswaran breaks with the TNA and forms the TMA
As the term of office of the Northern Provincial Council (NPC) concludes this month, Chief Minister C.V. Wigneswaran, elected from the Tamil National Alliance (TNA), actually from the Illankai Tamil Arasu Katchi…
Reflections on July 1983: 35 Years On
July 23 marked the 35th anniversary of one of post independent Sri Lanka’s darkest chapters, the July 1983 pogrom against Tamil civilians throughout the country. An ambush of an Army patrol in Jaffna,…
An insufficient appetite for a Rajapaksa return
The outcome of last week’s failed no-confidence motion against Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe has established a few political ground realities. Firstly, it was a massive overreach by the Joint Opposition (JO), which…
A question of confidence in Yahapaalanaya – The unfinished mandate
Hard on the heels of the local government elections, the Joint Opposition (JO) emboldened by the unexpectedly robust performance of their nascent political party, the Sri Lanka Podujana Party (SLPP), popularly known…