A Year in Cloud Cuckoo Land
A pandemic with no end in sight, an economy that is unravelling, a fiscal abyss, a debt pile-up, an overwhelmed public health system – and the Gotabaya-Mahinda government is planning to build…
A pandemic with no end in sight, an economy that is unravelling, a fiscal abyss, a debt pile-up, an overwhelmed public health system – and the Gotabaya-Mahinda government is planning to build…
“ On October 7, Sri Lanka officially informed the United Nations that the government of Gotabaya Rajapaksas has successfully contained Covid-19. On October 7, 519 Covid-19 patients were identified in Sri Lanka.…
Photo courtesy of Twitter Think of it as the Rajapaksa fairy tale. Mother Lanka is captured by the messy and wobbly monster called Democracy. The Rajapaksa brothers and sons rescue her by…
The Rajapaksas are in a hurry. They have a constitution to make and a country to remake. Currently, the road to both destination seems as wide and as clear as a super-highway.…
Basil Rajapaksa (Daily FT – 29.7.2020) Basil Rajapaksa is the Rajapaksa family’s thinking man. Unlike his brothers and nephews, he doesn’t shoot his mouth off. His remarks should be taken seriously, because,…
Phillip Larkin (Going) That was Fort magistrate Ranga Dissanayake speaking in open court, on June 24th 2020. The pictures the CID officials wanted to show possible witnesses just before an identity parade…
Photo by Eranga Jayawardena/AP Photo via HRW Arundathi Roy (Election Season in a Dangerous Democracy – The New York Review of Books – 3.9.2018) The Eastern province is the most ethno-religiously pluralist…
Photo by Tharaka Basnayaka/NurPhoto via Getty Images from It is a modern morality tale about the dangers of misusing the military, of militarising civilian tasks, of expecting generals to handle pandemics. By…
Photo courtesy NewsInAsia “…by tomorrow, everything will already look different; by tomorrow, everything will already feel different.” – Viktor Klemperer () It was October 1348. Bubonic plague, known to posterity as the…
Image courtesy WHO Frank M Snowdon (Epidemics and Society – from the Black Death to the Present) This week, Chinese authorities heaped praise on ophthalmologist Li Wenliang, absolving him of the charge…
Image via TRT World “Let me bow before you my country, where It is ordained that none will walk the streets with his head held high.” Faiz (Let me bow before you)…
Photo by AP Photo/Eranga Jayawardena via Yahoo! News “If we lift the hideous rags of History, we find this: hierarchy versus equality and order versus liberty.” – Éric Vuillard (The Order Of…
Photo courtesy the President’s Twitter account “As if our democracy was nothing but a short-lived dream,” says Brazilian filmmaker Petra Costa in her new documentary dealing with the slow unravelling of democracy…
AP Photo/Eranga Jayawardena via Yahoo News Gotabaya Rajapaksa (Interview with the ITN – 24.2.2010) If Gotabaya Rajapaksa wins the presidency, he and his family will have two priorities: secure the premiership for…
AP Photo/Eranga Jayawardena via Yahoo News Gotabaya Rajapaksa (Interview with Chris Morris of the BBC) In 2015, a majority of Lankans voted to give themselves a democratic government. Do we vote to…