Features

Some courtroom encounters in Victoria

Published

3 years ago

2023/03/19

Excerpted from A Life In The Law by Nimal Wikramanayake

It was now late in the year 1976. I made a calculated decision that I was not going to appear any more in the Magistrates’ Court. I was not going to put up with the boorish behaviour of the magistrates, nor was I going to appear before the justices of the peace. My clerk, Wayne Duncan, was horrified and told me that I would probably starve the following year if I refused to appear in the Magistrates’ Court. I had received a negligible number of briefs from him and if I had relied on him, I would probably have starved for the 16 years that I was on his list.

In December 1976, I was briefed to appear for a man who was accused of fathering a child. Unfortunately, the client was not able to see me before the matter came up for hearing but was able to see me on the day of the case. Despite my misgivings about the Magistrates’ Court, I continued to appear there. I turned up that day and asked Magistrate Moon to delay the matter for an hour so that I could obtain instructions. I duly obtained these instructions and went back into court at 11 am.

My opponent was full of righteous indignation and told me that he was going to fix my client up for the dreadful thing my client had done to his poor lady client. One lesson my father taught me in my early years as an advocate was never to get personally involved in my cases as it would affect my health. My opponent could have done with this advice. He was metaphorically foaming at the mouth. My client was a married man who had a beautiful home in Frankston and my instructions were that the woman had been sleeping around with other men, and that she was a “gold digger.’

When the case was called, my opponent led his evidence. The complainant was an extremely attractive, willowy young lady of Eastern European appearance. After she gave evidence in chief, it was my turn to cross-examine her. I got up, leered at her and said, “Madam, I suggest that you are a common prostitute, and that you would sleep with any man who was available.”

My opponent bounded to his feet with howls of protest. The magistrate started shouting and screaming at me, telling me that I had no business putting such a horrible question to such a lovely young lady. By this stage I had decided that I was not going to put up with any more rudeness from magistrates and I told Magistrate Moon that he was not entitled firstly to raise his voice at me and that he should keep his voice down when addressing me, and secondly, I told him that it was my case that this woman was a loose woman who had slept with many men, including my client. Any one of these men could have fathered the child and I would establish it.

I then cross-examined the lady for about three hours. I began in a fairly gentle manner but it was a rather excruciating experience for her. I suggested to her that on one occasion she was having intercourse with my client in Ballarat late at night in the front seat of his semi-trailer. My client was employed as a truck driver. ‘Ihis act of intercourse was carried out on one of the main streets of Ballarat, the town was sleeping and the street was deserted. When they heard several cars driving up to the semi-trailer, my client sat up in the driver’s seat while the girl slipped under the dashboard.

There were two carloads full of young men who walked up to the truck. One of them asked my client whether he was “fucking the young lady” whom he mentioned by name. Before my client could reply, the young man said, “I would suggest that you get stuck into her because she is no better than a common prostitute.”

When I put this little incident to the complainant, she vehemently denied that the young man had used such words to describe her. I then asked her whether he had used any words to describe her and her response was: “Yes, he told your client to fuck me, as I was the town bike,’ After that, I raised my voice and began to attack her. I took her to a number of incidents at a number of parties she had attended where she had walked out of the room where the party was being held and into a bedroom where on different occasions she had intercourse with a number of different men.

I mentioned to her that I had several witnesses who were going to testify to these facts. She then readily admitted them and I sat down at 3.45 pm, thoroughly satisfied with myself.

Magistrate Moon enquired from my opponent whether he had any other witnesses, to which my opponent replied “No.’ Magistrate Moon then told my opponent, “In that case, I am going to dismiss your complaint as any one of these men could have fathered that child.” My opponent was distraught.

I quietly slipped out of court with my client. That was the end of my practice in the Magistrates’ Court.

The year 1977 started well and I soon began collecting other solicitors. My dear friend, Egils Stokans, a young solicitor who was a partner in the firm of Kahn and Clahr, had now begun to brief me extensively in the County Court. I had picked up a number of other solicitors and things were beginning to look up.

In the middle of the year I got a brief to appear in the County Court for a plaintiff in a timber contract case. My client had been cutting and hauling timber for a timber contractor and had not been paid for the work he did. The case came up before Judge Arthur Adams in the County Court. Judge Adams was an eccentric judge ant was on the verge of retirement. I had appeared a couple of years earlier before him in a fairly unusual traffic case.

On that earlier occasion my client, a Sinhalese man like me, was charged with refusing to take a breathalyzer test. He had a most unusual defence for refusing to take the test, a defence unknown to law. He had played in a cricket match at a club in Rosebud and after the match had a couple of beers and then had a hamburger for dinner. He told me that the hamburger had onions and onions usually made him violently sick.

He was driving back home when he felt sick. He stopped the car, opened the door and vomited all over the road. He then sat back in the car and fell asleep. He was rudely awakened about two o’clock in the morning by a police constable flashing a torch in his face. The constable asked him whether he had been drinking and he replied yes, that he had had a couple of beers, and then related his unusual story. The constable started laughing and said, “Don’t give me that shit, you rotten little black bastard. Get out of the car and take a breath test’

My client said that he was incensed at this statement by the constable and refused to take the breath test because he was not prepared to be subjected to this racist abuse. When the case came up for trial before Judge Adams, he appeared on the bench with his wig askew. His bands were at a 70-degree angle to his collar and he had buttoned his jacket in the wrong buttonholes.

The constable gave his evidence. When I started cross-examining him, I put my client’s version of the events to him. Judge Adams was outraged that I could put such nonsensical allegations to a fine upstanding constable, and he told me that there was no racism in this wonderful country of ours. I ignored his outburst and continued with my cross-examination. I again put a question to the witness and again Judge Adams exploded, saying, “That is a stupid question – in fact it is the stupidest question I have ever heard”

I looked him the eye and said, “Your Honour, my client is seated behind me and when you tell me that I am putting stupid questions to the witness, he will think that he has retained a blithering idiot to appear for him.” Judge Adams was suddenly quite contrite and said, “I am sorry, Mr Wikrama, I will not make any comments about you again and I will not interrupt you in future”

A few minutes later while I was cross-examining the constable, he interrupted me again. I said, “Your Honour, you promised me that you would not interrupt me again and now you have broken your promise to me.’ He was very contrite and told me that he would not interrupt me again.

I then put my client in the witness box and led evidence from him that he had recently migrated to Australia from Sri Lanka. He was working at several jobs, firstly as a clerk in a suburban firm in Melbourne, secondly, he waited on tables in a restaurant several nights a week, and thirdly, he played drums in a band on some Saturdays in the month.

Judge Adams looked at me and said, “Mr Wikrama, how can you raise allegations of racism in this country when see what a wonderful life your client has in this great country of ours? In fact, I heard on the grapevine that you are now editing Louis Voumard’s great work. As a coloured man, shouldn’t you be grateful for the wonderful breaks you are getting in this country?”

The upshot of it was that at the end of the case Judge Adams dismissed the complaint against my client. I was astonished that no one asked my client why he ate a hamburger with onions if it made him sick.

I had done several timber-contract cases in Ceylon, and in Australia I kept referring to the forest as “the jungle” for in Ceylon one cut timber in the jungle, so Judge Adams kept referring to me as the jungle-man’. Once when I was doing a timber contract case before Judge Adams, I put a question to one of the witnesses, and the word “hammer” came up. Judge Adams queried the word and asked me to spell it. I then proceeded to spell it out for him: “Etch- a-m -m -e-r”.

Judge Adams said, “Mr Wikrama, in addition to being incompetent [all barristers who appeared before him were incompetent] you don’t even know the English language. It is not etch but haitch “

I then adopted my best Cambridge accent and told His Honour, “Your Honour, I was educated at a small University in England called Cambridge, which you probably have heard of. I sat at the feet of two great jurists, Cecil Turner, the author of Kenny’s Outlines of Criminal Law, and Tell Ellis Lewis, the editor of Winfield on Tort. These learned gentlemen told me that the word was “etch”, and it was only the cockneys in East London and the Irish who called it “haitch” As Your Honour pleases, witness, would you mind answering the question.”

Judge Adams was, of course, Irish. He looked at me aghast and did not interrupt me for the rest of the case. Not only that, bless his little cotton socks, the good man entered judgment in my favour. He then did a startling thing. He refused my client his costs on the ground that he was not entitled to them as he was “muddle-headed.” Of course, we appealed to the Court of Appeal on this particular point and the other side cross-appealed.

The matter came up on appeal towards the end of the year and Sir George Lush, who was presiding in the Court of Appeal, looked askance at me and asked whether I had made a mistake in my petition of appeal. I said no, the reason why my client did not get his costs was that he was “muddle-headed” The appeal on costs was allowed and my client got his costs in both courts.

This case had its lighter side. During the proceedings, I developed a high fever. My temperature was 102°F and I was quite ill. Judge Adams looked at me and said, “Mr Wikrama, I am sorry to have to mention it but you look off-colour, you look extremely pale.’ I told him that I was running a temperature of 102°F and he very kindly said that he would adjourn the case to the following Monday.

At this point, Mr RC Taylor, a florid, ruddy-faced “ocker” solicitor from Frankston who was the instructing solicitor for the defendant, sprang to his feet and objected vehemently to the judge granting me an adjournment. He told him that there was no reason why the matter should be adjourned as he had fought in the jungles of Papua New Guinea with an extremely high temperature. He told Judge Adams that there was no reason why I could not conduct the case with a temperature of 102 °F.

Nevertheless Judge Adams adjourned the case to the following Monday and of course as I mentioned, I duly won it. Judge Adams retired shortly afterwards and a few years later while I was returning to the car park after the Flemington races, I heard a shout, “Ah, my jungle friend!” It was dear old Arthur Adams.

Later on in 1977, I received another buffet of fate. My dear friend and chief supporter, Noel Rice, decided to retire at the age of 68 and had sold his practice to two young solicitors. After they bought the practice, one of these gentlemen took me out for lunch and we had a warm, congenial afternoon. However, all good things must come to an end.

After a few months being briefed by this new firm in December 1977, I received a telephone call from the other partner advising me that they would not be briefing me in the future, as they had found a brilliant young barrister who would be taking over my work. He told me that this barrister’s name was Tony Howard, and he was greatly impressed by Tony. Tony Howard later became a Queen’s Counsel and was appointed to the County Court bench. An extremely able man, he is the husband of the Governor of Victoria, Linda Dessau.

Family law

I had a large and successful practice in the District Court of Colombo in Ceylon, and in my 12 years at the Bar there I encountered every form of sexual perversion and sexual deviation in my cases. In one case, my client had been coerced into marrying a woman by his elder sister, who was many years older than him. Like Liza Minelli, who returned home early one afternoon to surprise her husband, he returned home one afternoon to surprise his wife. He did get a surprise. He found her in bed with his sister!

I was now also gradually building up a successful practice in Australia under the new Family Law Act which had been enacted in 1975 by the Labor Party under the guidance of Lionel Murphy. In June of 1977, I was briefed to appear in a custody matter in the Family Court of Australia. It was a no-fault jurisdiction which entitled either party to a marriage to a divorce after a separation of one year. This was a new and a startling concept. Under the Matrimonial Causes Act, which had previously been in force, a person could only get a divorce on the grounds of adultery, malicious desertion, constructive malicious desertion or non-consummation of the marriage.

At the end of May 1977, I was briefed to appear for a young wife in a custody case. It transpired that her husband, who was in his mid-twenties, had a Charlie Chaplin-like desire for young girls. He had seduced his wife when she was 15-years old and filled her with a baby before she turned 16. In order to escape punishment for his folly, the husband married his pregnant girlfriend on her 16th birthday.

The husband then had numerous affairs with young teenage girls. One of these girls, a 14-year-old, agreed to give evidence for my client. She had been sacked from school for stealing and had been caught shoplifting at Woolworths in Frankston.

I saw my client and the young lady in conference, and the young lady gave me detailed descriptions about her sexual activities with the husband. I then devised an ingenious plan of action. My father had taught me that the leading of evidence of a witness in examination-in-chief was as important as the cross-examination of a witness.

I had the benefit of sitting at the feet of my father, who was a brilliant advocate. In Ceylon, whenever Dad was cross-examining a witness, the courts were packed with young lawyers waiting to learn something from the old man. I would often ask him why he put a particular question to a particular witness, and he would explain in great detail why he did it. He instructed me early on that the purpose of cross-examination was specifically to get the ingredients of your case out of the opposition witnesses and after that to contradict them. But he also told me that examination-in-chief was an art which was very rarely practised by “advocates.” I decided to put Dad’s advice into practice in this case.

I planned to lead the bare bones of the girl’s evidence and let my opponent fall headfirst into the mire. After my client gave evidence, I called this 14-year-old girl into the witness box. After the usual preliminaries I pointed to the defendant and asked the girl whether she knew him, to which she replied, “Yes” I asked her how well she knew the defendant and she said ” Intimately”. I then asked her what she meant by that and she said that she had had sexual intercourse with him on more than one occasion.

I sat down and my opponent got up to cross-examine her. He walked right into the trap I had set for him. He asked her whether she had been sacked from school for stealing, to which she replied “Yes”. He then asked her whether she had been caught shoplifting at Woolworths in Frankston, to which again she replied “Yes” She was the sort of girl who would misbehave herself. My opponent suggested to her that she had concocted this whole story about having intercourse with his client. She vehemently denied this, and said no, she had had intercourse with the defendant on a number of occasions.

He then made the fatal mistake of asking her when they first had intercourse. She said, “We got into the back of his car and he started tickling my boobs. When he started tickling my boobs I got very randy and asked him to fuck me.” My opponent realized what had happened and quickly sat down. The judge, Justice Stephen Strauss, said, “Wait a minute, I want to hear more of this’

The girl then gave a graphic description of all the acts of sexual intercourse she had had with the defendant. My opponent did not call his client and the judge gave my client custody of her little girl, who had been conceived out of wedlock. I was delighted with my success and prepared for my next expedition in the Family Court.

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Features

The Digital Underground

Published

5 hours ago

2026/07/22

Sahan Weerasooriya

Illegal Foreign Exchange, Undiyal, Hawala and Money Laundering, A Four-Part Investigative Series

Forex Platforms, Cryptocurrency, AI and the New Financial Battlefield

THE INVISIBLE FINANCIAL EMPIRE – PART III

The Boyfriend Who Was Never Real

Priya, a 34-year-old professional in Colombo, met “David” on LinkedIn. He claimed to work in fintech in Singapore. For six weeks they exchanged messages daily, about work, about life, about a recent trip he had taken to the Maldives. Eventually, the conversation turned, gently and naturally, to money.

“I’ve been trading on this platform, let me show you,” he said, sharing a screenshot of a sleek trading dashboard showing consistent, impressive returns.

Priya invested a small amount first, $500. Within days, her dashboard showed it had grown to $650. She withdrew $100 successfully, just to test it. It worked. Encouraged, she invested more. Then more. Over two months, she transferred a total of $42,000 into the platform.

When she tried to withdraw her full balance, the platform demanded a “regulatory release fee” of $8,000 before funds could be unlocked. She paid it. Then another fee appeared. Then the platform stopped responding altogether. “David” vanished. The trading dashboard, the customer support chat, the entire brokerage, all of it had never been real.

This is what investigators now call “pig butchering”, and, in 2026, the most disturbing development is not the scam itself, which has existed for years, but what now powers it: artificial intelligence has industrialised the entire operation.

From Manual Fraud to Machine-Generated Deception

For most of the past decade, romance-and-investment scams, like the one that targeted Priya, required enormous manual labour. Scam operations, many of them staffed by trafficked workers held against their will in compounds across Myanmar, Cambodia, and Laos, needed real humans to build relationships with victims over weeks, manage fake trading platforms, and respond convincingly to questions.

That labour-intensive model has now been substantially automated. According to financial-crime researchers tracking this shift through 2026, threat actors are standing up entire AI-generated “brokerage” experiences end-to-end, complete with KYC onboarding, branded customer-service chat, animated portfolio dashboards, and falsified live market data feeds, and operating them at industrial scale against multiple victims simultaneously. Generative-AI relationship managers now front the WhatsApp and Telegram conversations that once required real human scammers. AI-cloned regulator letters are generated on demand to justify the fake “release fees” that drain victims a final time before the platform disappears.

What has changed is not the deception itself, it is the production economics. The cost of running a credible synthetic brokerage against one additional victim has collapsed, meaning a single criminal network can now run hundreds of “Davids” simultaneously, each one indistinguishable from a genuine fintech professional until it is too late. (Figure 01)

Sri Lanka: From Victim Pool to Operating Base

Sri Lanka’s relationship to this global scam economy has shifted in an alarming direction over the past two years. The country is no longer only a source of victims, it has become an operating base for the criminal networks themselves.

In April, 2026, Sri Lankan police raided a five-star hotel property, in Ambakandavila, and arrested 150 individuals, including 133 Chinese nationals, 13 Vietnamese nationals, and one Malaysian national, allegedly running a cyber fraud centre with links to international criminal syndicates, based in Myanmar and Cambodia. Investigators say the operation followed a now-familiar regional pattern: recruiters advertise “online marketing” or “data entry” jobs on social media to lure foreign workers to Sri Lanka, confiscate their passports on arrival, and force them to operate scam campaigns under threat.

The Central Bank of Sri Lanka has formally flagged pig-butchering scams as a “developing threat,” warning that foreign scam networks are increasingly targeting overseas nationals through scam farms operating from Sri Lankan soil. A 2026 United Nations report estimated that at least 300,000 people have been trafficked into scam centres across Southeast Asia.

This is not an abstract international problem. It is unfolding in hotels and rented properties across the country, exploiting the same infrastructure, high-speed internet, affordable accommodation, accessible tourist visas, that Sri Lanka has built to attract legitimate digital businesses and tourists.

Where the Money Actually Goes: The Stablecoin Pipeline

Behind every successful pig-butchering scam sits a laundering pipeline that has been transformed almost as dramatically as the scams themselves, and the transformation has a single dominant feature: stablecoins.

According to the Financial Action Task Force’s March 2026, report, drawing on analysis from blockchain intelligence firms Chainalysis and TRM Labs, stablecoins accounted for 84% of the USD 154 billion in illicit virtual asset transaction volume recorded in 2025, the highest share ever observed, and a dramatic jump from just 15% only a few years earlier. TRM Labs separately found that illicit entities received USD 141 billion in stablecoins, in 2025 alone, the highest level observed in five years. (See Table 01)

The scale of state-level abuse is striking. A Russian sanctions-evasion network built around the ruble-pegged stablecoin A7A5 processed more than USD 72 billion in total volume in 2025.

Fighting Fire with Fire: AI on the Defensive Side

The same artificial intelligence reshaping financial crime is also, out of necessity, reshaping the defence against it. Legacy anti-money laundering systems, built on static, rule-based thresholds, have proven badly outmatched by AI-generated fraud operating at machine speed. Research cited by compliance technology analysts suggests that between 90% and 95% of alerts generated by legacy AML systems are false positives, consuming enormous investigator time while genuinely suspicious activity slips through.

This is not a frictionless transition. AI models are notoriously difficult to explain to regulators and examiners in the way traditional rule-based systems are. The practical compromise emerging across the industry is a hybrid model: AI handles the initial scoring and prioritisation of risk, while documented rule-based logic still governs the final decision that must be defensible to a regulator.

The Regulatory Response: Catching Up to the Digital Frontier

Regulators worldwide have begun moving to close the most dangerous gaps exposed by this digital transformation of financial crime. (See Table 02)

What Comes Next

We have now traced this investigation from the centuries-old mechanics of Hawala and Undiyal, through the three-stage architecture that turns criminal proceeds into apparently legitimate wealth, to the AI-generated frontier of digital financial crime reshaping all of it at machine speed.

In our concluding instalment, Part IV: “Sri Lanka at the Crossroads: Economic Consequences, Organised Crime and the Road Ahead”, we bring this series home. We examine precisely what all of this costs Sri Lanka in hard economic terms: lost remittances, exchange rate pressure, tax revenue forgone, and the 2026 FATF evaluation that will determine whether the country’s institutions can demonstrate, with evidence rather than legislation alone, that they are equal to this challenge. We close with a practical policy roadmap.

(The writer, a senior Chartered Accountant and professional banker, is Professor at SLIIT, Malabe.
Views expressed in this article are personal.)

Features

‘There are no private universities in Sri Lanka’ – some considerations for higher education reform

Published

1 day ago

2026/07/21

Thilina Walpola

Academics involved in education policy like to say that there is no such thing as a private university in Sri Lanka. The only ‘universities’ in the country are state universities; anything else offering degrees is a private higher education institution (HEI). This position is technically accurate. Yet, in the discourse and imagination of the public, private universities are very real – people teach in them, students register in them, families pay fees, and such degree holders enter job markets in Sri Lanka and outside.

For decades, activists concerned for public higher education have ignored or resisted looking at private HEIs, as if such scrutiny would taint them. Others have worked in both types of institutions, carrying practices from each to the other. The apex body governing state universities, the UGC, has, meanwhile, ignored the concept of conflict of interest and appointed individuals in private higher education in committees and leadership positions. It is unsurprising then that some of the ideologies informing private higher education appear in reform agendas in the state sector.

This is a good time then to consider the varying types of private HEIs around us, and to take a look at some of the issues within them in the hope that higher education reform agendas will include private, as well as state higher education.

What is a ‘private university’?

First, some clarifications. In the public imaginary, a ‘private university’ is typically an institution that provides a foreign or local degree for which the student makes a payment. But this broad classification encompasses a host of diverse institutions and types of degrees which I detail below.

The Non-State Higher Education Division (NSHE) of the Ministry of Education has recognised 295 degrees by 32 institutions. Most of these are private companies and include a handful of established, well-known private HEIs that are ‘university like’. The degrees are local degrees conferred by the institutions accredited by the NSHE Division. While private HEIs conferring local degrees must be accredited by the NSHE Division, there appears to be no legal consequence for not doing so. In addition, there are several permutations of the private degree that miss the net of this Division and the Standing Committee on Accreditation and Quality Assurance (SCAQA) that assists this Division.

For one, degrees conferred by foreign universities offered, via these same private HEIs, are not vetted by the NSHE Division. Secondly, there is a growing plethora of private HEIs which have either no physical presence locally or only a dubious presence. The University Grants Commission has notified the public, through their website, that foreign universities listed in the Commonwealth Universities Yearbook and the World Higher Education Database are recognised, but refrained from giving any other details – which degrees? Offered by what modes? These details are not known. Some of the foreign universities in the lists may be legitimate entities in their own land but the degrees conferred locally, in their name, may not adhere to curriculum or teaching specifications of the NSHE Division or the UGC.

Another troubling phenomenon is the ‘top up degree’, which appears to work on the same principle as that of a pre-paid mobile connection: if I have a Diploma or an HND of a sort, I am eligible to complete a course of study which provides me with a degree, usually from a foreign university. The idea that someone who does not initially qualify for a degree programme should be able to work their way towards one is a progressive notion. This is the concept that open and distance learning (ODL) was based on initially, but which is now sadly exploited. ODL models are expected to provide opportunity for learning for those who may be excluded from traditional learning institutions. In Sri Lanka, however, we have seen ODL become a marketplace offering easy to obtain, for-fee qualifications by institutions with little commitment to superior teaching and learning.

Finally, a perusal of the many types of private HEIs and their varied degrees bring to mind another question – how should the private degrees, provided by state institutions (that are not educational institutions), be regulated? Who should do so?

All of these create a host of problems for the public – for hopeful students and parents and trusting employers. For the higher education sector, recruitment of academic staff, too, has become difficult due to this plethora of ambiguous higher education qualifications, as I discussed in a previous Kuppi article (‘Recruiting academics to state universities’).

Some issues in private HEIs – a bellwether for change in state universities

In this second part of this article, I will discuss some aspects of work in private HEIs – albeit the more established institutions – given that such issues may appear in reform agendas in future.

Across state universities, all permanent staff of a specific category are paid according to the same criteria. The picture is not so clear when it comes to private HEIs since they are different entities legally, typically companies. Private HEIs have salary scales and financial incentives that are different to each other. The more established private HEIs reportedly have attractive renumeration packages, possibly a reason for academics of state universities migrating eagerly to such institutions during sabbatical years and on retirement. This may not of course be the case with other less established, or improperly registered HEIs of which we know little. Academic staff of these more accepted private HEIs seem to value the high financial remuneration they receive (in comparison to state universities) as something that makes their work rewarding.

Attractive remuneration is important to sustain the good life and is at times seen as the institution’s way of encouraging good work. Yet, this has implications for the future of the institution: to continue to deliver on promised financial packages, institutions must continue to have large profit margins. One strategy has been to enroll multiple cohorts of students per year, even up to three or four intakes per year. This can result in exploitative work conditions, since staff must cater to all these cohorts in that same year. If there is inadequate staff, employees are further burdened. On the other hand, if there is a sudden drop in enrolments (degrees can go out of fashion) unexpected layoffs occur. Similar to other sectors that employ short-term contract staff – including state universities – in private HEIs, too, individual teachers, who are on short term contracts that need regular renewal, can feel pressured to work under difficult or exploitative conditions.

At the same time, even in the more established private HEIs, work norms differ from those of state universities in that they include promotional work that keeps the institution’s name in the eye of the public. The Marketing (or similarly named) unit comes up in conversations as one of the most important departments. It appears to weigh in on decision-making related to the number of staff, the amount of re-sits per exams, and other pedagogically important matters. This is a worrying example of how financial rationales interfere with pedagogically or academically sound processes, resulting in problematic results in the classroom. On the plus side, junior colleagues, who had experience in both state and private HEIs, also felt that they faced less harassment in private HEIs – primarily due to the private HEIs ability to take swift action in reported cases of harassment. This is a real indictment on state institutions and their reluctance to address chronic issues of harassment in our universities.

Yet, while we hear much about problems in state universities, we hardly hear of problems that staff in private HEIs face. One rationale for a lack of public expressions by staff is that expressions of discontent might lead to trouble given the importance of reputation for private HEIs. The worry about reputational damage is a growing concern in state universities, too, as evidenced by social media policies and internal conversations on reputational damage, consequent to negative publicity. Institutional worries of reputational damage are harmful in the long run since these impact not only freedom of expression by student and staff, but also research that is possible in and about the education sector.

Some thoughts at the end…

A close look at the private higher education sector is important given its strong presence in the country. Impending reform needs to regulate this diverse array of higher education offerings in the private sector, as well as the state institutions that offer privately-funded options of higher education (a topic for a separate Kuppi on its own). It is time we carefully considered how to build a whole system of higher education out of this broken mess.

Kaushalya Perera is a senior lecturer at the University of Colombo.

Kuppi is a politics and pedagogy happening on the margins of the lecture hall that parodies, subverts, and simultaneously reaffirms social hierarchies.

Features

Ready for solo spotlight

Published

1 day ago

2026/07/21

Thilina Walpola

Nish Peiris: Excited about future plans

Singer Nish Peiris is set to take the next big step in her music journey.

The talented vocalist, who has been seen and heard in the scene here for a short while, and was also featured with the now-defunct band, Inner Vision, has announced that she will be fully committing to her solo career, after completing her degree this year.

“I’m finishing my degree this year, and after that I’ll be fully committing to my solo music career,” Nish told The Island.

“I’ve already got a few tours lined up for next year, so I’m really excited for what’s ahead.”

Fans, no doubt, will remember Nish for her smooth voice and stage presence, and the good news is that she is now ready to chart her own path and bring new music to audiences at home and abroad.

With tours already planned for 2027, the year 2026 promises to be an exciting year for the young artiste as she steps into the spotlight on her own.

We wish Nish every success in this new chapter!