For the first time in parliamentary history, the Central Bank of Sri Lanka has issued a dire warning to Parliament and political parties therein over the responsibility on their part to ensure financial stability and discipline. Their failure to do so would trigger public protests again, they were told. There hadn’t been such a public […]

Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev who died last Tuesday was hardly known outside the Soviet Union when JR Jayewardene made himself Sri Lanka’s President in 1978. Seven years later, on March 11, 1985, Gorbachev would be become the General Secretary of the Soviet Communist Party. He was 54 years old and was the first leader of the […]

Thursday 1st September, 2022 There is absolutely no need for aliens to take the trouble of undertaking intergalactic missions to destroy this planet. The so-called big powers vying for global dominance are already at it, and the signs are that they will succeed in their endeavour. The entire world is reeling from the war in […]

By Shamindra Ferdinando The Sri Lanka Institute of Directors (SLID) and Transparency International Sri Lanka (TISL) recently declared corruption as the root cause of Sri Lanka’s current political and economic crisis. The declaration was made in a statement titled, “SLID and TISL launch ‘Business Against Corruption’ Initiative” issued to the media after the two organisations […]

Bangkok:External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar said on Thursday that the relationship between India and China is going through an “extremely difficult phase” after what Beijing has done at the border and emphasised that the Asian Century will not happen if the two neighbours could not join hands. Jaishankar made the remarks while responding to a […]

Thursday 18th August 2022 Speculation is rife that former President Gotabaya Rajapaksa is planning to return to Sri Lanka. The question, however, is not whether he is coming, but what he is doing overseas. The anti-government protesters who engineered his ouster called upon him to ‘go home’; they did not ask him to flee the […]

” Sri Lanka cannot do without IMF’s support. Having declared its inability to service its foreign debt, Sri Lanka is struggling to reach a consensus with lenders and the IMF. Two of Sri Lanka’s major creditors, India and China, locked horns over a port visit by a Chinese ship. Sri Lanka should be wary of […]

By Uditha Devapriya Divided from the Indian subcontinent, yet also deeply connected to it, Sri Lanka has never had an opportunity of forging and shaping a foreign policy of its own. The high point of its foreign relations, under the three Bandaranaike administrations over a period of 20 years, did signal an effort, and a […]

President Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s two years in office – a period of unprecedented political turmoil, uncertainty and further deterioration of Parliament – should be thoroughly examined. In fact, the UNP, with the support of the then President Maithripala Sirisena, paved the way for Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s candidature, at the 2019 presidential election, by blocking Mahinda Rajapaksa’s path […...

The World Food Programme (WFP) is seeking donor support to reach 3.4 million people in Sri Lanka with food and nutrition assistance as nearly a quarter of Sri Lanka is facing food shortages for millions.Sri Lanka’s worst economic crisis since independence is spinning off a “serious food crisis,” says the World Food Programme Representative and […]

SL too on agenda BY S VENKAT NARAYAN Our Special Correspondent  NEW DELHI, August 6: India is maintaining a studied “loud silence” on the tensions between China and the United States and the developments in the Taiwan Straits in the wake of US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s controversial visit to Taipei last week. The decision […]

After the collapse of the Sri Lankan economy, attention has turned to the state of affairs in other South Asian countries such as Pakistan, Bhutan and Bangladesh. All three countries have either curtailed imports or are planning to do so, to salvage their fast-depleting foreign exchange reserves and avoid a Lanka-like forex crisis. While the […]

by Chandre Dharmawardana, chandre.dharma@yahoo.ca. The forex crisis had forced the government to jettison its initial set of economic managers of the Central bank who looked for home-grown solutions and opposed dealing with the International Monetary Fund (IMF). The President re-instated a set of managers whose ideas were more orthodox and aligned with the neo-liberal bankers […]

Calls for unity in a country torn apart by nationalism and monetary instability