Image courtesy This month, the populist wave suffered two critical defeats. In France outsider-candidate Emmanuel Macron beat Marine Le Pen. In Iran, reformist president Hassan Rouhani trounced Ebrahim Raisi, a religious hardliner…
The United States and Sri Lanka both call themselves democratic societies. Like most of the rest of the world, we have had the U.S.A. held up to us as a model of…
Photograph from NBC News Donald Trump’s surprising electoral victory last week gives us Americans a lot to think about. One takeaway is particularly relevant for Sri Lanka. Over the last eight years,…
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…
Two things trouble and pain me. The Mullivaikkal “remembrance” on 18 May, of the dead and missing people due to war, whose families are still agitating to know the “truth” and want…
Photography courtesy The active politician is a creator, an initiator: but he is neither creates from nothing nor does he move in the turbid void of his own desires and dreams….
Featured image courtesy Youtube On January 8, 2015, thousands flocked to Independence Square to watch Maithripala Sirisena take his Presidential vows. With his promise to promote or ‘good governance’ the atmosphere was…
Featured image courtesy vivalanka.com I shared those words one year ago on Twitter and Facebook through a simple web meme. At the time, it was very much an aspiration, as we Lankans…
Picture courtesy the Prime Minister’s Office of Canada. I write this on the day of elections in Canada, a country excited about change after a dark period of conservative rule. I have…
Photo courtesy Article 14 The 8th parliament has been convened after a roller-coaster election. The indelible ink still stains my little finger, but my optimism about the national list wore off some…
What role (if any) did social media play in the recently concluded Parliamentary (General) Election on 17 August 2015? Many are asking this question – and coming up with different answers. That…
Photo EPA/M.A.PUSHPA KUMARA via Upon discovering I had been chosen as a short-term observer for the parliamentary election, it felt like Christmas had come early. Dallas to Doha to Colombo. And then on…
Photograph by REUTERS/Dinuka Liyanawatte, via On what criteria should we vote in elections? Should it based on the issues closest to our own, irrespective of likely consequences? Or should it be strategic, designed…
Photo via Al Jazeera Notwithstanding his rise to ultimate power as a politician in this country, Mahinda Rajapaksa retains the mindset of an uneducated peasant , in this instance from Giruwapattuwa. Despite…
Photograph courtesy Wall Street Journal The UPFA fought two consecutive elections in an imaginary country and lost them both. In that imaginary country the minority vote was of less value and weight;…
