Features

The recovery has begun

Published

1 year ago

2024/12/31

Sahan Weerasooriya

Colombo lit up for Christmas

by Jehan Perera

Downtown Colombo and especially its upmarket commercial areas sparkled, and will continue to do so, in the night this Christmas season until the grand finale on New Year’s Eve. There is little indication that this city of night lights had experienced dire economic collapse just three years ago. The long lines of vehicles that once queued up for fuel outside petrol stations are overshadowed the much longer lines of traffic crawling on the way to the centre of celebrations at Galle Face Green, once the epicentre of the Aragalaya protests that brought down the government and had the president fleeing the country.

The hotels and nightclubs at the higher end have been packed to capacity. The cost of celebrating in them is steep but there seem to be a large number of people who can afford this expenditure, at least once in a while. New hotels such as ITC Ratnadeepa and City of Dreams overlooking water fronts create an image of Dubai at night. The ever-rising stock market is evidence for the new found confidence in the economic management of the country. There is a sense of political stability that comes not only from the 2/3 majority that the government enjoys in parliament but also from the inability of the opposition to make suggestions or proposals that are significantly different from the policies being followed by the government.

The desire to be part of the festivities was visible also in the large number of people who participate in them at different levels. They enjoyed themselves at the expensive buffets of five star hotels and in the open spaces of Galle Face Green, where there was a carnival and mobile eateries or in the big shopping malls where they might have a bite at Pizza Hut or engage in window shopping. The high costs of restaurants and consumer items relative to income are manifest in the struggle of the government to bring down the cost of living but with little success. The ongoing battle of the government with the so-called “Rice Mafia” has yielded positive results after the import of rice. But the price of coconuts remains high along with everything else that went up in price three years ago and did not come down.

SPREAD DEVELOPMENT

Outside of Colombo the Christmas celebrations were more muted if they existed at all. Christian churches were the focus of such initiatives. The big celebrations outside of Colombo would take place during the traditional Sinhala and Tamil New Year in April. Some of the provincial capitals like Jaffna had their own displays of festive lights and decorations, but they were not on the scale of Colombo. The difference in purchasing power of Colombo, the national capital, and the provincial capitals was reflected in this disparity.

One of the key justifications for the devolution of power is that there needs to be equitable development across the country and not only in the region of the capital city. Power and wealth tend to go together as those with power to decide will tend to make decisions that benefit themselves and the area they live in. The devolution of power to the provinces is to provide engines of development to the provincial capitals, ensuring wider distribution of the fruits of development. This aspect of devolution of power needs to be explained to the general population who see the concept as being a foreign-driven one meant to resolve the ethnic conflict. Devolved systems of governance have existed in Sri Lanka from the times of the kings due to the impracticalities of centralized rule.

So far the devolution of power in Sri Lanka has been seen in the context of resolving the ethnic conflict. But it can also be justified in a broader perspective as befits the “System Change” that was the main slogan of the Aragalaya protest movement that finally propelled the present government to power. The present system of devolution has been brought into operation through the 13th Amendment to the constitution which came at the height of the ethnic war in 1987 and was facilitated by the external intervention of India. It is not surprising, therefore, that the devolution of power under the 13th Amendment should be seen in that context and as having a bearing on the sovereignty and territorial integrity of the country. Its implementation has been resisted by all successive governments, including the one that brought it into law. This may account for the government’s commitment to devolve power with the passage of a new constitution, but on a different basis to that which exists at present.

CHANGED BEHAVIOURS

The progress of the economy, which is expected to grow by 4 percent this year, and higher than anticipated by international financial institutions, will be due in part to the stability in the polity, which is reflected in increased investor confidence. This positive growth factor will be supplemented by the government’s promise of non-corrupt governance. Unlike in the past, the first 100 days of the new government have not given rise to any major corruption scandal involving government leaders. The issue of the PhD degree of the Speaker of Parliament which led to the resignation of the Speaker has been a new practice when compared to the practices of the recent past. Those in power have not stepped down or been asked to step down when found out for things done which were much more detrimental to the country’s reputation and economy.

The non-ostentatious, non-extravagant and non-corrupt attitude that comes from the president and his top team appears to be seeping down to the bottom. During the holiday season a visit to the local government office to obtain a Grama Niladari certificate of local residence bore this out. The concerned officer was at his desk at the time of the visit, gave information about the application procedure and delivered the required document without any fuss or delay. He explained that he was following all the formalities including getting the signatory to sign in his presence. He explained his supervisor would be checking for this. He also volunteered the information that the change in behaviour at the top of the government was influencing those at the bottom to follow the rules in performing their duties.

Another point he made was that his area was a multi ethnic and multi religious one. The previous person he had attended to was from the Diaspora, a dual citizen, and asking for a national identity card. As that person had all the proper documentation, he had issued the relevant certificate even though he had no personal knowledge of this person who had lived abroad for the past twenty years. He said that person was a citizen and needed to be treated as an equal. In response to the query whether this too was part of the positive influence from the new government, the Grama Niladari said no, it was a message that he had picked up during the period of the Yahapalana government. The new government has inherited not only the bad but also the good from the past and is taking the good alone, to build on it in the year to come and beyond. This gives hope for the future.

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Features

Proactive peacemaking becomes a paramount need

Published

24 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

24 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

24 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.