Features

Prime privatisation; vandalism in Paradise Lost

Published

3 years ago

2023/04/28

Cassandra received an email a couple of days ago, parts of which she quotes below, after googling to verify facts. A news item on Monday 24th moved her hand to do this; the news being that Sri Lankan is flying at a loss. No surprise; known for a long while. What stunned Cass, however, was the billions of debt incurred for these three months of the year. In contrast see what India has done. India will be hosting the 2023 G20 Summit of 20 member nations in New Delhi in September and Biden is scheduled to visit the country. Yes, VIP nations are scrambling to further good relations with India, with respect to the country and its economic advancement. On the other hand, the Teardrop that hangs at its bottom from being serendipitous and doing well, has been pushed to be a failed state, looked askance at, or if pitied and considered worth being charitable to, treated with a handout or two.

So here quoted is a para or two from the email received. “Air India announced on February 14 that it had placed orders for 470 Airbus and Boeing aircraft. It is being touted as the largest purchase in commercial aviation history.” (Monday 24 Lankan news said most of Sri Lankan planes, on loan, were undergoing repairs).

To continue quoting, “This is a classic story that highlights the transition from a state-owned loss making, corrupt and inept organisation to a private entity that has assessed the market and has made acquisitions to build up the business… India’s national carrier, Air India, was officially handed over to the Tata group on January 2022. The handover ends a years-long attempt to sell Air India, which has raked up losses worth $9.5bn. The national carrier was founded by JRD Tata in 1932 and nationalised in 1953. The acquisition is the country’s most high-profile privatisation under PM Narendra Modi and ends decades of losses and bailouts for Air India.”

Over here

And what pertains in this country apart from Sri Lankan Airline’s flabbergasting losses? A sinister drama involving a past AG who dared say there seemed to be a hidden hand in the Easter 2019 attacks on churches and hotels. He and his home have been targeted by, it has to be assumed, goons ordered by someone high up.

The second most pressing issue is obtaining compensation from the owners of a ship loaded with nitric acid and plastic catching fire and sinking in our most precious sea. The Minister of Justice himself has given info he got that directs to an act of corruption that is almost impossible to believe: that someone or some group wanted to reduce the amount asked for in damages and earned a tidy pile of dollars, supposedly deposited in a bank in England. Far too complicated for Cassandra to even comment on. A claim for damages properly put through could have got billions of dollars to our Treasury because our sea was vastly detrimentally damaged. Cass’ only comment is that not even the devil himself, Satan or Mara would do the bankrupt country such damage as to have the amount sought in compensation, and given, reduced. So, if what the Minister was told is true, there walk and live (well we suppose) Sri Lankans who are worse than the devil in whatever manifestation he appears.

Very probably these two serious issues will remain unsolved. Who loses? Sri Lanka and its people. Who gains colossally? Your guess is as good as poor Cassandra’s.

General lack of public spiritedness

The term ‘public spiritedness’ is here used by Cass to mean “having or showing active interest in public welfare or the good of the community.”

Steering clear of political happenings and dangerous ground, Cassandra moves to a subject that needs to be impressed on people. It is the total lack of public spiritedness which connotes disregard for public property – its correct use and care given – that has to improve. As school kids we had it dinned in our heads to have respect for public property which meant proper use of utilities provided, with care and caution not to damage in any way. I still clearly remember our first Ceylonese Principal in our Kandy school announcing at the school assembly that every student should be public spirited and for example, use a toilet and vacate the room spotlessly clean and with not even a drop of water on the floor.

Cass has often complained about noise and misbehaviour in places of worship, more especially of Buddhist veneration. The precincts of the most sacred Bo Tree in Anuradhapura are never silent; either kapuralas are chanting asking for favours for supplicants from god knows where. The Bodiya is to be venerated in silence; Buddha’s enlightenment remembered with gratitude; and reflection on one’s seela and Samadhi. Often poojas in the vihara below are loudspeakers blasting whatever little quiet there is.

I narrate two stories relevant to prove how badly people use public amenities and spaces.Two nieces braved a pilgrimage to Anuradhapura by public transport. The air-conditioned bus was fine. On reaching their destination, they needed to freshen up. Intending to go to a hotel they saw a very well-facaded set of public toilets. So, they decided to go in. The outside was completely fallacious as regards the inside. It was originally fitted superbly but within, toilet seats were broken, flushes damaged, the ground wet and atrociously smelly. A large mirror was badly cracked. The surmising was that only a deliberate act of vandalism could cause such damage to it.

The next story involves is what a European diplomat in Sri Lanka; narrated to me, hence believable. He and his driver were travelling to Nuwara Eliya, when they had to be behind an open vehicle that was carrying merry makers. The men were seen to be drinking and the women and kids singing. Then one man threw an emptied arrack bottle to the tea estate beside the road. The diplomat, highly angered, ordered the driver to overtake the vehicle which took some time on that hilly terrain. Once overtaken, he ordered that the vehicle be blocked. Mr DPL got down, went up to the van and told them they had to retrieve the thrown bottle and that if they did not do so, he would get the police to helicopter to the spot. Consternation resulted with the men becoming restive and the woman shouting at them to do as told. Both vehicles turned back and the bottle was retrieved. Conclusion is a question. Did the men learn a lesson and dispose of litter in a correct manner thenceforth? Not possible to believe since this careless use of public amenities and even space is ingrained and imbibed in our people from birth.

Sri Pada is a spot of sanctity, beauty, sheer majesty and popular during its season. After the season the area is combed to collect and dispose of rubbish carelessly flung aside. Hillocks of trash are made; such the indifference of people to the environment and keeping premises clean. Pickpockets too are co-trampers up the hill, such that hundreds of emptied purses are found strewn in the underbrush below.

When will Sri Lankans learn to keep their environments and surroundings clean and free of carelessly flung rubbish? Does it have to take strict authoritarianism to insist on decency?

Welcome news items

Heartening news was that a brand new, posh OPD section for the general hospital was gifted by the Govt of China. Great relief when the Chinese Ambassador said it was an outright gift from his great country to us poor failed state. How very sad that last is, but true, driven to it by satanic political leaders and top administrators. Here the Chinese helped with immense loans being given.

A most heart-warming news item was US Ambassador who is ever moving and mingling with common folk, Julie J Chung, graciously chatting and showing genuine amity meeting farmers and, more specially their wives, in Anuradhapura. A woman farmer said that due to the huge America gift of fertiliser delivered to them, the next harvest would assuredly be bountiful.

That is the way matters must be done: give in kind to the needy people: patients and farmers in the two bright news above. Never give money through high ups. There is a rampant disease among them called corruption. Only minus is that when this disease takes hold, the person thrives, girths increase and they live happy as ever. Cass adds – notwithstanding our curses.

Ambitious octogenarian

President Biden has announced his plans to run for re-election in 2024. If he wins, he will be 82 and 86 when his term ends. Trump who has also announced his candidature is close in age – 78 in 2024. Biden is already the oldest to be Prez. He is said to be a ‘healthy, vigorous 80-year-old’ although he has been treated for this and that including a slow growing skin cancer. He has had no major medical problems; doesn’t smoke or drink and exercises regularly. But very recently he was camera caught napping during important meetings, even when the Russian diplomat was addressing the UN.

Does this mean there is no chance that a descendant from an Indian parent will be head of the US, matching how it is across the Atlantic in the British Isles? In any case her popularity has declined, it is averred.

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Features

Proactive peacemaking becomes a paramount need

Published

21 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

21 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

21 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.