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Killing Tuskers and Culling Hopes
“I just passed a polling place and it’s crowded. There’s no parking… There’s an electricity. It’s exciting.”[i] That was American activist Lecia Brooks (of the Southern Poverty Law Centre), referring to the…
“I just passed a polling place and it’s crowded. There’s no parking… There’s an electricity. It’s exciting.”[i] That was American activist Lecia Brooks (of the Southern Poverty Law Centre), referring to the…
Discussions around corruption and its prevalence often focus on the highest echelons of power. In Sri Lanka, irregularities around the Central Bank bond issue continue to make the news – with the President most…
On November 8 President Maithripala Sirisena called the irregularities around the Central Bank bond issue a (a huge destruction) and said that those behind it must accept responsibility. He was speaking at…
On the day of my exam, I went to my driving school’s office at around 6.30 am. I discovered through conversation with others in the group that only I had not paid…
I ordered, he says, as if those two words would suffice. Perhaps they do, in his eyes. ‘I’m the state,’ Louis XIV declared, according to Carlyle. Mahinda Rajapaksa sees himself as the…
Recent events have brought the issue of corruption into the spotlight. When you open a daily newspaper, chances are there will be four or five cases involving corruption within its pages, reported…
On August 28th, Groundviews hosted a Twitter chat themed around corruption, using the hashtag #anticorruptlka. Participants included Executive Director of Transparency International, Asoka Obeysekere, Research Director at Verité Research, Gehan Gunatilleke, Chilaw…
Emma Lazarus’ poem, , became news recently when a poetry website carried it in response to Donald Trump’s immigration policy, and Mr. Trump responded with a characteristic twitter-barrage. Lazarus’ poem, written to…
Photo courtesy Getty Images, via As the media predicted last week, alluding to an off-guard comment made by a junior member of the Attorney-General’s legal team of the Presidential Commission of Inquiry…
This is the eighth in a series of video interviews forecasting what 2017 will have in store across different sectors. Attorney-at-law, Gomin Dayasri speaks about developments in the legal sector over the…
The Right to Information Act officially came into effect on February 3, 2017. We compiled a short video on the process involved in filing a request for information. The information was compiled…
Featured image courtesy Al Jazeera Good Governance is a key challenge Sri Lanka has faced and spectacularly failed to deliver for most of its modern history. This challenge is not only about…
Last week, on October 12, President Maithripala Sirisena lashed out at independent commissions, in a speech that drew condemnation from many quarters. This week, the Director General of the Commission to Investigate…
Featured image courtesy Sri Lanka Mirror The issue of the appointment of Dr. Indrajit Coomaraswamy as the Governor of the Central Bank is a defining one. It is an issue on which…
A large tranche of documents was released on 9 May 2016 by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) around “Panama Papers”, a fraction from a trove of more than 11.5 million leaked…