[Editors note: This post which first came to me through Facebook was forwarded to Dayan for comment. His response follows. The emphasis at the end of the article is mine. It is…
Was/is he an ethnonational liberation fighter, an egocentric megalomaniac or an unschooled political protagonist? Depending on the perspectives they would prefer to take, concerned future historians will struggle to pigeon hole Veluppilai…
1. Introduction In the aftermath of the defeat of the LTTE in Sri Lanka, many expected the government to put forward the promised political solution to the problems of the Tamils which…
I arrive on holiday at the Colombo airport with my family. It is I, your potato farmer. In my last post I told you about my trial, you might remember. Mine is…
Dr Dayan Jayatilleke has forcefully stated the diplomatic case for implementing the 13th Amendment which is already part of the law, in reply to Mr Malinda Seneviratne. The President has told the…
There have been three civil wars fought against the Sri Lankan state: 1971, 1986-89, 1979-2009. The Sri Lankan state prevailed in all three. These three wars settled three basic questions. The first…
By Colin Irwin, Institute of Irish Studies, University of Liverpool, www.peacepolls.org. Download PDF of this article here. Introduction With the end of the ground campaign, the death of the Tamil Tiger leadership…
Two weeks after I had interviewed Prof. Tissa Vitharana on, among other things, the full implementation of the 13th Amendment, I spoke with the Leader of the JVP Somawansa Amarasinghe for his…
I began my conversation with Prof. Tissa Vitharana, Minister of Science and Technology and Chair of the All Party Representative Committee (APRC) by asking him about the state of play in Information…
[Editors note: This is a detailed response to over 30 comments left on and read over 2,500 times to date.] Though several comments made on my article were not directly related to the…
The warning about the risk of triumphalism came days before the 65th anniversary celebration of D Day, by the leaders of the US, UK and France. In the USA there are annual…
In response to a call by the Opposition and civil society to lift the state of emergency and to repeal the Prevention of Terrorism Act (PTA) in consequence of the end of…
The long and bloody Sri Lankan war is over, and not a moment too soon. I really want to believe it. The alternative is too depressing to consider. Of course, there is…
For reasons I shall explain later I don’t think what we see at present marks the end of the Tamil struggle for independence. The popular perception may well end up in a…
Our Constitutional Council (CC) is the product of an extremely rare moment in our post-independence political history at which legislators of all hues arrived at a consensus. Unfortunately its efficacy has been…
