The maiden budget by Sri Lanka’s new government reflects the limitations of austerity and the need to reinstill confidence in ideas of investment-led growth and industrialisation. On 17 February 2025,…
Independence has been a long mirage in geostrategic Ceylon/ Sri Lanka where history seems to repeat itself as tragedy and farce in equal measure. This week, the geostrategic Indian Ocean…
There will be no honeymoon for the newly minted National People’s Power (NPP) Government that got a massive people’s mandate for debt justice. The storm blowing from Washington DC across…
At Annual Meetings in Washington last month International Monetary Fund head, Kristalina Georgieva claimed Sri Lanka as a debt restructuring ‘success’ story.[i] Left unsaid by the IMF’s Managing Director was…
Data from the Election Commission of Sri Lanka showed that the National People’s Power (NPP) coalition scored a decisive victory in Sri Lanka’s first general election since defaulting on its…
Anura Kumara Dissanayake, known with convenient laziness as AKD, became Sri Lanka’s latest president after a runoff count focusing on preferential votes. The very fact that it went to a…
by Atul Chandra and Vijay Prashad On September 22, 2024, the Sri Lankan election authority announced that Anura Kumara Dissanayake of the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP)-led National People’s Power (NPP)…
In the run up to elections the post-Marxist National People’s Party (NPP), has run a high-gloss, foreign-funded, election campaign to market its policies as a ‘new dawn’. Remarkably, the NPP…
In the run up to elections President Ranil Wickramasinghe has portrayed his government’s Debt Sustainability Agreement (DSA) with the International Monetary Fund as a panacea for Sri Lanka’s globally networked…
As the Gaza war is about to enter its seventh month, the Palestinian death toll stands at well over 33,000, including over 12,000 children. Hundreds of schools and hospitals have…
Civil and political rights (CPRs), which acquired general support throughout the world in the latter half of the 20th century and have persisted into the 21st, are the legal safeguards…
Sri Lanka’s economic crisis has worsened due to IMF deals, causing social unrest, unemployment, poverty, and food insecurity, and posing significant challenges for its people. The International Monetary Fund (IMF)…
There appears to be some confusion as to the scope of functions and jurisdiction of this court. ICC, and more particularly its jurisdiction over Sri Lanka’s alleged war crimes etc.…
The 1987 13th Amendment, a conceived and delivered baby of India which is now a part of parcel of the constitution of Sri Lanka has been lying partially implemented with…
Sri Lanka continues to swing wildly between being a ‘Donor Darling’ flooded with foreign ‘aid’ and ‘advisors’ on the one hand, to a ‘bankrupt’ pariah or outcast on the other.…
Dr Nishan De Mel, is the Executive Director of the Verite Research think tank based in Colombo. Dr Nishan, an economist with extensive academic, policy and private sector experience. Nishan…
The recent visit of French President Emmanuel Macron to Sri Lanka is the first-ever visit by a French president to the island nation. However, the historical relations between the two…
Ranil Wickremesinghe who was elected by a majority members of parliament on 18 July 2022 has been dishing out various promises to suit the occasion and the audiences. A meeting…
Topped off by a curious ‘coup’ attempt in Russia, June was a fascinating month with new geopolitical economic developments, twists and turns on many fronts: As US President Biden wooed,…
President Ranil is expected to visit India from July 20 to 30 and a meeting with Prime Minister Modi is scheduled for on the 21st July 2023. So far neither…
Asia is the fastest growing and most dynamic region of the world according to a recent IMF Report; “Recovery Unabated Amid Uncertainty”.[i] Asia and the Pacific will contribute around 70…
‘The Owl of Minerva takes flight only at Dusk’ --Walter Benjamin “We have met the enemy, and he is us” -- Pogo Comics quoted in the “ISIS is US: The…
Universal Periodic Review (UPR) is a unique process with involves a review of human rights record of all UN member states. It is a process conducted under the articles of…
The economic proxy war between the rising and fading Superpowers is escalating and expanding in the “Asian 21st Century.’ This was apparent in an (un)diplomatic exchange between Chinese and United…
The 13th Amendment is the baby born from the Indo-Ceylon Accord of 1987, a brain child of India which is an international agreement as entered by two independent nations India…
It is a well-known fact that most of the past agreements written and/or oral promises including undertakings of the past Sri Lankan governments are mostly complied with breaches, partial and…
“If you don’t like the weather, just wait a minute’ runs a wry idiom in New England where the weather may change dramatically in minutes. However, these days blaming the…
73 year old Ranil Wickremasinghe after serving as a prime minister for five years achieved his ambition of becoming the President of Sri Lanka on 21 of July 2022 as…
The recent statements of President Ranil Wickramasinghe and Foreign Minister Ali Sabry expose and confirm the financial, political, and economic bankruptcy of Sri Lanka even admitted by the leaders and…
The Scream by Edvard Munch ‘History repeats itself, first as tragedy, second as farce” Karl Marx, The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte ‘Make the Economy Scream’ were President Nixon’s instructions…
UNHRC in its 51st session passed a Resolution against Sri Lanka with 20 countries supporting and 7 countries opposing while other 20 countries abstained from voting. This striking Resolution has vindicated…
Over the past decade, the Sri Lankan government has borrowed vast sums of money from foreign lenders to fund public services. Sri Lanka had to fall back on its foreign…
Eelam Tamils in Sri Lanka and Tamils all over the world are very deeply concerned in relation to Sri Lanka’s past human rights violations including war crimes and the very…
The Sri Lankan government’s failure to establish an accountability mechanism for violations of International law means that referral to the International Criminal Court or the creation of another international mechanism…
Buenos Aires was rocked again last week by massive protests against austerity measures imposed by the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Structural reforms with austerity have resulted in soaring inflation, currency…
The alarm bells had been ringing for some time in Sri Lanka. The island nation is strategically located at the center of the Indian Ocean on the busiest trade and…
[This article is based on the discussions with activists of the Janatha Aragalaya and concerned Sri Lankan citizens. It is a humble contribution towards ongoing debates within the movement. As…
The massive debt crisis has affected the lives of nearly all classes in the society, specially the poor and middle, in Sri Lanka is not new. The loans given lead…
Sri Lankans had been protesting for months over the country's economic crisis that has led to a severe shortage of many essential imported items like medicines, fuel and cooking gas.…
Sri Lanka’s unprecedented economic and political crisis has created new kinds of solidarities among citizens, as they try and help each other ride through fuel and food shortages in the…
To quote Ahilan Kadirgamar, a political economist at the University of Jaffna, Sri Lanka, the uprising is “a revolt and not yet a revolution, because it doesn’t want to change…
People following the 2022 Sri Lanka political-economy crisis will be able to decipher that the two are closely linked. Political eruptions in Sri Lanka since April have usually followed intense…
Sri Lanka's former president Gotabaya Rajapaksa is expected to return to the country from Singapore, a Sri Lankan lawmaker says. Cabinet spokesperson Bandula Gunawardena told reporters on Tuesday that G…
Sri Lankan Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe won the presidential elections conducted by the Parliament on Thursday after Gotabaya Rajapaksa fled abroad amidst intense agitation over the economic crisis. He will…
(This article is based on a talk delivered at the online session organised by International Solidarity with the People’s Movement in Sri Lanka on a 23.07.2022) The people’s movement in…
“But to watch cricket, there has to be a country left for us to watch it in, no?” A fan at the Galle Test Match that ended with an innings…
The Coalition for Economic Democracy in Sri Lanka (CEDSL) is a group of concerned academics, activists, agricultural, fisheries and industrial workers, students, business persons, trade unionists, and professionals based ‘in…
Sri Lanka was braced for more unrest after newly appointed president Ranil Wickremesinghe vowed to crack down on the protests that toppled his predecessor, condemning them as “against the law”.…
Gotabaya’s election as the President of Sri Lanka in December 2019 is unique as it exposes and endorses the underlying political ills of Sri Lanka namely racism, communalism, majoritarianism and…
The mighty nationalist leaders from the Rajapaksa family in Sri Lanka looked helpless and cowardly when he was humiliated at the airport as he tried to flee abroad to protect…
Sri Lankan protesters have vowed to continue their struggle for a complete change of the system by abolishing the presidency, as the popular uprising that ousted Gotabaya Rajapaksa as president…
Gotabaya Rajapaksa is a Sri Lankan politician and former military officer who served as the eighth President of Sri Lanka from 2019 until his resignation on 14 July 2022. Gotabaya…
The fall and ignominious retreat of Sri Lanka’s Gotabaya Rajapaksa has enlivened one distinct possibility. Having formally resigned as Sri Lankan President, a point made via email from Singapore, those…
Most of the myths regarding the history of Sri Lanka originate from the Mahavamsa. And so, Sinhalese Buddhist nationalists maintain that they are the Buddha's selected people, and that the…
Sri Lanka politicians are trying to settle popular unrest as parliament plans to meet tomorrow after the official resignation of President Gotabaya Rajapaksa was made today. Speaker Mahinda Yapa Abeywardena…
On Thursday, the Sri Lanka government announced a curfew in the capital Colombo and its suburbs that would run until 5am on Friday. To stop demonstrators from accessing the Parliament on…
Sri Lanka’s opposition parties are trying to cobble together an all-party government and pick candidates who can take over after President Gotabaya Rajapaksa and Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe agreed to…
Sri Lanka’s opposition political parties are trying to agree on a new government a day after the country’s president and prime minister offered to resign in the country’s most chaotic day in…
For a country experiencing its worst economic crisis since gaining independence in 1948, the picture of a touring team pampered and fussed over might cause consternation. But the Australian cricket…
The Galle Face protests which commenced on April 9th 2022 cannot be described as a mass uprising by the majority of the Sri Lankan population representing all sections of the…
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