Features
The Teachers who taught and inspired me

by Dr.Nihal D Amerasekera
‘Education is not the filling of a pot but the lighting of a fire.’ –W.B. Yeats
George Bernard Shaw in his drama “Man and Superman” commented ‘Those who can, do; those who can’t, teach’. His words have since been a consistent irritation to teachers. Long years before G.B Shaw, Aristotle in his wisdom said “Those that know, do. Those that understand, teach”. The Greek philosopher also went on “The roots of education are bitter, but the fruit is sweet”. We know that only too well.
As the years pass and memories fade there are some things we will never forget. Entry into the Faculty of Medicine was the culmination of years of preparation and sacrifice. We still had the security of home. Our parents fed and clothed us and paid the bills. We dreamed it was a passport to fame and fortune. There was such a great sense of myopic optimism, we lost ourselves in the adulation. Life always has ways to bring us back to reality!!
It’s been said before, ours was the golden age of medical education in Sri Lanka. I feel greatly privileged to have been taught by some remarkable teachers. I still consider our Professors, lecturers and clinical tutors as some of the best in the world. I marvel at their clinical skills and recoil at their egotistical arrogance. We remember them all with gratitude. We soon learnt to survive and even thrive in that air of toxicity. We tread cautiously and endured the arrogance and conceit in silence in the hope of better times. In reality it wasn’t all bad. Surprisingly I don’t feel resentful. The tough life gave us self-reliance, confidence, grit and determination. I am told, the atmosphere and attitudes have evolved significantly to reflect changes in society. I remember our teachers with much affection and gratitude and thank them for their commitment to teaching.
As the sunset on our student days, there was a new dawn of a career in Medicine. Although we left the faculty, it never really left us. Time ticked on and decades passed swiftly. Many of us have now bade farewell to our professional lives. Here we are on our onward journey recalling memories of a time now long gone.
Prof Milroy Paul
Prof Milroy Paul had the advantage of having medical luminaries in both sides of his family of distinguished academics and public servants. After schooling at Royal College Colombo he went to Ceylon Medical College. After a year he proceeded to Kings College Hospital in London where he was awarded prizes in surgery, orthopaedic surgery, hygiene, psychological medicine and forensic medicine. He qualified MBBS in 1924 and later gained both, the MRCP and the FRCS, a brilliant and rare accomplishment and a badge of his intellectual merit. Subsequently he obtained the MS from London. He was an intellectual who was invited to deliver the Hunterian Oration on three separate occasions at the Royal College of Surgeons in London.
Many from my era and before will recognise Prof Milroy Paul as the Godfather of Surgery in our island. From 1936-1965 he was the founder Professor of Surgery at the Colombo Medical College and the Children’s Hospital. I presume his sharp intuition was an enormous help in his profession as a surgeon before the days of digital scans. He was a man of great presence and striking appearance and his charisma seemed magnetic. I believe as the Professor he was unable to do any private surgery but never did any after retirement although he was popular, widely known and respected. The richness of his career was his priceless gift.
I remember with great fondness and nostalgia his erudite lectures in surgery at the administration block of the faculty. The Prof delivered his lessons with such effortlessness and aplomb without even a scrap of paper to jog his memory. Listening to him, his brilliance was never in doubt. They were lectures in commonsense as much as surgical diagnosis and treatment. He was charismatic and eloquent. His simplicity, modesty and humility stood out. I was saddened to hear that in later years he became blind in both eyes after a tennis injury. It seems he never gave the impression that he was perturbed by ill health. He passed away in 1989. May his Soul Rest in Peace.
Monumentum requiris, circumspice (if you seek his monument, look around)
The service provided by his students is a lasting legacy to show his immense contribution to medical education in Ceylon.
Dr U.S Jayawickrama
I have never felt so emotional doing a portrait as I did with this one of my former boss. He is one of the finest human beings I’ve met in my life and consider working with him a great privilege. He was at Royal College Colombo and entered Medical College in 1949. After the MBBS in 1954 he completed his MRCP and MD in 1963. He was a Consultant Physician at the General Hospital Colombo (GHC) for 18 years. He was also elected President of the Ceylon College of Physicians in 1980.
My final assignment with the GHC was in 1973/74 when I was a Registrar to Dr U.S Jayawickreme. I learnt much more from USJ than clinical medicine. A deeply thoughtful man, he taught us how to connect with our patients.
One such patient was Wimal, a clerk working in a government department. He was around 50 years old. Wimal had a young family and was terminally ill with myeloid leukaemia. I remember speaking with him everyday. I became closer to him than any other patient in the ward. I spoke and joked with him just before I went for my lunch break. On my return the guy in the bed next to Wimal gave me the sad news that he passed away. Wimal had asked him to say thank you and goodbye to me for all the help and friendship. I still remember his friendly face and his soft voice.
USJ took over the ward from Dr W Wijenaike. He was a fine clinician and a dignified unassuming gentleman. Always immaculately dressed he showed tremendous kindness to his patients and to the staff. In turn he received great loyalty and enormous respect. He showed us how to conduct ourselves calmly and with dignity in the ward. His patients adored him. His work ethic and bedside manner had a tremendous impact on me. That was a fine finale for my clinical years at the GHC. In his written reference his generous praise and expression of pride in his (imperfect) registrar meant so much to me.
He passed away at the age of 88.
May he find the ultimate Bliss of Nirvana
Dr R.S Thanabalasundrum
On starting Clinical work at the GHC in 1964 I was immensely fortunate to belong to a generation taught by a plethora of superbly dedicated and gifted teachers. Although they lead busy lives with a thriving private practice they never failed to give their all to the students. I am greatly indebted to all of them for their dedication and commitment. In that firmament of shining stars I would consider Dr Thanabalasundrum as the one that shone the brightest.
My first clinical appointment as a medical student in Colombo was with Dr Thanabalasundrum. Then he was at the zenith of his profession and remained as one of the best teachers of clinical medicine in the country. He was a brilliant professional and a consummate physician. He took teaching seriously and introduced a system and structure into history taking. He brought logic into our clinical methods, diagnosis and treatment. When presenting cases nothing incorrect went past his sharp intellect. He always tested and challenged the student’s narrative. The little book of Clinical Methods by Hutchison and Hunter held more reverence than the bible. His pearls of wisdom filled our notebooks.
Dr Rajadurai Selliah Thanabalasundrum was born in Kokuvil in 1922. His father was a doctor. After a stint in the local primary school he entered Royal College Colombo where he had a glittering academic career. In the Ceylon Medical College he worked diligently to obtain first class honours in all examinations achieving the rare feat of distinctions in Medicine, Surgery and Obstetrics in the Final MBBS in 1946. After obtaining his MD in 1954 and MRCP (Lond) he returned to become the Visiting Physician in Jaffna. He was appointed Consultant Physician to the GHC in 1956. In that same year he was married to Pamathy Sivagnanasundrum. They had two daughters and a son.
After retirement from the GHC he continued with his private practice in Colombo for many years until he became the Professor of Medicine of the North Colombo Medical College in 1985. There he remained until 1995. As Professor he was greatly respected as an exceptional lecturer and good colleague. In recognition of his long years of service to the nation the Government bestowed on him the honour of Deshabandu in 1998.
All through the political upheavals and the grim era of ethnic tensions his love for the country of his birth sustained him and never wavered. He continued to live at Horton Place Colombo-7 until his death in November 2007. His remains were cremated with Hindu rites at the General Cemetery Kanatte. The likes of him are a rarity and irreplaceable in this selfish and egotistical world.
His name will be etched in the Hall of Fame of Medical greats in Sri Lanka to be remembered for all time.
May he find Eternal Peace.
Don Jinadasa Attygalle
He was educated at Royal College Colombo and qualified LMS from the Ceylon Medical College. He was a Visiting Physician at the GHC until his retirement in 1972 when he continued seeing patients privately at his home and in the private hospitals.
Dr Attygalle was a fine physician, a meticulous teacher, and a consultant of the old school with clinical acumen and insight of the first quality. I remember well his ward classes when he taught us the basics of taking a good history, eliciting physical signs and collating the facts to reach a diagnosis. He was softly spoken and treated the houseman, nurses, medical students and other staff with great kindness and respect. Many of Dr Attygalle’s junior medical staff speak of him in glowing terms as an excellent and astute physician and of his conscientious sense of honour. As a Consultant Physician he had a distinguished career that rivalled the best.
Dr Attygalle married Dr Daphne Kanagaratne. She became professor of pathology and dean of the Colombo medical faculty. She predeceased him in 1989. They did not have any children.
He was one of the great physicians of his time admired, loved and respected by his patients and medical colleagues. Through his enthusiasm he inspired many young junior doctors to sustained achievement. A veritable role model for all doctors from all disciplines. Rather reclusive and even enigmatic, he was a very private man away from the GHC. Dr Attygalla was a devout Buddhist well known for his generous donations to a multitude of charities. After a lifetime of service, he passed away in 1997. May he find the ultimate bliss of Nirvana.
Prof Valentine Basnayake
He was born in 1925 and had his schooling at St Joseph’s College Colombo. After the MBBS Dr Basnayake spent his postgraduate years at Oxford University and joined the Department of Physiology in Colombo in 1949. I recall with nostalgia attending one of his tutorials in his office with all the curtains drawn. In the warmth of the room, the soft melancholic drone of his voice put me to sleep. I did see several others struggling to keep awake. Perhaps there was a booze up in the Men’s Common Room the previous evening!!
He had a lifelong love of music and was a fine pianist. He soon became Sri Lanka’s foremost accompanist and a regular performer at the Lionel Wendt. In 1968 he joined the Faculty of Medicine at Peradeniya as its Professor of Physiology which was the ultimate accolade. Soon he became the Dean of the Faculty a position he held for three years with poise, tact and equanimity. Prof VB was a softly spoken unpretentious gentleman who had no harsh word for anyone.
He belonged to a fast vanishing era of privileged aristocrats of the Medical Profession. Doubtless that was part of his appeal as a cultured gentleman. Despite his posh diction he was tolerant and non-demonstrative and never pompous. He wore those privileges with modesty and charm. In an era when some senior professionals had big egos and treated students with contempt Prof Basnayake treated each of us with courtesy, dignity and respect. That is how I would remember this erudite scholar. He passed away in 2014. May he find Eternal Peace.
Features
‘Proud to be young’ – Beauty queen, lawyer and Botswana’s youngest cabinet minister

Lesego Chombo‘s enthusiasm for life is as infectious as her achievements are impressive: she has won the Miss Botswana 2022 and Miss World Africa 2024 crowns, is a working lawyer, has set up her own charitable foundation – and made history in November, becoming Botswana’s youngest cabinet minister.
She was just 26 years old at the time – and had clearly impressed Botswana’s incoming President Duma Boko, whose Umbrella for Democratic Change (UDC) had just won a landslide, ousting the party that had governed for 58 years.
It was a seismic shift in the politics of the diamond-rich southern African nation – and Boko, a 55-year-old Harvard-trained lawyer, hit the ground running.
His main focus, he said, was fixing an economy too reliant on diamonds, telling the BBC ahead of his innauguration that he wanted young people to be the solution – “to become entrepreneurs, employ themselves and employ others”.
Key to this was finding a suitable ambassador – and Chombo was clearly it: a young woman already committed to various causes.
He made her minister of youth and gender.
“I’ve never been more proud to be young,” she told the BBC at the ministry’s headquarters in the capital, Gaborone.
“I’m a young person living in Botswana, passionate about youth development, gender equality, but also so passionate about the development of children.”
The beauty queen did not campaign to be an MP – she is what is called a specially elected member of parliament – and is now one of just six female MPs in the 69-member National Assembly.
Chombo said becoming an MP and then minister came as a complete surprise to her.
“I got appointed by a president who had never met me,” she said.
“Miss World and the journey that I thought I was supposed to pursue as my final destination was only the platform through which I would be seen for this very role.”
It was her crowning as Miss Botswana in 2022 that raised her profile and enabled her to campaign for social change, while trying to inspire other young women.
It also gave her the opportunity to set up the Lesego Chombo Foundation, which focuses on supporting disadvantaged youngsters and their parents in rural areas – and which she is still involved with, its projects funded by corporate companies and others.
“We strive to have a world where we feel seen and heard and represented. I’m very thrilled that I happen to be the very essence of that representation,” she said.

As she prepared for last year’s Miss World pageant, she said: “I really put myself in the zone of service. I really channelled it for this big crown.”
Now in political office, she is aware of the expectations placed on her in a country where approximately 60% of the population is below 35 years.
It also has a high level of unemployment – 28%, which is even higher for young people and women who have limited economic opportunities and battle systemic corruption.
Chombo said this was something she was determined to change: “Currently in Botswana, the rates of unemployment are so high.
“But it’s not just the rate of unemployment, it’s also just the sphere of youth development.
“It’s lacking, and so my desire is to create an ecosystem, an environment, a society, an economy in which youth can thrive.”
Chombo said her plan was to develop a comprehensive system that nurtured youth-led initiatives, strengthened entrepreneurship and ensured young people had a seat at the table when decisions were being made.
With Botswana’s anti-corruption policy undergoing a rigorous review, she said this would ensure that quotas for young entrepreneurs – when state departments and agencies put out tenders for goods and services – were actually reached.
The government has begun a 10-month forensic audit of government spending that will include 30 state-owned enterprises.
Indeed President Boko is intent on cracking down on corruption, seeing this as a way to bolter investor confidence and diversify the economy – something his deputy has been seeking to do on recent trips to the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Switzerland.
And a key deal has now been secured with UAE-based CCI Global, a provider of business process outsourcing, to open a hub in Botswana.
While youth development is a central pillar of her work, gender equity also remains close to her heart.
Her short time in office has coincided with a growing outcry over gender-based violence.
According to a United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) report, over 67% of women in Botswana have experienced abuse, more than double the global average.
“It hurts to know that it could be me next,” she admitted.
A month into her appointment, she was criticised for voting against an opposition motion in parliament to create “peace desks” at police stations and magistrate courts to quickly deal with victims.
At the time she said such provisions already existed within the law and what was needed was more public awareness.
This was followed in January by a police report noting that at least 100 women had been raped and another 10 murdered during the festive season – this caused public outrage with many lashing out at her on social media over the issue.
The minister reiterated – on several occasions, including before parliament in March – that Botswana had many laws and strategies in place and what was important was to ensure these they were actually applied.
But she told the BBC the government would be pushing for the implementation of a Gender-Based Violence Act, aimed at closing legal loopholes that have long hindered justice for survivors.
She said she was also advocating a more holistic approach, involving the ministries of health, education and local government.
“We want curriculums that promote gender equity from a young age,” Chombo said.
“We want to teach children what gender-based violence is and how to prevent it.
“It will boil down to inclusion of teaching gender equity at home, how parents behave around their children, how they model good behaviour.”

She has also been vocal about the need to address issues affecting men, particularly around mental health and positive masculinity, encouraging chiefs “to ensure that our patriarchal culture is not actively perpetuating gender violence”.
“I hear a lot of people say: ‘Why do you speak of women more than men?’
“It’s because as it stands in society, women are mostly prejudiced [against].
“But when we speak of gender equality, we’re saying that it should be applied equally for everyone. But what we strive for is gender equity.”
Chombo, who studied law at the University of Botswana, said she was thankful to her mother and other strong women for inspiring her – saying that women had to work “10 times harder” to succeed.
“[My mother] has managed to create an environment for me to thrive. And growing up, I got to realise that it’s not an easy thing.
“As women, we face so many pressures: ‘A woman cannot do this. A woman can’t do that. A woman can’t be young and in leadership.’ I’m currently facing that.”
She also credited Julia Morley, the CEO of Miss World, for helping her: “She has managed to create a legacy of what we call beauty with a purpose for so many young girls across the world.
“She has just inspired us so deeply to take up social responsibility.”
Chombo is serious about this. The beauty queen-cum-lawyer-cum-minister knows she has made history – but is also aware that her real work has only just begun.
“Impact. Tangible impact. That’s what success would look like to me,” she said.
“I want to look back and see that it is there and it is sustainable. That when I leave, someone else is able to carry it through.”
[BBC]
Features
Pope Leo XIV – The Second Pope from the Americas

The conclave of 133 Cardinals, 108 of whom were appointed by the late Pope Francis from far flung parts of the world, needed only four rounds of secret ballot to swiftly settle on Cardinal Robert Francis Prevost as the new Pope. They could not have decided on a worthier successor to Pope Francis. The Chicago-born Prevost served as a lifelong missionary in Peru. Pope Francis made Prevost the Bishop of Chiclayo in Peru in 2015, and elevated him to the College of Cardinals eight years later in 2023. He was concurrently appointed as the Prefect of the Dicastery for Bishops, an influential position that looks after the appointment and guidance of Catholic Bishops everywhere.
This past February, the late Pope inducted Cardinal Prevost into the exclusive order of Cardinal Bishops. To Vatican insiders, this was a clear sign of “papal trust and favour” even though the two men of the cloth were not seen as always agreeing on everything.
Americans are lapping it up as the first selection of an American pope in history. Pope Bobby from Chicago. But an early news release from the Vatican would seem to have called Prevost the Second Pope from the Americas. It is Cardinal Prevost’s US-Peruvian dual national status that may have found a strong group of 18 cardinals from Latin America emerging as early supporters and facilitating the quick coalescing to achieve the required support of two-thirds of the cardinals.
The current diversity of the College would have certainly helped and many of the Cardinals apparently saw Prevost as one who would continue the legacy of Francis while reaching out to others who were not wholly inspired by the late pontiff. The new Pope demonstrated both continuity with Francis and a throwback to tradition in his first formal appearance, prayer and blessing from the balcony of St. Peter’s Basilica.
Unlike Francis who preferred the plain cassock, Prevost wore the traditional cape and the richly embroidered stole. He referred to his predecessor with genuine affection and respect and echoed Francis’ mission for “building bridges” in a world whose make up ought to be that of “one people.” More telling of the course of the new papacy is Prevost’s selection of Leo as the papal name and becoming Pope Leo XIV. More than 125 years after the last Leo, Pope Leo XIII (1810-1903) who was pontiff from 1878 to 1903 in a long and consequential papacy.
Two weeks ago, in my obituary to Pope Francis, I referred to Rerum Novarum (Rights and Duties of Capital and Labour), the celebrated 1891 encyclical of Pope Leo III. It became the first book of Catholic teaching on social issues. I briefly compared Rerum Novarum to Pope Franci’s 2020 encyclical, “Fratelli Tutti,” (Fraternity and Social Friendship). With the new pope becoming Pope Leo XIV, the new papacy offers the prospect for a new synthesis between the Church’s early teachings on social policy and the tumults of the contemporary world.
Pope Leo or Pope Bobby
Robert Francis Prevost was born in Chicago, in 1955, to parents of Italian, French and Spanish roots. He studied in a high school run by Augustinian priests belong to the Order of St. Augustine, one of the older religious orders in the Church founded by Pope Innocent IV in 1244, and named after the great Saint Augustine (354-430), an intellectual Berber from North Africa and later the celebrated Bishop of Hippo. Prevost went to Villanova University near Philadelphia and obtained a degree in mathematics in 1977. From there, he answered his calling, joined the Catholic Theological Union, an Augustinian seminary in Chicago, for religious studies and ordination as priest in 1981. Prevost became the first CTU alumnus to become Cardinal, and now he is the first Augustinian Pope in Church history. After Francis, the first Jesuit Pope.
At CTU, Prevost earned his degree in Master of Divinity and completed his Doctorate in Canon Law in Rome, at the Dominican University of St. Thomas Aquinas. It was the Augustinian Order that took Prevost to Peru as a missionary, and he has since shuttled between Peru and Chicago. His clerical vocation has combined missionary work, academic stints and administrative roles, including at one point being the head (Prior General) of the worldwide Augustinian Order with headquarters in Rome. As a Bishop in Peru, he won praise as “a moderating influence” between the squabbling factions of Peruvian Bishops who are divided between Liberation Theology, on the left, and Opus Dei, on the right.
Both in Peru and in Chicago, Prevost came under criticism for not acting strongly enough against priests accused of sexual abuse of children, but in both instances he was found to have acted properly by independent parties. Prevost also headed a successful diocesan commission for child protection in Chiclayo, Peru. As Cardinal, Prevost was also considered to be somewhat of an unknown quantity on the internally vexing issues of the church, viz., the ordination of women as deacons or priests, accepting same-sex unions, or allowing the Latin Mass. This may have diluted potential opposition to him by conservative cardinals. As a Pope from Latin America, Francis went farther than any of his predecessors. Given his dual US-Mexican status and experience, the new pope might go even further than Francis.
Outside of the Church, the College of Cardinals may have wanted to project both a missionary and an apostle for the faith, on the one hand, and a world statesman to speak to the secular issues of humanity, on the other. In selecting an American born cardinal as pope, the Vatican might be sending a message to both the church and the state of the United States of America. The new Pope will bring an alternative voice to debates in America over the rights of immigrants and their denial including deportation.
He could also be an antidote to the politically conservative sections of the American Church as well as the growing contingent of Trump’s MAGA Catholics, including some of the Supreme Court justices. Trump has welcomed the selection of an American Pope as “a great honour to the country.” His predecessors, Biden, Obama, Bush and Clinton have been more fulsome in their praises and their wishes for the new papacy. Regardless of politics, to many Americans the new pope could just be their Pope Bobby.
by Rajan Philips
Features
The NPP keeps winning, India and Pakistan keep fighting

More revealing than the results of the local government elections are the political reactions to them. There are as many interpretations of the LG election results as there are political pundits constantly looking to chip away at the still budding NPP’s political goodwill. More disturbing than any other world news is the flashpoint on the subcontinent with India and Pakistan seemingly spoiling for yet another border fight between them. For now, each side would seem to have served its military purpose and claimed victory. But belligerent rhetoric continues at the political level and in the social media that now includes the online expansion of the once stoic print medium.
The continuing rhetoric, including India’s for-now largely rhetorical threat to dam the downstream flow of the Indus waters to Pakistan, means that tensions in the subcontinent are not going to ease any time soon. With the current political changes in Bangladesh souring the relationship between Dhaka and Delhi, India is now flanked east and west by recalcitrant neighbours. The landlocked Himalayan countries aside, Sri Lanka might be India’s only friend now in South Asia. Sri Lanka can comfortably sit on the fence, to borrow Jawaharlal Nehru’s felicitous phrase, mind its own business and grow its exports, while avoiding the fruitless diplomatic forays of the 1960s and the non-alignment rhetoric of the 1970s.
Who won the LG Elections?
The answer depends on who is replying. So, here’s mine among several others. One regular commentator in an English newspaper admitted to harbouring reservations that the election of an NPP government may have taken Sri Lanka to seeing the last of a free and fair election in the country. So, with great relief he announced that regardless of the election results the NPP had “passed with flying colours” the test of the “commitment to multiparty democracy”. Not at all funnily, the commentator also asserted that his reservations were “not an unfounded fear, as the experience in many countries, where political fundamentalists or the militant left had won national power, has almost uniformly revealed.”
That in fact flies in face of history of many countries where electoral democracy has been threatened by political fundamentalists of a different kind or militants of the other hand. The darkest current example is of course the US, where an elected president is unabashedly trying to upend the oldest constitutional democracy in the world. Until the Supreme Court put an end to it India’s central governments, especially when Indira Gandhi was Prime Minister, frequently ran roughshod over the functioning of electoral democracy at the state level. Mrs. Gandhi infamously tried that even at the centre by imposing Emergency Rule in 1975.
In Sri Lanka, Prime Minister Sirimavo Bandaranaike, President Jayewardene and President Ranil Wickremesinghe have used different methods to postpone or cancel elections. As for fairness and freeness of elections, it is the (parliamentary) political Left in Sri Lanka that has been their most consistent guardians from the two national elections and the infamous Dedigama by-election before independence, to every election held after independence. It has also been the hallmark of the Sri Lankan Left not to challenge an election result in court.
The JVP emerged as the antithesis to parliamentary democracy, but over the last 20 years it has mellowed, evolved and expanded as the NPP into a practitioner of parliamentary democracy. The JVP’s violence is past, and no one has accused the JVP/NPP of resorting to violence, corruption, vote-purchasing, or vote-impersonation to achieve electoral wins. It is not the best in every political aspect, but it is certainly far better in many aspects than every other political party. And at a time when politics is quite turbulent in many countries including our three large neighbours, Sri Lanka is quite even-keeled. While the people and the voters of Sri Lanka deserve a ton of credit for Sri Lanka’s even-keeled status at present, the NPP government also deserves due credit, perhaps far more than any of its predecessors this century.
Apart from giving credit to the NPP government for not subverting elections and for facilitating political stability, let us also look at some of the interpretive questions that have been raised about the results of the LG elections. There is a hugely feigned surprise that the NPP fell far short of the 61.56% vote share it got in the 2024 parliamentary election and dropping to 43.76% in Tuesday’s LG election. What is conveniently unmentioned is that the voter turnout also fell from 69% in the parliamentary election to 62% in the LG election. In the September 2024 presidential election, the voter turnout was a high 79% and President AKD polled 42.31%.
A parallel take on the election is to compare the results this week and those of the February 2018 LG election that was won by the newly minted SLPP. The point that is emphasized is that the SLPP won that election from the opposition while the NPP fought the recent election with all the resources of the state at its disposal. The fact is also that the UNP and the SLFP then in an unholy tandem government fought the 2018 LG election with all the state resources they could muster and still came up woefully short.
That might be beside the point, but the real point is that the voter turnout in that election was a high 80% and the SLPP polled 40.47% (not 44.6% as mistakenly noted by some), the UNP 29.42% and the SLFP 12.1%. The still more relevant point is also that the NPP polled 5.75% in the 2018 LG election and is now at 43.76% in 2025, while the SLPP has slid from 40.47% in 2018 to a paltry 9.19% in 2025. The combined SJB (21.69%) and UNP (4.69%) vote total share of 26.38% is also lower than the 29.42% share that the then undivided UNP managed in 2018.
In terms of seats captured, between 2018 and 2025 the NPP ballooned from 434 seats to 3,927 seats while the SLPP has shrunk from 3,436 seats to 742 seats, while the SJB that was unborn in 2018 has managed to win 1,767 seats in 2025. The SLPP won 231 Councils in 2018 and has zero councils now, while the NPP has grown from zero Councils in 2018 to winning 265 Councils now, although it is not having absolute majority of the seats in all the Councils where it has won the largest number of seats. The SJB with 14 Councils is actually placed third after the ITAK with 35 Councils, but only 377 seats and 3% of the total vote. The abnormality is the manifestation of the relative territorial advantage of the ITAK, which is also more illusive than of any practical benefit.
Who Lost in the North & East?
The LG electoral map displayed by Ada Derana (and copied here) is splashed up by just two colours: the ITAK’s purple bordering the northeast coastline and bulging into the Kilinochchi and Mullaitivu districts, while the rest of the island is a mass of NPP red, with sprinklings of SJB yellow here and there including Mannar.
Much has been made of ITAK’s return to electoral supremacy in the north and east, reversing the NPP’s landslide success in the November parliamentary election. It has also been suggested that inasmuch as the NPP government and President AKD personally invested heavily in their campaign in the two provinces, the results are a repudiation of their efforts to woo the Tamils and expand the NPP base in the North and East. I for one see the results quite differently.
Of the five northern districts, the ITAK swept three – Jaffna, Kilinochchi and Mullaitivu, but the NPP came second in all three of them. The NPP also came first in both Mannar, which was actually a three-way split between the NPP, SJB and the ITAK; as well as Vavuniya, where the NPP and the SJB shared the spoils leaving the ITAK to hold on to the Vavuniya Urban Council only. In the Eastern Province, NPP won Trincomalee and Ampara, while the ITAK held on to Batticaloa – the only district that the NPP lost in the parliamentary election. So, it is more even-stevens than repudiation of any kind.
There are two other aspects to the northeast results. The pre-election writeups in the Tamil universe focused more on the challenge to the ITAK from the other Tamil parties than its contest with the NPP. Specifically, parties and alliances involving the ACTC and DTNA were expected to outperform the ITAK and even challenge the latter’s leadership in Tamil politics. Whether he was being set up as a strawman or not, the LG elections were fancied to propel Gajendrakumar Ponnambalam as the next Tamil leader filling the void left by the late R. Sampanthan. Those expectations have been frustrated by the election results. The ITAK is still the ‘accredited’ (AJ Wilson’s term) Tamil political party, and it has put its detractors in their place. As well, the ITAK may find it more congenial to work with the NPP than collaborate with its Tamil competitors.
What is remarkable at the national level is that the NPP is the first political party in Sri Lanka’s history to systematically try to establish itself spatially and socially, in every part of the country and among all sections of its people, and it is now showing some consistent rewards for its efforts. What the Local Government electoral map is showing is that the NPP came first in all the red areas and second in all the purple as well as yellow areas. That is something that should be celebrated and not cavilled at as repudiation in the North and East.
What is also noteworthy at the national level is the disarray of the opposition parties in comparison to the political discipline shown by the NPP. Going forward, the NPP must hasten to add tangible results that are commensurate with the people’s goodwill that it continues to command. In the absence of an effective opposition, the government may want to consider setting up its own sounding boards of independent people to provide criticisms and suggestions on the performance of individual ministers and the government as a whole. Perhaps the current system of parliamentary committees could be used to provide forums for consistent public interventions. Without a mechanism for public feedback and responsive changes the government may lose itself in the intoxication of its own rhetoric. The NPP could and should do better. And the country deserves even better.
by Rajan Philips
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