Features

The President’s month of reckoning

Published

3 years ago

2023/02/26

“I won’t make my speech long. I myself
have stood in the sun like this and said
when will they shut up so we can go back to the classroom.”

Ranil Wickremesinghe, Royal College,
February 22, 2023
“Shut up and sit down! I brought
you into politics.”
Ranil Wickremesinghe, Parliament,
February 23, 2023

The last week of February has turned out to be the busiest for Ranil Wickremesinghe. On Tuesday he defended the government’s immensely unpopular tax policy at a Tax Forum organised by the Sri Lanka Institute of Marketing. On Wednesday he attended a ceremony at his school, Royal College, with Prime Minister Dinesh Gunawardena, making a historical mountain out of the fact that for the first time in Sri Lanka, the country’s two leading faces were classmates. Then on Wednesday he made his most controversial and startling remarks yet about the Local Government elections, denying that there were moves to delay them on the basis that they had not been officially called in the first place.

These developments strongly suggest that the President is engaging in consolidating all the power he has, and all the power he can get. On more than one occasion he has admitted that he remains, then as now, an unpopular and unelected President, a President lacking a mandate. This has not stopped him from pursuing and implementing one austerity measure after another, and justifying it all with the promise of an IMF bailout in the near-future. With protests and a potential reawakening of the aragalaya looming on the horizon, there is no doubt that he and his cohorts will resort to every trick in the book to reinforce his rule and sabotage the Opposition, draining the latter of any credibility.

The Opposition, for its part, remains as divided and fragmented as ever. The main party, the SJB, seems to have decided to focus its energies on attacking, not the government, but its rival, the left-wing NPP. The NPP is the parliamentary wing of the JVP, a party associated with socialist politics. While the SJB has been indulging in red-baiting vis-à-vis the NPP, the NPP has been anything but coherent in its policy positions: less than a month after an MP stated, in public, that they supported the 13th Amendment, for instance, another party MP declared in a newspaper interview that neither the NPP nor the JVP supported it. This, at a time when the SJB has come out in full support of the Amendment, and the President has in his speeches and declarations promised to implement it.

President Wickremesinghe’s remarks on devolution and power-sharing, which is what the 13th Amendment is all about, have activated a section of civil society, as well as mainstream minority Tamil parties, to lend nominal, if conditional, support to his government. The mainstream Tamil parties, particularly the TNA, have been sending mixed signals about their stance on the President. But the more right-wing parties, including C. V. Wigneswaran’s TNPA, have praised the President’s actions. This has arguably pushed the mainstream to the right, forcing it to make a very difficult choice between opposing an unelected President and supporting his superficially progressive remarks on power-sharing.

Superficial is perhaps too strong a word for these reforms, given that they underlie genuine grievances among the country’s minority Tamils. Yet the President’s attempts to pacify the latter been widely perceived and criticised as window-dressing, as nothing more than an attempt to secure votes at a time when Sinhala nationalist electorates that gave thumping majorities to the ruling party, the SLPP, have shifted to other parties.

According to a recent Sri Lanka Opinion Tracker Survey (SLOTS) carried out by the Institute for Health Policy (IHP), the SJB and the NPP are running neck-to-neck and are expected to win a considerable majority at an election. The survey shows that SLPP voters, particularly Sinhala voters, will either defect to the NPP (illustrating very clearly the radicalisation of the middle-classes under this government) or not vote at all (showing their dissatisfaction with politics in general). Against such a backdrop, as Rathindra Kuruwita notes in a recent article to The Diplomat, the President has calculated “that he needs the support of Tamil MPs to be able to govern in the next two years.” In other words, he is trying to compensate for the loss of ethnic majority votes by pandering to ethnic minorities.

On the IMF, too, there are tenuous debates. The SJB and the NPP have both admitted that there is no alternative to a bailout from the organisation. The IMF, however, has not been exact or clear about the timing of the bailout. To pacify people, the government, specifically President Wickremesinghe and MPs like Justice Minister Wijeyadasa Rajapakshe, have in public stated that China is the last and only hurdle in debt restructuring talks. Such remarks belie the magnitude of popular opposition to, and hatred of, the austerity measures that the government has put in place to qualify for the bailout. Not surprisingly, while a number of protesters urged the then administration, led by Gotabaya Rajapaksa, to go to the IMF last year, the current regime’s reckless pursuit of austerity at all costs has alienated even them from the IMF: barring a few Colombo-based elite think-tanks, almost everyone has criticised the Wickremesinghe government’s engagements with the IMF.

Complicating all this last week were revelations by a prominent political analyst about the IMF’s stance on austerity in the country. The analyst made two startling exposes: first, that the IMF had urged the recent electricity tariff hikes as a condition for a bailout; and second, that around this time last year, then Finance Minister Basil Rajapaksa had been negotiating a significant loan with the Chinese government. This puts the Central Bank’s decision to default in April 2022, when only debt servicing on USD 78 million was needed to be settled that month and payments for a larger International Sovereign Bond (ISB) of USD one billion were due only in July, and the many projects being signed by the government, on the basis that they will help the country achieve financial stability, under question.

In this context, it’s interesting to note that even Colombo-based think-tanks have begun to disagree significantly with the government’s neoliberal economic policies. Nishan de Mel, Executive Director at Verite Research, has in an interview with a local paper contended that the government is “farming out” the task of policymaking to third-party institutions which are barely cognizant of local realities. De Mel’s point is that such a mechanism will not yield “optimised” solutions. What de Mel left out is that the government’s decision to outsource what it should be doing to institutions which are not accountable to locals points at another, even bigger problem: the widely held perception that the government itself lacks a mandate and is acting as though it does not require accountability for anything.

An even more interesting report, compiled by the Centre for Policy Alternatives (CPA), a human rights think-tank, shows that among the youth, support for the government’s pro-privatisation agenda is waning. While more than 50% in the survey believe that the State should allow foreign companies to invest in the country and the State should not restrict a person’s earning capacity, well more than 50% believe that government corporations should not be privatised and that they are necessary for the country’s development.

This is at odds with think-tanks, academics, economists, government officials, and even Opposition MPs who argue that State-Owned Enterprises need to be privatised and that they are responsible for the financial crisis. To be sure, a majority in the CPA survey believe that the individual, not the State, should find a job. But an equally strong majority also believe that the State should be spending on welfare. Such responses are paradoxical, and they are an indication of popular perceptions about social welfare and government intervention. Yet they are also at variance with the economic establishment’s views on reform.

It is against these developments that the President is tightening his grip, on the Opposition and on the swelling tide of dissent against his policies. In this he has been helped by the fact that the main Opposition, the SJB, includes several MPs who owe their political careers to him. The point has not escaped the President himself: at parliament last week, he more or less shouted at Opposition parliamentarians to “shut up and sit down”, adding that they were there in parliament because of him. This is hardly the first time that Wickremesinghe has betrayed such paternalistic instincts: an irony, given that in front of the the youth he has tried to exude a more placid image of himself, as his speech at Royal College makes it clear. That said, he has not hesitated to move the law, and if possible the army, against protesting university students, turning the latter into his bête noire.

For all intents and purposes, President Wickremesinghe is skating on thin ice. The President seems to think that the IMF will deliver what the government wants. Colombo’s economic establishment seems to think that the USD 2.9 billion that the government is aiming at will restore investor confidence in the economy. Critics say this is wishful thinking. In any case, March will turn out to be the President’s most eventful month. Students from his school associate the month with the world’s oldest inter school cricket match. They also associate it with what they call “March Madness”: a series of vehicle parades and other events which lead up to that match. For the President and his government, March may also become the month of their reckoning: a fact hardly lost on the regime’s detractors, as they get ready for a spate of protests against a never-ending cascade of austerity measures.

The writer is an international relations analyst, researcher, and columnist who can be reached at udakdev1@gmail.com.

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Features

Proactive peacemaking becomes a paramount need

Published

10 hours ago

2026/06/4

Sahan Weerasooriya

Wasting wars: Some war-displaced people in Lebanon. BBC

It may be some time before the full impact of food inflation is felt in the West. Until such time the world would continue to keep itself in suspense over whether the Trump administration is in earnest when it seeks to convey the impression that it is backing a negotiated solution in West Asia.

As is usually the case, consumer stress would be one of the final determinants of political change. To the degree to which the average US consumer somehow ‘muddles through’ and puts the food on the table, to the same extent would the Republican sections of the US public in particular be tolerant of the Trump administration’s inconsistent handling of the West Asian war and the main issues stemming from it. That is, there would be no grave popular disaffection and a demand for political change in the short term.

However, the indications are that the Trump administration’s support base is suffering some erosion in the wake of the current economic crisis. While reports indicate that Democratic sections are firming-up their opposition to the political centre, Republican support for Trump is also showing signs of waning, we are given to understand.

The above developments are probably why Trump is on record as having given Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu a ‘dressing down’ recently on his seeming intransigence on the question of giving negotiations a chance in West Asia. The show of displeasure could be really aimed by Trump at containing the impatience of the American public.

However, the current ground situation in the Middle East, particularly the uncontained bloodshed, is likely to impress on the thinking sections of the world that more than temporary political change is needed in West Asia and the US.

A well thought out political solution that addresses all the contentious issues at the heart of the Middle East conflict is what enlightened opinion would demand, and very rightly. Right now, the ‘peace efforts’ initiated by the Trump administration give the impression of being piecemeal solutions at best.

There have been, of course, numerous initiatives in the past aimed at bringing permanent peace to the Middle East. These failed mainly because they did not address in full the root causes of the conflict.

At bottom the Middle East conflict is mainly about race and religious hate bred by socio-economic and material inequalities. For instance, if the Palestinian people were not displaced and deprived of land occupied by them at the time of the founding of the Israeli state, ethnic enmities would not have grown to the current unmanageable proportions.

When addressing the above questions, though, it must be remembered that the Israelis too were a displaced people who were entitled to land and a state of their own in the Middle East. Basically, out of these seemingly irreconcilable and conflicting demands have grown the Middle East imbroglio.

Middle East peace is considerably about reconciling these demands and arriving at a solution that would ensure the creation of two states that would opt for peaceful co-existence thereafter.

As long as the US does not see the need for a non-partisan solution that addresses the needs of both ethnicities and religions and goes all-out, as it were, to have it implemented, the Middle East would continue to bleed.

However, staunching the blood flow through the creation of two states would be only half the job done, though a very important part of it. More pernicious, pervasive and difficult to remedy are the inter-ethnic and inter-religious hatreds that have been unleashed over the decades.

However, if substantial, long-lasting peace is to be fostered in the region the latter ‘demons’ would need to be exorcised from the hearts and minds of the communities concerned. No doubt an uphill task but one that must be undertaken by those who wish the region well.

The UN would need to put its ‘best foot forward’ in such undertakings but it is time that it dawned on the international community and other caring quarters that Middle East peace, and all other such uphill challenges, require proactive peacemaking on the part of all civilized sections for their effective management. That is, public involvement in peacemaking too is a must.

Since hatreds are harboured in the human consciousness the enmities embedded in the latter need to be managed and defused judiciously alongside other undertakings in a peace process. In the case of West Asia, such enmities could be even spread globe-wide besides being multi-dimensional. For instance, it ought to be thought-provoking that Iran is insistent on a peace initiative that would also include Lebanon.

Besides security considerations it is also ethnic and religious affiliations that account for Iran making this demand. For instance, the Shias are a numerically important religious community in Lebanon and they provide a significant number of Hizbollah fighters, who are in a vital sense carrying out a ‘proxy war’ for Iran. It also needs to be factored in that Iran is a Shia-majority country.

Thus trans-border religious affiliations could add to the complexities and enormity of ethno-religious conflicts. However, the task of managing centuries-long enmities needs to be launched and prodded on with by peacemakers since a downing of arms alone would not guarantee substantive peace.

It is not realized sufficiently that the process of ending hatreds begins with mutual apologies by antagonists to a conflict for the harm inflicted on each other. This would be anathema in some ears but there is no getting away from the requirement. It is the vital first step to permanent peace anywhere.

In fact there could be no reconciliation worth speaking of without such mutual apologies. It is a point worth re-iterating in these times when even the government of Sri Lanka is voicing the need for national reconciliation. Well, without the words, ‘I am sorry’, there could be no permanent end to enmities – they would do well to remember.

The above requirements may not go down very well with governments, but they resonate in the hearts and minds of most people, since they are inheritors of religious traditions of some kind.

This is a principal reason why peacemaking works well when publics too are involved in them. The effectiveness of such campaigns increases several fold when they have a Mahatma Gandhi or a Jawaharlal Nehru at their helm. A strong proactive involvement by the public in peace could lead to the emergence of such leaders at some point in these campaigns.

Features

Dialog Brings Sri Lanka’s Largest Digital Vesak Experience to Matara

Published

10 hours ago

2026/06/4

Sahan Weerasooriya

From left to right: Hon. Saroja Savithri Paulraj, Hon. Sunil Handunnetti, and Lasantha Theverapperuma experience the Dialog 5G Ultra-powered VR tours.

Official Digital Partner of the 2026 ‘Dakshina Prabha’ National Vesak Zone

Dialog Axiata PLC, Sri Lanka’s #1 connectivity provider, collaborated with the Ministry of Buddha Sasana, Religious and Cultural Affairs to bring one of Sri Lanka’s largest and most technologically advanced Vesak experiences to the ‘Dakshina Prabha’ National Vesak Zone. The three-day celebration, in Matara attracted more than hundred thousand visitors, who engaged with a series of innovative digital activities powered by Dialog 5G Ultra, including Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Virtual Reality (VR) experiences, digital pandols and a Data Dansala. The opening ceremony was attended by Hon. Sunil Handunnetti, Minister of Industry and Entrepreneurship Development and Hon. Saroja Savithri Paulraj, Minister of Women and Child Affairs, along with distinguished guests and Dialog’s senior management.

One of the key attractions at the venue was the Dialog 5G Ultra-powered Virtual Reality (VR) experience, which attracted more than 35,000 participants. The activation enabled devotees to virtually visit and pay homage to sacred Buddhist sites, including the Jaya Sri Maha Bodhi in India and the Atamasthana in Anuradhapura, directly from the Vesak zone in Matara.

Visitors receive complimentary mobile data through Dialog’s QR-powered Data Dansala.

Dialog also conducted an AI Digital Vesak Greeting Card Competition from 21 May to 01 June 2026, attracting numerous entries from across the country. The shortlisted designs were showcased across 20 large LED screens throughout the venue and across Matara City, and were also made available for download via mobile devices. Further, through the use of AI, traditional Jathaka Katha were reimagined in a digital format, demonstrating how technology can be used to preserve and enhance cultural and religious heritage. Together, these initiatives blended traditional Vesak celebrations with emerging technologies, offering visitors a unique and immersive way to engage with Vesak traditions.

Extending the spirit of Vesak through connectivity, Dialog conducted a special Data Dansala powered by its QR Reload platform, enabling visitors to receive complimentary mobile data by scanning QR codes placed across the venue. In addition to the Matara National Vesak Zone, similar Data Dansala activations were also conducted at the Gangaramaya and Bauddhaloka Vesak zones in Colombo.Visitors also had the opportunity to create personalised Vesak-themed digital photos through an AI Photo Booth, generating AI-enhanced portraits using their own photographs and adding a contemporary digital element to the Vesak celebrations.

Visitors watch AI-generated Jathaka Katha

Commenting on the initiative, Hon. Sunil Handunnetti, Minister of Industry and Entrepreneurship Development, said, “The 2026 Dakshina Prabha Vesak Festival marked the first time AI-powered digital innovations were incorporated into a National Vesak Festival in Sri Lanka. Presenting Buddhist stories and teachings through technology created a new and engaging way for visitors to connect with these traditions. We thank Dialog for supporting this initiative and for working closely with us to bring our vision to life. Their contribution played an important role in making this first-of-its-kind event a reality.”

Lasantha Theverapperuma, Group Chief Marketing Officer of Dialog Axiata PLC said, “We thank the Government of Sri Lanka for the opportunity to support the 2026 Dakshina Prabha National Vesak Festival and for embracing technology as part of this year’s celebrations. As the Official Digital Partner, we were privileged to contribute through our Dialog 5G Ultra and AI capabilities, creating new ways for visitors to engage with Vesak traditions while preserving their cultural significance for future generations.”

Beyond supporting the National Vesak Zone in Matara, Dialog also enhanced the Gangaramaya and Bauddhaloka Vesak zones through a range of digital activations during the Vesak season. The company additionally continued its sustainability initiatives, including the Thirasara Aloka Poojawa, which illuminated rural places of worship through solar-powered lighting solutions.

Features

Beauty, elegance and talent…for women

Published

10 hours ago

2026/06/4

Sahan Weerasooriya

Universal Woman is an international pageant focused on “beauty, elegance, and talent” for women, positioning itself as a platform to shape global ambassadors. The 2026 edition will be held in Cambodia, and Sri Lanka will be there, as well.

According to reports coming my way, contestants, at the international event, will work with industry trailblazers, under international standards.

Sri Lankan supermodel, runway and pageant trainer Chulpadmendra Kumarapathirana, is the National Director for Universal Woman Sri Lanka 2026.

With over two decades in the industry, Chula was crowned Miss Sri Lanka 2006, and has since shaped the next generation of titleholders through her Colombo-based Chulpadmendra Catwalk Studio, widely regarded as one of the country’s leading modelling academies.

The team behind Universal Woman Sri Lanka 2026

A former host of Derana Miss Sri Lanka for Miss World 2008 and a judge for Miss Universe Sri Lanka 2025, Chula now serves as National Director for Universal Woman Sri Lanka 2026, leading the franchise’s search for Sri Lanka’s delegate to the international final in Cambodia.

Applications for Universal Woman Sri Lanka 2026 are being taken, via WhatsApp: 077 659 4994, says Chula.

The judging panel for Universal Woman Sri Lanka 2026 includes Senaka De Silva, Pageant Aesthetic Advisor & Chairperson of the Judging Panel, Angela Seneviratne, Caroline Jurie, Rozelle Plunkett, and Suraj Mapa.

Universal Woman Sri Lanka 2026 officially began its journey with a first round of auditions, held in Colombo, marking the start of an exciting new chapter in Sri Lanka’s pageant industry.

Launching the first round of auditions

The platform aims to empower women while selecting an intelligent, confident, and inspiring representative to compete at the Universal Woman International Pageant 2026 in Cambodia, this September.

Universal Woman Sri Lanka now moves forward with the vision of creating one of the country’s most prestigious and empowering pageants while preparing to crown a queen who will proudly represent Sri Lanka on the international stage.