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The struggles within, friends and opponents, the Tea Board, the Tea Propaganda Board and CTTA

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3 years ago

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Excerpted from the autobiography of Merrill J. Fernando

If the chokehold that British interests exerted on the local entrepreneur was not strong enough to stifle him, the additional pressure needed to hobble him further was created by the machinations of the vested interests within, both wittingly and unwittingly aided by a shortsighted bureaucracy and trade associations with self-serving agendas. My relationships with all these organizations have been contentious and confrontational. Over the years I have been unapologetically critical of many of their policies and strategies, which I considered to not be in the best interests of the local brand builder and exporter.

The Ceylon Tea Traders’ Association (CTTA) came into being in 1894, in the early formative stages of the tea export trade, to mediate on behalf of growers and exporters and to solve their problems. It was a creation of the British and given the nature of colonial dominance of the country then, it was but natural that protection of British interests within the industry would be its first priority.

The Ceylonese ‘native’ tea traders who were in the minority till the late 1960s, permitted this state of submissiveness to colonial domination to prevail for decades after Independence. Whilst the CTTA committee comprised equally of sellers and exporters, five representatives of each, it was still dominated by Europeans.

The general insensitivity of the CTTA to needs of locals was exemplified by an incident in 1968, when the committee refused to suspend the tea auctions for an hour or so, to enable Muslim members to visit the mosque, on an occasion when an important Muslim religious festival coincided with an auction day. I discussed this matter with the late Abbas Akberally, then Chairman of Akbar Brothers and tea exporter Amin Suby, who were both of the firm view that a change in the CTTA representative body was an urgent need. The resentment caused by this episode eventually crystallized in a changing of the guard in the CTTA, with the ‘native’ segment taking control of its affairs for the first time in its history.

For the first time the post of Chairman was contested, and Austin Perera from the Cooperative Tea Society was voted in. The next and even bigger shock was when all Europeans in the buyer segment, with the exception of George Willis, then Chairman of Lipton, were ousted and replaced by five local shippers: Co-operative Tea Society Ltd., M.S. Heptulabhoy & Co. Ltd., Merrill J. Fernando Co., Suby Tea, and Van Rees Ceylon NV. It was a ‘palace coup,’ which the ruling parties were ignorant of until they were deposed.

Ilika De Silva, Promoting Pure Ceylon Tea at the London Tea Centre

Despite the first successful Ceylonese incursion into what had always been a closely-guarded preserve of British interests, there were subsequent attempts by interested parties to dilute the local influence. In 1969, an unusually large number of plantation companies in the Whittall Estate Agency, applied for membership of the CTTA. I opposed this strongly on the grounds that plantation interests were already adequately served by the Planters’ Association and that it would be inequitable to permit the sellers to outnumber the buyers in the membership of the CTTA. The subsequent vote endorsed my view, with the support of George Willis, who was one of the few servants of British interests to objectively view the aspirations of local exporters.

An objective insider speaks

The relevant extract (reproduced below) from the book ‘George Steuart & Co. Ltd., 1952-1973, A Personal Odyssey,’ by Tony Peries, former Chairman of George Steuart, provides an illuminating insider’s view of this historically significant episode. In a few well-worded paragraphs, he also outlines the impediments and obstacles which then existed to the advancement of the local exporter, and to the cause of Pure Ceylon Tea, globally.

[QUOTE:] The Colombo Tea Traders Association (CTTA) made the rules under which tea auctions were held and to buy at the auction a firm had to be a member. More or less the same firms comprised the five buyers/ five sellers committee year after year, and Forbes and Walker was always the advisory broker who had no vote. The buyers, from memory, were Brooke Bond Ceylon Ltd., Lipton Ltd., Harrison & Crossfield Ltd., Heath & Co (Ceylon) Ltd., and M.S. Heptulabhoy & Co. Ltd. The sellers were Carson Cumberbatch & Co., George Steuart & Co. Ltd., Gordon Frazer & Co. Ltd., Colombo Commercial Company and Whittall Boustead Ltd. .

As many as 411 the sellers save George Steuart and Frazer were also buyers of some significance, but I never saw or even had reason to suspect firms with dual interests doing anything adverse to affect their selling side and if anything, they occasionally gave their own teas a bit of help. However, criticism of firms ‘on both sides of the fence’ was rife.

By 1967, the small Ceylonese firms, most of them dwarfed by Brooke Bond, Lipton type giants, far outnumbered the long-established British outfits on the CTTA membership list. The owner of one such firm was Merrill J. Fernando, who had started life at A. F. Jones & Co. Ltd., become a Director there, and subsequently opened up his own firm under his name. Among those smaller firms, the majority was owned by the Muslim community. Heptulabhoys was the most significant, but Jafferjees and T Suby were also well known and respected.

The local traders, identified by the expatriate community as ‘natives,’ -felt that their needs were ignored by the CTTA (the old diehards like George Savage actually wrote N’ for native in their catalogues as they could not bother with long local names like Heptulabhoy!) A typical example was the committee’s refusal to suspend the tea auctions for an hour or so, on one occasion, on, to enable Muslim members to visit the mosque on a particular festival which fell on a tea auction day, having initially refused to reschedule the auction date. That same year the small exporters worked together to throw out the previous committee, leaving only George Steuart from the old brigade.

It fell to Merrill to give leadership to the newly-elected committee. He was intelligent, articulate, and forceful. His main objective was to get on the committee of the Ceylon Tea Propaganda Board (CPBT), where the CTTA had ex-officio sellers and buyers nominated by the committee. I had only a nodding acquaintance with Merrill and when the nomination paper came to me, I refused to endorse his nomination, which caused an awful stink.

My concern was that he lacked the knowledge to be on the CTTB. After some days of impasse, Arjuna Dias, a Tea Director at Somerville & Co. Brokers) and a close friend of Merrill, approached me with the suggestion that Merrill and I have a private meeting ng at which he would state his case.

I agreed and he very magnanimously came to 91 Steuart Place one evening, with Arjuna. Merrill’s argument was that the CTPB generated enormous amounts of money to spend on propaganda, as every pound of tea exported attracted a cess for propaganda (and research too) but that the control of that money was far too loose.

He certainly had a point, as in those days most of the propaganda money was, at the tea traders’ insistence, spent on generic propaganda, that is, tea advertised as tea and apart from the Lion symbol, which the packers were allowed to use on their packs, provided the blend comprised 50% Ceylon Tea, along with the legend `Pure Ceylon Tea, there was little done to promote Ceylon Tea specifically.

The pack contents of Ceylon Tea had to be unpoliced and the bona fides of the packers depended on a gentlemen’s agreement. Whilst I have no reason to believe there was large-scale cheating, the situation was really not very satisfactory as the major packers were in the excellent position of benefiting from tea (not Ceylon) advertising, at no cost to themselves. The CTPB ran ‘Ceylon Tea Centres’ in London and various other major cities but their impact was minimal and the London Centre, for instance, though it a fine location in the Haymarket, was best known as a good lunchtime curry house.

Merrill was by then selling some tea in Italy and other parts of Europe, but I remember Italy particularly as the CTPB representative there was a man named Egidio, who Merrill maintained was totally unhelpful to members of the trade. Merrill ‘s point was that the money spent on generic promotion and on promoting foreign-owned brands should now be expended towards helping the development of Ceylonese-owned brands.

Tony Peries — Then Chairman of George Steuart & Co, assisted me with the Ceylon Tea Propaganda Board

When we met at Steuart Place we did not discuss all this detail, but I agreed to support Merrill’s nomination. We parted friends and have remained so ever since. Merrill is the one man who has over the years established his ‘Dilmah’ brand very successfully just about everywhere in the world. I am aware of how very difficult it is to get a new brand in to the Australian supermarkets, where Dilmah’ is now widely stocked, so he has taken a hard road and persevered in putting truly pure Ceylon Tea, packed in Ceylon, on the map. I am only sorry I ever opposed him. [END OF QUOTE]

I was very pleased that Tony considered the issues sufficiently important, for them to be given prominence in his memoir, written more than 30 years after the episode. After moving to Australia in 1973, Tony carved out a very successful career for himself in the private commercial sector in that

country. About eight years ago, when I was visiting Australia, he got in touch with me with a request to address a meeting of the Sri Lanka-Sydney Business Society, of which he was the Chairman. He had always been highly appreciative of the success of Dilmah and was very keen on my explaining to the gathering, my vision for Ceylon Tea and the success of Dilmah.

I accepted with pleasure as that would have also given me the opportunity of meeting up with many of my Sri Lankan friends in Australia. However, having accepted the invitation, I realized, to my utter dismay, that the SLSBS event would coincide with a public relations event featuring 26 important journalists in New South Wales, in which I was due to appear. Eventually I compromised by making a short address at the SLSBS event and answering a few questions, before making an early departure.

Promotion of pure Ceylon tea, obstacles and pitfalls

The incisive observations of Tony Peries an objective and knowledgeable insider of the plantation industry reproduced in the previous chapter, clearly demonstrate the self-serving nature of the very organs established to assist the trade and the exporter.

The Ceylon Tea Propaganda Board (CTPB) became active in the early 1930s and was incorporated with the present Ceylon Tea Board, when the latter was established in 1976. The Chairman of the Tea Board was invariably a political appointee but the organization functioned under a full-time Director General. The first Chairman of the Tea Board was Ajith Goonatilleke, who had earlier been a Senior Estates Management Executive at the George Steuart agency.

There were also periods when the Chairman of the Tea Board and the Secretary of the Ministry of Plantations was one and the same individual, for instance the career civil servant Bradman Weerakoon. I believe that at the outset, Goonatilleke’s appointment as Chairman of the Tea Board and his substantive position as Secretary to the Ministry of Plantations, under then Minister Ratnasiri Senanayake, may have briefly overlapped.

Before the emergence of Ceylonese exporters as a force in the trade, most of the private trade representatives were from multinational companies, including Lipton and Brooke Bond. Therefore, understandably, British interests received priority support whilst there was no voice to promote Sri Lankan interests. I served two terms as a member of the CTPB, in the 1960s and ’70s, but several proposals I submitted regarding the establishing of Sri Lanka brands attracted little or no support, from the Board and the Secretariat.

I was deeply pleased by my appointment to the Ceylon Tea Propaganda Board, as it provided me a great opportunity to present to an important body, the views of a practicing tea trader. The Chairman was M.A. Bartlett, then a Director of Carson Cumberbatch, and the Secretary was Clarence Cooray, who had been with the CTPB for quite some time. The other members of the Board were chairmen of agency houses, brokers, and representatives of the smallholders.

At the very first meeting, when I spoke of the need for the promotion of value-added export of locally-owned brands, whilst Bartlett was very supportive, Maynard, Chairman of Brooke Bond, strongly vetoed the idea. His argument was that value addition at source would require blending from multiple regions and that it would not be practical.

Consequent to Bartlett’s term and Cooray’s retirement, Bertie Warusawitharana, a well-known planter from the south, was appointed Chairman, whilst Elmer Martenstyn, who had been Executive Director of the CTPB in the early 1970s, was appointed Director General and Victor Perera, Secretary. The then situation in that Board was such that Perera had filed an injunction against Martenstyn, and the two were not on speaking terms. Martenstyn was resentful of my inquiries regarding this issue but I was supported by two other Board members, Park Nadesan and Buddhi De Zoysa, the Treasury representative. Another member of the Board who supported new initiatives and new thinking was the late Stanley Jayawardena, then Chairman of Unilever.

The CTPB had within its ambit, both an overseas and a local marketing committee. The Commissioner of Domestic Marketing was one Arasanayagam. Inquiries that de Zoysa and I made revealed that although funds had been allocated for a tea promotion campaign in the east and the north, the tea had simply been handed over to some State institutions for distribution. Eventually, the Minister ordered the CTPB to immediately stop the “futile” campaign to promote tea locally (Ceylon Observer, 4 April 1969).

At the end of my first term, I found out that Martenstyn had privately requested Conrad Dias, then Secretary of the Chamber of Commerce, to nominate a less-confrontational individual. Much to Martenstyn’s displeasure, I was nominated by the Chamber for the second successive term.

The CTPB came in for severe criticism by the Minister of Plantations, Colvin R. de Silva, for its “disregard for promotional” work, its inappropriate appointments to the overseas Tea Centres, such as that of an Egyptian with no previous experience on tea to its Cairo office, and the employment of Kenyan girls at the London Tea Centre, despite the easy availability of Ceylonese girls in London (Ceylon Daily News, 2 July 1971).


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Features

BRICS upholds inclusive growth; re-affirms South-South cooperation

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19 hours ago

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2026/09/17

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BRICS political leaders at the 2026 New Delhi summit.(BBC)

A principal highlight of the recently concluded BRICS 2026 summit in New Delhi was the grouping’s unambiguous championing of the empowerment of ordinary people everywhere. This was yet another notable coming together of Southern governments over matters of common concern alright but it was the grouping’s people-oriented thinking that struck the impartial commentator as particularly important this time around.

The latter accent merits underscoring in view of the widespread perception that Southern oriented international organizations, such as the Non-aligned Movement (NAM), have had their day, so to speak. However the BRICS summit not only re-affirmed NAM principles but gave proof of its willingness to complement the main undertakings of NAM. Accordingly, causes such as South-South cooperation, international economic and social equity, multilateralism, international peace and the need to uphold the current UN-centred world order received resounding and fresh emphasis.

Particularly encouraging for those espousing Southern development concerns was the stressing of the historic ‘Bandung Principles’ in the New Delhi Declaration which crowned the summit deliberations. As is known, it was the ‘Bandung Spirit’ of 1955 that paved the way for the establishment of NAM and South-South cooperation in a major way. As such the ‘Spirit’ was primary in helping to reshape international development discourse and in giving it a pro-people bent. That is, development correctly conceived was birthed.

The New Delhi Declaration said in this regard: ‘We recall the 1955 Asian-African Conference in Bandung, Indonesia that proclaimed general principles, including equality, independence, non-intervention and mutual benefit. We stress that the Bandung Spirit serves as a reference in the pursuit of a fairer, more inclusive, and representative multilateral system.’

‘Geopolitics’ was not glossed over or ignored in New Delhi, but it is quite forgotten by some sections of opinion in particularly Sri Lanka that BRICS, while being an important Southern counter-balance in terms of power to the global North is also essentially about international economic growth with equity. The New Delhi summit helped to put right this conceptual imbalance in what groupings such as BRICS ought to be thinking and doing.

Even more precisely, people should be at the heart of development and in the exertions and preoccupations of international organizations claiming to represent the South. Southern governments equipped with economic and military might in particular remain important but it is people’s empowerment that ought to be the overriding consideration.

The latter concerns help stress the cruciality of democratic development since it is the latter that facilitates best the well being of people. Unfortunately, BRICS happens to be top-heavy with authoritarian governments that could deliver economic growth but not equity. It is fully representative, participatory governance that could best deliver to the people their essential needs and not totalitarian governments.

This is a complex dilemma for BRICS. It could be resolved somewhat by admitting more and more pro-people, democratic states into the BRICS fold to counter-balance the power and influence of authoritarian states. At present among the principal BRICS countries it’s only India that meets most of the criteria for democratic development.

Hopefully, more and more Southern democracies would see it fit to join BRICS in consideration of the latter’s potential to be a prime ‘economic powerhouse’ of the world. Equally hopefully, people’s empowerment in the true sense would come to be valued as a crucial merit for BRICS membership. It is relevant to stress that the fulfillment of the fundamental rights of a people is integral to their complete empowerment.

A grave negative fallout from the Trump administration’s current militarism is that more and more states world wide would come to value military heft over people’s empowerment. Consequently, the preference for military power could lead to countries wanting BRICS membership for the wrong reasons. That is, security through collective armed might would come to matter over all else and the world would be rendered an increasingly ‘dangerous place’.

But thinking people would expect from BRICS a more responsible role in world affairs and prefer to have from it inspirational guidance in democratic development, correctly understood.

A commitment by BRICS at the summit of considerable importance to world peace that should not be underplayed is its commitment to the UN system and the strengthening of International Law. The relevant quote from the Declaration spoke of BRICS’ ‘Commitment to strengthening multilateralism and multi-polarity and upholding International Law, including the Purposes and Principles of the Charter of the United Nations.’

Coming at a time when the UN is seen by some as a spent force, lacking effectiveness, the above endorsement of the UN Charter and International Law is of crucial significance. This amounts to solidly upholding the post World War Two order despite current largely rhetorical assertions that it is fast unraveling.

While UN reform remains a compelling necessity, the endorsement of the UN-centred order holds out the possibility of some of the BRICS heavyweights, who are currently acting in violation of International Law, eventually getting back to conduct that would be more in keeping with the requirements of International Law.

The UN could put these developments to constructive use by redoubling its efforts to work out diplomatic solutions to the current conflicts and wars that are showing no signs of being receptive to fresh peace efforts.

Two of these theatres of conflict are the Middle East and the Ukraine. While the US, Israel, Russia and Iran would need to be engaged by the UN with exceptional persuasive power to sort out the conflicts where they have come to feature directly and indirectly, the relevant BRICS members’ commitments to world peace and multilateralism could be used as instruments of moral pressure perhaps to induce them to get onto the path of peaceful conflict resolution.

The wide consensus among the BRICS powers amounts to their scoring a significant political victory over the US and its allies. Their espousal of international peace and the UN Charter exposes the US as being at cross purposes with peace-oriented and democratic sections world wide. Specifically, the moral and intellectual poverty of the Trump administration is being revealed glaringly.

This does not amount to a condemnation of the people of the US perse. It is just that some of them have voted quite unwisely. As a first step towards correcting this situation they could make good use of the upcoming mid term elections to register their strong disapproval of the Trump administration and the political extremists among the US Right. Course correction is not impossible.

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Not I — We: A new uniform will mean nothing if the person inside it is left behind

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19 hours ago

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2026/09/17

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by Mahil Dole

Senior Superintendent of Police (Retd.)

Sri Lanka Police has just marked 160 years. The parades were in order. The sentence that should have followed them has not been written with enough force. A police service that is pulled by politics, rewarded for individual glory and tried every night on social media cannot protect a country that is now a maritime hinge for international narcotics and financial crime. The political authority must decide, not in a speech, but in conduct, whether this force belongs to the law or to the loudest faction of the week.

That is not a plea. It is a warning.

The political hierarchy and the police hierarchy now agree that the service needs a new outlook, beginning with the uniform. The cut and the kit are not yet settled. That conversation is overdue. Criminals have moved into containers, encrypted apps and international logistics. An officer equipped for a quieter decade is less able to detect, and less able to come home.

Sophistication of kit is essential. Body-worn cameras, communications and protective equipment that match the threat are not luxuries. They keep a policeman alive.

If the first decision of this compact is only what the officer will wear, the wrapping will be modern and the person untouched. The priority is not a new silhouette. It is a different person inside the uniform.

The officer is a human being

He and she is a product of this complicated society. The fractures that run through the village, the school and the social-media feed run through the recruit. Communal suspicion, religious identity and ethnic memory are not checked at the armoury gate. The question treated as delicate is operational: is this officer mentally geared for ordinary crime and for communal, religious and ethnic conflict?

What is his stand if he belongs to one community and is sent into a dispute involving another? How will the parties look at him? How will the media frame the first photograph? That decides whether a crowd sees the law or “the other side.” We are all Sri Lankans. The sentence is easy on a Police Day banner. It is hard at a junction when rumour is already ahead of the patrol.

Every officer, from constable to gazetted rank, must be trained for these issues as deliberately as for a baton. Not one lecture at Katukurunda: recurring, scenario-based work on mixed neighbourhoods, mixed complainants, and keeping personal faith out of the method of work. The media will hunt the communal angle; parties to a conflict will hunt the ethnic one. The only answer that holds is an officer whose first identity on duty is Sri Lankan and whose first loyalty is the law.

That is “We.” Assuming the uniform dissolves identity is how a single incident becomes a national story.

What they have been is not what they can remain

From the 1866 ordinance this service has been the state’s civilian arm, colonial order-keeping, post-independence law and order, then a wartime partner that buried its dead beside the armed forces. Specialised units were built for terrorism, organised crime and financial intelligence. The same institution was used as a residual army, a political instrument and a promotion marketplace. Loyalty too often attached to a person, not to the law. Easter Sunday made the price visible. So did every file that moved, or stalled, according to who was in office.

A history of sacrifice does not excuse a present of capture. It makes the capture more shameful.

What they are today

On paper the force is large, some 79,000 authorised, 609 stations. On the ground it is thin. More than 4,300 officers have left since 2020. Vacancies exceed 30,000. Shifts of twelve to eighteen hours are still treated as normal. Distress is still logged as discipline rather than welfare. That is waste, not toughness.

Crime has two faces, and both strike national security. Gang violence over narcotics still produces shootings. Sri Lanka also sits on feeder routes moving Afghan and Pakistani product toward other markets. Harbour and high-sea detections in the hundreds of kilograms are no longer rare. Ice hidden in towels at Colombo Port; heroin pulled from multi-day trawlers; scam compounds and frozen assets in the billions of rupees, these are not “ordinary crime.” They buy influence and fund the next consignment.

The third battlefield is information. Reels and anonymous accounts impersonate officers, launder rumour as fact, and reward the man who seeks a following. Inside the service the culture still teaches “I”: my file, my photograph, my briefing. Rank is being treated as a prize. It is a trust.

The container that became a campaign

Late August 2026, officers opened containers at the Colombo International Container Terminal and recovered some 463 to 472 kilograms of crystal methamphetamine, concealed in towels, originating from Pakistan and valued in the billions of rupees. Suspects including foreign nationals were arrested. The United States DEA publicly associated itself with the intelligence. The criminal case sits with the Central Crime Investigation Bureau.

That is a success. It should have been protected as a success.

Instead, an internal process review, ordered by the Inspector General into how information moved between bureaux, was translated on social media into another story: that the IGP and Senior DIG Ranmal Kodituwakku were being “chambered” over the detection. An Opposition MP warned, correctly, that putting the officers who delivered the raid under a public microscope will teach the service the wrong lesson.

State the distinction without apology. A criminal file is about the network and the money. A process file is about timelines and chain of custody. A blog is neither. Collapsing a Senior DIG’s recorded statement into “the hierarchy is in the dock” is not accountability. It is a gift to those who packed the towels. After a half-tonne interdiction, a process review is normal; leaking it as a morality play is not. Complete the inquiry on the record. If negligence is found, deal with it. If not, say so. Half-spoken files let rumour colonise the institution.

Training, technology and a mind that can bear the load

The IGP and the hierarchy must stop treating training as a calendar ornament. Immediate programmes are required, not next year’s paper.

First

, the evolving issues: communal and religious tension, narrative operations, child and women protection, financial and cyber crime, harbour interdiction, the law of arrest.

Second

, the technologies: digital evidence, data protection under the Personal Data Protection Act, disciplined open-source work, body-worn cameras that protect the public and officers alike.

Third

, mental health as operational infrastructure, counselling an Inspector can use without becoming a Legal Division case, and early recognition of burnout before it becomes a headline.

Incentives must follow: allowances for certified competencies, promotion credit for courses applied, not for attendance photographs. Asking for sophistication at the port with no path to acquire it is theatre.

A new uniform that can carry a camera, worn by an officer unprepared for the society he polices, is a costume. The station, the cell, the unseen hour Look next at where this officer lives and works. Many stations are old, congested and unhygienic. Living standards on duty are low. You cannot demand a different person in the uniform and house him as if he were expendable.

Cells are a particular failure of command. Too many sit out of sight of the men on duty. They are dilapidated. What happens inside goes unnoticed until a death, an assault or an escape. That is a design of our own buildings, not a secret of the underworld. A cell that cannot be seen cannot be defended in court or in conscience. Refurbish, fix sightlines, monitor what the Constitution requires, and treat an escape as a failure of supervision before it becomes a press note.

These are not welfare extras. They are the conditions under which evidence is kept, suspects are held, and officers decide whether the job is still worth the family cost.

The health of the officer is the health of the public

One of the first duties of the hierarchy is the health of the policeman and his family. A sick officer with a sick child is not “uncommitted.” He is a risk to himself, to the next raid, and to the citizen at the counter. Police hospitals are few. Officers in rural stations cannot reach them in time. The IGP should not wait for a building programme. Speak to the health authorities now. Arrange priority access for officers and their families at government hospitals. Dedicated wards or reserved beds are not a privilege class. They are the minimum owed to people sent into harm, and into other people’s crises, at every hour.

Good health is a good mind. A good mind is good care for the people. No uniform compensates for an officer who has not slept, has not been treated, and cannot reach a Police hospital.

What they must be tomorrow

The country does not need more decoration. It needs a service the public can approach without fear and that no politician can casually redirect: intelligence-led against networks that threaten the state; digitally capable and legally bounded; trained for communal heat as well as narcotics; housed and treated as human beings; collectively minded. We hold the ground, not I cleared the file.

The constable at the junction and the analyst tracing a hawala chain are the same institution. National security is not a specialist’s private property.

To the policymakers and the political authority

You have agreed with the Police hierarchy on a new outlook. Use it for more than cloth.

Independence is not the IGP’s personal autonomy. It is the institution’s ability to apply the law without fear or favour, and still answer to the law. You cannot have that and also have a Police summoned, transferred or publicly undermined according to the needs of the week.

Appointment and removal of the Inspector General must remain a process, not patronage. The National Police Commission must exercise its powers over promotions, transfers and discipline without being hectored from the gallery. Cabinet sets policy and budget. It does not choose Tuesday’s suspect. Comment from the House on the guilt of named officers while a file is open is not oversight. It is interference under another name.

If you want an apolitical Police, stop using internal inquiry as a factional weapon and social media as a substitute bench. Different treatment of files is the old disease. Naming it only when the officer is someone you dislike is the same disease.

Then fund what a new uniform implies: immediate training, habitable stations, cells that can be seen, and a health arrangement with the Ministry of Health that does not leave a rural sergeant’s family outside the gate. Announcing kit and withholding living conditions is not reform. It is dressing the service for a photograph.

The public has a part. Distinguish error from crime. Cooperate with the officer who is fair; demand consequences where he is not. In conflict, look at the uniform as the law, not as a census of name, faith or village. Do not outsource judgement to an anonymous account.

The stand It is not I. It should be We.

A new uniform will not make an officer Sri Lankan. Training, health, housing, an apolitical file, and a command that treats him as a human being might. A service that thinks in individual glory will be outrun by networks that think in systems. A political class that thinks in capture will keep receiving detections and wondering why the pipeline never closes. A country that argues about the cloth while the person inside it is exhausted, untrained for communal fire, and unseen in a dilapidated cell block is not preparing for tomorrow. It is rearranging the wardrobe.

The law cannot serve two masters. Neither can the uniform, old or new.

(This analysis is offered in the interest of national security, institutional reform, and public safety)

Mahil Dole, SSP (Retd.), served as Deputy Director in charge of the Counter-Terrorism Desk of the State Intelligence Service and later as Intelligence Coordinator to the Inspector General of Police. He is a former Member of the Sri Lanka Wakfs Board and author of Security Beyond Enforcement: Practical Approaches for a Safer Nation. Email – mahildole54@gmail.com

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Features

The Miss World 2026 scene …

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2026/09/17

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History was made under the lights on 05th September, as Joheirry Mola Dominguez, of the Dominican Republic, was crowned Miss World 2026 by outgoing queen Suchata Chuangsri of Thailand at April 2nd Square in Nha Trang, Vietnam.

It is only the second Miss World title for the Dominican Republic; 44 years after Mariasela Álvarez’s win in 1982. Reports described it as an “emotional and historic moment” for the nation.

Joheirry, 24, beat 110 other delegates to take the crown.

A dedicated educator and community advocate, she holds a degree in Business Management and Administration from Universidad Iberoamericana. She is Founder and President of “Voices of Tomorrow”, an initiative expanding access to English education for children in vulnerable communities. She also teaches Literature and Social Studies in English, and works as a correspondent for Univision New York’s Ventana a Quisqueya.

Her advocacy won hearts

It was her advocacy that won hearts.

“My Beauty With a Purpose is to take English programmes to kids in vulnerable communities,”

she said at the Grand Final. “Because I believe that when they know this language, the opportunities, the doors that can open to their life, it’s huge. English is a tool that will stay with them and benefit them for the rest of their lives.”

Spain’s Elisabeth Reynés finished 1st Runner-Up, while Malaysia’s Taanusiya Chetty, also winner of Beauty With a Purpose, took 2nd Runner-Up.

The Top 6 included Vietnam’s Le Nguyen Bao Ngoc, Eritrea’s Snit Habteab, and South Africa’s Romanda Hombir.

The 75th Anniversary edition, hosted for the first time in Vietnam, was a spectacle before 20,000 spectators. Staged on a 110+ meter outdoor platform by Nha Trang beach, the square was lit up with huge LED screens and high-power sound.

Even heavy rain during the Americas & Caribbean segment couldn’t dampen spirits. Umbrellas and raincoats popped up and the show resumed 15 minutes later. Nobody left. That’s dedication.

With 111 ambassadors, cultural dances, ao dai performances, and the seaside backdrop, officials called it a celebration of beauty, talent, confidence, and social responsibility.

With 20,000 people, rain or shine, screaming, cheering, live-streaming, waving flags… it was, indeed, pure Miss World magic.

For Sri Lanka, Prathibha Liyanaarachchi did not make the Top 40 at the 73rd Miss World Festival, but she reached the finalist stages of four fast-track events — Top Model, Talent, Sports, and Beauty With a Purpose.

Miss World magic: The square was lit up with huge LED screens and high-power sound

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