The decision by the leader of the National Unity Alliance (NUA), Minister Ferial Ashraff’s to join the Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP) in February 2010 raises serious questions for Muslim politics in…
Today, over 14 million Lankan voters get to elect a new government. They can also pick from among 7,620 candidates vying for 225 seats in the national legislature. The election campaigns for…
This general election would bring about a parliament with a clear majority. Few if at all, would dispute that. While there is also talk of a two-thirds majority in parliament for President’s…
The government wants a two thirds majority in order to replace the Constitution, it says. The UNP opposition hopes to form a coalition with other Opposition parties. It would be unhealthy for…
. The version on , published on 3 April, attributed contentious comments, outrageously derogatory towards the Tamil community, to the President in a rally held in Jaffna on 1st April. Two audio…
Ranil Wickremasinghe is the Leader of the Opposition in Sri Lanka, party leader of the United National Party (UNP) since 1994 and for the up-coming parliamentary elections, head of the United National…
I remember visiting Jaffna in 1997. Local government elections were due. Several leading political figures had been assassinated in the preceding years, some by the LTTE, others by anti-LTTE groups. In the…
“Politically speaking, tribal nationalism always insists that its own people is surrounded by a world of enemies, one against all, that a fundamental difference exists between this people and all others. It…
Does the UNP and Opposition leader Mr Ranil Wickremesinghe suffer from a compulsion towards electoral suicide or is it a condition of political sado-masochism? Only someone who is politically suicidal or sadistic…
Here we go again, or should I say here they come again, or is it here they go again? In an opening scene in the movie 300, based on Frank Miller’s freely…
One evening we boisterously debated on the conduct of the last Presidential Elections. Some blamed the President and supporters, some Ranil Wickremesinghe / Sarath Fonseka and supporters, R. Samapanthan and Somawansa Ameresinghe…
The 24th of February marked the first month anniversary of the disappearance of Prageeth Ekneligoda, the Lanka E-News journalist. Two special Police teams are said to be on the case. They have…
The sudden and allegedly suspicious death of former General Secretary of the UNP and Minister of Transport, Highways and Civil Aviation, Gamini Athukorala (in 2002) seemed to have marked the end of…
I have always argued that the deepest division in Sri Lanka is not the so-called ethnic divide but the split between supporters of democracy and supporters of totalitarianism, and the presidential elections…
I have read and heard of W. Dahanayake travelling to Colombo from Galle in the morning “Ruhunu Kumari” train with all those other ordinary passengers, getting off at the Kollupitiya station to…
