Features

The NPP’s pivot to the past

Published

5 months ago

2026/05/24

“The elephant is crashing about in the room, trampling people to death, and politely ignoring it is no longer an option”.

AC Grayling (To Set Prometheus Free)

Before Anura Kumara Dissanayake promised a renaissance, Maithripala Sirisena promised good governance. The restoration of the rule of law was a key aspect of the different, better Sri Lanka Candidate Sirisena (and his chief supporter Ranil Wickremesinghe) offered in 2015. In that promised land, all wrongdoers will be brought before the law; justice will cease being a luxury only the rich and the powerful can afford and become a fact of ordinary life.

Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga’s elevation of the singularly unsuitable Sarath Silva to the august position of chief justice (an appointment some sought to justify on the irrelevant grounds that he was a Buddhist) had severely undermined judicial independence. Mahinda Rajapaksa dispensed with the rule of law entirely, enshrining in its stead the law of the ruling family. The illegal (and thuggish) impeachment of chief justice Shirani Bandaranayake destroyed even the pretence of judicial independence.

Today, Namal Rajapaksa is a born-again advocate of judicial independence and the rule of law. He seems to not remember the measure of the man his father and family picked as chief justice once they booted out Shirani Bandaranayake. Just one example would suffice to demonstrate Mohan Peiris’ suitability to be enthroned as the Rajapaksa chief justice. In November 2011, responding to a question about the disappearance of Prageeth Ekneligoda, Mr Peiris told the UN Committee against Torture, “Our current information is that Mr. Ekneligoda has taken refuge in a foreign country… It is something we can be reasonably certain of” (BBC– 25.11.2011). When summoned before the Homagama magistrate court (where the Ekneligoda case was being heard), he did a volte face. He rejected “the transcript of the statement he made in Geneva last year,” and said “he could not remember the source that revealed to him the whereabouts of Prageeth Ekneligoda,” adding that “I have no information that the corpus is alive or not and I do not think the government does either and that God only knows where Ekneligoda is” (Ceylon Today – 6.6.2012).

With Mohan Peiris controlling the judiciary, the law of the Rajapaksas could stalk the land unimpeded. For many voters who flocked to Maithripala Sirisena’s side in 2015, restoring the rule of law was not an abstract slogan but a vital necessity.

The Sirisena-Wickremesinghe administration did not betray that promise. Restoring judicial independence was the best – and the most enduring – achievement of an administration which violated the bulk of its promises and betrayed a large part of its mandate.

Unlike Maithripala Sirisena, Anura Kumara Dissanayake did not inherit a debased and a cowed judiciary. He inherited a strong judiciary confident enough to take on an executive president, a judiciary unafraid to stand up to a saffron mob and put a stop to the misuse of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) as a blasphemy law. Today, the judiciary remains one of the very few relatively undebased and uncompromised (plus popular) institutions in the country. Consequently, President Dissanayake’s task does not involve any doing. His task is to refrain from doing. His May Day remark concerning an upcoming verdict is an example of what he should not to.

While the judiciary has been a beacon of hope in dark times (despite occasional backsliding), the same cannot be said of the police, an essential component in maintaining the rule of law. If the police fail to carry out investigations impartially and speedily, if they favour powerful suspects over powerless victims, then the rule of law is violated at the foundational level, a wrong that cannot be righted even by the most independent judiciary.

Is the saffron robe above the law?

Addressing a District Development Committee meeting last week, President Dissanayake said that his government has ended the impunity of those who believed that the law would never apply to them.

Does the president live in a parallel universe where a powerful monk accused of raping a 12-year-old child is being protected by a non-divine hand?

The crime is so horrendous it would have sufficed to cause the most powerful politician or the wealthiest businessman to fall from grace. Despite the necessary presumption of innocence, any political or economic leader accused of ‘purchasing’ a small child from her parents and raping her would have been arrested immediately, kicked out from whatever positions he occupied, and ostracized societally. If the government was dragging its foot, if the police were bending the law, the opposition and the media would have been on them like a tonne of bricks. If the accused had any connection with the opposition, the government would talk of little else for days. There would be parliamentary debates and press conferences, media exposes and public protests.

Not when the accused is Pallegama Hemaratana thera, the head of Atamasthana. Then the only sound from the usually garrulous political, economic, and religious leaders is silence.

Human Rights Council and Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor have published extensive reports of how Israel systematically uses sexual violence against Palestinians ( and ). Last week, The New York Times carried its own expose detailing these atrocities. In his commentary on the findings, Nicholas Kristoff, a two-time Pulitzer winning journalist, wrote, “It’s a simple proposition: Whatever our views of the Middle East conflict, we should be able to unite in condemning rape” ().

Indeed. Similarly, we should be able to unite in condemning child abuse, whatever the identity of the alleged perpetrator. But when it comes to the Pallegama Hemaratana case, government and opposition, religious and economic leaders, most of the media and societal luminaries have united in wilful blindness and wilful deafness. Had it not been for judicial action and the effort made by the National Child Protection Authority, the monk would still be lording it over in Atamasthana. Even after the court ordered his arrest, he managed to evade prison and spend days in the Nawaloka hospital.

The Minister of Children and Women’s Affairs issued an anodyne statement after the judicial order rendered police inaction impossible. Nothing, though, from the president, the many would-be presidents, the PM, the leader of opposition, party leaders. Nothing also from the Mahanayake theros or the Cardinal. Just announce that children will be taught how to identify and protect themselves from child abusers and mark how quickly the silence ends and the cacophony of outrage begins.

In his autobiography We don’t know ourselves – A personal history of modern Ireland, Irish author Fintan O’Toole writes of a priest-teacher who abused his students, “openly, constantly, shamelessly…” The perpetrator picked his victims carefully, “the vulnerable boy, the kid who got into trouble, the kid whose father had died.” Mr O’Toole calls clerical child-abuse “…the open secret, the thing that everybody knew and nobody grasped, the truth that could be seen but never identified. We were adepts at epistemology. Most of us could walk like circus performers across tightropes that were strung between private knowledge and public acknowledgement. The only ones who ever looked down were those who were badly abused, and they became even better at suppressing reality.” For decades, individual acts of resistance went nowhere. A friend calls out the abusive priest-teacher in class. The priest ignores him and tells the class to turn to another page in the Latin grammar, which they do. “David was defeated. He just sat down again and everything went on as if his accusations had never been voiced.”

In Sri Lanka too, clerical child-abuse is obfuscated by a ‘cloud of unknowing’. Occasionally, the cloud lifts, when the victim has parents who care, who are able to protest and protect. This week, the Appeal Court confirmed the seven-year sentence passed on Hambegamuwe Chandananda by the High Court for abusing a nine-year old novice monk the day after he was ordained. If we ignore or tolerate such horrors in the name of Sasana, then we cannot be adherents of The Buddha.

Like any suspect, the monk Pallegama Hemaratana is innocent until and unless proven guilty by a court of law. But for him to be proven innocent (or guilty), there has to be a proper investigation and a speedy trial. How can there be any hope of a fair and a transparent investigation and a speedy trial given how hard various authorities tried first to keep the story under the wraps, then not to arrest the monk, and finally to keep him in the Nawaloka Hospital?

Given the range and magnitude of this preferential treatment, the involvement of the political authority up to and including the president cannot be ruled out. The Opposition’s complicity in this matter has given the government-enabled impunity wings. Suddenly, it’s as if the Rajapaksas never left.

The first step down the abyss

In his 1968 article The Territories, Israeli philosopher Yeshayahu Leibowitz issued a warning to his own countrymen and women. “Rule over the occupied territories could have social repercussions… The corruption characteristic of every colonial regime would also prevail in the state of Israel.” In his 1988 essay 40 years after, he returned to the theme. “That a subjugated people would fight for its freedom against the conquering ruler, with all the means at its disposal, without being squeamish about their legitimacy, was only to be expected. This has been true of wars of liberation of all peoples… We are creating – and have already created – a political atmosphere affecting the public as well as its individual members… In this same atmosphere one hears of cases of soldiers attempting to bury Arab boys alive; the Attorney General tries to distinguish between torture and ‘reasonable’ torture; those in charge of the army distinguish ‘burial alive’ from the burying alive of bodies without interring the heads.”

Consider the end. Resist the beginnings. In Sri Lanka, warnings about the danger of clerical impunity were made as far back as the 1930’s when the country was still Ceylon. One such Cassandra-figure who foresaw the future, whose words went unheeded was Munidasa Kumaratunga. In his 2 October 1934 editorial in Lakmini Pahana, he wrote, “If a monk engages in wrongdoing, we should not close our eyes. Instead, we should ensure that the monk is given the punishment appropriate for his wrongdoing.” Ignoring that sage warning, we developed into a fine art the devise of worshipping the robe irrespective of the quality of the wearer.

The police while treating an alleged child-rapist with kid gloves publicly arrested a monk in Rajanganaya for insulting a minister and two top cops. That differential treatment points to two dangerous developments which, if not nipped in the bud, can take us right back to the Rajapaksa days. One is the reincarnation of impunity. The other is the politicisation of the police.

The undermining of the police at the institutional level reached its zenith under Rajapaksa rule. Two examples from the South and the North would suffice to show the consequences of this debasement.

In July 2009, a coordinating secretary of the Minister of Human Rights, Mahinda Samarasinghe was abducted. The minister eventually uncovered that the victim had not been abducted by criminals (as was supposed initially) but ‘arrested’ by the police. He protested saying that the “police cannot simply barge into people’s houses without appropriate documents and take people away” (Bottom Line – 5.8.2009). The police’s response was, yes we can; the abduction was the work of a ‘special squad that had wide powers to arrest anybody in any part of the country” (The Island – 7.8.2009).

On 20 September 2011, Antony Nithyaraja, a man wanted by the police, appeared before the Jaffna magistrate through his lawyer. “The Magistrate after considering the police submissions and court documents released him. However, seven police officers in civilian clothes arrested him and started beating Antony in the presence of the Magistrate, lawyers, court staff and a large number of people. He was dragged to the Jaffna Headquarters Police Station for detention” (Asian Human Rights Commission – 23.9.2011).

The police could take the law into their own hands because the rulers created an enabling environment for such illegalities. The rot was begun by politicians, and can only be ended by politicians. Reforming the police was a key promise of Maithripala Sirisena in 2015 and Anura Kumara Dissanayake in 2024. Mr Sirisena broke it. Mr Dissanayake is breaking it. The carcinogen has returned to the body.

by Tisaranee Gunasekara ✍️

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Features

Coercive laws recipe for future misrule

Published

6 hours ago

2026/10/13

Sahan Weerasooriya

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.

Features

Quality assurance without quality enhancement: The irony of university QA

Published

6 hours ago

2026/10/13

Sahan Weerasooriya

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.

Features

Down Memory Lane — the Grand 20th Edition!

Published

6 hours ago

2026/10/13

Sahan Weerasooriya

Down Memory Lane: Ready to sing again

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.