Monday 9th February, 2026

Politicians cannot bring themselves to let go of power after savouring it and do everything possible to retain their hold thereon. This may explain why excessive powers vested in the executive presidency, draconian laws such as the Prevention of Terrorism Act (PTA), and the misuse of Emergency regulations have survived successive governments led by self-righteous leaders who promised to protect democracy during election campaigns. Only President J. R. Jayewardene (JRJ) made no bones about his dictatorial intentions.

The incumbent dispensation has failed to be different from the previous governments which misused emergency regulations to further their political interests. On Friday (06), Parliament voted to extend a state of emergency, declared by President Anura Kumara Dissanayake in the aftermath of Cyclone Ditwah about two months ago. The Opposition let out a howl of protest, claiming that the JVP-NPP government kept on extending a state of emergency with an ulterior motive—suppressing democratic dissent.

On Friday, the government frontbenchers took great pains to have the public believe that the Opposition was seeing ‘more devils than vast hell can hold’ when it claimed the extension of the state of emergency was aimed at suppressing democracy. However, the Opposition’s arguments were tenable. Arguing that there was no need for emergency regulations for the ongoing relief and rebuilding programmes to be carried out, Opposition Leader Sajith Premadasa said that instead of extending the state of emergency, the government should amend the Disaster Management Act and create a new Ministry for Disaster Management. This is a cogent argument. The government’s disaster preparedness left much to be desired in November 2025. Sri Lanka is among the countries badly affected by the extreme weather events related to climate change, and the government must urgently set up a separate ministry for disaster management and give the existing disaster management laws stronger teeth.

Ironically, most of those who are berating the current administration for misusing emergency regulations had no qualms about doing so while in power. Only a snake will know the tracks of another snake, as a local saying goes. So, one should take serious note of what ‘snakes’ say about each other when they clash on the Diyawanna lakeshore.

There is no way the government can justify its decision to overuse emergency regulations by claiming that the call for declaring a state of emergency came from the Opposition in the immediate aftermath of Cyclone Ditwah.

President Dissanayake has declared that there will be no pay hikes until 2027, regardless of what trade unions may do to pressure his government. The emergency regulations which can be used to suppress workers’ right to strike should be viewed against President Dissanayake’s aforesaid statement which, in our book, is a warning. The government has resorted to brinkmanship in dealing with protesting doctors who have threatened to intensify their ongoing trade union action. Pro-government groups are astroturfing as ordinary citizens and calling for tough action to force the state sector trade unions into submission. Deputy Minister of Public Security Sunil Watagala has asked the police to use emergency regulations to deal with those who carry out what he describes as personal attacks on the President and the ministers. The Human Rights Commission of Sri Lanka has reportedly expressed serious concern over growing threats to freedom of expression in the country, particularly the targeting of journalists through police investigations into instances of alleged defamation.

Meanwhile, arrests are still made under the PTA, which the JVP-led NPP, in the run-up to the 2024 elections, pledged to abolish. It promised “the abolition of all oppressive acts including the Prevention of Terrorism Act and ensuring civil rights of people in all parts of the country”(NPP Policy Framework, A Thriving Nation: A beautiful Life, p. 129). Time was when Dissanayake, as an Opposition MP, waxed eloquent in Parliament, condemning governments for overusing emergency regulations.

All Executive Presidents, except D. B. Wijetunga, have been affected by what may be described as the JRJ syndrome, which drives the wielders of the presidency to arrogate to themselves the powers of vital state institutions and subjugate everything to the interests of their political parties. No surprise that President Dissanayake now has emergency regulations extended on some pretext or another. Besides, he travels by helicopter, and two choppers are deployed in tandem for his journeys even though he once condemned his predecessors for that practice, sarcastically asking whether a President could jump from one helicopter to another in midair in case of an emergency. This kind of behaviour exemplifies the popular local saying: “A water monitor (kabaragoya) becomes a land monitor (thalagoya) when one wants to eat it.”

Many post-disaster rebuilding projects have got underway, and the government is grappling with the uphill task of relocating the survivors of landslides and ensuring the safety of others living in unstable mountainous areas. Experts have warned that if another spell of torrential rains occurs soon, it may trigger a fresh wave of landslides. While efforts are being made to relocate the disaster victims to safe locations, hundreds of apartment dwellers in Colombo are expressing concern about their safety.

A seven-year-old child died on Thursday when a chunk of plaster of an apartment wall fell on him in Colombo 15. He was accompanying his grandmother when tragedy struck. Residents of the multi-storeyed apartment complex, Randiya Uyana, have told the media that they had informed the Urban Development Authority (UDA) several times that the plaster of some apartment walls had developed cracks, posing a danger to them, but their complaints and warnings had gone unheeded. There is a prima facie case of criminal negligence, we reckon.

Besides plaster fissures, what look like structural cracks on concrete beams are visible in some images of the apartment building shown on television. They must be carefully examined forthwith, and immediate action taken if they are symptomatic of any issues compromising the structural robustness of the building. Some residents are heard saying in videos in the digital realm that while they were living in slums and shanties in low-lying areas, they had to worry about only floods once in a way, but now they have to live in eternal fear of being crushed by falling fragments of their apartment building, which is already in a very poor condition due to lack of maintenance; elevators are out of order and sewage systems are malfunctioning. Drug addicts have reportedly damaged the elevators. There is a pressing need for the place to be policed regularly.

City planners have apparently not paid much attention to the social aspects of relocating low-income groups. Densification does not mean vertical relocation of slums and shanties in permanent buildings, so to speak. It is doubtful whether the UDA and other state institutions responsible for the densification projects devised ways and means of overcoming the challenges of transitioning from informal settlements to high-rise housing and the relocation-induced social strain. This may be one of the reasons why we are witnessing the so-called high-rise resettlement failure. Support of urban sociologists and other experts need to be enlisted to address these issues. Action must be taken to tackle the post-relocation integration problems and improve the living conditions of the occupants and ensure that they adapt to their new environment while engineering experts are tasked with ensuring that apartment complexes do not end up being towering deathtraps.

Minister of Transport, Highways and Urban Development Bimal Rathnayake said in Parliament on Thursday that the construction of the Randiya Uyana apartment complex had commenced in 2014. Thus, the building is relatively new, and this fact points to a possible lack of compliance with building standards on the part of the constructor, and other construction issues. Inspections must be conducted urgently to rule out structural load-bearing deficiencies and ensure the safety of hundreds of occupants. The constructor of the building must be questioned. Sri Lanka is no stranger to shoddy constructions, which are ubiquitous.

The UDA ought to learn from apartment complex disasters that have dominated the global headlines during the past several decades and take precautions. Prominent among them was the partial collapse of the Champlain Towers, Florida, where nearly 100 people died in 2021. Experts identified the deterioration of reinforced concrete and corrosion of critical support elements as some of the causative factors, according to media reports. Dozens of people perished when an apartment complex collapsed in Italy in 1999 due to structural failure caused by the use of substandard building materials and poor workmanship. There have been several other such disasters the world over.

One can only hope that proper construction practices and building codes were adhered to when multi-storeyed apartment complexes were constructed, and the UDA will inspect the Randiya Uyana apartment complex immediately without waiting until another disaster strikes. A thorough investigation is called for because it will not only help figure out what has gone wrong with the construction of the apartment building at issue but also hopefully lead to improvements in building standards and safety protocols aimed at preventing similar tragedies in the future in view of rapid vertical urban development.

Saturday 7th February, 2026

It is popularly said in this country that when one has power one has no brains, and when one has brains, one has no power—bale thiyanakota mole ne, mole thiyanakota bale ne. However, some present-day politicians have proved that they have neither power nor brains. Painful knocks they and their parties received from a disillusioned public in the 2024 elections do not seem to have had a sobering effect on them if their misplaced priorities are any indication.

Former Minister Rohitha Abeygunawardena waxed eloquent in Parliament on Thursday, lamenting as he did the high prices of a popular brand of arrack, known as ‘gal’, so named because it was originally manufactured by a state distillery located in the Galoya valley. He fervently appealed to the government to consider slashing the ‘gal’ arrack prices ‘for the benefit of the ordinary people’ who consumed it. Deputy Minister of Economic Development Nishantha Jayaweera reportedly said the government was exploring the possibility of lowering excise duties on liquor.

MP Abeygunawardena is not alone in campaigning for making ‘gal’ arrack available at lower prices. His former ministerial colleague Chamara Sampath Dassanayake also keeps asking the government to reduce the ‘gal’ arrack prices. Their rotgut mission, as it were, may have gladdened the hearts of those who prioritise ‘warming the liver’ over everything else including the need to dull their family members’ pangs of hunger. The question is why these politicians are not equally vocal on the need to solve burning problems affecting the public, such as the escalating cost of living, and the prevalence of malnutrition and stunting among children. This country is not short of men who spend money on liquor at the expense of the nutritional needs of their family members, especially children.

It is doubtful whether the MPs calling for liquor price reductions have seen the findings of a Select Committee of Parliament which was appointed to look into child malnutrition issues in Sri Lanka. The committee report, issued last year, has said that according to the National Nutrition and Micronutrient Survey conducted in 2022, the prevalence of low birth weight in a nationally representative sample was 15.9%. The June 2023 Nutrition Month report identified an increase in underweight and stunting among infants and children up to two years of age compared to 2022, the committee report has said, noting that the most alarmingly high underweight rate of 24.6% was recorded in the Nuwara Eliya District, where one in every four children was identified as moderately or severely underweight. In June 2023, the proportion of children affected by poverty in Sri Lanka was 10%, and 1.2% of all children under the age of 5 were affected by severe acute malnutrition, the committee has said. Reports issued by non-governmental research organisations have revealed that about 43% of Sri Lankan children experience some nutritional problems, including stunting, underweight or wasting. Why don’t the members of both sides of the House address these issues which are bound to impact the entire nation adversely?

We have not heard the campaigners for cheap liquor addressing issues faced by women, who do not seek solace in alcohol despite working as hard as men and being equally fatigued and stressed. They toil in garment factories and on estates and in West Asia to keep their home economies and the national economy afloat. But the alcohol and tobacco consumption among them is negligible. Hats off to them!

Most of all, the National Authority on Tobacco and Alcohol (NATA), during a recent interaction with the Parliamentary Sectoral Oversight Committee on Health, Mass Media and Women’s Empowerment, has revealed that approximately 22,000 deaths occur annually in Sri Lanka due to tobacco and alcohol consumption, according to a report published in this newspaper on 30 Jan. 2026. The NATA has disclosed that the country suffers an economic loss of between Rs. 225 billion and Rs. 240 billion a year due to the consumption of tobacco products and alcohol. The focus of all people’s representatives must be on how to reduce liquor and tobacco consumption to save precious lives and state funds.

When will our politicians stop playing to the gallery and grow up?