Ten Years: Remembering the Past, Planning for the Future
Photograph courtesy Joanna Eckersley 2006: The Seeding Year Sri Lanka entered 2006 on the cusp between a failed peace process and a looming war. The year began with a murder. The killing…
Author: Tisaranee Gunasekara
Regaining Paradise with Donald Trump
Donald Trump’s victory is a beacon of hope to extremists of every stripe, from the Ku Klux Klan to Marine Le Pen, from Islamic extremists and Hindu nationalists to our very own…
Losing the Narrative
Photo credit NewsIn.Asia In the myth, hero-king becomes a tyrant when he turns his back on the source of his power. In the myth, the source of that power is divine, god/gods,…
Avoiding Superstitious Cures, Defeating Dictatorial Solutions
Photo courtesy OnLanka Sri Lanka, despite her soaring developmental ambitions, spends less than 1% of her national budget on research and development, an anomaly which was highlighted at the recently concluded symposium,…
A Year of Political Rights and Economic Wrongs
Photo courtesy International Business Times One year after winning the parliamentary election of August 2015, the government is on track politically. One year after winning the parliamentary election of August 2015, the…
Keeping the Lunatic Fringe in the Fringe
Photo courtesy July 2016 could have become a very small-scale reproduction of July 1983, attacks and counterattacks, panicky actions and fear-filled reactions, hysteria, mayhem and some murder. It didn’t because this July…
Ghosts from the Past
Photograph courtesy Business Today ‘The sleep of reason produces monsters.’ Goya (The title of the 43rd etching of Los Caprichos) Post-Rajapaksa Sri Lanka is being haunted by the ghost of the Rajapaksa…
Reflections on paths not taken
ISAAC KASAMANI/AFP/Getty Images via IB Times Former President Mahinda Rajapaksa is unlikely to know the poem or the poet, but the sentiments would have been his as he watched Uganda’s Yoweri…
From Panama Papers to Child Marriage: Food for Thought, Battles to Wage
Image courtesy CNN “To walk our way and keep our eyes fixed on it Is mankind’s first and foremost obligation.” Iphigenia in Tauris (Goethe) It is a lie, beloved by the powerful,…
Economic Justice and Democratic Survival
Featured image courtesy IndiaTimes In ‘’, his long piece on the Obama Presidency, Jeffery Goldberg writes that Mr. Obama, reflecting on his failures in the Middle East, privately laments, “if only everyone could…
Sinha Le Politics and Socio-cultural Persecution
The Independence Day celebrations commenced with the national anthem sung in Sinhala and concluded with the national anthem sung in Tamil. It was a first and a good first, a gesture of…
Shadow and Light
A song posted on the You Tube comparing President Maithripala Sirisena with ancient kings of Pollonnaruwa gave rise to a storm of social-media protests and was removed within hours. Parliamentarian Hirunika Premachandra…
Good Governance and Political Will
Photograph: ISHARA S.KODIKARA/AFP/Getty Images via “Error is cowardice…” Nietzsche () The military is a microcosm of the society it comes from. Lankan society has been experiencing a ceaseless wave of violent crime…
Progress and Backsliding
Photo via by AP Photo/Eranga Jayawardena Rizana Nafeek was the first Lankan woman to be executed in Saudi Arabia. She was beheaded after a questionable trial. Now a second Lankan woman is…
The Economics of Democracy
Picture courtesy Colombo Gazette “Want to buy some illusions, Slightly used, second hand? They were lovely illusions, Reaching high, built on sand….” (Marlene Dietrich in A Foreign Affair) “After emergency laws are…