Features
Exiled as GA to Ampara and the splendours of Gal Oya Valley
(Excerpted from Rendering Unto Caesar by Bradman Weerakoon)
I was expecting a transfer to the outstations but had not really thought it would be Ampara – one of the farthest districts to reach from Colombo and one of the least developed. When in the 1950s, on the initiative of D S Senanayake, the Gal Oya river was dammed at Inginiyagala, the American construction firm of Morrison Knudsen paid off with the country’s earned foreign exchange, and the colonists from the over-populated wet zone were brought in, the district was buzzing with activity.
Change was in the air. Even the casual visitor could scarcely fail to notice that a new world of broad roads and fine buildings was being created as well as a chain of small reservoirs with the names of both Sinhala and Tamil villages like Namal Oya, Kondewattuwan and Pannalgama. The Gal Oya Development Board in those days had a very competent leadership and plentiful resources, and had got going with a great deal of productive development.
However, when I arrived some 20 years later all that had changed. There was visible everywhere an aura of neglect and complacency. The district appeared to have slipped back into the familiar, somnolent rhythm of life that the dry zone so insidiously induces. The inevitable jungle tide, so close at hand in this most hostile of environments, seemed to have returned.
I felt that I needed to get busy very quickly, encourage the bright, young and eager-looking SLAS (Sri Lanka Administrative Service) team of assistants I had inherited and re-establish the authority of the civil administration. The task was not going to be easy because the whole area had been dominated for the past 20 years by the specially mandated and richly resourced Gal Oya Valley Development Authority.
I found that personal relationships between the GA’s administration and the Board were at a very- low ebb. After many peak-points of tension and a long tussle to assert who was the leader, the government agent, my good friend and colleague Victor Unantenna, and the Resident Manager (RM) of the GODB, Padmasiri de Silva, were not even on speaking terms. They communicated if they had to, by usually writing long and vituperative minutes to each other in the official files; and all the time this letter writing went on, they were both in the same building.
The government agent and his kachcheri had been located on the ground floor and the GODB resident manager and his staff, as perhaps befitted their perceived higher status – and it was the Board that had constructed the Secretariat – on the upper floor!
My appointment coincided with the winding-up of the Board’s activities in the Valley and I knew that soon I was going to inherit the whole of the Board’s empire. One of my first tasks was to have to engineer and carry through the transition process. This turned out to be easier than expected. Once I adopted the practice of walking upstairs into the RM’s room to discuss an issue, there was immediate reciprocity and he came down to see me. After that we got on very well together. Eventually when the Board left Ampara, I had the choice of upgrading my accommodation from the lowly B 1 residential quarters that the GA had occupied fill then, and move into the luxurious air-conditioned Resident Manager’s bungalow. This four-bedroom residence, built and furnished by the Board, commanded one of the finest views in town. It overlooked the large Ampara Tank – the source of the town’s water supply, and offered the blue Mahakandiya range of mountains as its majestic backdrop.
I was given the choice if I wished of moving two miles out of town to the GODB (Gal Oya Development Board) circuit bungalow – an eight-roomed mansion – but decided against this move because that would have kept me away from the Ampara town and access to my officials and the people. So Damayanthi and I soon moved with obvious delight to the former Resident Manager’s bungalow a few yards up the road.
My first few days in Ampara were spent trying to grasp the enormity of the tasks of civil administration at the periphery, that needed the government agent’s attention. The civil administration was symbolized by the kachcheri, a venerable institution of hoary origins. Its institution dated back to the third decade of the 19th century and the Colebrooke-Cameron reforms.
The position of government agent was manned in colonial times by young men with a good public school education and usually an Oxford Degree in classics. The career of Leonard Woolf, husband of the famous writer Virginia Woolf, illustrated the kind of path that others with a successful outlook would follow.
By the 1970s, the native breed that followed the British and were notably represented by members of the Ceylon Civil Service had almost died out. There were still some civil servants in the field but the spirit of the ‘club’ and its special elite quality now lay broken. Some were wont to say that the rot had started after the abolition of the CCS in 1963, principally on the initiative of Felix Dias Bandaranaike.
I found the work fascinatingly different from what I had done for 15 years in the prime minister’s office. Here, one was at the root of the problem. This was where it all started: the search by young men and women for employment, hunger for land, shortage of water for agriculture, schools for the children, hospitals for the sick, and the overall struggle for survival. But what encouraged me most and kept all of us active was the indomitable will of ordinary people to keep going in the face of impossible odds. The bureaucracy was, for the most part, uncaring and the political leadership partial in the distribution of its largesse.
My wife and I decided that this was a heaven-sent opportunity to indulge and enjoy ourselves in the work with the knowledge that what little you could do was being really appreciated by those
waiting for some service. One early instance of this was when, after literally hacking our way through jungle to get to a distant village on the Moneragala border, I was greeted by people who said that the agantha hamuruduruwo himself — the government agent — had not visited their particular village in living memory.
Ampara was a treasure trove of surprises. Its physical landscape was quite variegated contrary to the usual vision of the dry zone as a dreary plain of scrub jungle. It had large expanses of water as a result of the development work of the Gal Oya Board and vast stretches of paddy fields below them. If you entered the district from the west, driving down to Ampara from the great dam at Inginiyagala, you would be literally in a green valley.
Once when Dudley Senanayake was waxing eloquent in Parliament about how green the valley looked in full season, Felix is said to have baited him by asking him, “How green is your valley?” It is reported that Dudley, losing his cool, had advanced menacingly towards him muttering, “I’ll show you how green my valley is,” until he was stopped by the intervention of his friend M D Banda.
Elsewhere in Ampara the broad plain was covered with thick tropical jungle and jagged rock outcrops — silent sentinels that carried the names given to them by the early explorers who had chanced upon them in their survey work. The landscape was immortalized in the writings of R L Spittel, the Colombo surgeon who spent his spare time in researching the Veddahs — an aboriginal people of the island. In. my childhood I had devoured his books, all of which had been meticulously collected by my father.
The rock outcrops carried the most interesting names. One which I could dimly see as I looked south from my bedroom window was called `Westminster Abbey’. It lay some thirty kilometres away as one proceeded southwards from Hingurana on the Moneragala road. Another had been appropriately named ‘Friar’s Hood’, as it looked out under its jutting hood across Bintenna towards Maha Oya and to the Mahaweli ganga in the distance.
The Gal Oya Project
The heart of Ampara district was the Gal Oya Project. Although in the last 50 years the country had gigantic irrigation and power projects providing much more power and water, the Gal Oya Project
continues to have an enduring national significance. Its construction paralleled the birth of the new nation. Much of the pride of its creation came from the fact that this large multipurpose irrigation and hydropower project was done without resort to foreign borrowings.
To have finally come to Ampara as a government agent was in a sense a dream come true. I had, as a young student of Sociology at the University of Ceylon and under one of its American professors, Bryce Ryan, visited the valley to help in his research of the breakdown of traditional village structures. Our hypothesis had been that the modernizing impulses of colonization, bringing in settlers from the wet zone districts like Kegalle, Kandy and Matara would have greatly hastened the breakdown. When I arrived in 1970, twenty years later, the process was almost complete except for a very few purana villages which lay mostly at the back of the great reservoir and stubbornly maintained their traditional way of life.
In 1951, when the massive earth dam at Inginiyagala was being raised, I had stood on its height and looking west, marveled at the spread of the vast man-made lake as it engulfed the jungle. The blue foothills of Bible and the forbidding Knuckles range beyond provided a spectacular backdrop. I harboured a dream that some day I might have the chance of playing a larger part in the development of this new region which was being carved out of the larger Batticaloa district.
It was potentially productive and with its now mixed population of Sinhala, Tamil and Muslim people was representative of the multi-ethnic, plural entity that Sri Lanka was fast becoming. By a quirk of fate and on the irrational decision of the then government, I was now to serve for a while in one of the more remote districts of the country after 15 years at the centre of power. I found myself now with an opportunity of making this move towards the realization of a dream after 20 years since I had first set foot in this greenest of the country’s man-made valleys.
In 1970 the Gal Oya Development Board was still functioning actively in the area of its authority. It had been patterned in structure and function, in the wisdom of the first prime minister D S Senanayake, on the Tennesse Valley Authority of the United States. It was held that rapid and integrated development of virgin lands, needed the flexibility of a new coordinating mechanism – the veritable creation of a regional government within an existing overall national government. In 1970 the presence of the Board was yet very visible all over. In fact, other than for the function of law and order which was a subject for the National Police, all other activities within the territory and jurisdiction of the Gal Oya Board (which constituted a large part of the Ampara district ) was in the hand of that authority.
The supply of irrigation, power, drinking water, the alienation and management of land, agricultural extension services, cottage industry, some part of tertiary education (the Hardy Technical Training Institute, for example) and most functions which would normally be regarded as part of civil administration under the charge of a normal government agency were, by virtue of the Gal Oya Board Act, statutorily under the control of the Board.
Even in such aspects usually regarded as of a social and cultural nature such as the running of the local club, the maintenance of the playing fields, and the conduct of the annual religious festivals at Digawapi and the Buddangala hermitage, it was the Board’s writ that ran. Most of the buildings in Ampara town and Inginiyagala had been constructed, maintained, occupied and disposed of by the Board.
When the National People’s Power won elections in 2024, there was much hope that the country’s education sector could be made better. Besides the promise of good governance and system change that the NPP offered, this hope was fuelled in part by the appointment of an academic who was at the forefront of the struggle to strengthen free public education and actively involved in the campaign for 6% of GDP for education, as the Minister of Education.
Reforms in the education sector are underway including, a key encouraging move to mainstream vocational education as part of the school curriculum. There has been a marginal increase in budgetary allocations for education. New infrastructure facilities are to be introduced at some universities. The freeze on recruitment is slowly being lifted. However, there is much to be desired in the government’s performance for the past one year. Basic democratic values like rule of law, transparency and consultation, let alone far-reaching systemic changes, such as allocation of more funds for education, combating the neoliberal push towards privatisation and eradication of resource inequalities within the public university system, are not given due importance in the current approach to educational and institutional reforms. This edition of Kuppi Talk focuses on the general educational reforms and the institutional reforms required in the public university system.
General Educational Reforms
Any reform process – whether it is in education or any other area – needs to be shaped by public opinion. A country’s education sector should take into serious consideration the views of students, parents, teachers, educational administrators, associated unions, and the wider public in formulating the reforms. Especially after Aragalaya/Porattam, the country saw a significant political shift. Disillusionment with the traditional political elite mired in corruption, nepotism, racism and self-serving agendas, brought the NPP to power. In such a context, the expectation that any reforms should connect with the people, especially communities that have been systematically excluded from processes of policymaking and governance, is high.
Sadly, the general educational reforms, which are being implemented this year, emerged without much discussion on what recent political changes meant to the people and the education sector. Many felt that the new government should not have been hasty in introducing these reforms in 2026. The present state of affairs calls for self-introspection. As members affiliated to the National Institute of Education (NIE), we must acknowledge that we should have collectively insisted on more time for consultation, deliberations and review.
The government’s conflicts with the teachers’ unions over the extension of school hours, the History teachers’ opposition to the removal of History from the list of compulsory exam subjects for Grades 10 and 11, the discontent with regard to the increase in the number of subjects (now presented as modules) for Grade 6 classes could have been avoided, had there been adequate time spent on consultations.
Given the opposition to the current set of reforms, the government should keep engaging all concerned actors on changes that could be brought about in the coming years. Instead of adopting an intransigent position or ignoring mistakes made, the government and we, the members affiliated to NIE, need to keep the reform process alive, remain open to critique, and treat the latest policy framework, the exams and evaluation methods, and even the modules, as live documents that can be made better, based on constructive feedback and public opinion.
Philosophy and Content
As Ramya Kumar observed in the last edition of Kuppi Talk, there are many refreshing ideas included in the educational philosophy that appears in the latest version of the policy document on educational reforms. But, sadly, it was not possible for curriculum writers to reflect on how this policy could inform the actual content as many of the modules had been sent for printing even before the policy was released to the public. An extensive public discussion of the proposed educational vision would have helped those involved in designing the curriculum to prioritise subjects and disciplines that need to be given importance in a country that went through a protracted civil war and continue to face deep ethno-religious divisions.
While I appreciate the statement made by the Minister of Education, in Parliament, that the histories of minority communities will be included in the new curriculum, a wider public discussion might have pushed the government and NIE to allocate more time for subjects like the Second National Language and include History or a Social Science subject under the list of compulsory subjects. Now that a detailed policy document is in the public domain, there should be a serious conversation about how best the progressive aspects of its philosophy could be made to inform the actual content of the curriculum, its implementation and pedagogy in the future.
University Reforms
Another reform process where the government seems to be going headfirst is the amendments to the Universities Act. While laws need to be revisited and changes be made where required, the existent law should govern the way things are done until a new law comes into place. Recently, a circular was issued by the University Grants Commission (UGC) to halt the process of appointing Heads of Departments and Deans until the proposed amendments to the University Act come into effect. Such an intervention by the UGC is totalitarian and undermines the academic and institutional culture within the public university system and goes against the principle of rule of law.
There have been longstanding demands with regard to institutional reforms such as a transparent process in appointing council members to the public university system, reforms in the schemes of recruitment and selection processes for Vice Chancellor and academics, and the withdrawal of the circular banning teachers of law from practising, to name a few.
The need for a system where the evaluation of applicants for the post of Vice Chancellor cannot be manipulated by the Council members is strongly felt today, given the way some candidates have reportedly been marked up/down in an unfair manner for subjective criteria (e.g., leadership, integrity) in recent selection processes. Likewise, academic recruitment sometimes penalises scholars with inter-disciplinary backgrounds and compartmentalises knowledge within hermetically sealed boundaries. Rigid disciplinary specificities and ambiguities around terms such as ‘subject’ and ‘field’ in the recruitment scheme have been used to reject applicants with outstanding publications by those within the system who saw them as a threat to their positions. The government should work towards reforms in these areas, too, but through adequate deliberations and dialogue.
From Mindless Efficiency to Patient Deliberations
Given the seeming lack of interest on the part of the government to listen to public opinion, in 2026, academics, trade unions and students should be more active in their struggle for transparency and consultations. This struggle has to happen alongside our ongoing struggles for higher allocations for education, better infrastructure, increased recruitment and better work environment. Part of this struggle involves holding the NPP government, UGC, NIE, our universities and schools accountable.
The new year requires us to think about social justice and accountability in education in new ways, also in the light of the Ditwah catastrophe. The decision to cancel the third-term exams, delegating the authority to decide when to re-open affected schools to local educational bodies and Principals and not change the school hours in view of the difficulties caused by Ditwah are commendable moves. But there is much more that we have to do both in addressing the practical needs of the people affected by Ditwah and understanding the implications of this crisis to our framing of education as social justice.
To what extent is our educational policymaking aware of the special concerns of students, teachers and schools affected by Ditwah and other similar catastrophes? Do the authorities know enough about what these students, teachers and institutions expect via educational and institutional reforms? What steps have we taken to find out their priorities and their understanding of educational reforms at this critical juncture? What steps did we take in the past to consult communities that are prone to climate disasters? We should not shy away from decelerating the reform process, if that is what the present moment of climate crisis exacerbated by historical inequalities of class, gender, ethnicity and region in areas like Malaiyaham requires, especially in a situation where deliberations have been found lacking.
This piece calls for slowing-down as a counter practice, a decelerating move against mindless efficiency and speed demanded by neoliberal donor agencies during reform processes at the risk of public opinion, especially of those on the margins. Such framing can help us see openness, patience, accountability, humility and the will to self-introspect and self-correct as our guides in envisioning and implementing educational reforms in the new year and beyond.
(Mahendran Thiruvarangan is a Senior Lecturer attached to the Department of Linguistics & English at the 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
by Mahendran Thiruvarangan
Looking back at the past year, the anxiety among influential sections of the population that the NPP government would destabilise the country has been dispelled. There was concern that the new government with its strong JVP leadership might not be respectful of private property in the Marxist tradition. These fears have not materialised. The government has made a smooth transition, with no upheavals and no breakdown of governance. This continuity deserves recognition. In general, smooth political transitions following decisive electoral change may be identified as early indicators of democratic consolidation rather than disruption.
Democratic legitimacy is strengthened when new governments respect inherited institutions rather than seek to dismantle them wholesale. On this score, the government’s first year has been positive. However, the challenges that the government faces are many. The government’s failure to appoint an Auditor General, coupled with its determination to push through nominees of its own choosing without accommodating objections from the opposition and civil society, reflects a deeper problem. The government’s position is that the Constitutional Council is making biased decisions when it rejects the president’s nominations to the position of Auditor General.
Many if not most of the government’s appointments to high positions of state have been drawn from a narrow base of ruling party members and associates. The government’s core entity, the JVP, has had a traditional voter base of no more than 5 percent. Limiting selection of top officials to its members or associates is a recipe for not getting the best. It leaves out a wide swathe of competent persons which is counterproductive to the national interest. Reliance on a narrow pool of party affiliated individuals for senior state appointments limits access to talent and expertise, though the government may have its own reasons.
The recent furor arising out of the Grade 6 children’s textbook having a weblink to a gay dating site appears to be an act of sabotage. Prime Minister (and Education Minister Harini Amarasuriya) has been unfairly and unreasonably targeted for attack by her political opponents. Governments that professionalise the civil service rather than politicise them have been more successful in sustaining reform in the longer term in keeping with the national interest. In Sri Lanka, officers of the state are not allowed to contest elections while in service (Establishment Code) which indicates that they cannot be linked to any party as they have to serve all.
Skilled Leadership
The government is also being subjected to criticism by the Opposition for promising much in its election manifesto and failing to deliver on those promises. In this regard, the NPP has been no different to the other political parties that contested those elections making extravagant promises. The problem is that the economic collapse of 2022 set the country back several years in terms of income and living standards. The economy regressed to the levels of 2018, which was not due to actions of the NPP. Even the most skilled leadership today cannot simply erase those lost years. The economy rebounded to around five percent growth in the past year, but this recovery now faces new problems following Cyclone Ditwah, which wiped out an estimated ten percent of national income.
In the aftermath of the cyclone, the country’s cause for shame lies with the political parties. Rather than coming together to support relief and recovery, many focused on assigning blame and scoring political points, as in the attacks on the prime minister, undermining public confidence in the state apparatus at a moment when trust was essential. Despite the politically motivated attacks by some, the government needs to stick to the path of inclusiveness in its approach to governance. The sustainability of policy change depends not only on electoral victory but on inclusive processes that are more likely to endure than those imposed by majorities.
Bipartisanship recognises that national rebuilding and reconciliation requires cooperation across political divides. It requires consultation with the opposition and with civil society. Opposition leader Sajith Premadasa has been generally reasonable and constructive in his approach. A broader view of bipartisanship is that it needs to extend beyond the mainstream opposition to include ethnic and religious minorities. The government’s commitment to equal rights and non-discrimination has had a positive impact. Visible racism has declined, and minorities report feeling physically safer than in the past. These gains should not be underestimated. However, deeper threats to ethnic harmony remain.
The government needs to do more to make national reconciliation practical and rooted in change on the ground rather than symbolic. Political power sharing is central to this task. Minority communities, particularly in the north and east, continue to feel excluded from national development. While they welcome visits and dialogue with national leaders, frustration grows when development promises remain confined to foundation stones and ceremonies. The construction of Buddhist temples in areas with no Buddhist population, justified on claims of historical precedent, is perceived as threatening rather than reconciliatory.
Wider Polity
The constitutionally mandated devolution framework provided by the Thirteenth Amendment remains the most viable mechanism for addressing minority grievances within a united country. It was mediated by India as a third party to the agreement. The long delayed provincial council elections need to be held without further postponement. Provincial council elections have not been held for seven years. This prolonged suspension undermines both democratic practice and minority confidence. International experience, whether in India and Switzerland, shows that decentralisation is most effective when regional institutions are electorally accountable and operational rather than dormant.
It is not sufficient to treat individuals as equal citizens in the abstract. Democratic equality also requires recognising communities as collective actors with legitimate interests. Power sharing allows communities to make decisions in areas where they form majorities, reducing alienation and strengthening national cohesion. The government’s first year in office saw it acknowledge many of these problems, but acknowledgment has not yet translated into action. Issues relating to missing persons, prolonged detention, land encroachment and the absence of provincial elections remain unresolved. Even in areas where reform has been attempted, such as the repeal of the Prevention of Terrorism Act, the proposed replacement legislation falls short of international human rights standards.
The New Year must be one in which these foundational issues are addressed decisively. If not, problems will fester, get worse and distract the government from engaging fully in the development process. Devolution through the Thirteenth Amendment and credible reconciliation mechanisms must move from rhetoric to implementation. It is reported that a resolution to appoint a select committee of parliament to look into and report on an electoral system under which the provincial council elections will be held will be taken up this week. Similarly, existing institutions such as the Office of Missing Persons and the Office of Reparations need to be empowered to function effectively, while a truth and reconciliation process must be established that commands public confidence.
Trust in institutions requires respect for constitutional processes, trust in society requires inclusive decision making, and trust across communities requires genuine power sharing and accountability. Economic recovery, disaster reconstruction, institutional integrity and ethnic reconciliation are not separate tasks but interlinked tests of democratic governance. The government needs to move beyond reliance on its core supporters and govern in a manner that draws in the wider polity. Its success here will determine not only the sustainability of its reforms but also the country’s prospects for long term stability and unity.
by Jehan Perera
While agreeing wholeheartedly with most of the sentiments expressed by Dr Geewananda Gunawardhana in his piece “Pharmaceuticals, deaths, and work ethics” (The Island, 5th January), I must take exception to what he stated regarding corruption: “Enough has been said about corruption, and fortunately, the present government is making an effort to curb it. We must give them some time as only the government has changed, not the people”
With every change of government, we have witnessed the scenario of the incoming government going after the corrupt of the previous, punishing a few politicians in the process. This is nothing new. In fact, some governments have gone after high-ranking public servants, too, punishing them on very flimsy grounds. One of the main reasons, if not the main, of the unexpected massive victory at the polls of this government was the promise of eradication of corruption. Whilst claiming credit for convicting some errant politicians, even for cases that commenced before they came to power, how has the NPP government fared? If one considers corruption to be purely financial, then they have done well, so far. Well, even with previous governments they did not commence plundering the wealth of the nation in the first year!
I would argue that dishonesty, even refusal to take responsibility is corruption. Plucking out of retirement and giving plum jobs to those who canvassed key groups, in my opinion, is even worse corruption than some financial malpractices. There is no need to go into the details of Ranwala affairs as much has been written about but the way the government responded does not reassure anyone expecting and hoping for the NPP government to be corruption free.
One of the first important actions of the government was the election of Ranwala as the speaker. When his claimed doctorate was queried and he stepped down to find the certificate, why didn’t AKD give him a time limit to find it? When he could not substantiate obtaining a PhD, even after a year, why didn’t AKD insist that he resigns the parliamentary seat? Had such actions been taken then the NPP can claim credit that the party does not tolerate dishonesty. What an example are we setting for the youth?
Recent road traffic accident involving Ranwala brough to focus this lapse too, in addition to the laughable way the RTA was handled. The police officers investigating could not breathalyse him as they had run out of ‘balloons’ for the breathalyser! His blood and urine alcohol levels were done only after a safe period had elapsed. Not surprisingly, the results were normal! Honestly, does the government believe that anyone with an iota of intelligence would accept the explanation that these were lapses on the part of the police but not due to political interference?
The release of over 300 ‘red-tagged’ containers continues to remain a mystery. The deputy minister of shipping announced loudly that the ministry would take full responsibility but subsequently it turned out that customs is not under the purview of the ministry of shipping. Report on the affair is yet to see the light of day, the only thing that happened being the senior officer in customs that defended the government’s action being appointed the chief! Are these the actions of a government that came to power on the promise of eradication of corruption?
The new year dawned with another headache for the government that promised ‘system change.’ The most important educational reforms in our political history were those introduced by Dr CWW Kannangara which included free education and the establishment of central schools, etc. He did so after a comprehensive study lasting over six years, but the NPP government has been in a rush! Against the advice of many educationists that reforms should be brought after consultation, the government decided it could rush it on its own. It refuses to take responsibility when things go wrong. Heavens, things have started going wrong even before it started! Grade Six English Language module textbook gives a link to make e-buddies. When I clicked that link what I got was a site that stated: “Buddy, Bad Boys Club, Meet Gay Men for fun”!
Australia has already banned social media to children under 15 years and a recent survey showed that nearly two thirds of parents in the UK also favour such a ban but our minister of education wants children as young as ten years to join social media and have e-buddies!
Coming back to the aforesaid website, instead of an internal investigation to find out what went wrong, the Secretary to the Ministry of Education went to the CID. Of course, who is there in the CID? Shani of Ranjan Ramanayake tape fame! He will surely ‘fix’ someone for ‘sabotaging’ educational reforms! Can we say that the NPP government is less corrupt and any better than its predecessors?
by Dr Upul Wijayawardhana
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