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The work begins
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 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…
Photograph courtesy ‘The Brother’s Grip‘, Global & Mail, by Ishara Kodikara, AFP ### The past is what Gotabaya Rajapaksa invokes when he tells us to vote for him. In his glitzy…
Image from “Sri Lanka: Reconciling and Rebuilding”: Framing the lies What would a Gotabaya Rajapaksa Presidency look like (Economist Intelligence Unit – 11.8.2019) Saviours need crises, not the average inflation-unemployment…
Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s maiden speech as the SLPP’s Presidential candidate was a masterpiece in banality. It didn’t contain a single memorable sentence or one inspiring idea. That absence was no accident. The speech…
Mythic Inflation is a concept introduced by American mythologist Joseph Campbell to explain the emergence of a new kind of ruler, the secular king who is also the divinely mandated saviour of…
In the run up to the 2014 Aluthgama riot, the rabble-rousing monk Galagoda Aththe Gnanasara coined the term Aba Saranai, a battle-cry of hate totally at variance with the teachings of the…
Photo by President’s Media Division (PMD) “From now on, people and monks will govern this country from the streets” Aturaliye Ratana Thero (Lankadeepa – 28.5.2019) A man in a suit defending the…
The blue, red, yellow, orange and white lights are on, as are the makeshift stalls selling lanterns. Yet few pause to see, haggle, buy. Vesak, so near chronologically, had never seemed so…
Photo by JEWEL SAMAD / AFP/GETTY IMAGES via KCUR. “Unmindful are the walking dead The known way is an impasse.” Heraclitus (The Fragments) We have been here before. This blooded precipice is…
On the night of January 2nd, 2006, five students were killed in Trincomalee. Shanmugarajah Gajendran, Lohitharaja Rohan, Thangathurai Sivanantha, Yogarajah Hemachandran and Manoharan Rajihar, all of them either engaged in or about…
Featured image courtesy The Star “If they harm me, it is the country they harm.” The beautification of Gotabaya Rajapaksa is on full throttle. The names of his front organisations are indicative…
Four years ago, a majority of Lankans elected Maithripala Sirisena as the country’s executive president. A year from now, the country will be asked to elect its next executive president. Can the…