Wednesday 30th September, 2026

Underworld death squads are in overdrive, eliminating their rivals. On Sunday, a gunman armed with an assault rifle opened fire on a trishaw, killing its driver and a woman in Baddegama. Another woman, injured in the attack, died in hospital. A video of the attack shows the assassin, who arrives in a car, using controlled, individual shots rather than a burst. Such killings carried out by professional hitmen remind us of Hollywood blockbusters depicting street violence in Chicago of the 1920s. Close on the heels of Sunday’s killings, a man suffered serious injury in a shooting incident at Rathgama. The police have attributed these attacks to underworld rivalries.

About 25 people have perished in 35 shooting incidents so far this year. Two children were killed in a grenade attack in Dehiwala about three weeks ago. The increasing number of underworld attacks shows that criminal gangs remain strong despite the ongoing operations against the underworld. Several hardcore criminals have been arrested and remanded, but their gangs are still operating, making one doubt the effectiveness of the much-advertised offensives against the netherworld of crime and drugs.

Crime syndicates have emerged so powerful that they do not spare even holy shrines. One of the women killed in Baddegama on Sunday is believed to have aided and abetted the killing of a trustee of a famous devale in the Ambalangoda area, where another shrine reportedly cannot hold its annual procession due to underworld threats.

In July, Kanjipani Imran, a drug dealer operating from overseas, threated to attack the historic Devinuwara Devale perahera unless the shrine lifted a ban on a kavadi dance group sponsored by him. The police asked the shrine to hold the procession without the kavadi segment, accusing kavadi dancers of improper conduct. But the government intervened, directing the shrine to allow all kavadi groups, (including the one supported by Kanjipani Imran), to participate in the perahera. Thus, the political authority, devale officials and the police danced to Kanjipani Imran’s tune, as it were.

The underworld is often described as a criminal subculture separated from mainstream society, but criminologists point out that criminal networks are rooted in mainstream society and can have links with business and political elites. This may explain why the underworld has become so powerful in this country.

When Kanjipani Imran was arrested in Dubai and brought back in 2019, it was widely thought that he would not be able to secure bail because Sri Lanka police and their UAE counterparts had worked tirelessly for months to arrest him and Makandure Madush, another notorious criminal, who was also extradited. Madush was shot dead while in police custody, and the then government claimed that he had been caught in the crossfire between police and an underworld gang while being taken to a place where a haul of narcotics was believed to have been buried. But Kanjipani Imran obtained bail in 2024 and fled the country. Janith Madushanka de Silva (Podi Lasi), another drug dealer, also escaped to India after being released on bail in 2024.

Kavadi

dancers are not the only ones who have benefited from the largesse of drug dealers and other criminals. Following the assassination of High Court Judge Sarath Ambepitiya, this newspaper revealed that Kudu Nauffer, the drug dealer who ordered the killing, had sponsored food and beverages at a judicial officers’ function through a front. The police could not arrest Kudu Lal, the main supplier of heroin in Colombo, because of his political connections. In 2010, he left for London, with the help of a Cabinet minister in the UPFA government. Strangely, this incident has gone uninvestigated. There is a pressing need to monitor campaign funds of politicians and political parties closely.

It is hoped that the government and the police will stop bellowing rhetoric and step up their crime-busting operations to neutralise the underworld once and for all. Otherwise, the day may not be far off when powerful criminal gangs run a parallel government.

Tuesday 29th September, 2026

The government is busy concocting various theories in a bid to justify the manner in which the 22nd constitutional amendment (22A) was enacted. Its leaders claim that even in India, the retirement ages of judges have been increased recently, but there have been no protests. Their reference is to an order of the Indian Supreme Court in All India Judges Association v. Union of India case, directing seven states to raise the retirement age of district judicial officers from 60 to 62, subject to an assessment of their suitability and performance by the concerned High Court at the age of 60.

What the Indian Supreme Court order envisages and what 22A seeks to achieve are as different as chalk and cheese. The judges of the Indian Supreme Court did not seek to increase their own retirement age, which is constitutionally fixed at 65 years. The JVP-NPP politicians are therefore comparing apples and oranges. What drew criticism here was basically the arbitrary manner in which the government increased the constitutionally set retirement ages of the incumbent judges of the Supreme Court and the Court of Appeal; it did so even without any stakeholder consultation.

22A bears comparison only with a 2021 constitutional amendment that raised the retirement ages of the serving judges in Zimbabwe. As we pointed out in a previous editorial comment, President Emmerson Mnangagwa’s government hurriedly secured the passage of a constitutional amendment Bill to raise the retirement ages of judges, provoking a debate over whether it was proper to amend the Constitution to increase judicial tenure just in time to keep an incumbent Chief Justice in office. That amendment was obviously not part of a wider judicial reform initiative; it immediately opened the way for the then Chief Justice Luke Malaba to remain in office for another five years. Sri Lanka now finds itself in the exalted company of Zimbabwe.

Now that a precedent has been created, what guarantee is there that the JVP-NPP government will not seek to increase the mandatory retirement ages of the superior court judges again? A future government with a two-thirds majority will also be able to amend the Constitution and extend the retirement ages of the Supreme Court and the Court of Appeal judges.

The JVP-NPP politicians are asking the Opposition to stop protesting and come to terms with 22A, which has become law. Curiously, former Minister Vasudeva Nanayakkara is ‘rooting for’ the government. He has fully backed 22A, insisting that there is nothing wrong with increasing the retirement ages of the superior court judges. Addressing the media, yesterday, Nanayakkara claimed that it was an exercise in futility to keep on protesting against 22A, and the Opposition should face reality. He is entitled to his opinion, but the question is why he has led so many protests against the current Constitution and the Executive Presidency, since 1978, instead of coming to terms with them.

Government leaders are also asking the Opposition and the Bar Association of Sri Lanka to abandon their protests as 22A, reviewed by the Supreme Court and passed by Parliament with a special majority, is now part of the Constitution. Will they explain why they took up arms in the late 1980s in a bid to scuttle the 13th Amendment (13A), the establishment of the Provincial Councils (PCs) and the first PC elections? 13A also passed muster with the Supreme Court and was passed by Parliament with a two-thirds majority. Had the JVP leaders done at that time what they are now urging the Opposition to do, there would have been no bloodbath. They also campaigned hard against the 18th and 20th Amendments, and rightly so. Why didn’t they stop protesting after the enactment of those bad constitutional amendments?

One may argue that 22A differs from 13A, 18A and 20A in many respects, but that does not make it any less inimical to democracy. One may recall that the SC in its determination on the Inland Revenue (Amendment) Bill in 2022 held that a constitutional amendment affecting the retirement age or the period of office of the incumbent judges of the superior courts would impinge on judicial independence and therefore require approval at a referendum.

No amount of rhetoric and propaganda will help the government silence the critics of 22A, and their protests are bound to intensify.

Monday 28th September, 2026

All low-enrolment schools across the country are being assessed for restructuring, according to media reports. While many of them are facing the prospect of amalgamation or closure, the performance of one such school has strengthened the argument against a blanket approach to low-enrolment schools.

Students of Panahetagala Primary School, located in the backwaters of the Ratnapura District, have demonstrated their ability to overcome challenges and achieve academic excellence. They have proved what rural students are capable of, when properly guided. Four of the eight Panahetagala Primary School students who sat this year’s Grade Five Scholarship Examination (GFSE), have scored above the Ratnapura District cut-off mark of 135; three others obtained 100 marks out of 200. The remaining candidate scored 81 marks. The school has 22 students on its roll, and five teachers including the principal. None of the GFSE candidates had the benefit of private coaching, and the credit for preparing them for the highly competitive examination should therefore go to their dedicated teachers.

One may argue that the success story of Panahetagala Primary School is the exception that proves the rule, but the challenge before the JVP-NPP government, which flaunts what its describes as a pro-poor agenda, is to devise a strategy to make the exception the rule by developing the low-enrolment schools and making them attractive to more students.

The Ceylon Teachers Union has accused the government of trying to close down low-enrolment schools across the country, and redeploy teachers currently working in them to fill vacancies elsewhere. There are 10,146 state-run schools in Sri Lanka. Of them 9,750 are under Provincial Councils and 396 are national schools. About 800 rural schools have already been closed down during the past several decades, and it is feared that many more will face the same fate in the near future.

President Anura Kumara Dissanayake, speaking in Parliament in July 2025, said 3,144 government schools had fewer than 100 students. He said some schools would have to be permanently closed, while others would have to be amalgamated. According to teachers’ trade unions and organisations dedicated to protecting universal free education, most of these low-enrolment schools are situated in rural and remote areas. This situation has been attributed to several factors, including improved public transport, which has enhanced students’ mobility and reduced their dependence on rural schools that have suffered from neglect.

The NPP’s 2024 manifesto, A Thriving Nation, A Beautiful Life, promises “a government school system for primary education within 3 km of one’s home or parents’ place of work.” One can argue that the school merger programme, which is said to be on the cards, is not inherently contrary to the NPP manifesto, which envisages a more rationalised school network. But the NPP has not sought a mandate to close down any school. Most of all, will the government be able to fulfil its three-km access commitment if it opts to close down rural low-enrolment schools?

During its second uprising in the late 1980s, the JVP coined many pithy slogans to mobilise the disadvantaged rural folk, particularly the youth, by highlighting the glaring urban bias in state resource allocation. One of them was ‘Kolombata kiri, gamata kekiri’ (‘milk for Colombo, melon for the village’). However, villages have been left with no alternative but to settle for kekiri even under the current government led by the JVP.

Students and teachers have to walk long distances, with some of them even using a makeshift ferry to cross a river, to reach Panahetagala Primary School. Buses have stopped operating on the road that leads to Panahetagala due to its dilapidated condition. Shouldn’t the incumbent government, which is spending billions of rupees on developing the metro bus service in Colombo, allocate some funds to repair the road that links Panahetagala with the main road?

President Dissanayake, in his parliamentary speech under discussion, revealed that the number of children leaving school prematurely had risen from 16,673 in 2019 to 20,759 in 2022, before virtually plateauing at 20,755 in 2024. Everything possible must be done to bring the number of school dropouts down in the shortest possible time.

A high number of school dropouts is much more than a mere statistic; it is a symptom of wider social problems. As we have pointed out in a previous comment, the state has a strong justification for bearing the cost of operating low-enrolment schools to make education easily accessible to rural children, for such expenditure helps reduce dropouts, promote educational equity, prevent social problems and build human capital across the country. The government must handle this sensitive issue with great care.