Features

President Dissanayake and Tamil Speaking Politics

Published

1 month ago

2026/08/9

Thilina Walpola

President Dissanayake listens to Tamil Speaking Politics

by Rajan Philips ✍️

President Dissanayake listens to Tamil Speaking Politics

Two weeks after their first gathering in Colombo, on July 13, the six political parties of the ‘Tamil speaking people’ had an audience with President Anura Kumara Dissanayake on Monday, August 3 last week. The meeting was far more informal than all the structured discussions of the past that led to pacts, agreements and constitutional amendments – involving the state and the Tamil speaking people. Yet there is something mildly historic about this powwow that may turn out to be significant depending on what follow up actions will be taken by the President and the six political parties after their first meeting. More immediately for the President, the meeting with Tamil speaking political parties would have come as a reprieve after all the political flak the government has been receiving over prison riots and judges’ retirement.

The inaugural gathering included Rishad Bathiudeen, leader of the Sri Lanka People’s Congress; Rauff Hakeem, leader of the Sri Lanka Muslim Congress; Jeevan Thondaman, leader of the Ceylon Workers’ Congress; Mano Ganesan, leader of the Tamil Progressive Alliance; M. A. Sumanthiran, General Secretary of ITAK; and Selvam Adaikkalanathan of the Democratic Tamil National Alliance. ITAK’s Shanakiyan Rasamanickam was nominated as coordinator of the six-party initiative.

Three Issues

The meeting of political parties representing the Tamil speaking Muslims, Malaiyaka Tamils and Tamils of the North and East, marks their first formal gathering in recent years. Their stated agreement as has been reported is “to establish a common platform to discuss shared concerns, exchange views and build consensus on the issues facing their communities, bringing together the Tamils of the North-East, the Malaiyaka Tamils of the hill country and Muslims across the island.”

The group has identified three main issues that are important to their three communities, namely, constitutional reform, provincial council elections, and land issues. In their joint statement entitled “Tamil-speaking Political Parties Agree to Establish a Common Platform to Work Together on Matters of Common Concern,” the group highlighted the NPP government’s pre-election pledge to introduce a new constitution; its promise to conduct provincial council elections within a year of the parliamentary election in November 2024; and the urgency for the government to engage with the people grappling with land issues in the north and east and in the central province.

The focus of the group’s meeting with President Dissanayake was also on these three issues. Although no timeline commitments were made, it is worth noting that the President reiterated his and the NPP’s commitment to abolish the executive presidency and to replace it with “a system of governance that is clearly accountable to Parliament.” On the provincial council elections, the President tossed the ball to the parliamentary committee that is looking into the matter and promised to follow up with the committee. On the land question, the President again confirmed the government’s commitment to resolving land related issues both in the Northern Province and the Central highlands.

As general background, the President reminded the Tamil speaking political leaders that the government is laying the foundation where finally Sri Lankans can also find other Sri Lankans regardless of whether they are Sinhalese, Tamils or Muslims. He further reminded them that the country has been “free of ethnic unrest during the government’s tenure.”

That might be a stretch since the NPP government has not been in power long enough to justify that claim, but it must be acknowledged that this government is not in the business of fomenting ethnic unrest for political mileage. That was the business model of practically every other government after independence. The previous governments were mostly different from one another only in the degree of communal mischief and not in eschewing them altogether.

It is reasonable to ask as to why the Tamil speaking leaders, even the ITAK, did not bring up the matter of Chemmani and other mass graves with the President in their meeting. This was a missed opportunity from the standpoint of the victims of mass graves and their families. This government has facilitated positive progress in the investigation of mass graves, missing persons and in addressing other postwar grievances. Every opportunity should be used by the Tamil speaking leaders to encourage the government to continue with ongoing initiatives and not let them peter out.

Tamil Speaking Politics

Besides the powwow with the President, the new grouping of Tamil Speaking Political organizations leaders has raised questions about its purpose, who is included and who is excluded, its electoral intentions, and its relationship with the government and the main opposition. There have also been observations about the inherent contradictions within the group on constitutional matters, especially devolution, provincial councils and the chimera of a North-East re-merger.

At their first news conference, the Tamil speaking leaders were apparently at pains to highlight the limits of their common platform, insist that they are not an electoral alliance, affirm that they would pursue devolution within an undivided Sri Lanka, and assert that they are neither pro-opposition nor anti-government. That is post-modernism in Sri Lankan politics. Questions, observations and hesitations aside, the very idea of a common platform of the Tamil Speaking People is timely, positive and progressive.

Not surprisingly the first welcome sign for the Tamil speaking common platform came from the inimitable JVP veteran and NPP Minister, K.D. Lalkantha. The Minister has called “the unity of Tamil-speaking political parties [is] a good development for seeking solutions to the fundamental problems of the Tamil people.” He then took a jab at the opposition, blaming the ineffectiveness of the Leader of the Opposition as the reason for the Tamil speaking parties seeking unity among themselves rather than being in an opposition alliance.

Not many in the current parliament may know this, but the concept of a Tamil speaking people was patented by the old Federal Party, aka Ilankai Thamil Arasu Kadchi (ITAK), in the 1950s. It caused early excitement, got lost along the way and became an easy prey for Tamil separatism. Ironically, the Federal Party’s concept of the Tamil Speaking People was not a federal concept but a unitary concept. Today’s manifestation of the Tamil Speaking collective is not at all unitary and totally federal. It is centred on not one party, but six – two from each community. It is also symptomatic of the territorial and demographic changes within each community.

The northeast or Sri Lankan Tamils are no longer one of the two ‘major communities’ in the island, the way the early 20^th century Ceylon Tamil forefathers fancied themselves to be. There was a Tamil diaspora then, there is a different Tamil diaspora now and the latter has grown at the expense of their natal brethren – considerably depleting the social and economic significances of the Tamils at the time of independence. The political and economic challenges are also different from what they were post-independence to what they are now – postwar. The terms over which the war was waged are no longer relevant to the terms on which postwar lives have to be rebuilt. The Tamil diaspora has the luxury of living politically in the Sri Lankan past and economically in the more prosperous present of their new countries. This luxury is not available to Tamils living in the north and east. They have to reimagine their politics to overcome the precarity of their subsistence.

The Muslims and the Malaiyaka Tamils have come of age in their own separate ways as ethnonationalist coexistences within an island union. Muslims are geographically more dispersed but they are sufficiently concentrated in the east to make any idea of a north-east re-merger a political non-starter. Sooner the Tamil political leaders come to term with this reality, the better for their people. In that sense, the new Tamil Speaking Common Platform could be the consociational forum where consensus could be forged over contentious issues, including the north-east re-merger issue.

For all the citizenship suffering and political privations that they had to go through for over 150 years, the Malaiyaka Tamils are finally beginning to enjoy the benefits of citizenship and representation in politics and society. The plantation economy that the estate Tamil workers produced and were in turn reproduced by it, is now a whole different system. It remains a major but proportionately reduced contributor to the national GDP, but the main platform of plantation production is not the company owned estates but tea small holdings both in tea production and in employment.

The rubric of Malaiyaka Tamils, that the NPP government has officially recognized, encompasses not just the plantation workers and their families but a growing community of professionals, civil servants, diplomats, teachers, general state employees, and business owners. Yet as M. Vamadevan, the well known Malaiyaka Tamil civil servant and an accomplished Peradeniya student of AJ Wilson and H.A. de S. Gunasekera, has perceptively observed, despite all the changes the plantation workers remain “the mainstay” of the Malaiyaka Tamil community. The mainstay also bears the brunt of landlessness and the unresolved ownership of the wretchedly historic line rooms where generations of estate workers were born and raised. Not surprisingly, land and housing on the estates along with the land problems in the Northern Province featured prominently at the presidential powwow.

The Land Question

The current manifestation of land politics as one of three important issues on which six different political parties are able to form a common Tamil speaking platform – is another generational shift in politics from the four basic demands advocated by the old ITAK/Federal Party. The four demands were for language parity, regional councils, Malaiyaka Tamil citizenship and ceasing land colonization. President JR Jayewardene’s 13^th Amendment addresses three of them – language, devolution and land, while JRJ and President Premadasa separately resolved the citizenship question. So, there has been legislative progress on these matters, in fact, quite significant progress. Only the implementation of these initiatives has been tardy and inconsistent. With the exception of citizenship and language, President AKD and the NPP have unfinished tasks on devolution and land.

The task on devolution spans both constitutional reform and the Provincial Councils. The latter can be addressed quite swiftly if the President were to commit to an election date – say before when, and the parliamentary committee can get its act together to meet the deadline. The Election Commission is apparently all ready and is only waiting for the nod from the government. That is not the way election timing should be. Perhaps fixing unalterable election dates – specifying the month and day of the week every five years for all elections – would be a commendable constitutional reform.

On the constitution itself, both President AKD and ITAK’s M.A. Sumanthiran agreeabally spoke about the need for a national dialogue and consensus on a new constitution. Both are needed but there is no need to keep reinventing the same wheel over and over again. The country has been having dialogues and consultations from the time Chandrika Kumaratunga was elected to office in 1994. Both AKD and Sumanthiran are intimately aware of what changes are required to provisions of the constitution. Experts and professionals who worked on them are still around.

All the government has to do is to set up a Task Force to produce yet another draft in six months. That would be generous time considering the amount of work that has gone into this over three decades. All that should be counted as dialogue and consultation, and there is no need for another merry go round. Once a draft is done, Parliament can take a few months to deliberate and reach reasonable consensus (no more daylight burning of draft copies). The Supreme Court will then have its say and a new Constitution could be ready for ratification by the people at the next general election. That would be the referendum – the mother of all consultations.

The land question needs a different treatment – political will and administrative persistence. The August 3 meeting recognized the regional differences on land – the plantations and the northeast provinces. In the former, there is the NPP’s own framework – the Hatton Declaration – to guide future actions. The NPP’s eight point declaration, delivered on October 15^th, 2023, to commemorate the 200^th anniversary of the arrival of Malaiyaka Tamils in Sri Lanka, is both a historic and a unique commitment for a national political party in Sri Lanka. Specific to land and housing, the Hatton Declaration envisages the distribution of abandoned estate lands among the plantation residents.

Land politics in the north and east is an administrative quagmire involving more than a handful of state agencies. Besides the military, the Mahaweli Authority, the Archaeology Department and the Departments of Forests, Forest Conservation, Wildlife and Coast Conservation – all have their politico-bureaucratic fingers in the land pie. Even after the election of the NPP government in November 2024, state officials found a way to issue, on March 28^th 2025, a new Gazette Notification No. 2430/25, under Section 4 of the Land Settlement Ordinance, targeting 5,900 acres of land in the Mullaitivu, Jaffna, Mannar and Kilinochchi Districts and notifying that they would be sequestered as State property unless claims to ownership are made within three months of the gazette date!

Thankfully, Mr. Sumanthiran petitioned the Supreme Court and a bench of three judges, Yasantha Kodagoda PC, Sampath Abeykoon, and Sampath Wijeratne, issued a stay order suspending the Gazette Notification until judicial review was completed. The judiciary has evolved a long way in the post 13^th Amendment era – far more than the political and administrative departments of the state. The NPP government would do well to leave the judiciary alone and look elsewhere for likely saboteurs of its agenda.

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Features

Defend civic space upon which peace is built

Published

17 hours ago

2026/09/22

Sahan Weerasooriya

by Jehan Perera

International Peace Day was observed on 21 September. It finds Sri Lanka with a genuine achievement to record and a demanding test to meet. The UN’s theme this year was “Invest in Peace: For Everyone, Everywhere, Every Day.” It also honoured the “everyday architects of peace”—people driving local action and building a lasting peace from the ground up. In the 2026 Global Peace Index, Sri Lanka rose 30 places, from 97th to 67th among 163 countries. Over the same period, global peacefulness declined for the twelfth consecutive year to its lowest level since the index began, and South Asia suffered the sharpest regional deterioration. The test is whether the government will protect the civic space in which those architects of peace work.

Sri Lanka’s improvement is real and deserves acknowledgement. In this year’s review, issued a few weeks ago, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights acknowledged progress in the form of action against corruption, arrests and investigations linked to political killings, enforced disappearances and the 2019 Easter Sunday attacks, and continued official denunciation of racism. A ranking, however, records conditions at a particular moment. It does not guarantee that they will last. Sustainable peace will depend on three factors. These are whether the government addresses the unresolved causes of conflict, whether it strengthens accountability for past and present abuses, and whether it protects the civic space in which peace is built from below. On the first two the record is incomplete. On the third, the draft NGO law threatens to weaken the very organisations that press for the other two.

What holds Sri Lanka back from a higher place are the same things that fed the war at home and also feed international conflict that rages elsewhere in the world. These are racism or ethnic nationalism that is narrow-focused, corruption and lawlessness. Equality, accountability and the rule of law are their remedies. The present government has committed itself to these, and is a significant improvement over governments of the recent past. But these pillars are not held up by governments alone. Peace is made in villages, workplaces and university campuses. It is made by families who insist on the truth about their disappeared, by journalists and lawyers who expose abuse, and by community organisations that bring Tamils, Muslims and Sinhalese into practical cooperation.

Unfinished Work

The UN High Commissioner’s report to the current Human Rights Council session, covering October 2025 to July 2026, shows how much remains to be done. The Prevention of Terrorism Act is still being applied, producing arbitrary arrests and long detention without charge. The report calls for a moratorium pending repeal and for the release of long-term detainees. Military-occupied land has not been released, memorialisation lacks support, and tensions over land and religious sites persist. The Batticaloa district illustrates how such problems endure. In the past three years, two Presidents, Ranil Wickremesinghe and Anura Kumara Dissanayake, have visited and instructed that the dispute over grazing land in Mailaththamadu and Mathavanai be resolved. It is a dispute between Tamil cattle farmers and outside Sinhala cultivators, and it has not been resolved. When two Presidents issue instructions and nothing changes, the fault lies in the machinery of State. An unresolved dispute does not stand still. It hardens into the next grievance.

Accountability shows the same pattern. The report documents torture and deaths in custody, and surveillance and intimidation of activists, journalists and civil society. Serious cases remain stalled for years, among them the killing of seventeen aid workers of Action Contre la Faim in Muttur two decades ago. Sharper still is the case of the Eastern University refugee camp at Vantharamoolai, where in 1990 the army took away 158 persons in a single day. They were never seen again. The camp’s officer-in-charge, Dr T. Jayasingam, later Vice Chancellor of the university, identified the officers responsible. More than three decades on, those officers have not been questioned. These cases are still remembered because families, survivors and independent witnesses have refused to let them be forgotten. Meanwhile several commissions of inquiry have completed their investigations but nothing further has happened.

What South Africa, Argentina and other post-conflict societies have found indispensable are four pillars of what is called “Transitional Justice” which are truth, accountability, reparations and non-recurrence. In Sri Lanka’s circumstances, truth means credible, independent investigation of what happened to the disappeared, and support for memorialisation. Accountability means prosecuting Muttur, Vantharamoolai and comparable cases, and removing credibly accused persons from senior office. Reparations mean compensation for victims and the return of military-held land. Non-recurrence means repealing the Prevention of Terrorism Act, releasing those held under it in the meantime, and resolving local disputes such as Mailaththamadu before delay hardens them. A country that buries its past does not escape it. The past returns in the next generation.

Civil Society

It is against this background that the draft NGO law is most troubling. The proposed legislation contains sweeping provisions for State oversight and control of civil society organisations. Among these are enforcing a licensing requirement on NGOs, which is to be renewed every three years, and severe penalties for not submitting reports on time, or for spending on emergency flood relief (for instance) when the NGOs mandate is peacebuilding (as an example) with possible sanctions including deregistration and having to shut down. Civil society groups have warned that it would confer excessive discretion over their registration and operations. Officials in Sri Lanka have abused such powers in the past. Additional power without effective checks invites further abuse. Sound regulation would have clear criteria for registration, an independent registrar and a right of appeal to the courts. What cannot be justified is a regime in which registration becomes a licence to be withheld from organisations that scrutinise policy, expose abuses or advocate for the rights of citizens.

Democracy is based on checks and balances. Those who press for accountability are part of those checks. The contradiction is plain. A government that has pledged accountability, equality and the rule of law ought not to be preparing to weaken the very organisations that press for their fulfilment. The organisations most exposed are those working on disappearances, land, memorialisation and reconciliation in the North and East, where the State’s record is weakest and the need for independent witnesses greatest. Silencing them would not remove the grievances they document. It would remove the channel through which those grievances are addressed peacefully. The government appears to be relenting, which is welcome, but a pause is not a withdrawal. The bill should be withdrawn and any replacement drafted in genuine consultation with those it would govern.

Investment in peace as called for by the UN in its International Peace Day theme implies commitment over time, with returns that come slowly. Sri Lanka’s 30-place rise on the Global Peace Index is a first dividend and nothing more. It can be built upon only if the government matches its commitments with action: withdrawing or fundamentally redrafting the NGO law, repealing or suspending the Prevention of Terrorism Act, and bringing Muttur, Vantharamoolai and Mailaththamadu to resolution. A higher place in a global index is not a certificate of success. Sri Lanka’s higher ranking is an encouraging start, but it will endure only if the space in which citizens speak, question and organise is protected. Peace is built from below, and a government that is serious about it will treat civil society as a partner rather than a threat.

Features

Africa is buying: Sri Lanka must start selling

Published

17 hours ago

2026/09/22

Sahan Weerasooriya

A call to Sri Lankan exporters and agencies: Can Sri Lanka compete with China and India in Africa?

By Kana V. Kananathan
Former Ambassador

Sri Lanka has spent decades concentrating its exports on traditional markets in Europe, North America and Asia. Yet across the Indian Ocean lies a rapidly expanding market that remains significantly underdeveloped by Sri Lankan exporters: Africa.

The opportunity is not theoretical. Sri Lanka already exports packaging, textiles, rubber products, pharmaceuticals, paper, machinery and electrical goods to African markets. The question is whether these modest beginnings can be transformed into a serious export strategy—and whether Sri Lanka can compete against the enormous commercial presence of China and India.

The answer is yes—but Sri Lanka must compete differently.

Kenya: Gateway to East Africa

Kenya should be the starting point.

Sri Lanka exported approximately US$32.08 million to Kenya in 2025, while importing US$11.41 million. But US$32 million is tiny compared with the opportunity: Kenya imported more than US$24 billion in 2025. Even a 1% share of that market would represent nearly US$240 million in annual exports.

And the commercial base already exists. Sri Lanka’s 2025 exports to Kenya included approximately US$9.99 million in paper and paperboard products, US$9.73 million in knitted fabrics, US$3.64 million in pharmaceuticals, US$1.24 million in rubber products and US$1.20 million in machinery.

Kenya’s import structure is equally revealing. In the third quarter of 2025, industrial supplies represented 34.4% of imports, machinery and capital equipment 19.2%, food and beverages 9.0%, and consumer goods 7.3%. The opportunity for Sri Lanka, therefore, extends well beyond consumer goods—we can become a supplier to African industry.

But competition is fierce. Asia supplied around 70% of Kenya’s imports in 2025, with imports from China rising 16.5% and those from India 11.3%.

Sri Lanka cannot challenge China and India across every product category. Nor should it try. We must target sectors where quality, specialisation, reliability, technical capability, smaller production runs and flexibility matter more than simply offering the lowest price.

Where Can Sri Lanka Compete?

Packaging is an obvious starting point. Cartons, boxes, bags and labels are already among Sri Lanka’s exports to Kenya. Importantly, some Sri Lankan companies operating in Kenya are themselves importing these products from Sri Lanka. The market already exists; the challenge is to scale it.

As Africa’s food-processing, pharmaceutical, apparel and consumer-goods industries expand, demand for sophisticated packaging will grow with them. Sri Lanka already possesses the manufacturing capability and industry experience to capture a larger share.

Industrial rubber products, tyres, gloves and specialised rubber components offer another opportunity where Sri Lanka has established manufacturing expertise.

The apparel supply chain is equally promising. Rather than competing directly with African garment factories, Sri Lanka can supply fabrics, elastics, labels, packaging and specialised textile inputs.

Some Sri Lankan apparel manufacturing and export companies already established in Kenya, Togo, Ghana and Ethiopia are importing several of these inputs from Sri Lanka. The supply chain, therefore, already exists. The next step is to move beyond supplying Sri Lankan-owned factories and become a competitive input supplier to the wider African apparel industry.

Other sectors deserving systematic market development include pharmaceuticals and medical consumables, processed foods, biscuits and confectionery, coconut products, cinnamon and spices, electrical products and cables, industrial chemicals, ceramics, light engineering, agricultural equipment and food-processing machinery.

Sri Lanka should also look beyond physical goods. IT, fintech, banking technology, engineering, healthcare, hospitality management and professional services largely escape the freight disadvantage confronting merchandise exports.

The Tariff Problem Can Become an Opportunity

Market access cannot be discussed without tariffs.The East African Community applies a Common External Tariff with bands of 0%, 10%, 25% and 35%, while certain sensitive products attract still higher protection. Simply filling containers in Colombo with finished consumer goods will therefore not always be commercially competitive.

But that obstacle points towards a bigger opportunity: manufacture in Africa.

Sri Lankan businesses could export intermediate materials while undertaking final assembly, manufacturing, processing or packaging in Kenya. Packaging companies could establish converting plants; electrical manufacturers could assemble locally; pharmaceutical companies could explore manufacturing or packaging partnerships; and food companies could undertake final processing closer to consumers.

Kenya would then become more than an export destination. It could become Sri Lanka’s manufacturing and distribution gateway into East and Central Africa.

With the East African Community now comprising eight partner states and extending geographically from the Indian Ocean towards the Atlantic, establishing a regional presence is increasingly more important than viewing each African country in isolation.

West Africa Cannot Be Ignored

Sri Lanka simultaneously needs a West African strategy.

Ghana offers potential as an English-speaking commercial gateway and host of the AfCFTA Secretariat. Nigeria, with its enormous population and consumer economy, should be approached as a major market in its own right, despite its greater regulatory, currency and operational complexity.

ECOWAS tariff bands of 0%, 5%, 10%, 20% and 35% again make product selection critical. Sri Lanka should concentrate on products with sufficient differentiation and margins to absorb freight, tariffs and distributor costs.

Pharmaceuticals demonstrate both the opportunity and the challenge. Nigeria imported approximately US$766 million in pharmaceuticals in 2025, with India supplying roughly US$394 million and China US$131 million. Ghana imported approximately US$301 million, with India supplying about US$140 million.

Sri Lanka cannot simply offer another generic product and expect to beat India on price. We must identify specialised products, reliable supply arrangements, partnerships and, where commercially justified, local production or packaging.

Stop Promoting Sectors—Identify Products

Sri Lanka now needs an Africa Export Opportunity Study based on individual products, not broad sectors.

The Export Development Board, Foreign Ministry, chambers and private sector should jointly identify 15–20 priority products. For each product, Sri Lanka should calculate the HS code, African annual import demand, principal suppliers, Chinese and Indian market shares, applicable duties, freight from Colombo, regulatory requirements, distributor margins and final landed price.

That will tell us where Sri Lanka genuinely has a competitive advantage.

The Commercial Test

Before spending resources promoting a product, apply one simple test:

African import demand + Sri Lankan production capability + tariff + freight + distributor margin + regulatory cost = final landed competitiveness against China, India and local African production.

Only products that pass this test should receive concentrated export-promotion resources.

This would move Sri Lanka away from exhibitions, delegations and general discussions towards what ultimately matters: specific products, specific buyers, specific distributors and actual export orders.

Give Our Missions Targets

Commercial diplomacy must become results-driven. The Government should set clear annual trade and investment targets for every Sri Lankan mission in Africa.

Missions should be evaluated not merely on diplomatic activity, but on buyers and distributors identified, business introductions made, investments facilitated, market barriers resolved and measurable exports generated.

In a competitive Africa, our missions must become active economic frontlines not merely diplomatic outposts.

A practical strategy could operate through three commercial gateways: Nairobi for East and Central Africa, Accra for selected West African markets and Lagos for Nigeria.

Sri Lanka’s total exports of goods and services reached approximately US$17.25 billion in 2025. Capturing even a small additional share of Africa’s enormous import market could, therefore, make a meaningful contribution to export earnings, investment and foreign-exchange generation.

Africa Will Not Wait

Sri Lankan exporters must stop looking at Africa as a distant or difficult market and start treating it as a strategic growth market.

We cannot compete with China and India on scale, but we can compete on quality, specialisation, flexibility and reliability. Exporters must identify country-specific opportunities, establish strong local distributors, build partnerships with African businesses and use Sri Lankan companies already operating on the continent as gateways into regional supply chains.

Where freight and tariffs weaken competitiveness, businesses must be prepared to move towards local assembly, joint ventures and manufacturing in Africa. Exporters cannot do it alone. They need aggressive, measurable and results-driven commercial diplomacy from Sri Lanka’s missions.

Africa is buying. Its markets are being captured now. Sri Lanka must stop watching from the sidelines. We must enter, compete, build our presence and secure our share.

(Ambassador Kana Kananathan is a businessman, Diplomat, lobbyist and an expert in African affairs, with over four decades of experience on the African continent. A long-time resident of Africa, he served as Sri Lanka’s envoy to Uganda and Kenya, with concurrent accreditation to 22 African Nations, and was the permanent representative to UN Habitat and UN environmental Programme. Over the years, he has been the Elections Monitor across the continent, working closely with African governments, and built enduring partnerships with African leaders. He also served as Economic and Investments Advisor to former President Professor Alpha Condé of the Republic of Guinea)

Features

Memories and Midnight Magic: Recipe for a perfect 31st Night dance

Published

17 hours ago

2026/09/22

Sahan Weerasooriya

The heart of a great 31st Night dance is memory, and memories come rushing back when those 70s, 80s and 90s golden oldies begin to play — those timeless tunes that make revellers, young and old, rush to the floor and dance the night away.

A perfect 31st Night is not just a party. It is a journey. A journey through time.

The music should flow like a love story. Start slow, start soft. Let couples glide into a waltz for romance. Let the floor come alive with a twist, a rock ‘n’ roll, a jive. Let nostalgia build with beautiful sing-along oldies generally associated with a New Year’s Eve dance.

This is the art that many of our entertainers seem to have forgotten.

The final hour, before midnight, is sacred. It should be collective energy at its peak. The entire crowd, on the dance floor, linking arms, swaying together, singing, at the top of their voices, those sing-along favourites.

Yes, I’m referring to those immortal, nostalgic favourites that unite the world: ‘This Land Is Your Land,’ ‘You Are My Sunshine,’ ‘When The Saints Go Marching In,’ ‘Roll Out The Barrel,’ ‘Celebration,’ ‘She’ll Be Coming Round The Mountain,’ ‘Happy Days Are Here Again,’ and so many more.

One wonders if some of our modern entertainers have even heard of these nostalgia anthems that traditionally lead up to the dawning of the New Year! This is not just music; this is ritual.

Then comes THE moment: Lights dim. Music pauses. A hush falls. The countdown begins — 10, 9, 8… — hugs, wishes, tears of joy, and then … ‘Auld Lang Syne.’ Hands crossed, voices united, bidding farewell to the old and welcoming the new. That moment makes or breaks the night.

Here is the truth that many genuine 31st Night revellers feel but hesitate to say — an overdose of baila music at New Year’s Eve events is NOT welcome.

Of course, baila is required. Baila is our Sri Lankan heartbeat! But a 31st Night dance is for everyone.

When it’s ONLY baila, the twist and rock n’ roll lovers, the waltz kings and queens feel left out. And they are the very people who MADE nostalgia! They are the die-hard revellers who have kept the 31st Night spirit alive for decades.

A family mentioned to me that they went along with friends for a 31st Night dance, in the city, to usher in 2026, and were thoroughly disappointed with the setup.

The bands in attendance, they said, failed to generate the excitement generally associated with a 31st Night event.

If given a free hand, the music at certain Colombo venues will be mostly baila, and that is going to disappoint many. Some are already worried that it will be just a baila scene this year, as well.

A memorable 31st Night respects all rhythms … yes, a waltz for romance, a twist and rock n’ roll for that 60s magic, a cha-cha, a slow foxtrot, and then the baila, after the countdown anthem.

That balance is what makes it inclusive, classy, and truly fun-filled.

Organisers, especially in Colombo, should keep this in mind: let it be 70% nostalgia – Western, and 30% baila, with the last hour left for pure baila madness, after the New Year is in!

Organisers must work out the programme for their 31st Night and instruct the entertainers to follow those instructions. The band should not dictate the night; the spirit of nostalgia should.

This New Year, let’s give Colombo what it truly wants — memories, midnight magic, and music for every soul on the floor.

Let’s dance into 2027 with class.