Features
Flood Relief Should Help Victims, Not Bureaucracies
Sri Lanka has the capacity to respond to disaster. Donors should let it.
When floods swept through Sri Lanka in late November and early December, the need for swift assistance was undeniable. Lives were disrupted, livelihoods destroyed, and communities left exposed. In moments like these, speed matters. Judgment does too.
That is why the announcement on December 11 by Marc-André Franche, the United Nations resident coordinator in Sri Lanka, deserves closer attention. Mr. Franche said the U.N. was seeking to mobilize $35 million from donors, to be channeled through U.N. agencies for flood relief. About $9.5 million, he noted, had already been pledged, including by the European Union, Switzerland, Britain and the United States.
No one disputes that Sri Lanka needs help. The question is why the United Nations is setting up a parallel funding channel at all, when the Sri Lankan government has already activated its Disaster Management Fund, administered through national disaster authorities, and is actively seeking donor contributions for it.
U.N. appeals typically follow disasters when national institutions lack the capacity to deliver aid, when markets have collapsed, when donors distrust state systems, or when conflict makes neutrality essential. That logic held after the 2004 tsunami when large stretches of Sri Lanka’s coastline were under the control of the LTTE and again during the 2022 economic crisis when the government had reached an all-time low in terms of public distrust. It is much less obvious that any of those conditions apply today.
The United Nations, of course, has an argument of its own. Its agencies can move quickly in the first days of a crisis, drawing on pre-positioned stocks, standing contracts and surge staff. Many Western donors prefer routing funds through the U.N., pointing to fiduciary safeguards, standardized procurement rules and the political insulation that multilateral channels provide. In fragile or conflict-affected settings, neutrality can be indispensable.
In Sri Lanka’s current context, however, those arguments carry less weight. The government retains full territorial control. Markets are functioning. Public financial-management systems have undergone internationally validated reforms. Speed matters most in the first days of a disaster, precisely the window for which the U.N.’s global emergency fund, CERF, is designed. Beyond that initial phase, the rationale for diverting large sums into parallel bureaucratic systems weakens considerably. The prime minister announced this week that Sri Lanka has now moved into the next phase of recovery following the initial rescue and relief operations, making it all the more important that a parallel system not be entrenched. Coordination does not require financial control, and fiduciary risk alone cannot justify structural inefficiency where capable national systems already exist.
This debate is not confined to humanitarian aid. Earlier this year, Sri Lanka’s foreign minister rejected calls for expanded investigations by the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, arguing that externally driven accountability mechanisms risk undermining domestic processes and deepening political polarization. The government has maintained that questions of accountability and reconciliation should be addressed through Sri Lanka’s own legal and institutional frameworks. Whether one agrees or disagrees, the position reflects a consistent assertion by the state: parallel international mechanisms are not a substitute for functioning national systems. That logic applies as much to disaster response as it does to human rights oversight.
The government also maintains, credibly, that it has the administrative capacity, market access and logistical reach to manage emergency relief. After years of painful reform following the economic crisis, transparency in public finance has become a point of national pride. That assessment is not based on government assertion alone. In the wake of Sri Lanka’s economic crisis, both the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank have publicly acknowledged improvements in the country’s public financial management, transparency and fiscal oversight.
As part of the IMF-supported reform program, Sri Lanka has strengthened budget reporting, procurement controls and audit functions, while the World Bank has expanded technical assistance aimed at modernizing treasury systems, improving cash management and increasing the transparency of public expenditure. These reforms are incomplete and fragile, but they represent a material shift from the post-tsunami and post-economic crises period and are precisely the kinds of national systems donors say they want to support rather than bypass.
Moreover, there is no shortage of food or basic goods. What cannot be sourced locally can be procured quickly from neighboring countries. Logistically, too, U.N. agencies rely heavily on government departments, local NGOs and the private sector to deliver assistance. They no longer maintain the extensive field operations they once did during the civil war and the tsunami, which further weakens the argument that international organizations are best placed to manage large-scale delivery.
At its core, this debate is not really about the United Nations at all. It is about how donors and international organizations can best help countries like Sri Lanka recover from crises such as Ditwah. Notably, it is almost exclusively Western donors, as announced by the United Nations, that have chosen to channel assistance through this parallel mechanism, alongside a contribution announced by Japan a few days later. By contrast, countries from the Global South and other non-Western states — including India, China, Pakistan, Nepal, the Maldives, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Russia and Myanmar — have provided support largely through state-led mechanisms. The contrast is striking. It raises legitimate questions about why donor approaches diverge so sharply, and whether such differences risk blurring the lines between humanitarian assistance and broader geopolitical considerations, including perceptions of neutrality.
So why route scarce donor dollars through the U.N. and other large international organizations?
One explanation lies in the U.N.’s own financial distress. Its global budget is under unprecedented strain, weakened by chronic nonpayment from major contributors. In that environment, disasters also become opportunities to mobilize resources for the U.N. system itself, some of which eventually reach victims after passing through multiple institutional layers. Those layers come at a cost.
Donors, too, face incentives that discourage questioning the status quo. Aid ministries operate within rigid annual budget cycles and are under pressure to commit and disburse funds within a given fiscal year. Channeling money through large multilateral agencies offers a convenient solution: funds move quickly off national balance sheets, fiduciary responsibility is formally transferred, and donor governments can report internationally that they are supporting recognized humanitarian institutions. This dynamic helps explain why donor behavior often clusters around multilateral channels, particularly among Western governments operating within similar fiscal and political constraints, even when alternative models may offer greater value for money.
A major sector-wide analysis by Humanitarian Outcomes, linked to ALNAP, found that humanitarian financing dominated by large multilateral agencies is often slow and administratively heavy, particularly in the early days of a crisis. High transaction costs, including reporting requirements, compliance procedures and repeated donor processes, reduce the share of funds that reach people when they need them most.
Officially, U.N. agencies recover between seven and 13 percent of funds as “programme support costs,” money retained at headquarters for back-office functions. These funds never reach country offices. Beyond this, agencies charge the full cost of what they define as direct project expenses to donor-funded budgets. These include international and national staff salaries, consultants, vehicles, security, office rent, information technology, monitoring and evaluation, and donor-specific reporting.
Independent research by Development Initiatives and repeated observations by the U.N. Board of Auditors show that once these administrative and management costs are included, non-beneficiary expenditures can consume more than 40 percent of project budgets. In practical terms, a dollar routed through multilateral humanitarian channels may deliver less than fifty cents of tangible assistance on the ground.
(By contrast, providing direct cash assistance to victims of natural disasters typically costs less than five percent in administrative overhead and has been shown globally to be among the most effective and dignified forms of aid when local markets are functioning.)
Sri Lanka has seen this before.
After the 2004 tsunami, the U.N. system raised an unprecedented $120–140 million for Sri Lanka across agencies including UNICEF, the World Food Program, UNDP, UNHCR, WHO and FAO. Yet independent evaluations found that a year later, less than half of these funds had been disbursed — and “disbursed” often meant transferred to another intermediary rather than translated into houses, boats or livelihoods.
A senior U.N. official remarked at the time that “we have built many houses in our financial systems, but not a single one on the ground.”
In one telling episode, staff were encouraged to boost “delivery” figures by purchasing vehicles deemed necessary for field operations. Each U.N.-specification Land Cruiser cost roughly $40,000. At the government’s post-tsunami grant rate in 2005, that sum could have rebuilt more than 16 fully destroyed houses, housing roughly 80 people.
And it is not just a legacy of the tsunami years.
Recent experience offers a cautionary example. In June 2022, the United Nations launched a Humanitarian Needs and Priorities Plan for Sri Lanka, appealing for $149.7 million to assist 3.4 million vulnerable people across sectors including food, health and protection. The U.N.’s own Financial Tracking Service records that $182.4 million in humanitarian assistance flowed to Sri Lanka that year. Yet there is not a single publicly available document that consolidates how this money was actually spent, let alone one that distinguishes administrative and program costs from aid delivered on the ground.
The U.N.’s Sri Lanka Annual Results Reports for 2022 and 2023 avoid financial reporting altogether, focusing instead on broad, self-reported “results” that are difficult to verify. As of December 2025, the Annual Results Report for 2024 has still not been made public, an omission that would be unacceptable in most other institutional settings.
To be fair, the distrust that followed the tsunami and resurfaced during the 2022 economic crisis did not emerge in a vacuum. Weak governance, corruption scandals and the politicization of aid eroded donor confidence and justified heightened scrutiny at the time. But the lesson should not be that parallel systems are a permanent substitute for national ones. It should be that rebuilding trust requires transparency, independent oversight and accountability anchored in domestic institutions, not bypassing them indefinitely.
Sri Lanka’s experience is not unique. Evaluations from Indonesia after the Sulawesi earthquake, the Philippines after Typhoon Haiyan and India following the Kerala floods point to a similar conclusion: where capable state systems exist, parallel humanitarian financing often delays the transition from response to recovery rather than accelerating it.
The international humanitarian system, including U.N. agencies, also suffers from predictable incentive problems. Success is measured by money raised and money spent, not by recovery speed, resilience built or local capacity strengthened. Under annual appropriations and performance metrics focused on throughput, institutions optimize for what they are measured on. The result is a system that excels at mobilization and spending but struggles with efficiency and long-term impact.
There is one partial exception. The U.N. Central Emergency Response Fund, or CERF, is designed to provide rapid liquidity in the earliest days of a crisis. In early December, Sri Lanka received $4.5 million from CERF. Even here, transparency matters. Much of this funding replenishes pre-positioned stocks already drawn down, reimbursing existing expenditures rather than creating net new capacity. Public visibility into how those stocks are valued and how CERF disbursements align with national recovery plans remains limited.
None of this is an argument for excluding the U.N. altogether. Its technical expertise in water and sanitation, logistics, disease surveillance, and the protection of women and children can be invaluable. But that expertise is most effective when embedded within government systems, supporting ministries and local administrations, and focused on building durable national capacity rather than running parallel delivery structures.
Sri Lanka has learned hard lessons from past experiments. After the tsunami, $10 million in donor funds administered through UNDP were used to establish a Donor Assistance Database intended to track aid flows. It never delivered on its promise. Housed in an ad hoc agency that no longer exists, it disappeared along with the institution and the money.
A more constructive model is within reach. Donors could capitalize the Disaster Management Fund directly, subject to independent audits, real-time public dashboards and agreed performance benchmarks. The U.N. could provide embedded technical advisers and act as a third-party monitor, stepping in operationally only if clearly defined capacity thresholds fail.
Such a model would also clarify institutional roles. The Ministry of Finance would retain responsibility for budget execution, procurement and financial reporting. The Central Bank could support real-time monitoring of fund flows, liquidity management and payment systems, ensuring both speed and traceability. Parliamentary oversight, exercised through existing committees, would provide an additional layer of accountability, reviewing expenditures, audit findings and performance against agreed benchmarks. Together, these institutions offer a framework for transparency and control that donors routinely demand, without outsourcing financial authority to parallel external structures.
This is not to suggest that the government can or should act alone. Effective disaster response depends on a wide ecosystem that includes local NGOs, community-based organizations, the Sri Lankan private sector and international partners. Each brings capabilities the state does not always possess, from last-mile delivery and social trust to logistics, technology and specialized expertise. But direct intervention by international actors should be grounded in a clear, justifiable and verifiable comparative advantage, and accompanied by accountability mechanisms that are transparent, measurable and aligned with national systems. Absent that test, parallel intervention risks weakening, rather than strengthening, the very capacities disasters expose.
If the goal is genuine national ownership, stronger domestic institutions and cost-effective, sustainable results that reach those most affected, then the current model for delivering and accounting for aid deserves closer scrutiny. Rethinking that model is not optional; it is essential. The choice is not between national systems and international expertise. It is between financing delivery and financing bureaucracy.
The U.N. works in Sri Lanka at the government’s invitation. The country pays assessed contributions, provides prime land in Colombo rent-free, and covers utilities and services. That gives Sri Lankans not just the right, but the obligation, to ask hard questions.
If the U.N. secretary-general has pledged “all possible assistance,” as reported, the most constructive step now would be a simple one: support the Disaster Management Fund rather than compete with it.
As José Ramos-Horta, the Nobel Peace Prize–winning president of Timor-Leste, once observed of the vast U.N. administration that governed his country after independence, billions were spent “on Timor-Leste, but not in Timor-Leste.”
Sri Lanka, having learned once at great cost, should not have to learn that lesson again.
by a special correspondent
by Jehan Perera
The NPP government is going after powerful figures from the past and present who have engaged in corruption, fraud and criminal activity in a way that no previous government in Sri Lanka has done. Former ministers, politicians and senior state officials are among those facing investigations and legal proceedings. The government has placed before Parliament a document listing 50 cases involving corruption, fraud and other crimes. These include not only financial offences but also cases relating to the Easter Sunday attacks, the killings of Lasantha Wickrematunge and Wasim Thajudeen, the disappearance of Prageeth Ekneligoda and attacks on journalists Keith Noyahr and Upali Tennakoon.
The significance of this effort is that it can demonstrate that nobody is above the law, regardless of political connections or social standing, which will help restore public confidence in institutions that have long been distrusted. It could also recover public resources, improve the investment climate and strengthen the foundations for a more prosperous and just Sri Lanka. When criticised for focusing on the past and not the present, the government position is that these investigations were initiated under earlier governments, particularly between 2015 and 2019, and that it is now allowing investigators to proceed to deal with the backlog without political interference.
But there is an aspect of the government’s approach that is less justifiable. While pursuing past wrongdoing by powerful individuals, it is also advancing a triumvirate of draft laws that could give the state sweeping powers over citizens, organisations and dissent in the present and future. The draft Prevention of Terrorism legislation, the Prevention of Organised Crimes Bill and the NGO Registration and Supervision Bill raise serious questions about the over-centralisation of power. Each of these laws strengthens the powers of the state while weakening the rights and safeguards that protect people from their misuse and thus questions the basic rights of people in democracy where ‘the power of the people is vested in the government’. This is a recipe for future misrule rather than the rule of law. As the well-known saying goes, power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.
Proposed Laws
The real test of system change, for which the government obtained an overwhelming mandate, requires not only a government willing to hold others accountable, but one prepared to subject itself to the same principles of legality, transparency and restraint. The three proposed laws that are particularly important in this regard are the Protection of the State from Terrorism Bill, the Prevention of Organised Crimes Bill and the NGO Registration and Supervision Bill. Each of these draft laws has been presented as serving a legitimate purpose. Preventing terrorism, combating organised crime and ensuring that NGOs do not facilitate money laundering or terrorist financing are proper responsibilities of the state. Sri Lanka has international obligations in these areas, and no responsible government can disregard them. However, the existence of a legitimate objective does not justify every means adopted to achieve it.
The proposed Protection of the State from Terrorism Bill illustrates the problem. Although its definition of terrorism draws on a model developed by a former United Nations Special Rapporteur, the Human Rights Commission of Sri Lanka has warned that the definition of terrorism extends beyond the model and could bring legitimate political protest, trade union action and civil disobedience within the scope of counter-terrorism legislation. Its concerns also include prolonged detention, inadequate judicial oversight and restrictions on access to legal counsel. These are objections that go to the heart of the relationship between the citizen and the state. The government cannot credibly promise to protect democratic freedoms while creating powers that could be used to restrict them. It is necessary for the government to reassess the draft through transparent consultation and revise provisions that could criminalise legitimate dissent.
The Prevention of Organised Crimes Bill raises similar concerns. It is presented as giving effect to the United Nations Convention against Transnational Organised Crime, which Sri Lanka ratified in 2006. The Centre for Policy Alternatives (CPA) has argued that the convention does not require many of the bill’s provisions. The proposed law extends to a broad range of offences, permits detention orders lasting up to a year, makes confessions to police admissible for purposes of legal evidence, and introduces extensive surveillance powers. A law intended to dismantle criminal networks should not create a parallel system of exceptional powers that could be applied far beyond organised crime. Nor should safeguards developed through years of experience with abuses under the Prevention of Terrorism Act be weakened through legislation bearing a different name. The government should review whether or not existing laws could be used effectively to control these crimes or whether each exceptional power is necessary.
Civil Society
The proposed NGO Registration and Supervision Bill presents another test of the government’s intentions. The government may reasonably seek transparency in the finances of organisations receiving public or foreign funds, including measures to prevent money laundering and terrorist financing. It seeks to justify its overreach on the grounds of meeting the internationally mandated requirements of the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) for the Asia-Pacific region. But these objectives do not justify placing civil society and NGOs under excessive administrative control when even the FATF ranks them as low to medium risks. The draft bill would require registration and renewal, impose extensive obligations on organisations and empower authorities to suspend or deregister them on broadly framed grounds. It is important to redraft provisions that confer excessive discretion over registration, renewal, suspension and deregistration of NGOs.
Among the concerns raised by United Nations human rights special rapporteurs with regard to the draft NGO law are provisions requiring organisations to align with government policies and restrictions that could affect advocacy, dissent and freedom of association. The implications extend well beyond organisations that engage directly with the government. Community groups, human rights organisations, independent researchers and organisations working on reconciliation or accountability could find their activities constrained by uncertainty over how these provisions might be interpreted. Organisations that criticise government policies are not thereby working against the country. Their freedom to do so is part of what distinguishes a democracy from a system in which the government determines which opinions and activities are acceptable.
The government has generated considerable public goodwill through its pursuit of corruption and criminality. It should not assume that this goodwill gives it an unlimited mandate to strengthen the coercive powers of the state. The NPP knows from its own history that governments can treat dissent as a threat and use the machinery of the state against their opponents. There is still time to correct the drafts through transparent public consultation, narrow definitions of offences, meaningful judicial control over detention and surveillance, and effective remedies against arbitrary decisions. A government that pursues corruption while weakening safeguards against state abuse risks undermining its own achievements. Besides bringing to light the abuse of power by previous governments, the NPP government needs to build a system in which no future government can abuse power in the belief they can get away with it.
By Ramya Kumar
According to the Quality Assurance Council (QAC) of the University Grants Commission (UGC), quality assurance (QA) refers to “the means (i.e. the policies, attitudes, actions, procedures, etc.), by which an institution can guarantee with confidence and certainty, that the standards and quality of its educational provision are being maintained and enhanced”.
An expansive structure has been in place since 2005 to govern and implement QA processes within the state university system. The QAC is the focal point at the UGC that implements external reviews of state universities and institutes. Each university has its own Centre for Quality Assurance (CQA) tasked with performing QA in line with QAC directives. Faculties, in turn, have Internal Quality Assurance Cells (IQAC) performing their own QA; they are answerable to the CQA.
The big question is whether this all-encompassing top-down QA system, that in many ways undermines the internal dynamics of university governance, actually supports universities to enhance the quality of education. This article highlights some concerns.
Top-down check-box activities
The QAC conducts external reviews of universities and degree programmes. A review team appointed by the UGC (who may or may not have experience in the institution/programme in question) examines the self-evaluation report submitted by the said institution/programme. The team then conducts a site visit to verify the claims made in the university’s self-evaluation report, clarify issues identified during the desk review, and examine how QA procedures operate in practice. The team holds meetings with the university administration, members of the Council and Senate, Deans, Heads of Departments, academic and non-academic staff, students, and others. Following the visit, a draft report is submitted to the relevant institution/programme for comment before final publication. The reviewed institution/programme then prepares and publishes an action plan addressing the recommendations, with subsequent monitoring of progress.
There are some worthy QA initiatives under implementation, such as improving facilities for students with disabilities and strengthening mechanisms to address sexual- and gender-based violence. However, for the most part, QA activities have little to do with improving the quality of education. They are mostly preoccupied with monitoring faculty and department websites, digital transformation, student feedback, subject evaluation, course evaluation, peer evaluation, and, more recently, staff appraisal. These activities, which consume an inordinate amount of time—so precious at understaffed universities—have become check-box activities completed to generate evidence for the next review. Below is an excerpt of a conversation between two academics (1 and 2) that conveys how QA plays out at universities (reproduced with permission).
1: … .it’s like social media you know, like posting things on Facebook or twitter or Instagram. When people do a lot of social media, everything they do, they do thinking, “okay I’m going to post it in this way… this I have to put on my Instagram.” QA is a little like that… everything is considered in light of, “ah we can use this for the review, as evidence… for example very recently we were encouraged to have all the things that we do in our department in the faculty newsletter so then they can put in the review. Every little thing has to be noted down….
2: And with pictures and all…
1: At the very least it has to be written so that you have written evidence .. you can’t be doing something for the sake of doing something or because it is good for the department … and sometimes people tell me “oh yea that’s a good idea we can fit that under this x, y section of the review..”
2: Yea, and nobody really thinks about the actual outcome… whether it’s actually helping anyone..
1: I also find that a lot of the words that we used in different ways have now been co-opted to the QA discourse ..including quality.. I can’t actually say what I want as an “outcome”, for example, that the outcome of this workshop is that my students “think about” … then I am told “ah but no that’s not one of the Bloom’s taxonomy words, “think about”.…
2: And the worst part is these medical and agriculture people, these types of people go around spreading it like some kind of gospel!
1: Yea, this cookie cutter way of doing things, they think is the height of innovativeness or creativity, when actually it is so mundane … for me the most awful thing about it is like some fungus of mundanity has taken over through QA reviews.
2: yea, when you say QA, my mind closes off immediately and I stop listening…
Auditing everything but power
QA leaves out crucial aspects of university governance. For instance, there is no review or assessment of the “quality” of university administrations under Criterion 1 or the integrity of procedures governing the promotion of academic staff under Criterion 6 of the institutional reviews.
The majority in the Council—the university’s executive and governing body, which is responsible for selecting the Vice-Chancellor (VC)—are appointed in ad hoc fashion. Apart from the Ex-Officio members in the Council (VC, Deans, etc.), and the two members elected by the Senate, the remainder are appointed by the UGC with no formal consultation or vetting procedure. The VC appointment process described in UGC Circular No. 03/2023 exemplifies how an ostensibly technical process can become entangled in political sycophancy. The Registrar invites applications for the position of VC through advertisement. Applicants must submit a curriculum vitae, a statement of vision for the university and supporting documents. The University Council appoints a three-member Search Committee of senior academics to encourage “eminent persons” to apply, while the UGC appoints a former VC from another university to “observe” the selection process.
A Special Meeting of the University Council is convened. Candidates are interviewed and must make a presentation to the Council Members, followed by questions. Each Council member “gives marks” for seven prescribed criteria: strategic focus (20%), effective leadership (20%), holistic thinking/conceptual skills (10%), academic and research excellence (15%), personal integrity (10%), professional communication (10%) and managerial competence (15%). Marks are averaged, and the Council recommends three candidates to the UGC in rank order. The UGC-appointed observer separately submits a confidential report on the selection process.
This procedure is expected to guarantee quality, but does it? Applications are submitted to the Council Members, who have been appointed on questionable bases, and who are expected to review the applications and give scores, based on objective assessments. But, in reality, most Council Members are manipulated by VC candidates, who often have personal ties with them. The UGC-appointed observer usually has no genuine interest in the outcome. And there is no way for anyone to actually question the Council’s decision once it is made. Although the highest-ranked candidate may ultimately be appointed, the selection remains a political decision made by the President, who retains the discretion to appoint any one of the three.
External reviews also do not look into the promotions of academic staff, except to scrutinise whether there are policies and procedures in place to govern promotion. Academic staff may apply for promotion to Professor once they satisfy the prescribed eligibility requirements, which typically include the period of service, academic qualifications, research and publication achievements, teaching experience, and contributions to the university and wider community. Applications are evaluated against specified criteria, with research output and academic contributions assessed through documentary evidence and expert evaluation. Under the UGC’s scheme for Professors, two experts from outside the applicant’s institution assess specified aspects of research and knowledge dissemination. Again, beneath this technical process, which is externally evaluated, lies a problematic points-based scheme that can be manipulated and abused with impunity.
Rethinking university QA
Like the VC election process and the schemes of promotion for academic staff, QA reviews are open to manipulation. Before a review, there is a chaotic rush to complete evidence gathering and reporting. Academics leave all other work aside, including at times their teaching, to focus on completing documentation and preparing reports. The standardised criteria in the review manuals and scoring sheets often do not reflect differences in disciplines and institutional contexts. But this does not really matter because any serious problems experienced by institutions or programmes are hastily brushed under the carpet to conceal any evidence that could taint the review. The goal is to obtain an A or at least a B grade at whatever cost.
QA may result in positive change if it moves beyond top-down check-box activities towards internally designed and owned processes encompassing all aspects of university governance, led by departments and faculties, and supported by adequate resources. The current QA system needs to be dismantled and replaced by procedures that are accountable, not to the UGC, but to our students and the communities we serve.
(Ramya Kumar is attached to the Department of Community and Family Medicine, Faculty of Medicine, University of Jaffna)
. Kuppi is a politics and pedagogy happening on the margins of the lecture hall that parodies, subverts, and simultaneously reaffirms social hierarchies.
Yes, Down Memory Lane, the beloved Sing-Along concert series that first struck a chord, way back in 1997, returns for its landmark 20th edition this Saturday, 17th October, at the beautiful Bolgoda Grand Resort, Moratuwa town centre.
Having celebrated its glorious 25th anniversary with the show in 2023, this milestone 20th concert promises to be even more special.
The organisers, the ever-popular Moratuwa Arts Forum, are pulling out all the stops to present yet another unforgettable evening, brimming with camaraderie, fellowship, and pure nostalgia.
Get ready for two-and-a-half hours of non-stop singing as veteran vocalists, from the Moratuwa Arts Forum, will take the stage to lead and inspire the happy audience to sing, sing and sing to their hearts’ content.
The repertoire? Absolutely magical, according to the organisers.
Veteran Arun Dias Bandaranaike: Will handle the evening’s proceedings / Priya Peiris: Event Conceptor
Around 40 golden oldies — from timeless English vintage evergreens and hits from the 50s to the 90s, to toe-tapping calypsos, soulful American plantation melodies, rousing cowboy and Dixieland favourites, aa well as cherished Sinhala standards. All to be sung with much gusto!
This year’s dedicated organising committee comprises Brian Coorey (Chairman), Priya Peiris (Event Conceptor), Hiran Fernando, Suranga Fernando, Viranjan Perera, Hemka Fernando and Neelesh Silva. Guidance and support comes from Moratuwa Arts Forum President Sarana Guneratne and Secretary Chandani Silva.
Adding his signature charm to the evening, as Master of Ceremonies, will be the veteran Arun Dias Bandaranaike.
Don’t miss this landmark celebration of music and memories!
For further details, contact Hiran Fernando on 0772636446 or WhatsApp 0783636446.
Cabinet approves redrafting of State Assets Management Act
Cooperative Employees Commission Act No. 12 of 1972 to be amended
Dilki Wathsala Marambage appointed as Director General of the Department of Technical Education and Training
Declaration of Naakolagane Sanctuary under the Fauna and Flora Protection Ordinance
Cabinet approves transfer and maintenance of selected roads presently under PC’s and Local Authorities to the RDA
Obtaining financial facilities for the Water Supply and Sanitation Improvement Program (Sub-program 2) from the ADB
‘Dates have the highest sugar content to fight Coronavirus’
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