Real politics is always played in grey areas; decisions are not made in parliamentary chambers or presidential palaces but in hotel corridors, private aircraft, and the quiet geometry of negotiated survival. What is presented as constitutional order is often only the visible skin of a deeper machinery where power is not declared but assembled. Most commentary on Venezuela portrays the removal of Nicolás Maduro as a sudden rupture that dismantled an entrenched centre of authority and rapidly produced a new governing nucleus around Delcy Rodríguez, reframing the state not as continuity but as immediate reconfiguration under a new operational centre of power.

The claim is simple in outline and explosive in implication: Maduro removed, detained abroad, his political inner circle dismantled; Rodríguez elevated from vice-presidential operator to acting head of state, inheriting not a ceremonial vacancy but a fractured state requiring immediate recomposition. Whether one treats this as confirmed fact, speculative journalism, or a constructed political scenario, the effect is the same in analytical terms. It produces a vacuum, and in politics vacuums are never empty. They are filled immediately, often brutally, and almost always by those closest to the mechanisms of control rather than the symbols of legitimacy.

Rodríguez, in this framing, is not behaving like a transitional leader waiting for instructions. She is behaving like an administrator of consolidation. Her public language repeatedly returns to a controlled moral vocabulary: Venezuela, she insists, is “forging a path of national reunification”, “free from the divisions of classism and racism”, and rooted “in the pursuit of peace.” It is a carefully constructed grammar of stabilisation. Nothing in it is accidental. Reunification replaces rupture. Peace replaces conflict. Inclusion replaces accusation. It is the language of systems attempting to re-legitimise themselves after fracture.

Yet language in moments like this does not describe reality so much as attempt to discipline it. Every invocation of unity implies prior fragmentation. Every appeal to peace implies a preceding logic of coercion. What is being built is not only a political order but an interpretive frame in which that order can survive scrutiny.

Reports associated with this narrative describe rapid administrative restructuring: ministerial changes, security realignments, and renewed engagement with global financial institutions, including the International Monetary Fund. The return of financial dialogue after years of rupture is framed as a restoration of economic normality, yet it also functions as something more fundamental: conditional recognition. Access to financial systems is never neutral. It is a form of admission into an international order that confers legitimacy as much as liquidity.

A frequently cited poll attributed to this period places Rodríguez at 73 per cent approval among Venezuelans. Whether statistically rigorous or politically constructed, the number itself performs a different function. It stabilises perception. In transitional environments, polling is rarely about measurement alone; it is about producing the sensation of consensus in moments where consensus is structurally fragile. Numbers become instruments of narrative control rather than reflections of social reality.

What emerges across these accounts is a dual reading of Rodríguez’s role. For supporters, she is the stabiliser of a collapsing system, the figure capable of converting disorder into administrative continuity. For critics, she is the executor of elite reconfiguration, replacing one closed network with another while maintaining the architecture of concentrated power. Both readings contain truth, not because they agree, but because transitional power almost always generates contradictory interpretations of the same actions.

The deeper logic resembles a familiar political pattern: when central authority collapses, the question is not who is most legitimate but who is most capable of controlling institutions that actually matter. Security structures, financial channels, energy infrastructure, and diplomatic access become the real terrain of power. Ideology becomes secondary to control of operational systems. In that sense, Rodríguez is not an anomaly but a product of a very old political problem: how to maintain state coherence when legitimacy is contested and authority has been disrupted.

There is a long historical memory for this kind of moment. Rome did not end its republic through a single act but through incremental consolidation, where Augustus transformed emergency authority into a permanent structure while preserving republican language. Power changed form without changing vocabulary. In post-revolutionary France, figures like Talleyrand survived every ideological shift by treating loyalty as subordinate to institutional survival. The pattern is not moral; it is structural. Systems under stress reward adaptability over conviction.

The uncomfortable implication is that such transitions rarely offer clean moral categories. The language of betrayal and loyalty becomes unstable when applied to environments where institutional survival itself depends on the reconfiguration of alliances. What appears as betrayal from one perspective can appear as necessity from another. Politics in such contexts is not a question of ethical clarity but of functional continuity under pressure.

Even the symbolic inheritance of Chávez-era rhetoric complicates interpretation. His denunciation of Western power as “the devil” once represented ideological confrontation with global systems of influence. In the current configuration of events, however, the same state tradition appears to be engaging selectively with those same systems through financial reintegration and diplomatic recalibration. The contradiction is not unique to Venezuela; it is a recurring feature of states that move from confrontation to survival pragmatism. Ideological purity rarely survives institutional stress.

Rodríguez, within this contested framing, operates at the intersection of these contradictions. She is simultaneously presented as guardian of sovereignty and manager of reintegration into the Western financial structures. She speaks in the language of resistance while engaging in the mechanics of external normalisation. That duality is not incoherence; it is the condition of governance under constraint, where no single ideological position can fully account for the demands of survival.

It is tempting to describe this as either redemption or capture, but both interpretations flatten the reality of transitional authority. What exists instead is a corridor of constrained decision-making, where every action is shaped by pressure from multiple directions: internal fragmentation, external expectation, institutional inertia. Within that corridor, politics becomes less about declaring direction and more about preventing collapse.

This is why the figure of Rodríguez generates such divergent readings. She is not operating in a stable system where legitimacy is settled. She is operating in a system where legitimacy itself is part of the struggle. Every reform is also a negotiation. Every consolidation is also a risk. Every gesture of unity is also an act of exclusion somewhere else in the structure.

The deeper political lesson is that modern state transitions rarely resemble the narratives used to describe them. They are not clean breaks or linear progressions. They are layered adjustments in which old structures are partially dismantled, partially preserved, and partially repurposed. The result is not resolution but managed ambiguity.

In that sense, Rodríguez is not an exception but an expression of a broader political condition: the necessity of governing through instability rather than after it. Whether one interprets that as betrayal or transformation depends less on evidence than on political positioning. The structure itself does not resolve the ambiguity; it produces it. The irony is that political systems often attempt to justify themselves through historical memory while simultaneously repeating its most uncomfortable patterns. When power changes hands, justice changes meaning. As the old saying goes, in politics, loyalty is a currency that devalues quickly.

by Nilantha Ilangamuwa

This is the first of a two-part essay, from my remarks at a speech I delivered at the Kolamba Kamatha Festival on Saturday, 28 March 2026.

By Uditha Devapriya

The 8th of May 1956 is considered as a watershed in the history of the British theatre. On that day a play was staged which would change the shape and face of British drama. Two years earlier a stage director, George Devine, had cofounded an organisation for staging plays by young, radical writers. It called itself the English Stage Company, the ESC. On 2 April 1956, the ESC purchased the Royal Court Theatre in London.

For its first season the company’s founders planned a cycle of five plays. The first of these was a fairly tame drama by Angus Wilson, The Mulberry Tree. The second was a production of Arthur Miller’s The Crucible. Both these had been directed several times before. In the case of The Crucible, by 1956 it had already become a classic of contemporary theatre. It was the third play that would break ground, for the ESC, the Royal Court Theatre, and British drama in general. This was John Osborne’s Look Back in Anger.

A searing look into the class system and the institution of marriage in post-war Britain, Look Back in Anger delved into ideas and themes which few British playwrights had probed with such frankness. Almost immediately it created an uproar. Many newspapers railed against it and gave it negative or lukewarm reviews. It was described as “intense, angry, feverish, and undisciplined” in one paper and “unspeakably dirty and squalid” in another. Even critics who seemed sympathetic to the story sounded caution on its themes.

The only exception was Kenneth Tynan. A highly respected critic, as outspoken as the writers and dramatists he championed, Tynan became quite receptive to Osborne’s play. Writing in The Observer, one of the oldest newspapers in the UK, he commented that it symbolised a growing rift between an older, conservative generation and a younger, more outspoken one in the context of postwar Britain. Questioning its critics, he praised Osborne for being true to life and in doing so producing a “minor miracle.”

Tynan ended his review with these words.

“I doubt if I could love anyone who did not wish to see Look Back in Anger. It is the best young play of its decade.”

John Osborne

The review was published five days after the play, on 13 May 1956. Six months later, on 3 November 1956 at the University of Ceylon in Peradeniya, Sri Lanka, the University Sinhalese Drama Circle staged Maname. Written and directed by Ediriweera Sarachchandra, based on a Buddhist jataka tale and anchored in a fusion of various theatrical styles, Maname became as representative of a new theatre in Sri Lanka as Look Back in Anger had been of a new theatre in Britain. After it made its way to other parts of the country, including Colombo, the press began reviewing it with as much curiosity as with Osborne’s play. Unlike the latter, however, the press gave Maname positive notices.

One of the more perceptive reviews was written by the critic and journalist Regi Siriwardena. Published in the Ceylon Daily News a few days after it was staged, Siriwardena noted that Maname represented a breakthrough in theatrical form. He argued that it was quite unlike what the Sinhalese Drama Circle or the flagship dramatic society at the University of Ceylon, DramSoc, had staged in the 1940s and 1950s. At that time the Sinhalese Drama Circle had presented local adaptations of European dramatists, from Moliere to Gogol to Chekhov. Maname did away with these trends and promoted a new theatre among Sinhala-speaking and bilingual audiences. This would be known as stylised drama.

Reflecting on these developments 25 years later, Siriwardena speculated about the social composition of those who watched Sarachchandra’s play.

Sugathapala de Silva, founder of Apè Kattiya

“… from my impressions of the spectators who came to performances of Maname in its early years at the Borella YMBA [Young Men’s Buddhist Association] and Lumbini, I would hazard the guess that the new audience of 1956 and immediately succeeding years was composed predominantly of urban lower middle-class Sinhala speaking people.”

He argued that this underlay a much bigger achievement.

“What Maname effected then was to give the bilingual artists working in the theatre – Professor Sarachchandra and those who came in his wake: Gunasena Galappatti, Dayananda Gunawardena, and Henry Jayasena – an opening to the Sinhala-speaking lower middle class… Apart from the intrinsic dramatic achievement of Maname… [I]t was in consonance with the climate of Sinhala cultural revivalism in and after 1956.”

Siriwardena added that for most Sinhala-speaking audiences Maname contrasted strongly with the “hybrid” nurti theatre of the 1920s and 1930s. Influenced if not inflected by Parsi and European theatre, by the 1950s nurti was perceived as standing outside the canon of indigenous or national art in Sri Lanka. Though Maname was inflected by multiple cultural and artistic forms, including kabuki, for Sinhala-speaking audiences it seemed to represent a more rooted and authentic experience.

In the context of the performing arts, terms like “rooted”, “authentic”, “native”, “national”, and “indigenous” are, of course, very politically charged. It would be dangerous to deploy these terms and claim that one conception of drama is superior to the rest. Yet what is interesting is how differently cultural sentiments shaped the reception to Look Back in Anger in Britain and Maname in Sri Lanka.

In their respective countries, these plays ushered in a new idiom and broke down artistic barriers. But while Look Back in Anger was celebrated by a young generation for its unconventional themes and attitudes, Maname was praised by another generation for conforming to notions of indigeneity and authenticity.

This difference should tell us something about the social conditions that in Sri Lanka laid the foundations of plays such as Maname, and generated a wave of rebellion, resurgence, and revival which fostered a very outspoken set of playwrights. These younger artists were not just receptive to what was happening in other societies. They were also part and parcel of the most significant generational shift in their own country, in post-independence Sri Lanka: arguably one of the most important in any former colonial society.

In postwar Britain the generation of playwrights who banded around John Osborne and Look Back in Anger called themselves the Angry Young Men. Post-independence Sri Lanka’s Angry Young Men banded together in opposition to stylised theatre, while at the same time seeking encouragement and inspiration from their predecessors. These playwrights had their leaders and figureheads. Among them was Sugathapala de Silva.

Before we talk about Sugathapala de Silva, however, it’s important that we understand the extent to which postwar generational shifts and the changing undercurrents of the Sinhala theatre influenced him. As importantly, we need to understand the way in which this generation of artistes came together, and the ways in which they differed from each other. The rest of the presentation will focus on these two themes.

If the starting point to all this is 1956, my initial observation is that the cultural revival unleashed that year was contradicted by the same social and political forces that contributed to that revival. This contradiction is best seen when contrasting the initial reception to Sarachchandra’s drama with the criticisms it attracted in later years. While no one should doubt the achievements of Maname and Sinhabahu, those who followed Sarachchandra in the Sinhala theatre had very different conceptions of that theatre.

This contradiction becomes more interesting when we realise that in countries like Britain the trajectory of the theatre was more clearcut and predictable.

In Britain, the Second World War had destroyed much of its cultural infrastructure, including theatres and film halls. Yet within 10 years, a new theatre had been born, and a new generation of writers had taken root. The rupture was gradual, but when it came, it opened an entire avenue of possibilities for British theatre, cinema, and literature.

This was seen not so much in the opening of new theatres, schools, and workshops as an influx of new talent to old institutions, such as the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, or RADA. Such developments were made possible, in part, by scholarships these institutions began offering as well as a spurt in enthusiasm for the theatre among non-elite groups. This is what helped actors like Peter O’Toole and Richard Burton get established. In an interview, O’Toole recalled how he entered RADA, just when it was opening its doors.

“A chum of mine… and I hitch-hiked our way into London to begin our lives and we jumped off the lorry, the truck, at a station called Houston and we were aiming for a men’s hostel. … And we were plodding down and I looked on my left and it said, ‘The Royal Academy of Dramatic Art’ and my chum said, ‘Well, if you’re going to be an actor this is the kind of shop where they deal with such matters, so why don’t you pop in?’… One thing led to another and I found myself, that afternoon even, turning up for the first interview and then I did an audition and [another] audition, and found, to my surprise that I was in.”

Evocative as it is, the passage underscores the point that the rupture which shook the British theatre loose was gradual and yet unfolded in one go. In Sri Lanka, on the other hand, we can discern not one but two ruptures vis-a-vis the Sinhala theatre: political revolt and cultural revival in 1956, followed by a rejection of theatrical and artistic forms which 1956 had valorised and popularised.

Let me deconstruct this further. Whereas in Britain the revival of theatre and the emergence of a radical class of dramatists was simultaneous, in Sri Lanka these developments unfolded sequentially. I suggest that this was not just necessary, but also unavoidable.

Uditha Devapriya is an independent researcher, author, columnist, and analyst whose work spans international relations, history, anthropology, and politics. He holds an LL.B. from the University of London and a Postgraduate Diploma in International Relations from the Bandaranaike Centre for International Studies (BCIS). In 2024 he was a participant in the International Visitor Leadership Program (IVLP) conducted by the US State Department. From 2022 to 2025 he served as Chief International Relations Analyst at Factum, an Asia-Pacific focused foreign policy think-tank. In 2025 he did two lecture stints in India, one as a Resident Fellow at the Kautilya School of Public Policy in Hyderabad and another on art and culture at the India International Centre in New Delhi. Since 2023, he has authored books on Sri Lankan institutions and public figures while pursuing research projects spanning art, culture, history, and geopolitics. He can be reached at udakdev1@gmail.comudakdev1@gmail.com.

New modes of conducting global politics are upon us: X-messaging and Lego rapper videos. Unthinkable before, but we all pay attention as requested to the first, and by compulsive viewing of the second.

The first made fashionable by the President of the United States with the signature line, “Thank you for your attention to this matter” can inform us real time (and has) whether large numbers of people on the other side of the world live or die, with the mighty US military machine ready for kinetic action, is being countered by the second, with Lego videos dropping thick and fast by an independent Iranian group of students called Explosive Media in classic asymmetrical warfare, winning the battle of narratives on social media, gaining millions of views.

The AI assisted, well-made and appealing videos using Lego characters in the visuals set to rap music, now incorporating many other styles of music, is directed at a global audience though mainly targeting an American one. The content is serious but funny, and many a truth is laid bare in jest. It is reported that the Iranian Government accounts have shared them as well, which is a testament to discerning Iranian public diplomacy. When multiple mainstream TV stations bring in experts on prime time news to analyze the phenomenon, it has clearly done its job.

Cool, savvy, well-educated and politically very sophisticated Iranian youth are crashing the world stage, effectively re-interpreting western narratives of history, current affairs, truth and “fake news”, and notions of right and wrong. And the world can’t get enough of it, made clear by the numerous comments and shares.

In these testing times in global politics, they are a welcome addition in the effort to understand the very real and on-going threat of an unintended catastrophe affecting all of us, involved and uninvolved alike.

New Global Superstars

In what seemed to be intractable crisis heading towards a seismic event in international affairs, an unexpected mediator stepped up and offered to manage it. Pakistan emerged as a courageous and competent peace-maker, taking the initiative in a dangerously escalating clash of civilizations, to credibly offer diplomacy as solution, having cultivated good relations with both the US and the countries of West Asia, including Iran.

Pakistani diplomats are some of the best in the world. They are well trained and disciplined. They have excellent language skills, able to speak to the West with diplomatic sophistication as well as cultural affinity with the East.

They are courageous in speaking out at multilateral forums, always with admirable knowledge of the rules of procedure. They are often elected as spokesperson for the OIC, the Organization of Islamic Countries at the United Nations. Their diplomatic training centers and think-tanks are exemplary.

I can testify to their courageous competence, having seen them work during my husband’s diplomatic assignments at UN forums and made close friendships with some while a student at the Institute of Modern Languages during my father’s stint as chargé d’affaires in Islamabad.

Much of the world was unaware of the quality of Pakistan’s diplomats, until they unexpectedly stepped up leveraging these advantages to bring the world back from the brink. We can hardly forget the recent scary face-off between the US and Iran when the latter’s civilization was within inches of being eliminated by X, formerly known as Twitter. Phew! Pakistan, thank you for your invaluable attention to that matter.

Other stars emerged from Iran, primarily their Foreign Minister, now a social media sensation. Just as with Pakistan, the world was unaware of the well-educated sophistication of the Iranian elite. Most of their officials had PhDs, as the world soon found out when they trooped into Islamabad for the Pakistani-mediated negotiations, well prepared and confident. Despite the obvious financial and military advantages of the country they were facing, on this battleground, there was no mismatch. Quite the contrary. Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi’s book on Negotiations has made the New York Times bestseller list.

The Open Letter to the American People penned by the President Masoud Pezeshkian of Iran was a masterclass in calm, reasoned, and convincingly knowledgeable appeal to the ordinary people in the country of the adversary, while their own leaders engaged in threats and theatrics liberally laced with expletives. Americans are paying attention, reading out the entire contents of that letter on social media in admiration.

Despite it being reported that the US delegation grew in respect for the Iranian negotiators, even after 21 hours, the reality of the abiding issue in the Middle-East, that of Israel’s threat perception, had its predictable impact. They concluded without agreement.

The talks may have failed temporarily, but Pakistani diplomacy didn’t. Face to face talks between the two sides was a singular diplomatic achievement. The two sides sized up each other and came to their own conclusions. So did the rest of the world, paying close attention to a matter that would affect their daily lives significantly.

The need for traditional diplomacy has never been more urgent as at this moment. Something new is being revealed by the very effort. There is a changing, undeniable dynamic in global affairs. The initiatives for maintaining and even restoring stability are coming from the global South and East. China is credibly profiling itself as an alternative global partner offering stability.

Order, order!

The world order is in flux and has not yet settled into a steady pattern. As the two belligerents argue as to whose blockade of the Strait of Hormuz is more deadly for the world, those suffering the ill-effects are making deals in Yuan. Experts analyzing who the winner is in this war conclude it’s neither of the belligerents, but 3^rd countries such as China, which they say will gain economically.

The current state of play cannot stand where decades of restraint in the conduct of international relations with even nominal reference to the UN Charter is replaced with the early human version of who’s got the bigger club.

Incredible as it may have seemed a few years ago, recent negotiating positions resemble a hold-up on a dark street: “Agree, or you will be bombed back to the Stone Age.” The Stone Age is exactly where such a strategy would have been considered cutting edge, but this is the 21^st century after two world wars.

That cannot be unseen.

The Pope pays attention

As history would have it, Pope Leo, the first American Pope and therefore speaking in English, got everyone’s attention when he reminded the world of the message of Jesus, blessed be the peacemakers, condemned the unrelenting violence being visited on the people of the Middle-East and called for dialogue as a way of settling issues. The world applauded.

In revelatory reaction, this drew angry responses from the global hegemon, hoping to make power the sole variable in international affairs. The US Vice-President, a Catholic, told the Pope to stick to moral issues, as if war and peace were outside the realm of morality. And yet, history has proved that Jesus’ message of peace and righteousness and the blood of the Martyrs peacefully preaching that message, ultimately upended the Roman Empire, the world’s greatest in that era.

The Pope on the other hand told an audience that he carries a photo of a little Muslim boy who held up a placard welcoming the Pope to Lebanon, who subsequently died in the recent Israeli bombings. He urged people to work together to bring peace and friendship and continued to condemn war.

Which message got more positive attention?

The shaping of a new order is inevitable. The Middle-East is where the old one is unravelling. The perennial issue left unresolved in the world, that which most dare not name, is that of Israel and Palestine. The UN, where this issue is taken up in multiple forums, both in Geneva and New York has failed to make any significant dent as Palestinian deaths have continued to mount.

The world watches in horror as the greater Israel project plays out in Lebanon. Unfortunately, the United States’ attention to that matter resulted in a copycat project to annex Canada and Greenland. The now familiar opening position for negotiations of “Or else we will take it by force” was on display when it was first mooted.

United Nations

As the UN prepares to elect its next Secretary General soon, any delusions of what the UN can do to prevent violent conflict have disappeared. However, it is indispensable in dealing with the human suffering afterwards. Their work in the grey ruins of recently bombed out cities, overflowing hospitals, schools and community centers is the one ray of hope in these bewildering times. The resilience of the staff, their unwavering commitment to help the victims and professional reports from the field are all humanity can depend on in the absence of any resolution to the crisis itself.

The UN is not primarily its bureaucrats and staff. It’s made up of member states. Their permanent representatives meet often to discuss numerous issues, to resolve issues, to set standards, to enforce compliance and to consider detailed reports on many matters.

They should step up, and pay more attention to the dangerous direction in which interactions between states are heading, with the sovereign equality of states, sparing of innocents in armed conflicts, proportionality etc. are being bombed into irrelevance as we speak.

Is Sri Lanka paying attention?

No country is being spared the consequences of the wars in this globalized world. We have very little room to maneuver economically, being hamstrung by the arrangements with the ISB holders and the IMF.

Are they paying attention? Having abandoned the opportunity to gain us the necessary flexibility to repay our loans by re-negotiated IMF and ISB repayment packages, this government seems to have taken its eye off the ball altogether.

They have not paid attention to the banking system, a dangerous state of affairs that can escalate if people lose confidence in this government’s ability to ensure compliance and control of their financial affairs.

Days after a private bank was found to have had a massive fraud committed by their staff, a government repayment of a loan to the tune of 2.5 million US dollars went untraceably missing! Who exactly was not paying attention to this matter?

With the world in flux and countries making new arrangements, can we rely on our own government to be proactive and make the necessary arrangements to ease the inevitable increase in the financial burden? Current events don’t inspire confidence. Are the leading ministries working round the clock to detail our options? Are they being hacked and are they safe from emails?

It is hoped that those in charge are paying some attention to these matters.

By Sanja de Silva Jayatilleka