Features

The NPP’s ascent and the Opposition’s descent in Sri Lanka

Published

1 year ago

2024/11/24

By Uditha Devapriya

At parliamentary elections in Sri Lanka last week, the centre-left National People’s Power (NPP) checked all lists and squared all circles, winning not just traditional seats but also polling divisions populated by minority communities.

Speaking to the media on Friday, November 15, hours after general election results were announced in Sri Lanka, Tilvin Silva, General Secretary of the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP), the dominant member in the National People’s Power (NPP) alliance that governs the country, acknowledged that his party would commit to “developing the country, eradicating corruption, and enhancing democracy with accountability.”

Silva’s remarks came in the backdrop of one of the biggest electoral landslides in the island’s political history: the NPP, reduced to three seats at the 2020 general election, gained a two-thirds majority, obtaining 159 seats and 61 percent of the vote, last week.

The achievement is all the more remarkable considering that the NPP secured a two-thirds majority without entering agreements with other parties. It also trumped expectations by winning seats in minority populated areas like the Northern Province, which had been written off as unfeasible and unwinnable for a party associated, rightly or wrongly, with Sinhala Buddhist nationalist politics. Yet by the early hours of Friday, November 15, it was clear not only that the NPP had won these areas but that they had displaced traditional communal parties: in the Tamil-dominated Jaffna district, for instance, the alliance secured three seats, while the once powerful Ilankai Tamil Arasu Kachchi (ITAK) obtained just one.

The NPP’s victory is also remarkable given that, at presidential elections two months ago, the party won with 43 percent of the vote. This led commentators, including supporters of the previous Ranil Wickremesinghe administration and the main Opposition, the Samagi Jana Balavegaya (SJB), to brand the new president, Anura Kumara Dissanayake, as a minority leader. At a rally, former President Wickremesinghe, who was appointed as president by parliament instead of a popular vote in 2022, compared himself to Dissanayake, stating that both were elected as presidents without majorities. As a former State Minister posted on Twitter on Friday, however, the results have made “a nonsense of the claims made about the President being a minority president.”

A record of Opposition parties

If supporters of the NPP were flushed with victory, they were fairly subdued in expressing their feelings. In Sri Lanka, the announcement of election results is typically followed by firecrackers and much celebration on the streets. On Friday morning – a Poya day, a religious holiday for Buddhists across the island – there was no such revelry. As the results came in, however, it was clear not only that the NPP had won, but that Opposition parties, including both those positioning themselves as moderate (such as the SJB) and hardline (such as the Sarvajana Balaya, or SB), had lost heavily. The SJB, for instance, which obtained 54 seats at the 2020 parliamentary election, slid down to 40 this time around.

For many Sri Lankans, there were other reasons to celebrate. The NPP rose through the ranks promising both change and a cleanup of the political system. Before the general election, a number of MPs associated with the previous government opted out of the race, choosing to retire from politics or return to other professions.

Yet a few among them chose to remain and fight – and lost heavily. Former President Ranil Wickremesinghe’s coalition, the National Democratic Front, secured three seats, while the much-hyped Sarvajana Balaya, led by a powerful media mogul, failed to obtain any. The Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna (SLPP), led until 2022 by the ousted former president Gotabaya Rajapaksa, won two: Rajapaksa’s nephew and Mahinda’s son, Namal, has entered parliament through the party’s National List. He didn’t run for an elected seat Meanwhile, the People’s Struggle Alliance (PSA), a radical alliance of university students and activists which positioned itself to the left of the NPP, did not get through. As Harindra B. Dassanayake, co-founder of Muragala, a political research think-tank in Colombo, puts it, the results show that “Sri Lankans have spoken in one voice and placed their overwhelming trust in the NPP.”

Ever since September’s presidential election, a slew of analyses has attempted to ground the NPP’s victory solely if not mainly in its commitment to anti-corruption. The Western press, by and large, has echoed these sentiments, depicting the NPP as a Marxist-Leninist outfit committed to “clean” politics. However, Ramindu Perera, a political analyst who lectures at the Open University in Colombo, argues that this mischaracterises the NPP and overlooks its political and economic programme. In an article to Factum, a foreign policy think-tank based in Colombo, he frames the NPP’s victory as “the momentous rise of the populist left.” He also states that while anger at the then government did play a role in bringing the NPP to power, this alone does not explain why it could capitalise on the post-2022 radicalisation of the country more than other parties, including those on the Left.

The SJB’s underperformance

In the run-up to both presidential and parliamentary elections, claims of the NPP being hazy, idealistic, and impractical were fervently recycled by other parties. The SJB, for instance, portrayed itself as more committed to reform, contending that the NPP did not possess enough acumen to, for instance, negotiate with the International Monetary Fund. One leading MP from the SJB called the NPP “clueless” with regard to debt restructuring, and even dismissed the arguments of a group of economists critical of the IMF agreement, who visited Sri Lanka last May, as “conspiracy” theories.

It is clear that by making such claims, the SJB only admitted that it had no original, radical reforms of its own, and that it was content in pushing forward the policies of the previous government. The IMF agreement is widely reviled, especially outside of Colombo, and is associated with the Wickremesinghe administration, which brokered it. By defending the agreement and launching attacks on the NPP, the SJB managed to diminish its electoral prospects. That several SJB MPs and relatives of MPs engaged in red-baiting the NPP, making the most spurious claims, only worsened matters. While analysts supportive of the SJB’s leader, Sajith Premadasa, argued for a course-correction, the party paid little to no attention and instead focused on denigrating the NPP on the flimsiest grounds.

The SJB was also riddled by several internal tussles, which as political and foreign policy analyst Rathindra Kuruwita argues resulted in the party not being seen as a serious political player. The election results appear to have awakened the party: some have called for an internal inquiry and even a leadership contest. As a leading political commentator, Dayan Jayatilleka, puts it, if the SJB is to recover, it needs to do away with its commitment to the previous government’s economic reforms and position itself to the left. Ramindu Perera, however, contends that this is impractical, since the SJB is committed to the policies of the Wickremesinghe government regardless of the party leadership.

The NPP’s wooing of minority voters

If the NPP proved that it could both criticise policies such as the IMF agreement at election rallies while moderating its stances after winning elections – as of now, it has stated that it will not disrupt ongoing debt restructuring negotiations – it has also thumbed its nose at critics who claimed that it could not win minority votes. The NPP’s performance in the north and east, as Harindra Dassanayake observes, indicates that it has transcended “ethnicised electoral borders.” In polling divisions like Kopay, Kankasanturai, Nallur, Point Pedro, and Vaddukoddai, the NPP won with more 20 percent of the vote, pushing establishment parties from the south and the north to second or third place.

A number of reasons, including disenchantment with and fragmentation of older parties – particularly the Ilankai Tamil Arasu Kadchi (ITAK) – can help explain this trend. ITAK’s media spokesperson, M. A. Sumanthiran, who failed to secure a seat this time, attended NPP rallies and went so far as to say that his party would work with them after elections – even though the NPP declared it would not consider building coalitions with others. Nevertheless, a few days before the election, he questioned a decision by the NPP to bring in busloads of people from districts in the Northern Province to Jaffna, traditionally an ITAK stronghold, rather than going and directly talking to them. Such criticisms did not dent the NPP’s prospects among Tamils and only served to betray ITAK’s insecurities: while the latter won 33 percent in Jaffna in 2020, it obtained a little more than 11 percent this time around.

It goes without saying that the NPP’s performance with minorities – not just in the north and east but also in the Central Province, home to the country’s Hill Country Tamil population – has come as a shock to much of Colombo’s civil society circles. While we have yet to find out what drove these voters to support the NPP in large numbers, one can argue that while issues like land ownership and justice for those who died or went missing during Sri Lanka’s 30-year separatist conflict – a conflict for which the JVP, the dominant arm of the NPP, advocated a military solution – remain relevant, Tamils feel increasingly sidelined by old parties. The election of a hardliner to the leadership of the ITAK earlier this year, ITAK’s decision to field a common Tamil presidential candidate, and the later decision to enter an alliance with the SJB, reveals this only too well.

Shifting voting patterns in the north

However, it remains to be seen whether these voting patterns reflect a broader shift in Sri Lanka’s ethnic politics. Prior to the parliamentary election, JVP General Secretary Tilvin Silva accused Tamil political leaders of failing to resolve issues like land ownership and devolution of power. He added that ordinary Tamils did not prioritise such issues and that they mainly wanted “land and water for cultivation, a price for their produce, a place to sell, a school, a hospital.” Liberal commentators have critiqued Silva’s statement, noting that despite the predominance of economic problems, Tamil people still place high value on civil and political concerns such as those which Silva seemingly dismissed.

That ITAK performed less than expected even as the NPP made such statements, however, underlies a deficit in Tamil nationalist politics – one that can be seen, as political analyst Sivashanthi Sivalingam comments, in the rise of independent groups and candidates in the northern province, especially Jaffna. Indeed, many of these candidates have taken positions more hardline than either the NPP or ITAK. The NPP’s rise, in that sense, can be traced as much to disillusionment with elite politics as to a radicalisation of elite parties – as I have noted elsewhere. In the Muslim-dominated Batticaloa district in the Eastern Province, by contrast to the ITAK, and traditional parties like the Sri Lanka Muslim Congress (SLMC), fared better, though the NPP scored majorities in other districts in the region.

According to Rathindra Kuruwita, these shifting patterns show that the north has accepted the NPP as a “serious party.” While not dismissive of civil and political issues like land ownership, he contends that they underlie more concrete economic concerns, which he says parties like ITAK have failed to deliver on. “While Tamil political bigwigs have been accepted as representatives of their people by foreign embassies and governments and Colombo-based NGOs and civil society organisations, it is clear that they have been rejected by their communities.” As one observer has argued on Twitter, the lack of analysis on why the NPP won the north and east this time, versus the slew of commentaries when it failed to win either at presidential polls in September, shows that civil society in Colombo needs to think anew and afresh – especially in relation to minority politics.

Even before 2022, the NPP managed to galvanise opposition to establishment politics. In doing so, it became a key beneficiary of the post-2022 radicalisation of the country and the youth in particular. In the two months since it assumed the country’s presidency, the party has demonstrated that it can move to the centre on a number of issues. Contrary to what supporters of the former president and the SJB state, it has shown itself capable of handling matters of state as well, though it still is going through a learning curve.

More than anything, the NPP has won the trust of communities that have almost never been associated with it. As Omar Rajaratnam, a political and foreign policy analyst in Sri Lanka specialising in defence and public diplomacy outreach, states, “for the first time in 15 years, a president from a southern party was able to enter the north without facing protests and hostility from people there.” In the context of Sri Lankan politics, this is unprecedented and cannot just be put down to the party’s opposition to corruption. The key takeaway there is clear: Sri Lanka’s minorities have helped the NPP secure their biggest mandate yet. It is now up to the NPP, and its representatives, to honour that mandate.

Uditha Devapriya is a researcher and writer from Sri Lanka who currently works as the chief analyst of International Relations at Factum, an Asia-Pacific focused think-tank based in Colombo. He can be reached at uditha@factum.lk.

A version of this article was published by The Diplomat.

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Features

Rebuilding the country requires consultation

Published

14 hours ago

2026/01/13

Sahan Weerasooriya

A positive feature of the government that is emerging is its responsiveness to public opinion. The manner in which it has been responding to the furore over the Grade 6 English Reader, in which a weblink to a gay dating site was inserted, has been constructive. Government leaders have taken pains to explain the mishap and reassure everyone concerned that it was not meant to be there and would be removed. They have been meeting religious prelates, educationists and community leaders. In a context where public trust in institutions has been badly eroded over many years, such responsiveness matters. It signals that the government sees itself as accountable to society, including to parents, teachers, and those concerned about the values transmitted through the school system.

This incident also appears to have strengthened unity within the government. The attempt by some opposition politicians and gender misogynists to pin responsibility for this lapse on Prime Minister Dr Harini Amarasuriya, who is also the Minister of Education, has prompted other senior members of the government to come to her defence. This is contrary to speculation that the powerful JVP component of the government is unhappy with the prime minister. More importantly, it demonstrates an understanding within the government that individual ministers should not be scapegoated for systemic shortcomings. Effective governance depends on collective responsibility and solidarity within the leadership, especially during moments of public controversy.

The continuing important role of the prime minister in the government is evident in her meetings with international dignitaries and also in addressing the general public. Last week she chaired the inaugural meeting of the Presidential Task Force to Rebuild Sri Lanka in the aftermath of Cyclone Ditwah. The composition of the task force once again reflects the responsiveness of the government to public opinion. Unlike previous mechanisms set up by governments, which were either all male or without ethnic minority representation, this one includes both, and also includes civil society representation. Decision-making bodies in which there is diversity are more likely to command public legitimacy.

Task Force

The Presidential Task Force to Rebuild Sri Lanka overlooks eight committees to manage different aspects of the recovery, each headed by a sector minister. These committees will focus on Needs Assessment, Restoration of Public Infrastructure, Housing, Local Economies and Livelihoods, Social Infrastructure, Finance and Funding, Data and Information Systems, and Public Communication. This structure appears comprehensive and well designed. However, experience from post-disaster reconstruction in countries such as Indonesia and Sri Lanka after the 2004 tsunami suggests that institutional design alone does not guarantee success. What matters equally is how far these committees engage with those on the ground and remain open to feedback that may complicate, slow down, or even challenge initial plans.

An option that the task force might wish to consider is to develop a linkage with civil society groups with expertise in the areas that the task force is expected to work. The CSO Collective for Emergency Relief has set up several committees that could be linked to the committees supervised by the task force. Such linkages would not weaken the government’s authority but strengthen it by grounding policy in lived realities. Recent findings emphasise the idea of “co-production”, where state and society jointly shape solutions in which sustainable outcomes often emerge when communities are treated not as passive beneficiaries but as partners in problem-solving.

Cyclone Ditwah destroyed more than physical infrastructure. It also destroyed communities. Some were swallowed by landslides and floods, while many others will need to be moved from their homes as they live in areas vulnerable to future disasters. The trauma of displacement is not merely material but social and psychological. Moving communities to new locations requires careful planning. It is not simply a matter of providing people with houses. They need to be relocated to locations and in a manner that permits communities to live together and to have livelihoods. This will require consultation with those who are displaced. Post-disaster evaluations have acknowledged that relocation schemes imposed without community consent often fail, leading to abandonment of new settlements or the emergence of new forms of marginalisation. Even today, abandoned tsunami housing is to be seen in various places that were affected by the 2004 tsunami.

Malaiyaha Tamils

The large-scale reconstruction that needs to take place in parts of the country most severely affected by Cyclone Ditwah also brings an opportunity to deal with the special problems of the Malaiyaha Tamil population. These are people of recent Indian origin who were unjustly treated at the time of Independence and denied rights of citizenship such as land ownership and the vote. This has been a festering problem and a blot on the conscience of the country. The need to resettle people living in those parts of the hill country which are vulnerable to landslides is an opportunity to do justice by the Malaiyaha Tamil community. Technocratic solutions such as high-rise apartments or English-style townhouses that have or are being contemplated may be cost-effective, but may also be culturally inappropriate and socially disruptive. The task is not simply to build houses but to rebuild communities.

The resettlement of people who have lost their homes and communities requires consultation with them. In the same manner, the education reform programme, of which the textbook controversy is only a small part, too needs to be discussed with concerned stakeholders including school teachers and university faculty. Opening up for discussion does not mean giving up one’s own position or values. Rather, it means recognising that better solutions emerge when different perspectives are heard and negotiated. Consultation takes time and can be frustrating, particularly in contexts of crisis where pressure for quick results is intense. However, solutions developed with stakeholder participation are more resilient and less costly in the long run.

Rebuilding after Cyclone Ditwah, addressing historical injustices faced by the Malaiyaha Tamil community, advancing education reform, changing the electoral system to hold provincial elections without further delay and other challenges facing the government, including national reconciliation, all require dialogue across differences and patience with disagreement. Opening up for discussion is not to give up on one’s own position or values, but to listen, to learn, and to arrive at solutions that have wider acceptance. Consultation needs to be treated as an investment in sustainability and legitimacy and not as an obstacle to rapid decisionmaking. Addressing the problems together, especially engagement with affected parties and those who work with them, offers the best chance of rebuilding not only physical infrastructure but also trust between the government and people in the year ahead.

by Jehan Perera

Features

PSTA: Terrorism without terror continues

Published

14 hours ago

2026/01/13

Sahan Weerasooriya

When the government appointed a committee, led by Rienzie Arsekularatne, Senior President’s Counsel, to draft a new law to replace the Prevention of Terrorism Act (PTA), as promised by the ruling NPP, the writer, in an article published in this journal in July 2025, expressed optimism that, given Arsekularatne’s experience in criminal justice, he would be able to address issues from the perspectives of the State, criminal justice, human rights, suspects, accused, activists, and victims. The draft Protection of the State from Terrorism Act (PSTA), produced by the Committee, has been sharply criticised by individuals and organisations who expected a better outcome that aligns with modern criminal justice and human rights principles.

This article is limited to a discussion of the definition of terrorism. As the writer explained previously, the dangers of an overly broad definition go beyond conviction and increased punishment. Special laws on terrorism allow deviations from standard laws in areas such as preventive detention, arrest, administrative detention, restrictions on judicial decisions regarding bail, lengthy pre-trial detention, the use of confessions, superadded punishments, such as confiscation of property and cancellation of professional licences, banning organisations, and restrictions on publications, among others. The misuse of such laws is not uncommon. Drastic legislation, such as the PTA and emergency regulations, although intended to be used to curb intense violence and deal with emergencies, has been exploited to suppress political opposition.

International Standards

The writer’s basic premise is that, for an act to come within the definition of terrorism, it must either involve “terror” or a “state of intense or overwhelming fear” or be committed to achieve an objective of an individual or organisation that uses “terror” or a “state of intense or overwhelming fear” to realise its aims. The UN General Assembly has accepted that the threshold for a possible general offence of terrorism is the provocation of “a state of terror” (Resolution 60/43). The Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe has taken a similar view, using the phrase “to create a climate of terror.”

In his 2023 report on the implementation of the UN Global Counter-Terrorism Strategy, the Secretary-General warned that vague and overly broad definitions of terrorism in domestic law, often lacking adequate safeguards, violate the principle of legality under international human rights law. He noted that such laws lead to heavy-handed, ineffective, and counterproductive counter-terrorism practices and are frequently misused to target civil society actors and human rights defenders by labelling them as terrorists to obstruct their work.

The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) has stressed in its Handbook on Criminal Justice Responses to Terrorism that definitions of terrorist acts must use precise and unambiguous language, narrowly define punishable conduct and clearly distinguish it from non-punishable behaviour or offences subject to other penalties. The handbook was developed over several months by a team of international experts, including the writer, and was finalised at a workshop in Vienna.

Anti-Terrorism Bill, 2023

A five-member Bench of the Supreme Court that examined the Anti-Terrorism Bill, 2023, agreed with the petitioners that the definition of terrorism in the Bill was too broad and infringed Article 12(1) of the Constitution, and recommended that an exemption (“carve out”) similar to that used in New Zealand under which “the fact that a person engages in any protest, advocacy, or dissent, or engages in any strike, lockout, or other industrial action, is not, by itself, a sufficient basis for inferring that the person” committed the wrongful acts that would otherwise constitute terrorism.

While recognising the Court’s finding that the definition was too broad, the writer argued, in his previous article, that the political, administrative, and law enforcement cultures of the country concerned are crucial factors to consider. Countries such as New Zealand are well ahead of developing nations, where the risk of misuse is higher, and, therefore, definitions should be narrower, with broader and more precise exemptions. How such a “carve out” would play out in practice is uncertain.

In the Supreme Court, it was submitted that for an act to constitute an offence, under a special law on terrorism, there must be terror unleashed in the commission of the act, or it must be carried out in pursuance of the object of an organisation that uses terror to achieve its objectives. In general, only acts that aim at creating “terror” or a “state of intense or overwhelming fear” should come under the definition of terrorism. There can be terrorism-related acts without violence, for example, when a member of an extremist organisation remotely sabotages an electronic, automated or computerised system in pursuance of the organisation’s goal. But when the same act is committed by, say, a whizz-kid without such a connection, that would be illegal and should be punished, but not under a special law on terrorism. In its determination of the Bill, the Court did not address this submission.

PSTA Proposal

Proposed section 3(1) of the PSTA reads:

Any person who, intentionally or knowingly, commits any act which causes a consequence specified in subsection (2), for the purpose of-

(a) provoking a state of terror;

(b) intimidating the public or any section of the public;

(c) compelling the Government of Sri Lanka, or any other Government, or an international organisation, to do or to abstain from doing any act; or

(d) propagating war, or violating territorial integrity or infringing the sovereignty of Sri Lanka or any other sovereign country, commits the offence of terrorism.

The consequences listed in sub-section (2) include: death; hurt; hostage-taking; abduction or kidnapping; serious damage to any place of public use, any public property, any public or private transportation system or any infrastructure facility or environment; robbery, extortion or theft of public or private property; serious risk to the health and safety of the public or a section of the public; serious obstruction or damage to, or interference with, any electronic or automated or computerised system or network or cyber environment of domains assigned to, or websites registered with such domains assigned to Sri Lanka; destruction of, or serious damage to, religious or cultural property; serious obstruction or damage to, or interference with any electronic, analogue, digital or other wire-linked or wireless transmission system, including signal transmission and any other frequency-based transmission system; without lawful authority, importing, exporting, manufacturing, collecting, obtaining, supplying, trafficking, possessing or using firearms, offensive weapons, ammunition, explosives, articles or things used in the manufacture of explosives or combustible or corrosive substances and biological, chemical, electric, electronic or nuclear weapons, other nuclear explosive devices, nuclear material, radioactive substances, or radiation-emitting devices.

Under section 3(5), “any person who commits an act which constitutes an offence under the nine international treaties on terrorism, ratified by Sri Lanka, also commits the offence of terrorism.” No one would contest that.

The New Zealand “carve-out” is found in sub-section (4): “The fact that a person engages in any protest, advocacy or dissent or engages in any strike, lockout or other industrial action, is not by itself a sufficient basis for inferring that such person (a) commits or attempts, abets, conspires, or prepares to commit the act with the intention or knowledge specified in subsection (1); or (b) is intending to cause or knowingly causes an outcome specified in subsection (2).”

While the Arsekularatne Committee has proposed, including the New Zealand “carve out”, it has ignored a crucial qualification in section 5(2) of that country’s Terrorism Suppression Act, that for an act to be considered a terrorist act, it must be carried out for one or more purposes that are or include advancing “an ideological, political, or religious cause”, with the intention of either intimidating a population or coercing or forcing a government or an international organisation to do or abstain from doing any act.

When the Committee was appointed, the Human Rights Commission of Sri Lanka opined that any new offence with respect to “terrorism” should contain a specific and narrow definition of terrorism, such as the following: “Any person who by the use of force or violence unlawfully targets the civilian population or a segment of the civilian population with the intent to spread fear among such population or segment thereof in furtherance of a political, ideological, or religious cause commits the offence of terrorism”.

The writer submits that, rather than bringing in the requirement of “a political, ideological, or religious cause”, it would be prudent to qualify proposed section 3(1) by the requirement that only acts that aim at creating “terror” or a “state of intense or overwhelming fear” or are carried out to achieve a goal of an individual or organisation that employs “terror” or a “state of intense or overwhelming fear” to attain its objectives should come under the definition of terrorism. Such a threshold is recognised internationally; no “carve out” is then needed, and the concerns of the Human Rights Commission would also be addressed.

by Dr. Jayampathy Wickramaratne
President’s Counsel

Features

ROCK meets REGGAE 2026

Published

14 hours ago

2026/01/13

Sahan Weerasooriya

JAYASRI: From Vienna, Austria

We generally have in our midst the famous JAYASRI twins, Rohitha and Rohan, who are based in Austria but make it a point to entertain their fans in Sri Lanka on a regular basis.

Well, rock and reggae fans get ready for a major happening on 28th February (Oops, a special day where I’m concerned!) as the much-awaited ROCK meets REGGAE event booms into action at the Nelum Pokuna outdoor theatre.

It was seven years ago, in 2019, that the last ROCK meets REGGAE concert was held in Colombo, and then the Covid scene cropped up.

Chitral Somapala with BLACK MAJESTY

This year’s event will feature our rock star Chitral Somapala with the Australian Rock+Metal band BLACK MAJESTY, and the reggae twins Rohitha and Rohan Jayalath with the original JAYASRI – the full band, with seven members from Vienna, Austria.

According to Rohitha, the JAYASRI outfit is enthusiastically looking forward to entertaining music lovers here with their brand of music.

Their playlist for 28th February will consist of the songs they do at festivals in Europe, as well as originals, and also English and Sinhala hits, and selected covers.

Says Rohitha: “We have put up a great team, here in Sri Lanka, to give this event an international setting and maintain high standards, and this will be a great experience for our Sri Lankan music lovers … not only for Rock and Reggae fans. Yes, there will be some opening acts, and many surprises, as well.”

Rohitha, Chitral and Rohan: Big scene at ROCK meets REGGAE

Rohitha and Rohan also conveyed their love and festive blessings to everyone in Sri Lanka, stating “This Christmas was different as our country faced a catastrophic situation and, indeed, it’s a great time to help and share the real love of Jesus Christ by helping the poor, the needy and the homeless people. Let’s RISE UP as a great nation in 2026.”