News

Ranil says Donoughmore Constitution was a success

Published

4 years ago

2022/06/7

Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe, delivering a speech at the ‘Conference on Sri Lanka’s Twin Crisis’ held at the Sri Lanka Foundation, on Friday, said: “We based ourselves on the British Constitution. The majority has the power, the minority starts talking and shouting, that’s all. But then we changed the first-passed-the-post into a PR system. Now, you’re going to abolish the Presidency, then do you want to go back to the English system, the Westminster system, or do you want to have one in which there’s more cooperation like the old Donoughmore system, the State Council system? This is one issue that everyone has to think of.”

Excerpts of the speech: I’ve been asked to address you on Sri Lanka’s Twin Crisis. One has already started, the economic crisis in Sri Lanka. I need not go back to the past as to how we deprived ourselves of our foreign exchange, how we decided that we’d go on to do it alone and the facts were concealed not only from the public but from

Parliament, and from the members of the then government. And stemming from it is also a political crisis, the question of loss of confidence in a political system that allowed the country to go down to this level. So this is what we’re grappling with.

There’s a second crisis. The second crisis is the global impact of the Ukraine crisis. We’re only seeing the beginning of it, the increase in fuel (price). It will get much worse as it goes along. As it goes along you’d probably find that there’ll be a shortage of food.

The food shortage will go global till 2024. After all Russia and Ukraine, one is the largest producer of grain, the other is the fifth largest. You cannot import Russian grain, and in Ukraine whatever is left cannot be sent off. Their ports are closed by the Russians, and their rail track gauge is different from that of Poland. So each carriage has to be lifted and put onto the Polish track. You can’t send food out there. And many of the fields of their agricultural area are destroyed. If the war stops even tomorrow, it will take Ukraine at least three years to get its cultivation back on track. Then the rising price of fuel, the rising price of corn, again the shortage of fertilizer. So it hits the whole world. There’s a shortage of fertilizer in California, there’s a shortage of fertilizer in Brazil. How do you meet it? And there’s going to be a shortage of food. Already countries are banning the export of food. That’s the second one you have, that you’re facing.

There’s no Priority List. Even till recently different agencies were actually using the different credit lines to order what they wanted, there was no priority. If someone said ‘I want fertilizer’ that was the effort, if someone said “I want petrol’ that was there. We had to establish a Priority Order and sort of centralize the access to the foreign credit lines. So this is just a start of what we have to do. The worst is still to come. As you know there will be no food, as in our food supplies will be enough until about September- October because we didn’t have enough fertilizer either for ‘Maha’ or for ‘Yala’. Now we’re trying to get fertilizer for the next ‘Maha’ season. If we do, then we will be certainly self -sufficient by February next year. What do you do in between? As the economy fails, more and more jobs are being lost. More and more enterprises, big and small are collapsing. This is what we’re going for. A time will come when people will not eat three meals a day. They may eat two meals; that situation may come for some of our people.

We have to avoid hunger. Is there an end to it? Well, we’re talking with other nations, our friendly nations, to get help. There is light at the end of the tunnel, but we need to ensure that there are no earth slips while we go through the tunnel. That’s the problem. We cannot get through this year by ourselves. We need a few billion dollars to come from outside. Otherwise this country cannot survive. We need to reach out again to the people we rejected. The Japanese have been our friends from 1952 to date who are hurt by what happened. Which country rejects 3 billion dollars’ worth of aid, without a thank you, without even having a negotiation? Just said we don’t want it. How do you build back confidence with those people? We’re lucky that India has come forward to help us, at the hour of our need. Other countries are chipping in. China has come with assistance, but someone in the government went and negotiated a loan, a swap, which we cannot use.

So we have to get ready to go through a tough time and to change the system. Changing the system and making this export oriented, I don’t think is going to help Hiran De Silva, Chairman – Rakimu Jayathu Lanka very much. But his sons and his daughters and his grandsons and his granddaughters are going to have a new Sri Lanka. That’s what we’re working for. A Sri Lanka that is prosperous. Let this experience be our last experience with this bitter politics. Let’s think anew.

And that comes back to the Constitution. We based ourselves on the British Constitution. The majority has the power, the minority starts talking and shouting, that’s all. But then we changed the first-passed-the-post into a PR system. Now you’re going to remove the Presidency, then do you want to go back to the English system, the Westminster system or do you want to have one in which there’s more cooperation like the old Donoughmore system, the State Council system? This is one issue that everyone has to think of. I’ve given some proposals to make the Parliament work together, but that is only the beginning. So think of it and remember, that this is the beginning of a new journey. So think of it, and start traveling along.

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Where is Gnanasara Thera?Police pass buck to court

Published

7 hours ago

2026/09/16

Sahan Weerasooriya

Gnanasara Thera

by Norman Palihawadane

Bodu Bala Sena (BBS) General Secretary Ven. Galagoda Aththe Gnanasara Thera’s whereabouts have remained unknown since the Supreme Court, on Monday, annulled a presidential pardon granted to him in 2019.

Prison officers visited the Thera’s temple in Nawala, Rajagiriya, to take steps to return him to prison to serve the unexpired portion of his six-year sentence. However, monks at the temple had reportedly informed the officials that they were unaware of his whereabouts.

Police spokesman ASP F.U. Wootler said a separate court order was required for the police to trace the Thera, or assist in taking him into prison custody. No such order had been issued so far, he claimed.

Meanwhile, sources close to Gnanasara Thera said he was expected to attend a book launch in Colombo tomorrow (17),

The development follows the Supreme Court declaring the 2019 presidential pardon granted to Gnanasara Thera, by then President Maithripala Sirisena, null and void.

A three-member Supreme Court bench held that the pardon had been granted arbitrarily and violated public trust and principles of natural justice.

Gnanasara Thera had been serving a six-year prison sentence for contempt of court when the then President Sirisena granted him the pardon, in May, 2019. He had served only about nine months of the sentence at the time.

With the pardon annulled, the original sentence remains in force and the Thera is now required to serve the balance of his six-year term.

The Supreme Court ruling has raised questions over the procedure to be followed to return him to prison, with police and prison authorities yet to take custody of him.

News

Russian citizens in Lanka to vote in State Duma elections

Published

7 hours ago

2026/09/16

Sahan Weerasooriya

Chandana Ruwan Jayanetti, Director of the Advanced Technological Institute, Galle, presented a copy of his new book POEMS FROM GALLE, to Prime Minister Dr. Harini Amarasuriya in her office in Parliament last Friday (11). Dr. Hiniduma Sunil Senevi, Minister of Buddhasasana, Religious and Cultural Affairs, is also in the picture.

Russian citizens residing or temporarily visiting Sri Lanka will have the opportunity to cast their ballots in the elections to the State Duma of the Federal Assembly of the Russian Federation on September 20.

The Embassy of the Russian Federation in Sri Lanka said polling would be held at polling station No. 8338 at the Russian Embassy, 404, Bauddhaloka Mawatha, Colombo 07.

The polling station will be open from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. on September 20, according to the Embassy.

Russian citizens aged 18 and above, including those permanently residing in Sri Lanka and those temporarily visiting the country, are eligible to vote, the Embassy said.

Voters are required to visit the polling station during its operating hours and produce documents certifying their Russian citizenship.

The Embassy said prior registration was not required to participate in the voting.

The election will be held to elect deputies to the ninth convocation of the State Duma, the lower house of Russia’s Federal Assembly.

News

Euro 110,000 research drive to tackle plastic waste in food sector

Published

7 hours ago

2026/09/16

Sahan Weerasooriya

Grant agreement signed by Mahmoud Gaballah, Project Manager at Expertise France and Sr. Prof. Pasdunkorale Arachchige Jayantha, Vice-Chancellor of the University of Ruhuna

Plastic waste is a growing challenge for Sri Lanka’s food sector, yet important gaps remain in understanding where and how single-use plastics are used, how they move through food value chains, and where interventions could have the greatest impact.

Through the European Union-funded CIRCULAR project, new research will help address these gaps by generating evidence to inform policy, business practices and more sustainable choices. Three research grants, totalling €Euro 110,000, will support university-led studies by research teams from the Faculty of Agriculture at the University of Ruhuna, and the Faculty of Medicine and Faculty of Computing at the University of Kelaniya.

Together, the studies will examine the use, flow and impacts of single-use plastics (SUPs) across selected food and beverage value chains in the Colombo and Galle Districts. The research will also seek to identify practical opportunities to reduce plastic use, promote more sustainable alternatives and strengthen circular economy practices.

At present, available data on plastic waste in Sri Lanka, particularly single-use plastics, do not provide sufficient detail on the sectors, sources and types of plastics involved. This limits the ability of policymakers, businesses and other stakeholders to pinpoint where plastic use can be reduced most effectively and to assess which interventions could deliver the greatest impact. The new research will help provide a more detailed understanding of these patterns, supporting more targeted and evidence-based action.

The three research teams will use a combination of data collection, waste-flow mapping, environmental and public health assessments, and life-cycle approaches to examine these challenges from different perspectives. The findings are expected to help identify opportunities to reduce plastic use, improve resource efficiency and promote more sustainable packaging and waste management practices.

The research grants are part of the CIRCULAR project’s broader efforts to support Sri Lanka’s transition towards more sustainable production and consumption in the food sector. Alongside research and evidence generation, the project works to raise awareness, encourage behaviour change and support approaches that move away from the traditional “take, make and dispose” model towards a more circular economy.

Circular Economy in the Food Sector (CIRCULAR) project is a three-year initiative focused on reducing food loss and food waste (FLW) and Single-use plastic (SUP) waste in the Food Sector in Sri Lanka. Funded by the European Union, and partially co-funded by the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ), the project is jointly implemented by Expertise France (EF), the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) and Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH.

By strengthening the evidence base on single-use plastics, the research is expected to provide a stronger foundation for practical action, helping decision-makers, businesses and other stakeholders better understand where change is needed and how more sustainable solutions can be put into practice.