By Rohana R. Wasala The November 2019 inauguration of president Gotabhaya Rajapaksa rekindled bright hopes of national resurgence. The visions of peace and prosperity that bloomed in the years following the end of nearly three decades of civil war in 2009 faded in the years 2015-19. While the people were eagerly looking forward to electing […]

By Rohana R. Wasala The Island newspaper of April 10, 2020, in a front page news report (PB ‘reads Election Act’ to EC chief”), published  a letter dated April 06, 2020 addressed to the Chairman of the Election Commission Mahinda Deshapriya by Presidential Secretary P.B. Jayasundara, which was in response to two letters from the […]

By Rohana R. Wasala This article was partly inspired by Orpheus Perera’s commendable writeup under the title ‘Open letter from the Chinese embassy to the Editor of the Wijaya Newspaper’/Posted April 11, though my subject is not the same as his. As Perera’s article suggests, there are more plausible explanations of the actual origin of […]

By Rohana R. Wasala Courtesy The Island This is in response to two recent articles published in The Island that relate to the aftermath of the debate about the suitability of the booklet titled ‘Hathe Ape Potha’ as supplementary reading material for introducing sexuality and reproductive health education for Grade 7 students in Sri Lankan […]

By Rohana R. Wasala Recently, there was a heated discussion about a supplementary reader in Sinhala titled ‘HATHE APE POTHA’ for Grade 7 students in government schools in Sri Lanka for ‘sexuality and reproductive health education’, which is a novel subject to the country’s school education system. The writer believes that this controversy surrounding an […]

By Rohana R. Wasala Like ‘secularism’, ‘nationalism’ is a much abused term in the vocabulary of the opponents of the unitary status of the Sri Lankan state. A previous article of mine (‘Why secularism is good for Sri Lanka’/Lankaweb/posted January 23, 2020) explained my opinion that the principle of secularism in governance is a good […]

By Rohana R. Wasala Singing or not singing Sri Lanka Matha/ apa Sri Lanka…..” in Tamil is not a problem for ordinary Tamils. Neither is it an issue for ordinary Sinhalese or other Tamil speaking Sri Lankan citizens. But, apparently, it is a crucial subject for some foreign NGOs, separatists among expatriate Tamils in the […]

By Rohana R. Wasala Courtesy The Island Secularism and nationalism are two terms which are deliberately misdefined by internal and external destabilizing agents in various forms in the current political context in Sri Lanka for confusing and misleading the largely monolingual Sinhala or Tamil speaking electorate. Properly understood, secularism will be found to be quite […]

By Rohana R. Wasala ‘The Child is father of the Man’ William Wordsworth, ‘My Heart Leaps Up’ I will not try to label a diamond. But diamonds deserve to be on display. Trained valuers assess them in terms of- Colour, clarity, carat weight, and cut.  But those who view them whole just admire them.  The […]

By Rohana R. Wasala Courtesy The Island This is a reply to the opinion piece under the heading ‘Separating Religion from Politics’ sent in by George Braine (The Island/January 13, 2020). According to Braine ‘The various Mahanayakes and other Buddhist leaders must act quickly before the deterioration of the Sangha hits rock bottom. Another danger […]

By Rohana R. Wasala (The title is a line from the concluding passage of  Sir Edwin Arnold’s ‘Light of Asia’. The Spanish title and name Don Quixote used below is pronounced dong khee khothe”) ANNO FELIX, HAPPY NEW YEAR, TO YOU! Rejoice my beloved Mother Lanka! With us your dear children just debunking The entrenched […]

By Rohana R. Wasala Beware the Jabberwock, my son!The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!Beware the Jubjub bird, and shunThe frumious Bandersnatch! The latest developments in the Sri Lankan political arena including diplomatic mockery in the form of a staged abduction episode by a minion of the global hegemon brought to my mind those […]

By Rohana R. Wasala Courtesy The Island Latheef Farook, as usual, goes off on a tangent when writing about the alleged ‘plight’ of the Muslim minority vis-à-vis  the Sinhalese Buddhist majority (Muslims expect positive overtures from President’’/The Island/November 27, 2019). The title of the piece implies that the Muslims are experiencing a sense of alienation […]

By Rohana R. Wasala  I love my country. I am proud of my country. I have a vision concerning my country. I appeal to all Sri Lankans to join together in building a prosperous land for posterity”  declared Gotabhaya Rajapaksa on being sworn in as the seventh executive president of the Democratic Socialist Republic of […]

By Rohana R. Wasala Courtesy The Island Today Sri Lanka is facing, arguably its worst survival crisis since independence, following the two armed JVP insurrections (1971 and 1986-90) and the long drawn out armed LTTE separatism (1976-2009), both terrorist movements. A considerable number of good but ill-informed or misinformed young Sri Lankans believe that the […]

By Rohana R. Wasala  The Ministry of Finance published an announcement on the treasury.gov.lk website on November 1, 2019 to the effect that the ‘MCC agreement drafted with the consent of AG will be presented in parliament’. The self-explanatory first paragraph mentions what the Millennium Challenge Corporation means and what projects it is going to […]

By Rohana R. Wasala Two of the three important presidential candidates have, by the time of writing, October 28, unveiled their election manifestos. SLPP’s Gotabhaya Rajapaksa and National People’s Power candidate JVP’s Anura Kumara Disanayake (AK) did so on October 25 and 26 respectively. Be that as it may, the contest is actually between two […]

By Rohana R. Wasala ‘Sri Lanka 2020 and Beyond is a forum that will provide Sri Lankans living in Australia with an opportunity to engage in a dialog with the intent of shaping the future blueprint of Sri Lanka. This forum will provide with an opportunity to directly interact with the panel of experts on […]

By Rohana R. Wasala Courtesy The Island Latheef Farook (‘Foreign power influence and impact on presidential election’/ The Island, October 16, 2019) asserts that a number of countries ‘including China, India, United States, its European allies especially United Kingdom and France, Russia and Israel’ ‘competing to control the Indian ocean’ (he identifies these countries collectively […]

by Rohana R. Wasala The following article of mine was published in The Island newspaper and in Lankaweb respectively on January 14 and 15, 2015. I thought the present circumstances warrant a reprint of the same.  If you see any unimportant inconsistencies here in relation to the current ground reality in the political landscape, please remember that […]

By Rohana R. Wasala You take a country like Cuba. For us to test the possibility that engagement leads to a better outcome for the Cuban people, there aren’t that many risks for us. It’s a tiny little country. It’s not one that threatens our core security interests, and so [there’s no reason not] to […]

By Rohana R. Wasala Friday Forum’s observations on Presidential Elections And The Peoples’ Options” (sic) published in The Island of September 3, 2019, are far wide of the mark. This is not surprising in view of their past press releases about related or similar topics. The ‘peoples’ in the title implies that the internationally respected […]

By Rohana R. Wasala Courtesy The Island Those who pursue the higher life of wisdom, who seek to live by spiritual principles, must be prepared to be laughed at and condemned.” Epictetus, Greek Stoic philosopher (55-135 CE) (Following is an updated version of an article published in two parts in The Island in the last […]

BY ROHANA R. WASALA Courtesy The Island The artificially sensationalized controversy within the UNP ranks about the authenticity of the party deputy leader Sajith Premadasa’s educational qualifications, in the twilight of its barely legitimate rule, is a strangely anticlimactic, but justly retributive, reversal of its unbroken mudslinging campaign against the Rajapaksas, whose democratic return to […]

By ROHANA R. WASALA And we shall play a game of chess, Pressing lidless eyes and waiting for a knock upon the door. –·  From ‘A Game of Chess’ (the second canto of The Waste Land” by T.S. Eliot) (The following article was first published in The Island and Lankaweb simultaneously on June 29, 2016, […]

By Rohana R. Wasala (‘Hamartia’ is the fatal flaw that leads to the downfall of the tragic hero in classical Greek Tragedy; it is Greek for ‘missing the mark’.) The artificially sensationalised controversy within the UNP ranks about the authenticity of the party deputy leader Sajith Premadasa’s educational qualifications in the evening twilight of its […]

By Rohana R. Wasala ‘I am an entertainer, albeit one with the temerity to deal frequently with serious ideas, concepts or – as we say in the theater, where I came from – the spines” of drama. Simple things like the abuse of power, the conspiracies of manipulators, the debasers of the public weal, the […]

By Rohana R. Wasala The Bodu Bala Sena organization held (seemingly the first edition of) its Siv Hele Maha Samuluwa or National Convention of Siv Hela  at the Bogambara Grounds in Kandy on July 7, 2019. Its purpose was, presumably, to propose a democratic, non-violent way out of the present political morass that the country […]

By  Rohana R. Wasala It would probably not be an exaggeration to say that more outrage was expressed by interested parties at an incidental comment made by the Most Venerable Warakagoga Gnanarathana, the Mahanayake Thera of the Asgiriya Chapter, during an anusasanawa (homily) than at the April 21 Easter Sunday suicide bombings by Wahhabi Islamists. […]

By  Rohana R. Wasala The polity consisting of the majority community (Sinhalese) cannot behave like this. In any country, it is normal for the majority community to be unconsciously undermined by a false sense of security vis-a-vis the minorities, whereas the latter feel a bit too paranoid with or without reason. The Sinhalese voting public […]