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 Sri Lanka’s Former Presidents and the Current President

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by Rajan Philips

There is no transfer of state powers in Britain following the death of Queen Elizabeth and her succession by old Prince Charles as new King Charles III. The powers of the British State reside not at Buckingham Palace but in the British Parliament, and are exercised by a cabinet government with a Prime Minister as its head, who by convention is only the first among otherwise equal ministers and MPs.

There is no risk of the vast powers of the state being passed from proper hands to wrong hands, or from bad hands to worse hands. British Monarchy doesn’t even need any checks and balances to ensure good behaviour. All that the modern royals have to do beyond their routine roles, is to pay their share of taxes (may be times two) for the properties they have amassed over centuries through acquisition and inheritance, to compensate for their costly upkeep by other taxpayers.

Everything turns upside down in other countries when upstart politicians become elected presidents and start pretending to be kings. And they keep pretending even when they are no longer presidents, and join the club of former presidents to enjoy never ending perks and privileges, more so in Sri Lanka than anywhere else. The country with a crashing economy now has a growing club of former presidents and offers its members a unique range of post-retirement benefits which are outrageously more generous than in other countries. Why should they be given a house in Colombo where they had none before? It is fine to pension off retired presidents, but not if they continue to be in politics as MPs, Ministers or even a Prime Minister. Like Maithripala Sirisena, Mahinda Rajapaksa, and now even Gotabaya Rajapaksa?

3,000 Arrests

The ex-presidential club in Sri Lanka had three members and the number increased to four overnight with the daylight return of Gotabaya Rajapaksa, two moons after he furtively flew away in the dark of night. And it may become five sooner or later: Sooner, if another Aragalaya were to get Ranil Wickremesinghe to go home and complete the vicious Ranil-Rajapaksa circle. Or later, as and when Mr. Wickremesinghe realizes that he cannot be President till 2048 to deliver in person his version of Saubhagyaye Dekma to the country.

Unlike in monarchical Britain, the Republic of Sri Lanka has to periodically go through power transfer spasms every time there is a change of President after a presidential election, with parliament as a sidelined spectator. In July, the military was called in to protect the brick and mortar of parliament allegedly from a mob of protesters. But no one cares when parliament is sidelined during presidential transfer of powers between elections, or after a president resigns from office. Ranil Wickremesinghe, as Acting President, requested the army to protect the parliamentary precincts. As interim President he has been making all the right gestures towards parliament, while wielding presidential powers to a far greater extent than Gotabaya Rajapaksa did after the start of aragalaya protests.

Aragalaya was able to get rid of an elected president, but it has since been smothered by an unelected interim president. Over 3,000 aragalaya protesters have been arrested according to a statement by Champika Ranawaka. President Wickremesinghe made a show & tell of not extending the emergency rule beyond its first month, but then he silently gave the green light for arrests to continue under the Prevention of Terrorism Act, which everyone was made to believe was at the point of being rescinded by the Rajapaksa Administration.

By way of mitigation, Prime Minister Dinesh Gunawardena announced in parliament that no one arrested under PTA will be charged under it. If so, the arrested people should have been discharged immediately. On the contrary, there are rumours that it is the Prime Minister who might be relieved of his post. If true, is it because he has run afoul of the SLPP for changing the government’s position on the use of PTA?

To be sure, President Wickremesinghe will not countenance any ploy to get rid of Prime Minister Gunawardena. Not only the two men go too far back, but it is also true that it was Dinesh Gunawardena who gave Wickremesinghe significant credibility among lawmakers when he was candidate for President. Basil Rajapaksa had his SLPP toads lined up to vote for Ranil Wickremesinghe, which gave him victory but not credibility. Dinesh Gunawardena will do his job as PM and will have no further claim on the President. Not so with Basil, who is virtually holding the President to ransom and there seems to be no way that the President can put an end to it. In fact, there is a way out, but Mr. Wickremesinghe will not take it.

The way out

The Sunday Island in its editorial last week neatly summed up President Wickremesinghe’s difficulties in governing while on an SLPP, rather Basil’s, leash. The title, “Hobbled President and jumbo administration,” could not have been more apt. The editorial went on to bemoan that “until he is constitutionally enabled to dissolve parliament early next year, President Wickremesinghe will remain hobbled.” I would argue that President Wickremesinghe finds himself hobbled not only because of the antics of Rajapaksas and Basil’s machinations, but also because of his own cynical ploys and the self-serving choices he has been making.

My hunch is that President Wickremesinghe will not dissolve parliament even when he is enabled to do as early as next year (after March 2023), simply because dissolving parliament at this juncture will not help his case to extend his tenure as President beyond November 2025. There is no question that he means well when he speaks of progressive political reforms and a process of economic recovery that will keep moving forward until its total fruition in 2048. One might even grant that other than Ranil Wickremesinghe there is no one else in the current parliament who is capable of articulating a comprehensive diagnosis of the country’s ills and suggesting remedial measures for them. Granted, Champika Ranawaka could be an exception, but he has more political enemies than personal friends.

As for Ranil Wickremesinghe, there are fatal flaws in his premises and in the trajectory that he is projecting. First, even as his visioning is sweeping in its scope it is bereft of realistic and demonstrably achievable goals and targets. The reason for this, and therein is the second flaw, is that he is quintessentially a one man band. Not merely by virtue of his being the lone National List MP for the UNP, but also seemingly to the manner born. His public and political life over 45 years amply attests to this. For all his sweeping vistas he cannot cultivate durable political loyalty in anyone other than those who are beholden to him.

The third and the biggest flaw, in my view, is his insatiable presidential ambition. It would be far fetched to suggest that when Ranil Wickremesinghe decided to become the UNP’s sole national list MP in parliament he was already scheming to succeed Gotabaya Rajapaksa. However, when chips started falling and Gota’s short lived presidency foundered through incompetence, and the chance opened for him to become a crisis Prime Minister, it is reasonable to suggest, Mr. Wickremesinghe’s long-game mind started ticking.

It is my contention that everything that Ranil Wickremesinghe has been doing after he became Acting President has been geared to realizing a single-minded objective of his: to remain President till November 2025 and to be elected President thereafter for one full term, for one last hurrah. The same singlemindedness, to contest the 2019 presidential election, coloured Mr. Wickremesinghe’s entire tenure as yahapalanaya Prime Minister from 2015 to 2019. Yahapalanaya is now water under a broken bridge, but what Mr. Wickremesinghe is doing now or, more pertinently, what he is not doing now, is what is before us for analysing the inconsistencies between his words and actions, and the clever obfuscation of his true intentions.

Let us take Mr. Wickremesinghe at his word that he accepted Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s offer of crisis premiership and then became acting president only for the sake of the country and that his all-party government intentions are genuine. Then why did he not involve the opposition MPs in all the arrangements he made with Gotabaya Rajapaksa from the beginning, when Gotabaya Rajapaksa was agreeable to practically everything except resigning as President prematurely? Whatever arrangement the two men made between them backfired and Rajapaksa was forced to resign within two months of Ranil Wickremesinghe becoming Prime Minister.

Stand tall or stay hobbled?

After Gotabaya Rajapaksa left, was there anything to stop Ranil Wickremesinghe, as acting President, from reaching out to the opposition MPs rather than to the SLPP? At that point Mr. Wickremesinghe owed nothing to any of the Rajapaksas, but he owed everything to the Aragalaya protesters. The Acting President then did an about turn. He abandoned the protesters and gravitated to the Rajapaksas.

For all his talk about youth parliament, endless promises about committees and fundamental reforms, he never sent any credible emissary to engage the protesters. Instead, he sent the police and the army to expel them from occupied public places, while promising to set up special zones for protesting. This is a new development for urban planning – from zoning for land use to zoning for protests. The UDA, which the Rajapaksas had under the Defence Secretary, can look after Colombo’s protest zones.

All of this invariably led to Mr. Wickremesinghe relying on Basil Rajapaksa and his SLPP contingent to secure victory in the election by parliament of a successor to GR’s balance term. Mr. Wickremesinghe won quite handily with 134 votes. But he lost his credibility yet again. And Basil Rajapaksa is collecting his IOUs. He wanted SLPPers appointed as State Ministers before he left for the US, his home away from home. President Wickremesinghe had to and did oblige, appointing State Ministers including MPs who are convicted felons.

The President apparently refused to appoint Namal Rajapaksa to anything, but compromised by appointing Shasheendra Rajapaksa, Namal’s cousin and son of Chamal Rajapaksa as State Minister. The appointment of 37 state ministers flies in the face of all the President’s lofty promises and lecturing about political reform. This political hypocrisy at home will not go unnoticed abroad at the IMF, among Sri Lanka’s creditors, and at the UNHRC which has started yet another session on Sri Lanka.

The power of dissolving is the ultimate weapon a Prime Minister has over all MPs in a parliamentary system. This is not a power that should be granted to the President in a presidential system, or a semi-presidential system like Sri Lanka. But in Sri Lanka the President has restricted powers to dissolve and there is no better time to use it. Since Mr. Wickremesinghe’s election by parliament as Interim President, the SLPP has gone through some splits and the current number of Basil Rajapaksa loyalists is said to be around 100. That is, the SLPP is not the majority party in parliament anymore.

If Mr. Wickremesinghe wants to dissolve parliament before March 2023, he should get the support of all non-Basil-SLPP MPs to support a resolution for dissolving parliament. He will not do it because it will upset his personal calculations to remain as long as President, not so much to salvage Sri Lanka as to keep his options open to be a presidential candidate in 2024. Like Trump in the US, but far less obnoxiously. On the other hand, if he chooses to continue his reliance on Basil, via Zoom to USA, he will not get the support of opposition MPs to do anything positive in parliament.

The only way President Wickremesinghe can get all-except Basil’s MPs’ support in parliament is by committing to dissolve parliament after an agreed upon interval – say between six months to a year. The JVP and the SJB have been saying this all along. And the only way Mr. Wickremesinghe can restore his credibility in the country is by announcing that he will not continue as President after the remainder of the term that he inherited from Gotabaya Rajapaksa is over in November 2024.

Two years (2022 to 2024) is more than enough for the President to finalize agreements with the IMF and external creditors, to implement electoral reforms, to establish a new roadmap for positive changes to address the growing list of concerns at the UNHRC, and to even prepare a referendum question for changing the presidential system by removing direct election by the people and providing for election by parliament. The referendum question can be put to the people at the next parliamentary election, and the new parliament can act on the people’s verdict after the election. This is the opportunity for President Wickremesinghe to stand tall, offer selfless service and leave with dignity. The alternative is to remain hobbled until is forced out like the Rajapaksas.



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Easter truth can be the beginning

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Bimal Rathnayake

There has long been speculation that the Easter bombing of April 2019 had a relationship to Sri Lankan politics. The near simultaneous bombings of three Christian churches and three luxury hotels, with a death toll of 270 and over 500 injured, by Muslim suicide bombers made no sense in Sri Lanka where there has been no history of conflict between the two religions. But a political motivation was suspected on the basis of who would be the beneficiary of an otherwise senseless crime. The bombing immediately discredited the government in power at that time, saw the nomination of the opposition presidential candidate soon after, and paved the way for the crushing defeat of the government at the national elections that followed in a few months.

In Parliament last week, Leader of the House Bimal Ratnayake revealed a political strategy to create the conditions for the change of government that took place. His remarks corresponded to suspicions that the attack was not just a failure of intelligence, but the result of deliberate manipulation by those in the political sphere. What is new is that these suspicions are now being stated clearly and officially at the highest level of government. Minister Ratnayake said, “They started this in 2013 by creating and maintaining Sinhala and Muslim extremist groups through intelligence agencies. The culmination of this was similar to the Cambridge Analytica incident.”

The Cambridge Analytica scandal involved the unauthorised harvesting of personal data from millions of Facebook users to build psychological profiles and micro-target voters for political purposes. The data harvested by Cambridge Analytica was used primarily to influence the 2016 U.S. presidential election in favour of Donald Trump and the 2016 Brexit referendum in the UK. The company also allegedly worked on elections in Kenya, Nigeria, India, Trinidad and Tobago, and several other countries, using psychographic profiling and targeted digital ads to manipulate voter behaviour.

Cardinal’s Consistency

If the allegations about the Easter attacks prove true, they would constitute one of the most unprincipled examples of violence being used for political purposes in Sri Lanka’s post-war period. To use fear, death, and destruction to pave the way for a political return is totally unacceptable and without conscience. What makes the current moment different from earlier efforts to deal with such unacceptable actions is that there now appears to be political will. There is a sense that the present government is committed to follow through with investigations, even if the implications reach to the highest levels of power.

It is significant that the government has taken the controversial step of reappointing retired officers Shani Abeysekera and Ravi Seneviratne, both of whom were known to be top class police investigators who were removed from the investigation process by previous governments, to once again lead the investigations. They are both controversial in that they briefly joined the government side’s political stage during the last presidential election campaign. Minister Ratnayake justified their reappointment on the grounds that Cardinal Malcolm Ranjith made the request. It is in this context that the current government’s willingness to act gains it credibility with the Catholic community, which bore the brunt of the attacks.

The role of the Catholic Church and Malcolm Cardinal Ranjith in consistently pushing for accountability in the Easter Sunday case is commendable. From the outset, the Cardinal was a vocal advocate for justice for the victims of the bombing. His calls for transparency, a credible investigation, and the identification of those truly responsible have been persistent and unwavering. Over the years, previous government leaders made promises to find the culprits and masterminds in response to this pressure which the Cardinal publicly welcomed. But those assurances, like many others before them, did not materialise in the form of tangible outcomes.

Ending Impunity

Progress in the investigation of the Easter bombings comes at a time when the government has already made forward movement in pursuing economic accountability. High-profile arrests and legal actions against formerly powerful politicians for corruption are being carried out in a way never witnessed before. For many decades, impunity has been the practice in government at the highest levels. Economic crimes and political violence in which the protagonists were suspected to be of government-origin were pursued only half-heartedly in the past. Charges were often framed, suspects were taken into custody, but invariably the process broke down mid-way and the suspects were released. This time around those who have been charged have had their cases taken to court where they have been given exemplary sentences.

In the case of the Easter bombing, the testimony of survivors and the documentation of intelligence failures are now being brought back into the spotlight. Investigations into key actors, including the alleged role of former paramilitaries turned politicians like Pillayan show that this is no longer a nominal exercise. The challenge for the government is to ensure that this momentum does not wane. The legal and institutional frameworks need to be allowed to function without interference. No matter how politically sensitive, the Sri Lankan people need answers, and more importantly, justice.

Sri Lanka has suffered for decades from a culture of impunity that has bred cynicism and mistrust. The present government has taken early steps to reverse that trend. It is too early to say whether this will lead to full justice. There are indications that the government is sequencing its priorities: first, economic crimes and now political crimes like the Easter attacks; later, possibly, war crimes. The wounds of the war years are deep and divisive. Pursuing accountability for wartime abuses may demand more political capital than the government currently possesses or wishes to expend, and it is likely that such steps will be undertaken more cautiously—and later.

In the case of the Chemmani mass graves the government seems to be allowing the judicial investigations to proceed independently, unlike in the case of the Mannar and Matale mass graves by previous governments. Permitting the Chemmani probe to proceed signals that the era of blanket impunity might finally be drawing to a close and the integrity of Sri Lanka’s democratic institutions is being secured. If a crime like the Easter bombing, which has defied a satisfactory conclusion for over six years is successfully investigated and prosecuted, it may open the space for deeper scrutiny of the past, including the war years. It is up to the independent institutions, judiciary and civil society to push this process forward.

by Jehan Perera

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Reflections on Cuba, BRICS and geopolitics

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Cubans marching in Havana against the blockade and the State Sponsors of Terrorism designation in December 2024. (Handout picture)

I returned to the US, from Cuba, just a few hours before Donald Trump signed a memorandum on 30 June, 2025, tightening the long-standing US economic blockade against Cuba. The memorandum includes a statutory ban on US tourism to the neighbouring island.

Despite a long fascination for the island nation, I did not volunteer for the Venceremos Brigade to Cuba during my college years. Finally, my wish to see the legendary island of anti-imperialist revolution—the so-called ‘last bastion of socialism in the western hemisphere’—came true.

I enjoyed Cuba’s resplendent land and waters, the vibrancy of its music and dance, and the warm hospitality of its racially integrated people. I visited the impressive places and monuments of its colonial and modern history, receiving a wealth of interesting and intriguing information from my wonderful Cuban guides and other sources.

The history of Cuba is one of struggle and transformation. The original Taino people were extinct due to the Spanish conquest. The Revolution of 1898 brought liberation under scholar-poet Jose Marti, only to be followed by US neocolonial rule from 1902 to 1959. During the latter part of this period, the Batista dictatorship and his American business and Mafia connections dominated the island.

The armed struggle, culminating in the 1959 Revolution, led by Fidel Castro, Camilo Cienfuegos, Che Guevara and others, transformed the nation. The Cuban Communist Party, under Fidel Castro’s rule (1959-2008), implemented widespread confiscation and wealth redistribution. Throughout this period and up to date, the US has maintained occupation of Guantanamo Bay (the first US overseas military base) under a 1903 perpetual lease agreement, following the Spanish-American War.

Cuba’s Present Crisis

Unfortunately, what I encountered in my homestays and travel around the island was far from the thriving socialist society I had hoped to see. The once magnificent buildings in Havana and other cities are dilapidated and the streets strewn with litter. Lacking reliable public transportation, people stand on streets around the island patiently waiting to catch rides from any vehicle that will stop—among them, the still widely used pre-Revolution American cars and horse-drawn carriages.

The island is currently facing its worst economic crisis, since the 1959 revolution. Long and daily power cuts, scarce internet connection, food and medicine shortages, and high prices, are the realities of present-day Cuba. Some staple items like beans are nowhere to be found; rice production has declined and much is now imported. Sugar, too, has become an import in Cuba, which, until recently, was the leading sugar exporter in the world.

People cannot make ends meet with their meager incomes—a doctor’s monthly salary is approximately US$50. Even by conservative World Bank estimates, 72% of all Cubans live below the poverty line. Beggars seem to be everywhere, with the African community descendant from slavery being the most economically victimised.

Young professionals, products of the island’s renowned free education and healthcare systems, are emigrating to the US, Europe, and elsewhere, leaving mostly the elderly behind. Cuba reportedly lost some 13% of its 11 million population between 2020 and 2024, due largely to emigration. Financial remittances from emigrants are essential for their families’ survival at home.

In private, people complain bitterly about government mismanagement and corruption, expressing concern about the island’s future and people’s survival. Given state authoritarianism and repression, there is no independent media, visible organised resistance, or public demonstrations.

The Cuban government blames US sanctions and blockade, operative since the early 1960s, for the island’s economic strangulation. In contrast, the US and its Cuban-American supporters blame socialism for Cuba’s failures.

Notwithstanding claims to be a leader of the international Non-Aligned Movement, Cuba withstood the 1961 CIA-backed Cuban-American Bay of Pigs invasion and the 1962 Cuban missile crisis by aligning itself with the Soviet Union, eventually becoming its client state. The dismantling of the Soviet Union in 1992 and the recent Covid crisis have dealt severe blows to the Cuban economy and society. The decline in tourism, one of the most important sectors of the Cuban economy, will be further impacted by Donald Trump’s recent statutory ban on US tourism.

Is the opening of Cuba to neo-liberal capitalism—including global finance capital, the IMF, international intervention by the US (and its Cuban-American supporters awaiting return of land and business confiscated by the Cuban Revolution)—the solution to Cuba’s current economic crisis?

The Path Forward

Government mismanagement, corruption, repression and authoritarianism, economic collapse, agricultural decline, lack of employment, shortages of fuel and food, rising prices, powerlessness, despair and labour emigration characterise much of the world following neoliberal policies today. These countries also face the threats of international intervention, regime change, sanctions and blockades if they attempt to strike out on independent paths of economic and political development outside western-dominated neoliberalism.

Is BRICS the alternative to both authoritarian socialism and neoliberal capitalism, the path to resolving the crisis in Cuba and much of the world?

The Global South-led BRICS constitutes Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa, Egypt, Ethiopia, Indonesia, Iran, and the United Arab Emirates, as well as 10 partner countries, including Cuba, Belarus, Bolivia, Kazakhstan, Malaysia, Nigeria, Thailand, Uganda, Uzbekistan, and Vietnam. Today, the BRICS countries together are estimated to account for 56% of world population, 44% of global GDP.

The BRICS alliance provides a much-needed platform to explore alternative mechanisms, like the New Development Bank and bilateral trade agreements, to reduce reliance on Western financial institutions, such as the IMF and currencies, specifically the US dollar. While BRICS rejects certain aspects of Western dominated geopolitics and hierarchical North-South relations, it upholds neoliberal economic principles: competition, free trade, open markets, export-led growth and globalisation, unfettered technological expansion.

BRICS aims to advance its members within the existing global capitalist order, rather than create a fundamental alternative to the capitalist paradigm which prioritizes profit-led growth before environmental sustainability and human well-being. As such, corporate hegemony, concentration of wealth by a global elite spanning the North and the South, as well technological and military domination, are not challenged. Neither does BRICS challenge political authoritarianism within its member countries or the possibility of the emergence of forms of authoritarian capitalism. Composed of countries unequal in size, economic and military power, BRICS may also easily reproduce unequal exchange and new forms of colonialism in south-south relations.

False Alternative

Although barely noticeable to a visitor, China is quietly replacing the former Soviet Union as Cuba’s benefactor, expanding its economic activities on the island. Since 2018, Cuba has joined China’s Belt and Road Initiative, the massive infrastructural project connecting some 150 countries around the world. While the US is tightening its trade blockade, China has become Cuba’s largest trading partner and the primary provider of technology for infrastructure, telecommunications, renewable energy sources, the tourism industry, and other important areas of Cuba’s development.

Some critics of US imperialism tend to see China as a benevolent alternative to US and western domination. There are claims that certain media outlets, promoting such perspectives, may be linked to a funding source, associated with China. Even if it is true, the political and military intentions of Chinese economic expansion can only be known in the future.

According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, China has increased its nuclear arsenal by 20% from an estimated 500 to over 600 warheads in 2025. According to US government sources, China has also established satellite intelligence infrastructure or ‘spy bases’ in Cuba that can target the United States commercial and military operations. Cuba, located only some 90 miles from the Florida coastline, could well be drawn into the geopolitical confrontation between the United States and China as it was during the Cold War between the US and the Soviet Union, the Cuban Missile Crisis being a case in point.

Even though the world is moving towards an inexorable market and technologically controlled reality, the rationality of this trajectory must be questioned. The need for balanced ecological and social frameworks upholding bioregionalism, local control of resources, food self-sufficiency need to be considered. Freedom of expression, right to dissent, and collective organising undermined by both neoliberal capitalism and socialist authoritarianism must be upheld. This requires the awakening of consciousness to create a human society founded on wisdom and generosity over competition and exploitation.

The words of the great nineteenth century Cuban patriot, Jose Marti (1853-1895) are still applicable to the transformation needed in both Cuba and the world:

“Happiness exists on earth, and it is won through prudent exercise of reason, knowledge of the harmony of the universe, and constant practice of generosity.”(Courtesy IDN in-depth News)

(Dr. Bandarage  has served on the faculties of Brandeis, Mount Holyoke and Georgetown  and is the author of books, including Colonialism in Sri Lanka; The Separatist Conflict in Sri Lanka, Sustainability and Well-Being: The Middle Path to Environment, Society and the Economy, Crisis in Sri Lanka and the World and numerous other publications on global political economy and related subjects. www.bandarage.com)

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Multi-faceted Sri Lankan celebrity … checking out land of birth

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With Mirage in Dubai as a guest artiste

I was sent a video of Noeline Honter doing the song ‘Beauty and the Beast’, with Maxi Rosairo, live on stage.

The clip, I was told, was from The Island Music Awards, held in the late ‘90s … probably 1994.

Believe me, their performance was simply awesome … the vocals, the voices, the passion, the expression, the enthusiasm. Yes, that is what singing is all about. And no lyric-stands, planted in front, for guidance.

Well, the good news I have for you is that Noeline Honter will be in our midst next month (August) and she will be seen in action at three events, in Colombo.

Noeline will be featured at Gatz, Cinnamon Life, on Sunday, 24th August, and again on 20th of September.

Her first date at Gatz will be with the group Terry & The Big Spenders, while her 20th September performance will be with Mirage.

Noeline will also be performing at the BMICH, on the 30th of August, at a concert, ‘Vibes of Yesterday.’

The show, which is in aid of the Apeksha Hospital, Maharagama, will also feature several other artistes. The band in attendance will be the ‘Expressions.’

Noeline indicated to us that she is very much looking forward to her date with Mirage.

Noeline’s first band … her very own Galaxy

“It will be really exciting as I’ve performed with this wonderful outfit several times, as a guest artiste, touring the Middle East and other parts of the world, and also joining them on stage at their regular gigs in Dubai.”

In Sri Lanka, Noeline was not only known for her singing, she was also immensely popular as a TV presenter … winning several awards in both categories – singing and TV presenter.

In addition, she had her own Academy of Training, and she continues with her English training, Down Under, conducting several training programmes online to students, in many countries.

Noeline’s contribution to the field of television news, in Australia, commenced in 2008, in the role of Executive Producer and Presenter of ‘Sri Lanka News weekly,’ a news programme telecast on Channel 31, in Melbourne.

This multi-faceted Sri Lankan celebrity now presents interview programmes on Channel 31, where she features a gamut of mainly Sri Lankan musicians, resident in Sri Lanka and around the world. This is a chat show with musical clips by the featured artistes.

Noeline had her own band in the scene here … Galaxy, comprising Mohan Sabaratnam (drums), Kamal Perera (guitar), Joe Thambimuttu (bass/keyboards/vocals), Kumar Pieris (keyboards), and Ricky Senn (sax/trumpet /brass).

Noeline Honter: Three events in Colombo

Her trip to Sri Lanka, in August, she says, is mainly to be with her family, and to visit some of her favourite places, like Yala, Trincomalee, etc

“When I come over in August, it will be nearly three and a half years since I left the beloved land of my birth.”

Noeline is now based in Australia and says she is absolutely delighted to have the opportunity of sharing time with her son, Ryan, in Adelaide, and her daughter, Jaimee, in Melbourne.

Yes, a name that will never ever be forgotten, especially in the local Western music scene – Noeline Honter.

Go check her out at Gatz, Cinnamon Life, on 24th August and 20th September, 2025.

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