Saturday 16th May, 2026

A group of undergraduates seized what remains of a mansion that belongs to the State, in Malwana, on Thursday. They represent the new Inter University Students Federation (IUSF), created by the JVP-NPP government as a counter to the original IUSF controlled by the breakaway JVP group, the Frontline Socialist Party (FSP). The protesters’ JVP links became clear from the subservient manner in which the police behaved.

It was alleged after the 2015 regime change that the Malwana Mansion belonged to Basil Rajapaksa, but that allegation could not be proved in court. Nobody claimed ownership of the house, which the court subsequently vested in the state.

The pro-government student union is desperate to outshine the original IUSF, and therefore needs media attention. Thursday’s mansion grab can therefore be considered a publicity stunt aimed at having university students believe that the government-controlled IUSF is doing something for them. The JVP may also have sought to use the incident to distract attention from the ongoing controversy over a palatial house built by a minister who claimed, during the 2024 election campaign, that he was struggling to make ends meet.

It will be interesting to see the government’s reaction to the forcible occupation of the Malwana Mansion. The protesters are demanding that the sprawling house, which was damaged by goons during the violent phase of Aragalaya in 2022 be repaired urgently and handed over to a university. Chances are that their demand will be granted so that both the government and its student wing can score political points.

On Friday, the police, who are notorious for resorting to disproportionate force to crush protests, at the drop of a hat, behaved for once. They pretended to resist the protesters’ efforts to enter the property, and what was described as a scuffle by a section of the media looked more like a friendly Kabaddi match. Unsurprisingly, the police gave in, and the students overran the house. They were there at the time of going to press. They don’t have to worry about legal action or a police crackdown, for the government supporters are above the law. They can grab others’ properties, park buses in undesignated areas on expressways and even carry out scams, causing staggering losses to the state, with total impunity.

If the CID cannot so much as trace the owner of a palatial house abandoned after a regime change, how can it be considered equal to the task of finding out the masterminds behind the Easter Sunday terror attacks? Unlike the herb-bearing mountain Hanuman brought here from the Himalayas, according to Ramayana, the Malwana Mansion was built over a period of time, and it is a shame that the police and other investigators have failed to find out its owner.

Thursday’s incident at Malwana reminds us of how a group of JVP cadres, led by a couple of NPP MPs, seized an FSP office at Yakkala last year, with the police looking the other way. The violent mob assaulted the FSP members and produced what they claimed to be the copy of a judicial order that permitted them to occupy the office. The police accepted their claim unquestioningly and went so far as to put up barricades near the disputed office to protect the JVP cadres. A case was filed, and the Gampaha Magistrate’s Court ruled that the FSP could occupy the party office.

President Anura Kumara Dissanayake never misses an opportunity to claim that his government has restored the rule of law, and nobody is above the law. He repeated this claim the other day in Matale. But his party members are free to violate the law in full view of the police. No action has been taken against the JVP cadres and MPs who committed a serious offence by seizing the property of another political party and furnishing a bogus document to mislead the police. So much for the new political culture that the JVP/NPP promised to usher in.

Friday 15th May, 2026

Politics is full of unexpected twists and turns. No sooner had newly elected Tamil Nadu Chief Minister Joseph Vijay punched above his weight to win a crucial trust vote in the Tamil Nadu Legislative Assembly to consolidate his power than he had to roll back the appointment of an astrologer as an Officer on Special Duty (OSD) due to protests. One of the first few things Vijay did after being sworn in as Chief Minister was to appoint famous astrologer Radhan Pandit Vettrivel, as an OSD. It has been reported that Vettrivel predicted Vijay’s electoral victory, and on his counsel Vijay rescheduled his oath-taking ceremony. The new Chief Minister had to give in to pressure from his political allies and rivals and make a volte-face; they questioned his wisdom of appointing an astrologer as a top aide when the need was for the new government to “foster a scientific outlook”.

Vijay should consider the removal of Vettrivel as a foretaste of what is to be expected in coalition politics, where the tail tends to wag the dog, so to speak. Perhaps, by taking up the issue of the astrologer’s appointment, and pressuring Vijay to cancel it, the parties that enabled his TVK to secure a working majority have tested their ability to leverage their support for the TVK to influence the new government.

Intense opposition to an astrologer’s appointment to a Chief Minister’s staff in India, of all places, has come as a surprise. Astrologers wield tremendous influence on people and their political leaders in this part of the world despite the advancement of science and technology. Prof. Richard Lachman of the Toronto Metropolitan University, in an article in The Conversation, reproduced on this page today, discusses how AI Chatbots are believed to manipulate us and shape our opinions. He points out that scholars have long argued that “the algorithms used by social networking sites and search engines create filter bubbles, in which we are fed well-crafted text, video and audio content that either reinforces our worldview or exerts influence towards someone else’s.” It can be considered an instance of the creature manipulating the creator. However, in South Asian politics, astrologers are far more influential than AI Chatbots. Astrologer Vettrivel’s list of clients is said to include a number of prominent Indians.

According to media reports, the late Tamil Nadu Chief Minister J. Jayalalithaa was one of Vettrivel’s clients, and they fell out over his wrong prediction that she would not be found guilty in a disproportionate assets case and imprisoned. Astrologers have taken quite a few political leaders for a ride in this country as well. Some of them even let their guard down, believing in astrological predictions only to be killed in terror attacks, and others who took astrologers’ claims seriously even advanced elections and suffered humiliating defeats. An astrologer was appointed as a director of a state bank. Strangely, there were no protests though the astrologer’s plum job was a sinecure. Time was when Sri Lankans did as governments said; the governments did as the Presidents said, and the Presidents did as astrologers said.

Why Vijay’s allies and rivals have opposed the astrologer’s appointment at issue is not clear. Do they genuinely believe that the new Tamil Nadu government should promote science at the expense of pseudoscience and occult practices involving divination, or did their protests emanate from political and personal rivalries? Whatever the reason, astrologers are facing formidable challenges in this day and age, with a resurgence of global interest in space exploration and new scientific inventions and discoveries. While astrology is focused on interpreting the positions of the celestial bodies within the solar system, astronomy is examining the Milky Way and beyond. A new scientific research has proposed a striking alternative to the long-held scientific belief that a supermassive black hole lies at the centre of the Milky Way, but according to some researchers, the mysterious object may be an ultra-dense concentration of dark matter rather than a black hole. Scientists have long argued that there could be a ninth planet in the solar system, orbiting the sun at a huge distance.

There are several key factors that pose existential challenges to astrology. Some of them are rapid advances in the field of AI, the growth of the Internet with increasing access to information and scientific knowledge, the emergence of a digitally native generation, and the spread of scientific reasoning through modern education.

As for the political brouhaha in Tamil Nadu, the question is why Vettrivel, described as a competent astrologer, could not foresee political trouble for him and his master, Vijay, over his controversial appointment and did not decline the sinecure, when it was offered, without waiting to be removed unceremoniously.

Thursday 14th May, 2026

US President Donald Trump’s recent statement at a business summit that he would leave the White House in eight or nine years is widely considered a light-hearted remark intended to provoke his critics. It has apparently had the desired impact, but it has also evoked the dreadful memories of his refusal to concede defeat after losing the 2020 presidential election, his unruly supporters’ attacks on the US Capitol, and his previous statements that he would seek a third term. The US Constitution prevents any American President from seeking a third term and is robust enough to keep the likes of Trump in check. But Trump and his fellow Republicans are doing everything in their power to win the upcoming midterm elections and have employed some controversial methods to achieve that goal.

President Trump, who is trying to redraw the world map, according to his whims and fancies, to expand the US territory, as part of his grandiose MAGA initiative, has resorted to gerrymandering (or ‘Trumpmandering’) in the name of redistricting to make his Republican Party great. On Monday, his party’s efforts to secure an undue advantage at the midterm elections by resorting to gerrymandering tactics such as “cracking” and “packing” voters in some states, received a judicial boost.

On Monday, the US Supreme Court allowed the Alabama Republicans to pursue a new electoral map that will be more favourable to them in the midterm elections due in November. The apex court ruling was reportedly split 6–3 along ideological lines; six conservative justices formed the majority while the court’s three liberal justices dissented, according to media reports. It has overturned a lower court decision and narrowed the landmark Voting Rights Act. The lower court had decided that the Republicans’ preferred electoral map intentionally discriminated against Black voters and unlawfully diluted their voting power.

The main allegation against the Republicans’ electoral map, which will now become official, thanks to the Supreme Court endorsement, is that it seeks to “pack” or cram many Black voters into a single district while “cracking” (distributing) other Black communities across several white-majority districts. Observers have pointed out that the Republican strategy will prevent the Black voters from electing candidates of their choice in a fair manner although they make up about 25% of Alabama’s population. The Republican redistricting plan is antithetical to the democratic ideals the US claims to cherish.

Alabama has been at the centre of the US racial conflict and civil rights campaigns by Blacks and therefore regarded as the cradle of defining battles of the American civil rights movement. Black Americans in Alabama were victims of racial segregation in schools and public transport, barbaric violence unleashed by the Ku Klux Klan, disenfranchisement and economic exclusion. It was the intense civil rights struggles in Alabama that brought Black rights icons such as Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King, Jr. into the national spotlight. The situation has improved significantly thanks to civil rights struggles and pathbreaking judicial decisions, but Alabama is not totally free from tensions over racial inequality, and therefore it is feared that the Supreme Court decision under discussion will weaken the Voting Rights Act to the extent of paving the way for the revival of discriminatory practices such as voter suppression and diluting the political influence of the Blacks. One can only hope that what is feared will not come to pass.

The Supreme Court endorsement of the controversial redistricting map is sure to have implications for other states. The legal victory for the Republicans’ efforts signals a wider issue that severely erodes the credibility and legitimacy of the US as a leading democracy and its campaign for promoting global democracy. How would the US have reacted if a government in the Global South had resorted to gerrymandering? It would have condemned such a move in the strongest possible terms and pontificated on the virtues of democracy and the need to respect the rights of all communities. The protection of civil rights, like charity, should begin at home.