The (Geo)politics of a Bailout
China has backed Sri Lanka’s debt plan. To be more specific, as Bloomberg reported, it has “given assurances that it will support Sri Lanka’s debt restructuring.” This is a significant breakthrough and…
China has backed Sri Lanka’s debt plan. To be more specific, as Bloomberg reported, it has “given assurances that it will support Sri Lanka’s debt restructuring.” This is a significant breakthrough and…
The last week of February has turned out to be the busiest for President Ranil Wickremesinghe. On Tuesday he defended the government’s immensely unpopular tax policy at a tax forum organised by…
Prasanna Vithanage’s Gaadi takes place in the last year of the Kandyan Kingdom. It begins with an encounter between Ehelepola Adigar and John D’Oyly and moves on to scenes of the two…
Sri Lanka celebrates its 75th independence day today. The event has provoked much debate and discussion. Coming on top of the worst financial crisis in the country’s post-independence history, it coincides with…
The petition from 182 economists and development experts calling for the cancellation of Sri Lanka’s sovereign debt has provoked rather interesting discussions in Sri Lanka and elsewhere. W. A. Wijewardena calls these…
My Lunches with Orson is the title of a collection of interviews that Henry Jaglom, a US avant-garde filmmaker, did with Orson Welles over a period of two years (1983-1985). It is…
Speaking in Parliament in 1996, Anura Bandaranaike dwelt on the legacy of his father and mother. He spoke of how the world had viewed Sri Lanka in their time and how it…
A recent World Food Programme (WFP) report underlines the magnitude of the food crisis in Sri Lanka. The report shows that 36% of the country’s households are effectively food insecure while 76%…
When I look back at 2022, what strikes me more than anything else is how agonisingly slowly it passed. The early days of COVID-19 had been slow enough. But 2022 broke that…
The Mahanayakes of Sri Lanka’s three Buddhist monastic orders – Siam, Amarapura, and Ramanya – have written a letter to President Ranil Wickremesinghe. They have requested concessions on the recent electricity tariff…
Colombo was noticeably subdued when news of Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s resignation letter reaching the speaker of the parliament came out; perhaps because people were unable to buy them, there were no firecrackers. In…
Lenin once remarked that there are decades when nothing happens and weeks when decades happen. Much more than a decade passed last week at Galle Face. Beginning with Mahinda Rajapaksa’s desperate and…
Sri Lanka will enter into negotiations with the International Monetary Fund next week. Led by Ali Sabry, the country’s Finance Minister, and Nandalal Weerasinghe, the Governor of the Central Bank, the delegation…
I’d like to say this is the beginning of the end but it’s not. The latest spate of protests to hit the country has now been going on for more than a…
Much more lucid than in his disastrous last address to the nation, President Gotabaya Rajapaksa was noticeably sombre and sober on Wednesday night. Perhaps mindful of the critiques that followed his earlier…