Taxing Times
Sri Lanka’s poorest of the poor, their lives devastated by economic collapse, may face a killer blow soon: a crippling of the public health system. That GMOA is planning to paralyse the…
Politics and Governance
The President’s Month of Reckoning
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…
Making the IMF Work for Sri Lankans
The government of Sri Lanka is negotiating a large conditional loan from the IMF. A formal agreement is likely to be signed within weeks once all the main creditors provide the IMF…
Survey Reveals Dramatic Shift in Voting Patterns
The latest Sri Lanka Opinion Tracker Survey (SLOTS) carried out by the Institute for Health Policy (IHP) by the polling in January 2023 shows the NPP/JVP and SJB running neck and neck…
Decriminalisation of Same-Sex Conduct: Another Empty Promise or a Reality?
The basis and the procedure of the criminal law in Sri Lanka was derived from English law. After Sri Lanka was colonised by the British, British laws were gradually applied throughout the…
Justice for the Disappeared: Will the Next Generation Take on the Fight?
Veteran human rights campaigner Reverend Marimuthu Shakthivel’s voice is tinged with frustration when he says, “There will come a day where we will see the end of our struggle for the rights…
Deep Jungle Fever: A Symptom of a Greater Malady
The traditional conservation laws and policies of Sri Lanka are largely not working. If they were there would not be so much unrestrained destruction of wildlife and forests. These pieces of legislation…
Trade with Asia is a Pathway for Crisis-Hit Sri Lanka
South Asia and East Asia trade is growing amid global uncertainty. Alongside an IMF program, Sri Lanka should adopt pro-trade reforms to tap into this source of dynamism to tackle its terrible…
Independence Celebrated by Dependents
While the country was on a celebrative mood, I turned the pages of a dictionary that defines independence as the “Freedom to make laws or decisions without being governed or controlled by another country, organization, etc. Wikipedia, as if reading Sri Lankans’ minds,…
Battle Lines Drawn Again Over the 13th Amendment
The 13th Amendment, created 35 years ago, has once again become a flashpoint after President Ranil Wickremesinghe declared its implementation. Anti-devolution forces have begun gnashing their teeth; those who went into hiding…
Victoria Nuland Calls Chinese Bluff on Sri Lanka Debt Relief
The US Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs, Victoria Nuland, visited Sri Lanka last week and dominating her agenda with the government was the core issue of restructuring the government’s foreign…
The Country We Lost to Sinhala-Buddhism
During Black July, marauding mobs, when uncertain about the ethnic identity of a potential victim, would order him/her to recite the five precepts in Pali or the chant , a composite which…
75 Years of Free and Unfree
Independence arrived in South Asia steeped in blood, trauma and resistance. A fierce independence struggle permeated Indian consciousness; a massive civil disobedience campaign birthed the world’s largest democracy. But the partition of…
The International Dimension of Sri Lankan State Formation
Embassy This month the Sri Lankan state celebrates 75 years of independence from British colonialism. This is a good to opportunity to remind ourselves about the link between Sri Lankan state formation…
Still Looking for Independence after 75 years
The media have been replete with the pronouncements that the president of Sri Lanka was going to resolve the ethnic issue by taking some rapid action measures. However, scepticism was inevitable when…
