Friday 16th October, 2026

Glad tidings come occasionally amidst doom and gloom. Sri Lankans are elated that the Supreme Court of Saudi Arabia has set aside the death sentence imposed on Anojan Sivarasa. He was initially sentenced to five years’ imprisonment and fined three million Saudi riyals over a Facebook comment deemed insulting to the Prophet Muhammad. The death sentence was subsequently imposed on appeal, forcing Sri Lanka to redouble its efforts to save him. The Opposition lost no time in raking the government over the coals, claiming that it had ruined the chances of saving Anojan.

Anojan has been spared the death penalty, but that does not mean his freedom has been secured. His legal fate remains uncertain. Conflicting interpretations of the Saudi Supreme Court ruling and media reports based on them do not establish whether he will face another sentence at the rehearing or incur other legal consequences for the offence of which he was convicted. A prolonged stay in a Saudi prison could prove a fate worse than death. Anojan has already suffered an assault at the hands of a fellow inmate. His ordeal, therefore, is far from over. It is fervently hoped that he will secure his freedom, return to Sri Lanka and be reunited with his family.

It is both heartening and ironic that a government led by the JVP, an organisation with a history of kangaroo trials and extrajudicial executions, has striven to save a life, and rightly so. One hopes that the government will continue to uphold the same respect for the right to life in its broader sense, a fundamental human rights principle that encompasses not only protection against arbitrary deprivation of life but also the state’s duty to safeguard life. Saving Anojan from the executioner’s blade is therefore a welcome act. But respect for the right to life must extend beyond a single individual facing execution abroad. According to the UN Human Rights Committee, the right to life encompasses protection against unlawful killing, foreseeable threats to life, and conditions that prevent people from living with dignity. These include access to essential healthcare and other basic services, protection against environmental degradation and public hazards, and safeguards against deaths in state custody. The principle applies to everyone, including suspects and convicted criminals, regardless of the gravity of their offences.

It is said that victory has a thousand fathers but defeat is an orphan. So, it is only natural that both the government and the Opposition are claiming credit for saving Anojan. If the Saudi Supreme Court had upheld the death sentence, they would have blamed each other.

Sri Lankan taxpayers, who are struggling to keep their heads above water amidst numerous economic hardships and crying out for relief, have a right to know how much the legal and diplomatic efforts to save Anojan from execution have cost the public purse. The government must disclose the expenditure incurred, including legal fees, travel and other related expenses, and explain the principles governing the use of public funds for such interventions.

The government should also make it very clear that all Sri Lankans working or living abroad must understand that they are subject to the laws of their host countries and that insulting religions or committing other offences can have grave consequences. Those who knowingly violate such laws must be prepared to face the legal consequences. At the same time, any policy must allow for exceptional cases in which fundamental rights, access to justice or the risk of disproportionate punishment warrant direct state intervention.

One important lesson that Anojan’s predicament holds for social media users is that freedom of expression is not the freedom of the wild ass. It has limits, and, as the familiar saying goes, one person’s freedom ends where another person’s nose begins.

Thursday 15th Octobber, 2026

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is reportedly cranking up pressure on US President Donald Trump to resume military strikes on Iran ahead of the upcoming elections in Israel and the US. Trump recently declared that there would be no military operations against Iran until the conclusion of the US midterm elections in November, but speculation is rife that Netanyahu may be able to persuade him to change his mind.

Netanyahu appears to view the Iran conflict through the Clausewitzian lens. Prussian General and military theorist Carl von Clausewitz has argued that war is not an isolated military undertaking divorced from political considerations; it is an instrument used by states to achieve political objectives when other means prove insufficient or when leaders choose to resort to force. Critics of Israel claim that Netanyahu is trying to further his own political interests by escalating an international conflict. They argue that Netanyahu’s support base has shrunk considerably at home as he is facing criminal charges of bribery, fraud and breach of trust in three separate cases, and therefore he is using the Iran conflict, etc., to portray himself as a leader best equipped to deal with threats to Israel’s security.

Renewed military confrontation with Iran could give a big fillip to Netanyahu’s election campaign. Political scientists call this phenomenon ‘diversionary war theory’; leaders facing declining popularity, domestic unrest or threats to their tenure tend to use an international confrontation to redirect public attention, stimulate patriotism and rally citizens around their governments.

In the US, the Republicans face a serious risk of suffering a huge setback at the upcoming midterms and losing control of the House of Representatives, while their chances of retaining the Senate are believed to be considerably better, although Democrats now have a realistic opportunity to capture it as well. Current forecasts favour the Democrats in both chambers, but the Senate contest remains much closer. This is an unsettling proposition for President Trump, who will not hesitate to do everything in his power to improve his party’s electoral chances.

Meanwhile, Netanyahu’s desperation to retain his hold on power amidst the Israeli Opposition recovering lost ground has given rise to several conspiracy theories, the most prominent among them being that the recent attempted hijacking of Flydubai flight was an Israeli false-flag operation; the incident was staged for political purposes. It may be recalled that a conspiracy theory about the Hamas attack on Israel in 2023 alleged that Netanyahu had prior knowledge of the assault but deliberately allowed it to happen because the resulting war would strengthen his political position.

World history is replete with instances where rulers fought wars to consolidate their power at home. Historians tell us that Napoleon III involved France in the Crimean War so as to strengthen its legitimacy and restore France’s international standing. Russia’s war in Chechnya enabled Vladimir Putin to establish his image as a decisive leader.

The next phase of the Iran war is very likely to be far more destructive than the previous ones. Future military operations against Iran are bound to have unprecedented global consequences. Oil prices will soar again, making economies scream the world over. Worse, Iran has explicitly threatened to target regional digital infrastructure, including submarine cables and data centres if war resumes. Iran’s threat is credible enough to merit attention, although it does not establish that attacks on every category of infrastructure are inevitable or that Iran has announced a specific operation against US-based facilities.

If Iran carries out its threat in case of the US and Israel resuming strikes, the UAE and Bahrain will face direct risks; the UAE, Bahrain, Qatar, Kuwait and parts of Saudi Arabia will be exposed to damage affecting Gulf submarine cables. Sri Lanka and India are among the potential secondary victims of a wider outage, especially if Red Sea cables are damaged. The possibility of attacks on cables causing widespread disruption to European internet connectivity cannot be ruled out, according to experts, but military might blinds powerful nations to reality and drives them to act recklessly. All one can do is hope that what is feared will not come to pass.

Wednesday 14th October, 2026

Sri Lankan political leaders never miss an opportunity to moralise, and their oratory often helps them win elections. But their words are rarely matched by deeds, so much so that they have come to be dubbed NATO (no action, talk only) leaders. These self-righteous characters portray themselves as paragons of virtue while condemning their political rivals as rogues.

Leaders of the previous government wrapped themselves in the flag and branded their critics as traitors. Their successors are treating key Opposition figures as rogues who deserve to be thrown behind bars. President Anura Kumara Dissanayake has declared that drug money is used to finance media outlets and protests as part of a strategy to unsettle the government, which has taken on the drug Mafia with might and main. Addressing a recent public rally, the President said some sinister characters with links to drug cartels were all out to derail the government’s efforts to eliminate organised crime.

If President Dissanayake has credible evidence that drug barons are funding any media organisation, he should initiate legal action against it, shouldn’t he? Similarly, if there is irrefutable evidence that drug dealers are behind any protest campaign, legal action must be instituted against its organisers. However, no witch-hunts must be launched on the basis of unsubstantiated allegations, with arrests being prematurely made even before investigations get underway.

One may recall that last year President Dissanayake reportedly said he had credible information that some local government members had been funded by drug dealers. He said he had directed the law enforcement authorities to launch an investigation. It is believed that Kudu Lal, a drug dealer operating from overseas, backed a group of independent candidates at the 2025 local government polls in Colombo and some of them were elected. Have the police failed to find out who benefited from drug barons’ largesse? If the JVP/NPP had allowed all local council heads to be elected by open ballot, the public would have been able to see whether it was the government or the Opposition that had benefited from the support of the councillors with alleged narcotic links.

We also have former ‘NATO’ leaders claiming the moral high ground. Former Speaker Mahinda Yapa Abeywardena has gone on record as saying that he thwarted an attempt by an influential Colombo-based foreign diplomat and some religious leaders to persuade him to assume the presidency following Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s resignation at the height of the Aragalaya protests in 2022. He claimed that those behind the move wanted to establish an unconstitutional government and plunge the country into anarchy. He has not made any official complaint about that serious incident. During a discussion at a national conference of the Chartered Accountants of Sri Lanka in Colombo, in 2024, former President Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga said she had been offered a US$5 million bribe by the husband of a junior minister in her Cabinet and a foreign businessman, when she was the Prime Minister. She said she had rejected the offer out of hand and threatened to have them arrested. Why she did not carry out the threat is the question. In 2013, the then Health Minister Maithripala Sirisena claimed the tobacco industry had offered him a huge bribe and he had turned it down. He did not take any action against the culprits.

Refusing a bribe is the minimum expected of a public representative. Reporting such an attempt is what helps ensure that the person who offers a bribe is held accountable. Anyone cannot credibly claim to be fighting corruption while treating an attempt to bribe him or her as a private matter. Whatever the law may say, the ethical obligation is clear; a political leader who is offered a bribe should document the incident and report it promptly to the appropriate investigative authority so that the matter can be investigated. Those who do not do so undermine the rule of law.

Meanwhile, President Dissanayake’s claim that drug dealers are using protesters and media outfits against his government reminds us of a similar claim made by President Maithripala Sirisena in 2019 after the Easter Sunday terror attacks. He claimed that drug cartels he had taken on had orchestrated the terror strikes to discredit him and scuttle his anti-narcotics drive.

Political leaders who claim to have rejected bribes or possess credible information of conspiracies by drug dealers against governments must resort to legal action. They must fish or cut bait.