Wheel of fortune turns for Sri Lanka’s political soothsayers
Generations of Sri Lankan leaders have sought guidance from seers and astrologers, and now one has dared tell the ruling Rajapaksa family that their time in office is up. As…
Sri Lanka’s reluctance to tap IMF helped push it into an economic abyss
Sri Lanka’s worst economic crisis has triggered an unprecedented wave of spontaneous protests as the island nation of 22 million people struggles with prolonged power cuts and a shortage of…
Controlling inflation and financing deficits — I
In April 2020, Intern-ational Monetary Fund (IMF) managing director (MD) had reportedly called the Covid pandemic a ‘crisis like no other’, and a Guardian article ‘We are living through the…
Lessons from Lanka
SRI Lanka figures very largely in the imagination of the people of South Asia. Not only is ‘Ceylon tea’ considered the best tea money can buy, a long line of…
Cracks in Colombo
RAMPANT inflation, food and energy shortages, foreign debt dilemmas, street protests. That’s not an unfamiliar scenario in this country, but a similarly hydra-headed crisis in Sri Lanka appears to have…
Crisis in Sri Lanka
Sri Lanka’s troubles seem never-ending. In the decades since its independence in 1948, the small island has seen ethnic pogroms against Tamils, leftist rebellions, a Tamil independence movement, genocide, anti-Muslim…
A wakeup call
A lot has been rightfully written and said about the success story of the Pakistan-Sri Lanka friendship ever since Pakistan’s independence. Sri Lanka, as a smaller island nation with a…
Forced cremations
ON Oct 29, 2020, Prime Minister Imran Khan wrote an open letter to the leaders of Muslim-majority countries. He asked them to “act collectively” to tackle the “rising tide of Islamophobia and…
Time for CPEC consensus
On August 20, the second bilateral Joint Consultative Mechanism (JCM) on CPEC was held. The JCM is the apex political platform established by the Communist Party of China in partnership…
Dynastic politics in Sri Lanka
With a landslide victory in the parliamentary elections held on August 5, the Rajapaksa brothers have tightened their grip on power in Sri Lanka. The Sri Lankan People’s Party (SLPP)…
