On 31 July 2025, U.S. President Trump announced a blanket 25% tariff on all exports from India to the United States. This came despite the conclusion of five rounds of bilateral trade negotiations, with the sixth round scheduled for later in August. Trump’s frustration was evident, as India continued to resist U.S. demands – particularly the opening of its agricultural sector to U.S. exports, especially dairy products. In a series of outbursts on Truth Social, Trump denounced India’s trade barriers as ‘obnoxious’, referred to the country as the ‘tariff king’, and, in one of his more extreme remarks, described India’s economy as ‘dead’. He also threatened additional, unspecified penalties beyond the already announced 25% tariff, citing India’s continued purchase of Russian crude oil that was facing U.S. economic sanctions. That threat materialised on 6 August, when the Trump administration announced an additional 25% tariff on Indian exports. Once in effect, Indian exports to the U.S. will face a steep 50% tariff. Gaganendranath Tagore (India), Terribly Sympathetic, 1917. Trump’s outbursts and use of tariffs to arm-twist other countries into trade deals is now an internationally well-known tactic. Countries that rushed to conclude agreements in response to Trumpian threats have ended up with highly unfavourable terms. A case in point is the European Union, which accepted a lopsided deal. It now faces a 15% tariff on its exports to the U.S., while agreeing to invest $600 billion in the U.S. economy and purchase $750 billion worth of U.S. energy over three years. Meanwhile, U.S. exports to the EU will be duty-free. In Asia too, countries such as Vietnam and Indonesia have concluded trade deals with the U.S., which are likely to hurt them in the long run. Trump’s intemperate language targeting India and the steep tariff imposed, is undoubtedly embarrassing for the Indian government and Prime Minister Narendra Modi, especially given his claims of a personal rapport with Trump, marked by periodic displays of obsequious bonhomie with his fellow right-wing demagogue. In this context, the Indian government’s refusal so far to yield to U.S. pressure is significant, and one hopes this position will hold in the coming months. It is hard not to recall the previous Trump administration, when India initially resisted U.S. demands to comply with sanctions on Iran and halt its oil purchases. In that case, the Modi government ultimately capitulated, ending all imports of Iranian oil and hurting its ties with a historically close neighbour, one that is critical not only to India’s energy security but also to its efforts to develop alternative trade routes linking it to Central Asia, Russia, and Europe. The penal tariffs imposed on India appear to stem from two reasons: first, India’s refusal to open its agricultural market to tariff-free U.S. imports; and second, its continued purchase of Russian oil, citing its economic needs and energy security. One of the key reasons for India resisting Uncle Sam’s pressure is that dismantling tariff protections for the agricultural sector would amount to political suicide of the ruling party. Over 45% of India’s population remains directly dependent on agriculture for their livelihoods. When the balance of payments crisis triggered India’s neoliberal turn in 1990–91, protections for agriculture were among the first to be dismantled. Between 1990 and 1996, average tariffs on agricultural imports fell sharply from 81% to 40%, exposing millions of Indian farmers to the volatility of international agricultural markets dominated by large agribusinesses and commodity speculators. This led to a prolonged agrarian crisis, lasting more than a decade, marked by widespread farmer suicides due to debt. Unstable global prices of agricultural produces devastated rural incomes. It was also a period of serious political unrest, with frequent farmer protests across the country. The Indian political establishment would be careful not to recreate such a situation, considering Modi’s bitter experience with Farmers’ Protest in 2020. Soon after Modi triumphantly returned to power for a second term in 2019, he took on the farmers enacting three farm laws. These laws would have facilitated the removal of price support to farmers, and put agricultural trade in the hands of private corporations. The strength of the resilient farmers, who poured into the national capital in protest, stationing themselves on the borders of the Delhi and forcing Modi, a first in his career as prime minster, to accept defeat and withdraw the three farm laws, is fresh in the mind of the current political dispensation. A farmer who joined in the initial protest reads work by the revolutionary Punjabi poet, Pash, in his trolly at the Singhu border in Delhi, 10 December 2021. Vikas Thakur / Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research At the current cojuncture, when employment as well as investment in the manufacturing sector is stagnant and the shift away from agriculture to urban employment that took place till 2014, now somewhat reversed with people moving back to agriculture. Hurting the agriculture sector by removing tariffs and consequently causing damage to the rural economy is going to have severe consequences not only for the peasantry, but also for India’s overall growth . The trade negotiations have not been open to public input or scrutiny. However, based on media leaks, one of the major sticking points appears to be U.S. pressure on India to open its dairy sector. India’s dairy economy is deeply embedded in peasant agriculture. Unlike the large-scale dairy farms in the U.S. that keep hundreds of cattle, Indian peasants typically keep only a few animals alongside crop cultivation. Cattle rearing in India plays a crucial role in peasant economy. Given the seasonal variation in labour needs for crop cultivation, caring for cattle absorbs otherwise unutilised family labour. Crop residues, such as paddy and wheat straw, sugarcane and maize leaves, oil cakes, and farm weeds, are used as cattle feed, reducing the need for purchased inputs. For small-scale farmers, cattle rearing and milk sales are essential to make farming viable. Over several decades, the Indian government has implemented policies to increase milk yields and improve availability, beginning with Operation Flood in the 1970s. As a result, India has become self-sufficient in milk production and dairy consumption has steadily risen – making a significant contribution to improving protein intake among the country’s undernourished population. Succumbing to Trump’s demands for tariff removal on dairy products would be a severe blow to India’s dairy sector, reversing decades of effort to build self-sufficiency. The country’s long-term nutritional security would be placed at the mercy of international markets and U.S. whims, dragging India back to the 1960s when its leadership had to approach the United States with a begging bowl for wheat to feed its population. Arunkumar H G (India), Bhu-ka (Diet of the Earth), n.d. Clearly this is an outcome the Indian state would be wary of – irrespective of which party is in government. As such, the Indian government may never agree to U.S. demands on agriculture. Moreover, India’s leadership and commentariat appear to believe that the steep tariff imposed by the U.S. is a temporary measure, likely to be reversed once a trade deal is concluded on more favourable terms. Having fallen behind East Asia in comprehensive industrialisation and technological development, Indian policymakers hope to gain ground by replicating China’s success of export-oriented growth driven by access to Western markets, with the U.S being the major one. Since President Trump’s first term, when the U.S.-China trade conflict moved to the centre of global economic tensions, Indian businesses and the government have anticipated an opportunity to fill the potential vacuum in global supply chains serving Western consumers. As the U.S. pushes for a decoupling from Chinese production, taking advantage of the so-called ‘China+1’ strategy of U.S. companies, India hopes to leverage its massive labour force to attract a large share of this redirected investment and export demand. Apart from the size of its labour force to attract investments that are looking to diversify production away from China, India’s calculations for export-oriented growth also hinge on the anticipation that the U.S. would look at India as a strategic counterweight to China. India-China border tensions, marked by unresolved border issues, have fostered this outlook. It is also true that U.S. would like to co-opt India into various geopolitical schemes to contain China – one example being India’s membership in Quad. India has also for the last two decades increasingly shown willingness for a closer strategic embrace of the United States. Aswath (Young Socialist Artists, India), Marching with the Peasants, 2021. While India is unlikely to agree to removing tariffs on U.S. agricultural imports, it may well yield to U.S. pressure and step back from Russian oil purchases, as it did earlier in the cases of Iran and Venezuela. It may also allow itself to be dragged in to support U.S. geopolitical agendas in Asia. This strategy is, of course, deeply dangerous. India risks being dragged willy nilly into conflicts initiated by the U.S. in Asia. Pakistan offers a cautionary example. Despite being a close strategic partner of the U.S. for over half a century, it remains mired in chronic economic distress and dependency. Even those countries that have secured impressive economic performance by aligning closely with the U.S. – such as Japan, South Korea, and its European allies – have increasingly become exemplary Henry Kissinger’s statement that ‘Being [United States of] America’s enemy is dangerous, but being its friend can be fatal’. The U.S.-engineered destruction of Ukraine, in its bid to contain Russia, stands as a sobering warning for India. Even if Indian policymakers’ optimistic scenario materialises, and India secures a bilateral trade deal without hurting agriculture or compromising strategic autonomy – India is poorly placed to benefit from it. Past free trade agreements (FTAs), signed with great fanfare by India, have mostly led to widening trade deficits and further erosion of domestic industry. India’s FTA with ASEAN is a case in point, with the country’s trade deficit with ASEAN countries ballooning since its signing. Similarly, the recently concluded bilateral trade treaty with the UK is also unlikely to deliver significant gains, and is instead expected to hurt the pharmaceutical sector. India has reportedly diluted its position on compulsory licensing and patents, setting a precedent that could undermine its stance in future trade negotiations with other developed countries. Warmly, Bodapati Srujana, Tricontinental Asia Srujana is an Indian economist. Her work focuses on agrarian relations, banking and inequality.
COLOMBO, Sri Lanka | 12 August 2025 (IDN) — Real and staged crises present opportunities to reorient, innovate and think outside the box. Trump’s tariff ‘shock’ presents Sri Lanka’s business sector and national policy makers an opportunity for short, intermediate and long-term economic and industrial policy shift out of the current neocolonial, services-heavy, economic model.
At this time, the focus of discussion should be on the Development of New Products and New Markets by businesses and entrepreneurs, in partnership with state agencies like the Board of Investment of Sri Lanka (BOI), to grow the economy out of the Eurobond-USD debt trap and International Monetary Fund bailout business.
Sri Lanka has abundant fisheries and high-value Graphite and Minerals, including Rare Earths such as Zircon, as well as Titanium Ilmenite, phosphates, etc. These are low-hanging fruit with huge potential to grow the national economy through value addition and integration into regional supply chains.
Firstly, it would be essential to develop new export products by leveraging existing resources, Including Marine and Mineral resources, and to industrialise and add value in these sectors.
Secondly, identifying and targeting wealthy Central and West Asian markets, particularly the post-Soviet Republics and Shanghai Cooperation countries, as well as Middle Eastern countries, to export high-value Sri Lankan goods would be beneficial. Sri Lankan businesses also need to pivot to the BRICS and their allies to grow the economy- particularly China and Russia.
Asia is the growth hub of the world, and the West is in Decline at this time. South and Southeast Asian markets already have similar products, so targeting wealthy Central and West Asian markets, where transport costs would be manageable, makes sense.
Third, Sri Lanka has high-quality agricultural products but not large quantities or an economy of scale. Hence, priority should be given to identifying wealthy niche markets for traditional high-quality products like spices, Cinnamon, pepper, tea, rubber and coconut products, and for new marine (fishery) and mineral exports, such as Graphite, Zircon, Titanium, phosphates, etc.
Tariff Hype but Narrow Discussion Sans Data Analysis
Despite and perhaps because of the much-hyped Trump Tariff’ shock’ and possible economic disaster scenarios in the corporate media echo chamber and among think tanks, there has been a narrow focus on negotiations with Washington by the Sri Lanka Government team.
There has been inadequate analysis of the country’s export products and export market profile, also given questions about data accuracy, to assess any real impacts of the Trump tariff hike.
While the US claims to be the biggest export market of Sri Lankan goods and hence the biggest contributor to foreign exchange earnings, the European Union (EU) has made a similar claim!
By making such claims, both the EU and the US seek to exert influence in the country, to control its development policy trajectory and resources. Such claims have shaped the geostrategic island’s current pattern of dependent development on former Imperial powers, economic underdevelopment and failure to industrialise.
At a recent discussion at the Centre for Poverty Analysis, it was surmised that the Trump tariffs would have a marginal impact on primary commodity exports such as tea, rubber and coconut sectors, as these mainly go to other markets. However, women in the garment sector were the most vulnerable and likely segment of the population to face hardship if at all due to the Trump tariffs.
Data accuracy regarding the volume of Sri Lankan exports and their markets was necessary for an adequate assessment of whether any of the Trump tariffs impacted it. This, also in the context of concerns about some firms that are heavily import-dependent, such as apparel, under-invoicing, tax evasion and parking foreign currency overseas. The latter practice had also contributed to Sri Lanka’s staged first-ever Sovereign Default in 2022 amid the Aragalaya chaos and regime change operation.
The Geopolitical Economic Big Picture and BRICS
In the face of global Trump tariff shocks, we need lateral and critical thinking and analysis of the big picture of Geopolitical Economics. However, national media and think tanks have mainly focused on the untransparent negotiations in Washington by President Anura Kumara Dissanayaka’s inexperienced team.
India, one of the founding countries of BRICS, which was hit with 50% tariffs, had a dual or parallel track negotiation process with Washington. The first track focused on national economic issues (e.g., protecting local agriculture and dairy from multinational Agri-business, including GMO seeds, was a top priority of the Modi government, also for its survival). Sadly, Sri Lanka has already conceded these sectors that are crucial to national food security to the Bill Gates and Tony Blair Foundations!
The second track of Indian Govt tariff negotiations focused on geopolitical issues, which included Indian Govt. purchases of Russian oil amid Trump’s threats of secondary sanctions, as well as defence corporation.
The BRICS challenge of de-dollarisation and trading in local currencies, and other Geopolitical considerations, clearly are the subtext of the global Tariff Shock. Leading BRICS countries, Brazil, China, and India, have been hit with over 50 per cent tariffs.
President Trump is fighting to maintain the hegemony of the US Dollar as the Global Reserve currency, increasingly, of last resort, given a whopping $ 36 trillion US deficit, as economist and author of Super Imperialism, Professor Michael Hudson has noted. Hudson has also pointed out that the tariffs are set to compound odious debt traps in Global South countries, and make debt servicing impossible. Hence, the only solution is for debt-trapped countries in the Global South to refuse to pay predatory bondholders rather than remain in the IMF’s Odious debt restructure rabbit holes.[i]
At this time, questions remain as to what geostrategic security concessions were made by President Anura Kumara Dissanayaka’s team that went to Washington vis-à-vis Trump’s Tariff Shock red herring? Did the NPP regime promise protection of Israeli Spy-der webs and Container smuggling operations in Sri Lanka to turn it into an Indian Ocean hub for Project Stargate’s Artificial Intelligence infrastructure and data centres? This would include surveillance of the Indian Ocean energy, trade and submarine data cable routes for the coming Third World War on China, the BRICS and the Global South.[ii]
Was it an accident that in the same week that the Trump Tariff hype reached a crescendo, an announcement was made that Arkia Israel Airlines would resume flights to Sri Lanka in September 2025? Flights from Israel have been suspended in May 2024 as the War in Palestine escalated. The Tel Aviv – Colombo route would be operated by Gullivair Airbus A330-200 aircraft, it was announced. This, despite mounting opposition by citizens to Israeli land grabbing, shady business deals and tourism in strategic and environmentally vulnerable coastal and hilltop areas, not to mention the Chabad house phenomenon.
Board of Investment and Private Sector: Absence of Imagination, Innovation and Corruption?
It is indeed laughable that the NPP regime in Colombo continued to import salt and canned fish this year despite grand promises to develop the economy. Moreover, Sri Lanka is surrounded by the Indian Ocean, which is full of salt and fish, and the country should have industrialised to export volumes of these products.
However, rather than address the issue of underdevelopment and lack of industrialisation, there has been a blame game between the business sector and the government. The private sector seems to prefer to pass the buck to the State, rather than provide leadership as the ‘Captains of Industry’ should.
There has been an abject failure by the private sector, Chamber of Commerce, and BOI for decades to leverage existing resources such as Graphite, Salt, or fishery through industrialisation–even to supply domestic markets, never mind export markets. These include fishery by-products, fish feed and high-end fish oil pharmaceutical products.
In the context, it bears repeating that the Trump tariffs present an opportunity for Sri Lanka’s so-called ‘captains of industry’ and the AMCHAM colonised Ceylon Chamber of Commerce to reorient and pivot to develop New Products and New Markets outside Euro-America by leveraging existing resources in the country.
The Trump Tariff Shock also presents the NPP regime in Colombo an opportunity for long and short-term strategic economic planning to enable Transfer of Technology towards leveraging Sri Lanka’s valuable marine and mineral resources, such as fishery and Graphite.
However, endemic corruption in the marine and mineral sectors and relevant institutions like the National Aquatic Resources agency (NARA) and the Geological Survey and Mines Bureau (GSMB), which have been mired in corruption, controlled and bankrolled by external actors and corrupt local networks remain a challenge. A former Minister of Fisheries, Rajitha Senaatne is currently under investigation for corruption vis-a-vis local fisheries harbours and corrupt deals with foreign trawler companies.
The failure to industrialise these sectors with a National Development Plan and an over-reliance on services and low end manufacturing (tourism and apparel), and exporting labour and brain draining the country to generate foreign exchange is reflective of a colonial dependency economy syndrome among the business community (so-called Captains of Industry) and National Policy Makers, which have contributed to the current ISB-IMF debt trap bailout business.
Private Sector: A Colonial Dependency and Handout Mentality?
When I briefly worked as a Consultant for the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC), on a ‘Constraints to Growth Analysis’, I was often asked by international experts: why is Sri Lanka, which is so well endowed in resources and talent, so lacking in innovation, i.e. industrialising and leveraging existing resources? My answer would be that the so-called business community has been, sadly, an engine of de-industrialisation and under-development because it remains highly dependent on Euro-American Development Aid, advisors and experts, and markets due to a colonial dependency mentality.
This dependency syndrome of the business sector and failure to recognise the real Wealth of the Nation is also valid to a great extent for the local economic think tanks, research community, and policy makers, albeit with a few exceptions.
The Business community constantly plays a blame game and passes the buck to the government, as if the GoSL signing Free Trade Agreements with all and sundry is the solution to their lack of entrepreneurship.
We may call this phenomenon, geostrategic Sri Lanka’s Neocolonial Hang Over– in the Asian 21st Century because the country has long suffered from being a Donor Darling” with too many Economic Hitmen as’ advisors and experts’!
A foreign Aid and Experts dependency mentality is evident in the current context of the failure to recognise the rise of the BRICS and the need to pivot to Asian Markets, which are the growth centres of the world at this time, by the SL Chamber of Commerce and NPP policy makers alike.
Foreign Aid Dependency and Indian Ocean Resources in the Faux Anthropocene
The Marine and Mineral sectors should have been industrialised long ago, and Sri Lanka should be exporting and not importing Sea Salt and canned fish. However, these sectors have been deliberately kept small-scale and artisanal” while Distant Water States like France and Japan send industrial-scale trawlers to harvest Indian Ocean fishery resources.
Maintaining under-development in the Fisheries Sector in Sri Lanka has been in line with OECD Donor agendas and the name of ‘environmental protection’ in line with the United Nation’s faux Anthropocene, which is also being staged with geoengineering of climate disasters and the use of weather modification technologies, cloud seeding/ cloud bursts, heat dome, etc. generated with HAARP and Directed Energy Weapons (DEW).
The UN climate catastrophe and Anthropocene narrative increasingly serve to de-develop, de-industrialise and impoverish Global South countries in the name of environment protection”, while facilitating the financializing of Mother Nature and the marketing of Green and Blue Bond scams at this time.[iii] The result is depriving farmers and fishers access to their traditional farmlands, forests and ocean areas in the name of ‘environmental conservation’ with a gravy train of conservation NGOs as the Transnational Institute Report on Ocean Grabbing shows.[iv]
Meanwhile, development aid donors of the industrialised countries, particularly the EU, Japan, Korea, Taiwan, China, etc., harvest Indian Ocean fishery as data from the Indian Ocean Tuna Commission shows. Although these countries are not in the Indian Ocean, they take out Indian Ocean fisheries resources with industrial fishing fleets and trawlers. In contrast, Indian Ocean rim countries like Sri Lanka remain impoverished and engaged in ‘artisanal fishery’ – purportedly to save the environment and prevent over-fishing of the Indian Ocean![v]
France has claimed almost 20 per cent of the Indian Ocean seabed and valuable mineral resources at UNCLOS using colonial islands like Mayotte and Reunion. It is in a dispute with Mauritius at this time. So too, a part of Sri Lanka’s extended Exclusive Economic Zone has been claimed by France, whose International development agency- AFD- funds various think tank research projects on fisheries and the Blue Economy to distract from the EU’s Indian Ocean Grabbing![vi]
Performance of the Private Sector
Sri Lanka has valuable minerals, such as Graphite, Zircon, Titanium, etc., but only mineral sands are exported, and there is little value addition or attempt to integrate into regional and global value chains and no contribution to the country’s GDP and export income.
There needs to be a broader critique of the SL Business Community and Ceylon Chamber of Commerce, which remains historically colonised, heavily aid-dependent, mentally and materially (including GSP Plus and minus). The ‘Captains of industry ‘seem focused on pleasing Euro-American donors with a few products (garments, primary commodities, tourism, etc.) and unable to pivot to Asian markets with value products leveraging local resources rather than imported raw materials like textiles for garments.
Simultaneously, there is a need for concerted critical analysis of the performance and practices of the Business Sector in the county. At this time, there is a need for Government and Think Tanks to develop a fuller analysis of the challenges and opportunities that the Trump Tariff shock presents, particularly, a Geopolitical Economic discussion that relates the micro-level to the Macro global dimensions. The need of the hour is for proactive identification of new markets in Asia and Global South countries, which are increasingly the growth hub of the world for high-value export products from Sri Lanka.
Finally, the Trump tariffs underline the need for countries like Sri Lanka to eschew US dollar dependency, which exposes them to Exogenous Shocks and related currency manipulation, and have a long-term strategy towards de-dollarisation. In short, pivot away from neocolonial dependency and increasingly an IMF-fueled USD debt entrapment culture.
*Dr Darini Rajasingham-Senanayake is a social and medical anthropologist with expertise in international development and political-economic analysis. She was a member of the International Steering Group of the North-South Institute project: Southern Perspectives on Reform of the International Aid Architecture”. [IDN-InDepthNews].
[ii] Israel, the forefront of the new, global and electronic Nazism by harry Davies and Yuval Abraham https://www.defenddemocracy.press/israel-the-forefront-of-the-new-global-and-electronic-nazism/
[iii] How much Debt can the Ocean Sustain? https://www.tni.org/en/publication/blue-finance
According to a news report carried in The Island of July 31, 2025, a group of senior representatives of the Sarvajana Balaya (SB) including its leader Dilith Jayaweera MP and Dr Channa Jayasumana had a meeting with Ihab Khalil, the Ambassador of the State of Palestine, two days earlier on Tuesday 29th. They called on the ambassador to communicate to him their condemnation of what they called the ‘Gaza genocide’ and to express ‘the deep and unwavering solidarity of the Sri Lankan people with the innocent civilians of Palestine, who continue to endure immense suffering and a prolonged and inhumane conflict’. The SB delegates expressed the party’s ‘grave concern over the humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza and the occupied Palestinian territories…. the deliberate targeting of civilian infrastructure……widespread displacement of families…systematic deprivation of basic necessities resulting in starvation…..which all constitute egregious violations of international law.’
While condemning ‘these atrocities’, the SB called upon Israel to ‘immediately halt all military aggression, lift the illegal siege, and end the collective punishment of an entire population.’ It added: ‘The international community, especially a nation like Sri Lanka, cannot remain indifferent while innocent lives continue to be lost on a daily basis’.
The SB leader MP Dilith Jayaweera stated ‘We should leave all differences aside and unite to support Palestine against this genocide, while sending a strong message as a nation’. He further said that, ‘guided by the timeless principles of our civilizational values, the Sarvajana Balaya reaffirms its belief that it is the moral duty of all global leaders and nations to stand on the side of peace and humanity’. The SB’s appeal ended with the words: ‘At this critical juncture in world history, we call upon international institutions, human rights organisations, and all nations of conscience to act decisively and without delay.’
What the SB’ers have done is a commendable thing, but subject to important reservations in my view. They have confirmed Sri Lanka’s existing and continuing friendship towards Palestine, while also expressing concern, on behalf of all Sri Lankans, about the avoidable human suffering that is being inflicted on innocent Palestinian civilians. SB’s appropriate appeal to the ‘international institutions, human rights organisations, and all nations of conscience to act decisively and without delay’ should have been supported by a stronger commitment to their own conscience, which is nothing if not ‘guided by the timeless principles of our civilizational values….’ (i.e., Buddhist moral and ethical values).
Media reports from Sri Lanka, especially independent social media reports, show that the majority of Sri Lankans, while helplessly watching on the suffering of the Palestinians with an overwhelming sense of human kindness, are equally concerned about the really genocidal hate directed at the innocent Israeli men, women and children. Why don’t the SB’ers recognise this? Was the shock and dismay they expressed during their meeting with the Palestinian ambassador concerning Palestinians a mere political act intended to win the hearts and minds of the local Muslim minority? Do they assume that the Jews, wherever they live, whether in Israel or elsewhere in the world, including the small number of Jews who live in Sri Lanka, and others who come as visitors, are not worth caring about? Do they believe that Sri Lanka’s foreign policy decisions regarding Muslim majority countries should not be otherwise than in accordance with the whims and fancies of some fundamentalists among the local Muslim community? By the same token, are SB’ers content with Indians interfering in Sri Lanka using the alleged Tamil minority issue as a false pretext?
Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India is already mending fences with China; he is scheduled to attend the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) summit due to be held from August 31 to September 1, 2025. President Donald Trump of America feels worried about this development, as Hindustan Times (July 8) revealed. What will be the plight of Sri Lanka when the current leaders of those countries who are kicking the island nation about like a football in the rough and tough game of geopolitics, go out of power in the course of time?
The last mentioned hazard is of particular relevance to the nearly 75% majority indigenous Sinhalese people of the country who are facing the same genocidal threat that the Jewish nation is facing in a different way. Incidentally, the global Jewish population is 15.7 million, according to Wikipedia, which is 0.2% of the global human population of 8 billion. These figures almost exactly match those for the global Sinhalese population, which is between 16-17 million. In Israel, Jews account for 73% of its nearly 10 million population, while in Sri Lanka, 75% of its nearly 22 million population comprise Sinhalese. There is a special unrevealed similarity between these two beseiged ancient peoples, except for one difference: the almost total diaspora status of the Jews across the globe after their ancient displacement from their original homeland of ‘the Land of Israel, also known as Palestine’;even today less than half of all the Jews live in modern Israel. In the case of the Sinhalese, though there is some global dispersion outside Sri Lanka (Ceylon/Sihale), their original homeland from time immemorial, almost the totality of the Sinhalese people still live there.
Demographically, Jewish presence is much less marked than Muslim presence. Being a predominantly business community, Sri Lanka’s Muslims, in the past, used to lean more towards the rightist UNP at elections than towards the left of centre SLFP. It was under the latter party that Sri Lanka’s friendship with the Palestinians became more pronounced. Even a street in Ramallah in the State of Palestine was named after president Mahinda Rajapaksa of Sri Lanka in 2007 during his first term (2005-2010), which coincided with the beginning of the presidency of today’s incumbent Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas, who was also sworn in the office, like Mahinda Rajapaksa, in 2005. Abbas is not a uniformly popular figure; his control over Palestine is tenuous. He can hardly deal with the Hamas militancy, which is a big stumbling block to resolving the Israeli Palestinian conflict. Sarvajana Balaya delegates should have done better homework before deciding to go on that peace mission.
Relations between Sri Lanka and Palestine were repeatedly reaffirmed through mutual state visits and diplomatic exchanges between 2009 and 2014 (that is, during Rajapaksa’s second term). Having said that, it must be emphasized that this connection is not based exclusively on Sri Lanka’s current Muslim demography. Ceylon’s links with the Arabs in West Asia predates the birth of Islam in the seventh century CE. Jews also had as ancient a friendly presence in the land of the Sinhalese (Ceylon) as traders, according to the island’s historical records.
Actually, in modern times, Ceylonese (Sri Lankan) collaboration with Israel started more than a quarter century before Lankan diplomatic relations with Palestine began in 1975 with the opening up of an embassy by the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) in Colombo. On the other hand, the State of Israel was founded on May 14, 1948 by the British as envisaged in the Balfour Declaration of 1917. This was just over two months after Sri Lanka gained its own independence from Britain on February 4. Whereas most of its neighbours refused to recognise or support Israel then, Sri Lanka under its first prime minister D.S. Senanayake did recognise the Jewish state and started buying weapons from it, including the River-Class navy frigate HMCyS Gajabahu, later named SLNS Gajabahu (Source: Wikipedia).
Sarvajana Balaya’s message of solidarity delivered to the Palestine ambassador on behalf of all Sri Lankans would have sounded more sincere if it had been less judgemental towards Israel. The SB representatives didn’t care or dare to make the faintest reference to Israel, let alone invoke, for humanity’s sake, the abhorrent memory of the horrendous genocidal raid by heavily armed Hamas terrorists on innocent Israeli civilians, still asleep, on that early morning of October 7, 2023. For the SB’s message of solidarity to be of any potential value for global peacemaking efforts in this conflict zone, its unequivocal denunciation of Israel should have been balanced by a similarly unambiguous condemnation of the horrific Hamas terrorism that provoked the massive Israeli military operations in Gaza that continue to this day.
Important caveat:
I have the highest respect for the great Palestinian people, and recognize their sovereignty and independence. I fully empathise with them over their undeserved suffering. I equally well recognize and respect the great people of Israel, the only democratic nation in the region, and deeply empathise with them over the miseries inflicted on them by terrorists. As a senior Sri Lankan of cosmopolitan views, rooted in the Sinhalese Buddhist culture which has a natural resonance with cosmopolitanism, it is my sincere and fervent hope to see these two great nations (Israeli Jews and Palestinian Arabs) living peacefully side by side as gracious neighbours in the near future.
The edifice of a democratic government rests on three pillars: of legislature, the executive, and the judiciary. In sl, there had been as many as 21 changes in the Constitution dealing with the powers of the executive and legislature. There were heated debates and profuse analysis on the issues involved in these themes. Similar but less frequent and less controversial reviews have been there on the Judiciary as well. The success or failure of a government pivots mainly on the executive. It is also the body that is directly engaged with the public. It is an axiom that the success of executive action depends on the proficiency and propensity of its Public Service (PS). It is unfortunate that in recent times there has been no attempt to examine in depth the system of our PS. This is in spite of the fact that the government spends 86 percent of the government budget on salaries and pension payments to maintain a massive public service (PS) which has burgeoned into around 1.5 million public servants at one public servant to 14 citizens or to 3.4 households.
The following is an impressionistic note on the present state of and possible remedies to our PS based on personal experience and several studies in the public domain. All governments are responsible for this unwarranted increase in numbers due to narrow political compulsions rather than actual needs. The attraction of the PS has been the security of tenure and the handsome lifelong pension. Public servants enjoy a five-day work week, 26 public holidays, and many other perks. They are on the job only on 235 days in the year, during which they enjoy 42 days of leave.
The day-to-day operations of the PS are governed by the Financial Regulations and the Establishment Code. There have been a few cosmetic changes but no radical revisions to suit the demands of the contemporary concerns of national development and public interest.
The low productivity in the PS and even in the private sector is due partly to the excessive number of public holidays, which have increased to assuage sectarian interests. The biggest increase came with the Poya holidays. One doubts whether the religiosity of Buddhist public servants has increased due to this measure. On poya holidays other than Vesak and Poson the Saturday immediately following the Poya holiday should be made a working day to compensate for the loss of productivity on the Poya holiday. The better option is to allow casual leave to any person who is keen to make religious observations on a Poya day. It is noted that Vietnam a Theravada Buddhist country, has only 8 public holidays and Singapore has only 11 public holidays. In Sri Lanka, even during these lesser number of days of work rarely do public servants attend to their tasks full-time. The attendance register is a joke. It is manipulated to accommodate latecomers. It should be replaced with time recording machines. In city offices, clock watching is a common practice towards closing times. Hardly any work is done during the last half an hour. Public servants should also be required to sign off when they leave office.
Lack of discipline is another blight affecting productivity in the PS. An enormous amount of time is spent in offices reading newspapers and chatting in the canteens. In offices like Banks and even in some public corporations tea is served at the seat. This is a tradition which should be adopted by government offices as well. News papers should be confined only to the reading rooms. Most public servants are more informed on political gossip than on their areas of work.
While public servants have to accept the blame for the lack of responsibility and dedication, there are manifest conditions in which they work that influence their behavior. There is an over-concentration of administrative functions in Colombo City. The location of the Capital City and center of administration in Jayawardhanepura, only a short distance from Colombo, has not eased the problems of traffic congestion and environmental issues. This continuous concentration of public administration within the commercial and capital conurbations has put a strain on public servants travelling to the office. Not many public servants can afford to live within the city or even in the adjoining municipalities. Most public servants would be spending 2 hours or more travelling to the office by public transport. Travelling back home would take the same time. They do not have the time to prepare and have their breakfast at home. This makes them use the canteen to have their breakfast during office hours. More than all that, the hazard of travelling under intolerable conditions for a few hours to the office makes them tired and less alert.
A fundamental and long-term step to make PS more accessible to the public and make it more productive is to remove the domination of Colombo and Jayawardhanapura by dismantling the over-concentration of administrative activities from there. Colombo should be developed only as a commercial city. Unfortunately, our effort in moving out the Administration out of Colombo was colored by the anxiety to perpetuate the name of a living national leader. The capital city was located in a new city named the Jayawardhane Pura, in a marsh, at a short distance from Colombo. This move has not reduced the inconvenience of the PS nor the public and made the PS more effective.
In this context, there are two measures that need careful attention. First is to locate the main government Departments in the Districts where the relevant activities are dominant. For example, the Irrigation Department and the Mahaweli Authority have no justification to be located in Colombo. They should be located in a District where irrigation is dominant, perhaps in Anuradhapura. The Paddy Marketing Board could be moved to Polonnaruwa. More Departments could be moved to District centers. What is the logic of the Department of Surveys, or the Malaria Control Division, being located in Colombo District? It should be noted that the Department of Agriculture, a major Department, has been functioning effectively in Peradeniya from British times. Such a move would also meet the objectives of the decentralization of governance on the principle of subsidiarity.
The other strategy is to establish satellite secretariats in the periphery of Colombo City. There is already a working model in the Kaccheri system (now District Secretariats) where several Departmental units operate under the nominal supervision of the Government Agent. The large Departments and other Public Enterprises in the City could locate sub-units in such a common secretariat. With fiber optic communications and advanced technologies, most of the work could be done online. If physical monitoring is a must, CCTV systems could also be installed. Such offices could reduce paperwork and the time wasted in travel by office workers at least by 50%, and drastically reduce traffic congestion. The opportunity cost of time wasted by road users is not normally considered, but it is enormous.
Besides the improvements in the working conditions of the PS there is the need to implement broader administrative reform to improve bureaucracy in order to deliver efficiently essential services to the people and attain national development goals. Unwarranted political interference is one of the evil forces strangling the PS. The intrusion on the independence of the PS started with the 1972 Constitution of SL where the public service was named the State Service denoting that the task of the PS is to serve the State and not the public. By this the ‘your obedient servant’ to the public disappeared.
In the following Articles of the 1972 Constitution powers of appointment, transfers and disciplinary control of public servants were vested in the Cabinet of Ministers. The Public Service Commission was abolished and replaced with a State Service advisory Board and a State Services Disciplinary Board.
Article 113. (1) Appointment of State Officers : Except where the Constitution otherwise provides, appointments to posts of Heads of Departments and to such other posts as may be prescribed by the Cabinet of Ministers shall be made by the Cabinet of Ministers.
Article 117. Dismissal and Disciplinary Control of State Officers: The Cabinet of Ministers shall exercise its powers of dismissal and disciplinary control of state officers only after receiving through the Minister in charge of the Ministry or Department to which a state officer is attached, a recommendation from the State Services Disciplinary Board.
Article 118. (1): The Cabinet of Ministers may in accordance with the assignment of subjects and functions by the Prime Minister and subject to such conditions as may be prescribed by the Cabinet of Ministers, delegate to a Minister its powers of dismissal and disciplinary control of state officers.
Article 111.1: State Services Advisory Board: There shall be a State Services Advisory Board to exercise, perform or discharge such powers, functions or duties as are required of the State Services Advisory Board under the Constitution.
With the radical open market policies of 1977, it was expected that the independence of the public service would be restored. But in the 1978 Constitution the introduction of the following Articles tightened the hold of the Cabinet on the PS.
Article 55. (1) :Subject to the provisions of the Constitution, the appointment, transfer, dismissal and disciplinary control of public officers is hereby vested in the Cabinet of Ministers, and all public officers shall hold office at pleasure.
(2) The Cabinet of Ministers shall not delegate its powers of appointment, transfer, dismissal and disciplinary control in respect of Heads of Departments.
(3) The Cabinet of Ministers may from time to time delegate its powers of appointment, transfer, dismissal and disciplinary control of other public officers to the Public Service Commission:
(4) Subject to the provisions of the Constitution, the Cabinet of Ministers shall provide for and determine all matters relating to public officers, including the formulation of schemes of recruitment and codes of conduct for public officers, the principles to be followed in making promotions and transfers, and the procedure for the exercise and the delegation of the powers of appointment, transfer, dismissal and disciplinary control of public officers.
Article 57. (1) : Whenever the Cabinet of Ministers so directs the Chairman of the Public Service Commission shall appoint a Committee of the Public Service Commission to exercise the powers of the Commission in respect of such categories of public officers as are specified in such direction.
Article 59: The Cabinet of Ministers shall have the power to alter, vary or rescind –
any appointment, order of transfer or dismissal or any other order relating to a disciplinary matter made, on appeal or otherwise, by the Public Service Commission or a Committee thereof;
Article 52. (1) of the Constitution provides for the appointment for each Ministry a Secretary who shall be appointed by the President.
(2) The Secretary to the Ministry shall, subject to the direction and control of his Minister, exercise supervision over the departments of Government or other institutions in the charge of his Minister.
It is under the powers of control given to the Minister that political interference is justified. Even in public corporations a Minister can give general or special directions and most cases only in writing. Even in politically sensitive large institutions like the CTB and Mahavali Authority and a minor agency like SLECIC they are not under the control of the Minister.
Transport Board Act says that the Board shall be subject to, and act in accordance with, such general or special directions as the Minister may from time-to-time issue in relation to any matter that appears to him to affect the national interest or efficient administration of the Board. In the Mahavali Authority the Minister may, after consultation with the Authority, give to the Authority in writing general or special directions. In SLECIC the Board is subject to such general or special directions as the Minister may issue from time to time. But in Departments under a Ministry the Secretary has to act under the control of the Minister. This is in spite the Secretary being the Chief Accounting Officer responsible to the Parliament. Although the channel from the Minister to a Department is through the Secretary, Ministers find it expedient to avoid the Secretary and deal directly with subordinate officials.
Ministers are under constant pressure from their constituents to provide them with employment. It is in this field that Ministers intervene blatantly. In the past Ministers resorted to a device to ensure the selection of their candidates at interviews. Every interview board had to have a Minister’s/ Ministry representative whose job was to ensure the choice of the Minister is selected. The final ruse was that all appointments and promotions had to have the approval of the Minister. In Public Corporations in which the intervention of the minister is supposed to be through directions the fact that the Board is appointed by the Minister there is collusion between the Minister and the Board on appointments. It is no wonder that Public Corporations are heavily over staffed and the quality of the PS with political an excess of political appointed has declined. It may be necessary to make the Secretary the Chief Personnel Officer and hold him responsible for all appointments and promotions. In the past public servants has faith in the Public Service Commission on recruitment. It was in the name of the Public Service Commission that the letter of appointment was made. There were no ceremonies and Ministers to hand over the letters. They came in the registered post. The independence in selection was confined to that done directly by the Commission. But bulk of selections were done by authorities under delegation by the Commission. In the past there were allegations of these agencies came under external influence. One serious allegation was the involvement of a religious faction named catholic action. A good example was in the selection of a departmental interview board, for 19 staff level posts where there were 7 Christians and only 7 Buddhists. Looks equal treatment but in the proportion of religions with 70 percent Buddhists and 9 percent Christians it was suspect. The rumor was that the Catholic Action had a hand. Of course, the 7 Christian officers were outstanding.
The common accusation against the bureaucracy is that it is strangled with red tape. An OECD study revealed that even in OECD countries ‘one of the most common complaints raised by businesses and citizens was the amount and complexity of government formalities and paperwork. Enterprises and citizens spend much time and devote significant resources to activities such as filling out forms, applying for permits and licences, reporting business information, notifying changes etc. In many cases, practices have become extremely complex, or irrelevant and cumbersome, generating unnecessary regulatory burdens – so-called red tape”. The costs imposed on the economy as a whole are significant. When excessive in number and complexity, administrative regulations can impede innovation, create unnecessary barriers to trade, investment and economic efficiency, and even threaten the legitimacy of institutions’ This tale of woes is more relevant to PS of Sri Lanka.
Many governments have taken measures to reduce red tape and paperwork and provide a hassle-free service to the public. IT encourages governments to cut red tape and provide a speedy and seamless service. One stop-shops can reduce substantially time and cost to a client and also provide a common platform to several agencies for an integrated service.
A few countries have introduced legislation and monitoring agencies to reduce the burden of paperwork. U.S. Paperwork Reduction Act (PRA), for analysing and clearing individual government information collection requirements is one such example. The PRA is intended to minimise the amount of paperwork the public is required to complete for federal agencies. Norway also has a sophisticated regime for measuring and monitoring administrative burdens on enterprises. The Register of Reporting Obligations for Enterprises maintains a constantly updated overview of businesses’ reporting obligations .
Several countries have set time limits for response to public requests which can lead to reduced costs for businesses and citizens and can also make administrations more accountable and responsive. Sri Lanka too had a rule that any request from the public should be replied within a certain time. It is no more in practice. Public servants are no more ‘obedient servants’ of the public. They have become minions of the State.
The fault is not only in the procedures but is also with the personnel. PS is accused of not being proactive. Public servants are steeped in rules, conventions and precedents which most times have no contemporary validity. The offhand and presumptuous behavior was noticed even in supervisory authorities towards lower agencies. It was the practice of the then Treasury to respond to serious requests from departments with a curt note saying, ‘treasury does not approve your request” There was rarely an indication of the reason for rejection. Most times bureaucracy finds it convenient to reject than approve.
In a fast-changing world the challenges before a PS become more complex and demanding. In this context, capacity development in the PS needs concerted attention. This has to be addressed at both at the individual level and the institutional level. At the individual level the skills and knowledge of the public servant needs sustained upgrading to meet the changing tasks before them. A skill they cannot neglect today is IT. It is disappointing to note that most departments do not even maintain an updated website. E government could cut costs and time and make the PS more efficient. Public servants also have to make a solid change in their attitude to the service from a rigid bureaucratic to a citizen friendly approach.
Individual development will be of little use unless public institutions also keep pace with the new challenges. This is more difficult and requires dynamic leadership and political support. A good example of such leadership was evident in the change of vision and mission of the former Academy of Administration to that of the Institute of Development Administration.
Sri Lanka PS consists of several independent merit-based career services like the Administrative Service, Engineering Service, Scientific Service and Clerical Service. They are closed services other than in the Administrative Service where on merit and through competitive examinations promotions are made from the Clerical Service.
Traditionally Secretaries of Ministries were selected from the Civil / Administrative Service. But there is now a trend of bringing outsiders to these posts and also for scheduled posts. There is a justification to infuse special talent to the career service in special situations, but it should not be at the expense of continuity and neutrality in the PS. Most important of all, an established non-partisan PS is vital to democracy as it makes it possible to have a peaceful and orderly political succession, and thus genuine pluralism. In this context the PS of Sri Lanka has contributed actively in the conduct of elections in the country where there dedication and integrity when they act under conditions devoid of politics has been amply and repeatedly demonstrated.
A marked deficiency in our merit-based system is the dependence on written examination for promotions. Examinations are the logical method for entry into a merit-based system. But promotions should be on performance evaluation. It should be a reward for good performance. Every officer, especially in the staff ranks should make a self-evaluation at the end of each year which should be commented on by the supervisory officers. These reports should be the basis of decisions on promotion. Many promotional agendas are still based on academic examinations which suit shirkers and not workers. It has been the experience that most members of interview boards try to show their knowledge by asking the candidates exotic questions and are not interested in the candidates past performance. Better leaders in the PS are persons with emotional intelligence and not those who are only equipped with acquired academic knowledge. The only way to identify them is by examining their past performance.
In the general services like the SLAS where officers are shifted frequently from post to post they do not get the opportunity to develop expertise in a subject area. Every officer should be made to serve in several fields specially in the periphery during the first ten years of their service. After which they should be streamed into specialized areas of administration where they become experts in the subject and are able not only deal with routine administration but advise political authorities on policy. This is critical in higher posts like Secretaries of Ministries and Heads of Departments. It is sad to see Secretaries of Ministries rotated from post to post where they do not gather no moss” and have to depend on subject clerks and junior officials on policy issues. Members of general services at the higher levels should become repositories of information in their area of expertise. Such a practice will reduce the present predicament of amateurs as Ministers dependent on generalists as Secretaries and Heads of Departments.
Traditionally, public administration is identified with a system conducted with specialized bureaucracies, on the Weberian model differentiates politics from administration. In such a structure, politicians deal with policy, and the bureaucracy executes the policy. But in the real world of governance, this distinction tends to fade partly due to the failure of the bureaucracy to adapt to the new demands of PS and more due to the interventionist trait of the politician.
In the early 1980s, the disappointment with the Weberian model of PS, the emergence of open market policies and the rise of the private sector made a few Western countries to explore a New Public Management program (NPM). The main thrust of this effort was to diminish the role of the state and adopt private sector management systems. NPM is characterized by client focus, decentralization, and the separation of policy making from implementation. It also stresses on public- private partnerships.
An OECD study points out that People want the state and its public administration to act as a social and economic promoter, capable of ensuring equitable distribution of opportunities, sustainable management of resources and equitable access to opportunities (political, economic, social and cultural). An established public administration has been, arguably, far more vital to economic development in historical fact than either free elections or parliaments. NPM measures success in terms of performance and efficiency. PS of Sri Lanka could immensely benefit from the lessons of experience of the NPM.
In Sri Lanka the Right to Information Act was enacted to foster a culture of transparency and accountability in public authorities and combat corruption and promote accountability and good governance. Article 8 of the act requires every Minister to publish a biannual report each year on
the powers, duties and functions of officers and employees and the respective procedures followed by them in their decision making process;
the norms set for the discharge of their functions, performance of their duties and exercise of their powers;
(iii) rules, regulations, instructions, manuals and any other categories of records, which are used by its officers and employees in the discharge of their functions, performance of their duties and exercise of their powers.
The compilation of such a report would have been useful to the public as well as the organization itself. It is doubtful whether Ministers are following this legal requirement.
In many developed countries electronic governance or e-governance is employed with the use of information technology (IT) for delivering services of the government as well as internal transactions. IT allows paperless on time communication where distance is no hindrance. It cuts red tape and reduces corruption. With fiber optic connections and use of IT administration could be decentralized removing for example the urban domination and the ills of city focus. Most staff can be allowed to work from home. IT also eliminates restrictions on data storage capacity. IT could facilitate knowledge sharing and training of personnel. A prerequisite for successful operation of e-governance is the presence of IT competent personnel and willingness to adopt IT. This is still absent in many government agencies. Although writing done through electronic means is legally accepted e,g RTI ACT 24.(6) many government agencies insist on written letters or facsimile fax” copies. Many government agencies do not maintain up to date websites. Majority of government officials are not proficient in the use of computers.
The advantages of using IT is demonstrated in the success of Estonia’s in the use of modern information and communication technologies in the public sector and governance which has placed the country at the forefront of states that are aiming to modernize their public sector and provide transparent governance. Numerous online public services are available to Estonian citizens and residents, including digital identification, digital signatures, electronic tax filing, online medical prescriptions and,ultimately, internet voting. Driven by convenience, most of the services offer efficiency in terms of money and time saved by the users as well as public officials. For example, selling a car in Estonia can be done remotely with less than 15 minutes, filing an online tax declaration takes an average person no more than five minutes, and participating in elections by Internet voting takes 90 seconds on average.” https://thedocs.worldbank.org/en/doc/165711456838073531-0050022016/original/WDR16BPEstonianeGovec
Sri Lanka Public Service is much maligned due to in most cases where their initiative and dynamism is throttled with antiquated rules and poor leadership and more severely by political interference. In the absence of such constraints and where objectives are clear and the rule of law is supreme the SL PS has performed exemplarily. Their performance in conducting democratic elections many times efficiently and impartially, under difficult conditions has been exceptional.
10/11 Delimitation
In SL, the decentralized administrative units at the grassroots consist of 331 Divisional Secretariats, 14,022 Grama Niladari Divisions, and 276 Pradeshiya Sabhas. The delimitation of these units had been done from time to time by different Delimitation Committees appointed by different authorities. This ad hoc delimitation has resulted in the overlapping of boundaries between these units. There is a need to introduce a more holistic and cohesive scheme of delimitation of these units. For better coordination between DS Divisions and Pradeshiya Sabha, they should be made coterminous. This would need an increase in the Pradeshiya Sabha from the present 276 to 331. This would eliminate any new delimitation. The GN Divisions within the combined DS and PS Divisions could be the basis of the demarcation of wards of the PS. The ideal setting would be for DS Divisions to also be coterminous with electorates. This necessitates a drastic reduction of the number of DS Divisions, but it would bring about better coordination between the political representative and the administrative agency.
The Ambassador of the United Arab Emirates to Sri Lanka, H.E. Khaled Nasser Sulaiman AlAmeri, paid a courtesy call on the Defence Secretary, Air Vice Marshal Sampath Thuyacontha (Retd), at the Ministry of Defence today (13 Aug).
During the cordial discussions, both sides explored avenues to further strengthen bilateral defence cooperation, with a particular focus on defence production, cyber security, information sharing and disaster relief activities.
Ambassador AlAmeri also commended the significant contribution of the large Sri Lankan workforce in the UAE, acknowledging their valuable role in his country’s socio-economic development.
The Defence Secretary extended seasonal greetings to the visiting Ambassador, and to mark the occasion, the two dignitaries exchanged mementos. Deputy Military Liaison Officer, Brigadier Kasun Adhikari, was also present at the meeting
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The Defence Ministry’s statement on the arrest of former Navy Commander Admiral Nishantha Ulugetenne reduces a serious constitutional and security matter to a public relations slogan The law applies equally to all.” That is not a legal conclusion, in the military context equality before the law does not erase jurisdictional boundaries. Military law exists not to place service members above accountability but to ensure that offences committed in service or in connection with service are tried within the statutory framework designed to protect both national security and operational integrity.
At the heart of this case is a decisive legal question Did the alleged offence occur during service and in connection with operational duties? If yes, the Navy Act No. 34 of 1950 Sections 34 and 131 applies without question and the proper forum is a court martial If no civilian courts retain jurisdiction. This is not a matter of preference it is the law
The decisive factor here is not public opinion media noise or even the Defence Ministry’s soundbite. It is the B Report submitted by the CID to the Magistrate’s Court. That document determines how jurisdiction is framed in law. By classifying the alleged offence as a personal matter unrelated to naval service the CID effectively removed the Navy Act from the process and moved the case into civilian jurisdiction.
If the CID’s classification is wrong bypassing military law would be a procedural breach with serious implications for state security. If it is right the Navy stands correctly excluded. But that determination cannot be left solely to the CID, a civilian investigative body operating under the Inspector General of Police most likely advised by a Defence Ministry legal division that itself appears to be civilian in composition. Neither the CID nor the IGP has statutory power to overrule or nullify military jurisdiction created by an Act of Parliament.
The CID is not the supreme authority in criminal matters. It is a branch of the Sri Lanka Police commanded by the IGP tasked with investigating facts not deciding law. Yet here under police administration the CID has stepped outside its investigative role and assumed a power it does not possess deciding that the Navy Act does not apply. This is not mere overreach it is jurisdictional overreach that risks undermining the separation between military and civilian legal spheres.
The danger is twofold. First it creates a precedent whereby any sensitive case involving a senior military officer could be routed through the CID to bypass court martial procedures entirely. Second it allows the IGP’s administrative control to become the de facto gatekeeper of military law by virtue of the CID’s classification in the B Report. This is a direct encroachment on the armed forces’ legal sovereignty.
In its clarification to me the Defence Ministry claimed that the Navy Act does not apply because Admiral Ulugetenne is now retired. That position collapses under the weight of binding Supreme Court precedent.
In SC FR 556 2009 Captain AD Senaratne de Silva v Military Police and others, a bench comprising Priyantha Jayawardena PC J, author B.P. Aluwihare PC J, and P. Padman Surasena J – now the Chief Justice of Sri Lanka, upheld the military’s right to proceed under the Army Act for offences committed during service even if the proceedings or arrest occurred later.
The Court’s logic was clear jurisdiction is determined by when the alleged offence occurred not the officer’s status on the day of arrest or trial. If the act happened in service and in connection with service duties the relevant Service Act Army Navy or Air Force applies in full Retirement does not erase that jurisdiction.
To accept the Defence Ministry’s position would create a dangerous loophole any officer facing allegations could be retired to block the Service Act and avoid court martial. This would strip the armed forces of internal disciplinary control and hand ultimate authority to civilian police undermining the very purpose of the Navy Act.
The triggering of the Navy Act in such cases is not optional. It is a statutory duty. The chain of command is clear.
1. Commander of the Navy: First responsibility to assess if the alleged act is service connected
2. Navy Legal Division: Formal legal review on jurisdictional applicability
3. Defence Ministry: Direction to enforce military jurisdiction where applicable
4. Attorney General: Final legal oversight ensuring statutory compliance
If all four remain silent when a case potentially within the Navy Act is moved into civilian court, the silence is not procedural it is institutional inaction.
The President is both Commander in Chief of the armed forces and head of the civilian executive. When a jurisdictional conflict arises between military law and civilian courts, the Commander in Chief is the only constitutional authority capable of bridging both spheres.
The judiciary hears what is presented before it. It does not initiate charges frame jurisdiction or draft B Reports. That process begins within the executive specifically within the Defence Ministry the CID under police administration and the Attorney General’s Department. The Commander in Chief must ensure that what is presented to the judiciary is legally and jurisdictionally correct before it ever reaches a court.
The Navy Act is not ceremonial. It is a wartime safeguard designed to protect the chain of command classified information and operational sovereignty. A former Director of Naval Intelligence carries classified operational knowledge from the nation’s war years.
Trying such a figure in a civilian court without the protective procedures of a military tribunal risks exposing operational secrets in open court. Civilian trials are not bound by the same security protocols as courts martial. The risk is not theoretical it is operational.
If the B Report’s personal matter classification is correct then the Navy stands rightly excluded. But if that classification is wrong, if the act is linked to service, then what we have witnessed is not just a procedural issue but a significant bypass of the Navy Act under police administration.
This case is not about Admiral Ulugetenne as an individual. It is about the integrity of the chain of command and the protection of national security mechanisms. If a precedent is set that allows the CID to bypass the Navy Act without challenge, future commanders will serve under the shadow of politicised scrutiny knowing that operational decisions made in war could later be second guessed in a civilian dock.
That is not just demoralising It is strategically dangerous.
Jurisdictional boundaries are law not preference: The Navy Act applies if an offence occurred during service or in connection with service
Civilian bodies cannot override military law: The CID and police administration cannot by classification nullify statutory jurisdiction
The commander in chief must intervene: This is a constitutional duty not a political option
National security requires controlled trials: Military courts protect classified material civilian courts risk exposure
The Supreme Court precedent is binding: Service related offences remain under military jurisdiction post retirement
Institutional silence equals complicity: Failure to challenge jurisdictional bypass is a failure of duty
The law is equal for all but the law is also structured. Equality before the law does not mean the abolition of jurisdictional limits. It means applying the right law in the right forum.
If the B Report is correct, the Navy stands rightly excluded. If it is wrong, then the CID’s action under police administration is a procedural bypass of the Navy Act that undermines military sovereignty and emboldens external pressures already seeking to weaken Sri Lanka’s defence structures.
If this is not clarified and resolved without delay, public interest litigation will follow to compel full disclosure of how this procedure was applied by whom and whether any jurisdictional safeguard was bypassed.
In such a war on jurisdiction silence is not neutrality. It is surrender.
This analysis is based on publicly available information, legal provisions, and reported facts at the time of writing. It is intended for public discussion and policy debate, not as a statement of guilt or innocence regarding any individual. All references to persons, institutions, or proceedings are in the context of jurisdictional, constitutional, and national security considerations. The views expressed are solely those of the author and do not represent any final judicial or official determination.
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Colombo, August 13 (Daily Mirror) – Minister Wasantha Samarasinghe should be removed from the Cabinet for violating the collective responsibility of the Cabinet, Navin Dissanayake, a senior UNPer said today.
He said Minister Samarasinghe has actually challenged Prime Minister Harini Amarasuriya by uttering about the SupremeSAT. The Minister should have discussed the matter within the government and presented his reservations on the Prime Minister’s comments rather than uttering things outside. The Cabinet has never acted the way the Ministers are behaving today. This must be the first time in Sri Lanka’s political history that a Cabinet Minister is challenging the Prime Minister,” he said.
My father, late Minister Gamini Dissaayake and late Minister Anandatissa de Alwis were against the move by the J.R. Jayewardene government to abolish the civic rights of late Prime Minister Sirimavo Bandaranaike back in 1980. They expressed their opposition on the move within the Cabinet. However, they did not utter things in public like what had taken place today,” he added.
Minister Samarasinghe should be removed from the Cabinet and one wonders whether President Anura Kumara Dissanayake is ready to do it,” he said.
In the olden days citizens were not allowed to file complaints with the CID. It was a sacred establishment that only investigated serious crimes. The IGP would refer from countrywide Police Stations of serious, unsolved crimes – mostly murders, big time theft etc to the CID.
Basically, the CID was out of bounds for ordinary citizens. People were advised to lodge complaints with the Police station located in their Police division. I believe even today this is the case, but politicians excepted.
The CID used to have the best Police brains. Most of them received training at such prestigious places as the London Metropolitan Police Academy, Scotland Yard, All India Police, The Police Service of Pakistan (PSP), NYPD, AFP etc. Such luminaries like Tyrell Gunathileke, LMP (Lumpy) Silva, RC Thavarajah, SK Iyer, Edward Guanawardane come to mind.
Thanks to the CID, many major murder crimes were resolved. Eg: Turf Club, Kelethhawa, Adeline Vitharana, Pauline De Croos, Mathew Peiris etc.
Today we see politicians (*and sometimes other ‘prominent’ people) running like crazy to the CID with petty personal complaints. For them, CID has become a haven from public criticism.
Some of them arrive at the CID with scores of media (print and electronic) and cameramen, Youtubers etc. These media people wait outside of the CID to interview the politician upon his/her lodgement of the complaint.
Most of these complaints are about the politician’s minor personal grievances – largely defamation. As they get a freehand to talk to the media, it is not incorrect to state that these politicians use the CID’s Complaint Lodgement Process to whitewash themselves. They could very well be the guilty party, but through the publicity they receive from the CID complaint, they try to attract public sympathy.
Also, through the CID complaint, they try to estop public discourse about any bad conduct alleged against them.
Freedom of communication is a right given to the public by the Constitution. By making a CID complaint, Politicians try to suppress this?
Does the CID investigate these complaints made by the politicians? Your guess is good as mine.
Running to the CID has become a pastime of the present-day politicians. The writer is not aware of incidents where this has happened under the previous governments (he may be wrong).
Chandrika, Mahinda, Gota and Ranil are the leaders who have faced worst communications against their reputation (both in libel and slander).
But, to their credit, they never ran to the CID like the current NPP lot. These past leaders stood tall against the brickbats thrown at them. Sometimes they initiated civil action against those who allegedly defamed them. That was the correct course of action to take.
Ranil, perhaps the most progressive Liberal Leader of our time, was instrumental in decriminalizing defamation. He did this in 2002. Until then, a two-year jail sentence was possible under the Penal Code.
As defamation is a civil offence, prima facie our Police seems to have no jurisdiction to investigate the same. Thus, what the politicians currently do may amount to using power that they have to obtain an ulterior advantage. It could also be an abuse of power.
What they must do is to file law suits against the alleged perpetrators in civil law courts. This is what all other citizens presently do.
Of course there is the Online Safety Act 2023. This covers online misinformation, cyber bullying and defamation. Herein, perpetrators must have acted with intention to cause actual harm. The Defendant may argue truth as a defence.
But, CID should not be the forum to complain online offences.
There is so much work at CID’s hand. They are investigating the Easter Sunday bomb attack. Nearly 50 people have been gunned down by the underworld this year alone. Colombo resembles a mini Chicago sometimes these days.
Wild Elephants are being killed by villagers unmercifully in large numbers. What is the government doing about this?
What about the Container Gate scandal?
The politicians must realise that by constantly lodging their petty complaints with the CID, they are depriving the CID from doing much more important work.
We hear sometimes that complaints have been lodged with the CID by the politicians’ lawyers. How can a 3rd party lodge a Police complaint on behalf another? The aggrieved party must attend the applicable Police station and state their complaint, and provide the Police with a full statement of facts. The aggrieved person themself must sign the complaint and leave the Police station.
The politicians should behave like ordinary citizens. If they expect special treatment from the Police – like what is happening now, that is not good governance.
All our politicians, especially the 225, must be exemplary in character. We are a traditional society. People expect good, moral, decent behaviour from our leaders/politicians.
The politicians must realise that they are role models – they are looked to by others as examples to be imitated. If they behave badly, the society that emulate them may also become bad. It will be very bad for our children. Worldwide, politicians who have misbehaved like engaging in illicit sexual affairs, extra-marital affairs, anti-social behaviour, vulgar conduct have mostly been severely punished by the people at elections.
If they can’t behave honourably and decently, such politicians must quit politics.
The National Anti-Human Trafficking Task Force (NAHTTF) issues an urgent public warning in light of alarming information on new trend wave of human trafficking activities targeting Sri Lankan nationals.
Reportedly, organized trafficking syndicates operating cyber scam centers im South East Asia without effective government regulating contents have launched a large-scale recruitment drive. Information suggests these networks are attempting to lure and transport over 50,000 individuals to these scam compounds, from all countries and Sri Lankans are among the primary targets.
As per the information received, five new scam centers are reportedly being set up in remote areas. Drawing on recent information and established patterns of exploitation, traffickers are using misleading online advertisements and fraudulent job offers to attract job seekers. These operations remain highly active, with several Sri Lankans confirmed to have been trafficked to these locations in the past few weeks.
In addition to above, NAHTTF notes, that several victims had been attracted and initially recruited to these scam centers while working in Dubai. Further, the rest of the Sri Lankans among them have been directly recruited from Sri Lanka through the tactic of using fake job advertisement in social media platforms.
Victims rescued from these scam centers, reveal harrowing experiences of torture, including electric shocks, raising serious concerns for the safety and well-being of those trapped at present.
Therefore, NAHTTF urges the general public to exercise of extreme vigilance when responding to online job advertisement in South East Asia especially in Myanmar, Thailand, Cambodia and Laos, and follow the legitimate procedures to go safely abroad for employment purposes though registration with the Sri Lanka Bureau of Foreign Employment (SLBFE). Families and communities are also encouraged to remain vigilant and report any suspicious recruitment activities to the relevant authorities in Sri Lanka.
Reaffirming its commitment to empowering Sri Lankans on their academic journeys beyond borders, NDB Bank is pleased to announce its latest partnership with Student in Aus Education Consultants. The strategic collaboration, marked by the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) on 25th July 2025, aims to further simplify access to global education by offering a comprehensive suite of financial solutions to students and their families.
The official signing took place at NDB Bank’s Head Office, with Mr. Sanjaya Perera, Senior Vice President – Personal Banking & Customer Experience, and Mr. Vinjaya Jayasinghe, Assistant Vice President – Branch Operations, representing the Bank. Signing on behalf of Student in Aus Education Consultants were Directors Mr. Charith Ranasinghe and Ms. Shafrina Rizvi.
Through this partnership, aspiring students will gain streamlined access to financial tools essential for studying abroad, including tailored education loans, student file facilities, foreign remittance solutions, and advisory services. The collaboration is designed to support students at every stage of their overseas education journey—from application and visa processing to international settlement.
NDB Bank’s continued expansion of strategic alliances with reputed education partners reflects its broader vision of making overseas education a seamless, stress-free experience for Sri Lankans. With Student in Aus Education Consultants offering expert guidance on academic placements and visa procedures, students can now benefit from a truly integrated support system—both academically and financially.
Speaking on the occasion, Sanjaya Perera remarked, NDB Bank understands that overseas education is one of the most meaningful investments a family can make. By partnering with trusted institutions like Student in Aus Education Consultants, we aim to ease the financial planning process and be a part of every student’s success story. It’s a reflection of our purpose: to be there for all the moments that matter.”
NDB Bank continues to lead with purpose-driven financial services, offering support that goes beyond traditional banking. This partnership is yet another step in enabling Sri Lankan students to access global opportunities with confidence, backed by the stability and expertise of one of the nation’s most trusted financial institutions.
NDB Bank is the fourth-largest listed commercial bank in Sri Lanka. The Bank was awarded Domestic Retail Bank of the Year – Sri Lanka and Sri Lanka Domestic Project Finance Bank of the Year by Asian Banking and Finance Magazine (Singapore) Awards 2024, and was named Sri Lanka’s Best Bank for Corporates at the Euromoney Awards for Excellence 2024. NDB is the parent company of the NDB Group, comprising capital market subsidiary companies, together forming a unique banking and capital market services group. The Bank is committed to empowering the nation and its people through meaningful financial and advisory services powered by digital banking solutions.
Proposed ‘Gambling Regulatory Authority’ law inadequate”
The Committee on Public Finance (CoPF) has said the proposed Gambling Regulatory Authority (GRA) law will not be adequate to meet the challenging task of overseeing the thriving casino industry.In spite of discussions held since Nov., 2022 when the CoPF formally called for the establishment of dedicated GRA, the relevant stakeholders hadn’t been able to reach a consensus, political sources told The Island.
When The Island sought a clarification from CoPF Chairman and SJB MP Dr. Harsha de Silva yesterday (10), he emphasised that the parliamentary committee on several occasions had urged the previous government (Wickremesinghe-Rajapaksa arrangement) and the incumbent National People’s Power (NPP) government to secure expert advice from jurisdictions that run well-regulated casinos, like Singapore, they weren’t interested.
The CoPF Chairman said that the issue at hand had attracted fresh attention in the wake of the opening of the country’s first integrated resort City of Dreams, an 800-room hotel that housed what the operators called a world class gaming area with license to operate for 20 years.
John Keells Holdings (JKH) has teamed up with Melco Resorts & Entertainment Limited (Melco”) developer, owner and operator of integrated resort facilities in Asia and Europe. President Anura Kumara Dissanayake opened the facility on August 2 that received approval from the Finance Ministry during Ranil Wickremesinghe’s tenure as the President and Finance Minister. NPP and JVP leader Dissanayake currently holds the Finance portfolio.
The CoPF relentlessly pushed the Finance Ministry to finance the process by September 2023 and then by March 31, 2024.
The Wickremesinghe-Rajapaksa government granted approval for the JKH-Melco project though CoPF on Nov 24, 2022 declared that no new licenses would be issued until the formulation of GRA. Sources said that this announcement was made when CoPF considered two extraordinary gazette notifications on casinos but weren’t approved.
Sources alleged that the Finance Ministry pathetically failed to adhere to decisions taken by CoPF to ensure the speedy finalisation of the process to ensure the setting up of GRA in line with international standards. However, for want of the required commitment of the Finance Ministry, the CoPF couldn’t achieve what it wanted to.
CoPF has expressed serious concern over the issuance of what it called an unduly long 20-year casinos license to JKH-Melco operation.
At the moment, the lucrative casino industry here operates under an outdated and fragmented legal and
regulatory framework, primarily governed by: (i) Casino Business (Regulation) Act, No. 17 of 2010 and (ii) Betting and Gaming Levy Act, No. 40 of 1988.
Regardless of the enactment of the 2010 legislation, the corresponding regulations for licensing and designated operational areas hadn’t been issued for over a decade, those who represented CoPF have pointed out.
Bally’s, Bellagio, Casino Marina, and Stardust currently operate under provisional registrations, all of whom registered within a five-month window in 2013, sources said. According to sources regardless of promises to increase revenue by taxing casinos, Sri Lanka lacked the required tools to monitor the industry’s financial operations, including online platforms.
According to the CoPF and Finance Ministry, there had been undue delays on the part of the Attorney General in examining the GRA Bill. Sources pointed out that the AG’s Department had taken as many as 15 months to review the Bill and all stakeholders needed to discuss ways and means of avoiding such delays in finalising critically important Bills.
Colombo, August 11 (Daily Mirror) – One time JVP Politburo member Nandana Gunathilake who defected from the party, said the JVP, which encouraged former President Mahinda Rajapaksa to resort to a military solution to the war, should not make him vulnerable to the threats of the Tamil Diaspora by curtailing his privileges.
He told the media today at Dodanduwa in Hikkaduwa that it was a matter of serious concern that the former President to be a target of the Tamil separatist movements through the proposed act to reduce the privileges of former presidents at the instigation of the Tamil Diaspora and several members of the JVP Politburo.
I am hopeful that the government will not ignore our views in this regard. The JVP, prior to the presidential election, formed a collective of retired military personnel. Its leader was Thoradeniya, who assassinated the JVP leader Rohana Wijeweera.”
Tamil Diaspora is largely instrumental in bringing the National People’s Power (NPP) into power. The government taking much interest in excavating Chemmani mass grave has now shown a similar interest in Suriyakanda and Hokandara mass graves.”
In 2010, the JVP backed Field Marshal Sarath Fonseka and campaigned to elect him to power. It is not a long spell of time from 1989 to 2010. Security force personnel who were called Ranaviru prior to the Presidential and General Elections are now mere soldiers for the President.”
If Sarath Fonseka were victorious, Ranil Wickremesinghe would have been the Prime Minister. It was Sarath Fonseka who suppressed the JVP movement in Trincomalee.” We believed in a struggle against imperialism and the movement heading for socialism. Former President Mahinda Rajapaksa resolved a massive political crisis created by the separatist movement.”
We believed in a struggle towards socialism against imperialism, and it was with this in view that we formed the UPFA government, and the JVP held several cabinet portfolios,” he further said.
Former Deputy Minister of Fisheries Resources Development Chandrasena Wijesinghe addressed the media conference.
Colombo, August 11 (Daily Mirror) – Ceylon Teachers Union (CTU) General Secretary Joseph Stalin today revealed findings from the 2024 Auditor General’s report, released in May 2025, which stated that 139 vehicles registered under the Education Ministry Secretary’s name are not in the possession of the Ministry.
He further noted that the report detailed the Education Ministry’s spending of Rs. 5,219 million during 2020, 2021, and 2022 on education reforms, while the National Institute of Education (NIE) spent Rs. 350 million. However, the report highlighted that these reforms were not implemented as planned and that a clear road map for the reforms had not been prepared even by March 26, 2025.
Addressing the media, Stalin said the report observed low school attendance not only among Advanced Level (A/L) students but also Ordinary Level (O/L) students, even after the NPP came to power. The report urges the Ministry to develop sustainable solutions to address this issue and criticized the lack of focus on O/L and A/L students in school education.
Stalin pointd out that low attendance is partly due to students attending private tuition classes instead of regular schools. He urged the government to curb tuition classes and strengthen formal school education, noting that no reforms have addressed this problem so far.
Therefore, the Education Ministry must intervene in the issues.
Colombo, August 11 (Daily Mirror) – The research unit of the Civil Aviation Authority of Sri Lanka (CAASL) is preparing to recover 19 aircraft said to have been hidden by King Ravana in 25 locations.
The unit has confirmed several specific details about the 25 identified locations.
Investigations have revealed that these aircraft were allegedly manufactured by King Ravana and flown using mercury and other chemicals.
Findings suggest the aircraft are hidden in caves and underground in mountainous areas, including Kurunegala, Wariyapola, Sigiriya, Dambulla, Badulla, Mahiyangana and Hambantota.
The investigation also indicates that there was a designated person responsible for operating King Ravana’s aircraft.
Commenting on the matter, Nuranga Adhikari, Manager of the Research, Development and Planning Division of the CAASL, said the only way to definitively determine the locations of these aircraft is through carbon testing. However, he noted that a single carbon test costs more than Rs. 2 million and that Sri Lanka lacks the technical capability to conduct such tests, which can only be performed in the United States.
The search project began in 2020 but was halted midway due to insufficient government funding. At the time, a special committee was appointed to gather information, with the participation of Indian scientists. Archaeologist Professor Raj Somadeva was also a member of the committee but later resigned.
Many local experts were involved in the project, but setbacks forced its suspension. Adhikari noted that if even one aircraft had been found, it could have sparked a major debate about the Wright brothers’ place in history as the inventors of the world’s first airplane.
He confirmed that plans are underway to restart the search within the next year.
Colombo, August 11 (Daily Mirror) – Opposition Leader Sajith Premadasa is ready to form a new government together with progressive factions of the National People’s Power (NPP), Samagi Jana Balawegaya (SJB) MP Sujith Sanjaya Perera said today.
It looks like the NPP government is shaken by the SupremeSAT drama. Opposition Leader Sajith Premadasa is ready to form a new government together with the progressive factions in the government if the need arises,” the MP said.
MP Perera said the effort by Minister Wasantha Samarasinghe may be to put Prime Minister Harini Amarasuriya into difficulties and show that she is an incapable person.
A court in Puttalam today (11) ordered that the ilmenite processing site located in Aruwakkalu adjacent to the Wilpattu National Park boundary, be placed under police custody until further investigations are completed.
The order was issued by Puttalam District Judge Mihil Chirantha Sathurusinghe following a report presented to court regarding the operation of the site without proper legal authorization within a highly sensitive environmental zone.
The local company operating the site had reportedly been conducting ilmenite processing without valid approval from the Geological Survey and Mines Bureau (GSMB), while also disregarding orders issued by the Department of Archaeology. Based on a complaint received, the site was recently raided by the Walana Anti-Corruption Unit.
Presenting facts before court, Police Inspector R.A. Janitha Kumara of the unit had stated that the ilmenite processing had caused severe environmental damage. He explained that, without proper GSMB approval, the company had constructed a large reservoir and four smaller water bodies at different locations, leading to significant environmental harm.
During the court session, the attorney representing the company did not challenge the claims made by the prosecution. However, he stated that the company had made multiple attempts to obtain the necessary permits from the GSMB and that legal proceedings regarding the matter are currently pending before the Court of Appeal.
After considering all presented facts, Judge Sathurusinghe ordered the site to remain under police custody until investigations are concluded. He further ordered that the case be recalled on September 11.
The Bribery Commission and the Colombo Crimes Division are actively trying to arrest three high-profile individuals: former Minister Rajitha Senaratne, former Member of Parliament Venerable Athuraliye Rathana Thera, and Thusitha Halloluwa, a former Director of the National Lotteries Board and Director General of Public Relations for former President Ranil Wickremesinghe.
The Bribery Commission has been investigating Senaratne for a month for an alleged corruption case from his time as the Fisheries Minister.
However, they have so far failed to find any leads on his whereabouts.
The Colombo Crimes Division has also been carrying out operations for several days to arrest Venerable Rathana Thera and Halloluwa, but has not been able to find them or any information on their locations.
‘Before you study the economics, study the economists!’
e-Con e-News 03-09 August 2025
The USA & England have escalated covert attacks on shipping: Russia-India-China routed vessels have mysteriously caught fire, most recently near Oman and Kerala, which affected Sri Lanka too). The merchant media is meanwhile gasping at the USA’s 50% tariffs on India’s exports, for buying Russian oil. The ruling classes in both Sri Lanka and India are too embedded in the USA and Europe (who know too much about their financial and personal shenanigans) to truly challenge such blatant interference in our policies. The media, for instance, is happily ignoring India’s ‘first-ever’ collusion in the 3-week-long US-led Talisman Sabre 2025 multilateral drills in the so-called ‘Indo-Pacific’ seascape. These ‘drills’ are exercises in provocation & espionage in countries’ backyards, and the US tariffs on trade are the opening shots in a new world war. You could call it World War 4, if you wish, though their world wars have begun for us a long long time ago, from at least 1492 or 1505, and never seem to cease unless actively thwarted. Undeterred, the whites hope another world war will not only sustain their imperialist domination, but also extend their dictat, and they wish to embroil us in their fun & games…
*
We are being given 2nd row seats (1st row reserved) to witness the white slaughter in Palestine, with the whole history of white settler colonialism, from Africa to the Americas to Asia and the Pacific, being unreeled before us in the bloodiest, most barbarous technicolor. It is another lesson for the world, if we don’t know our own history… Watch how the English media in Sri Lanka indulges in a whitewash that also forgets duplicitous colonial practices in Sri Lanka, by faithfully reproducing their pale master’s voice, claiming that England & Canada & France & Australia have supposedly ‘broken’ with their US master on the horrors in Gaza, even as they keep providing the machineries of mass murder, etc. They wish at some later date (hoping any true Palestinian leadership is decimated by then) to recognize a ‘final’ ‘2-state solution’ in Palestine. This media claims the Europeans have supposedly displeased the giant threat-manufacturing machine in Washington, whose promotion of the myth of Christian Zionism – 40% of US military forces are ardent believers in an imminent Armageddon to herald & hasten the 2nd coming of a whiter Jesus Christ – lies at the roots of invading the former Ottoman Empire (now West Asia) – i.e., if they ever need divine justification for mass murder.
*
When not whingeing about the US tariffs, despite the ‘spurious’ mathematics involved, and despite a lack of transparency on what concessions Sri Lanka has had to make to the USA, much of the merchant media in Sri Lanka this week also spent their excess electrons & pulp on the so-called ‘Education Reforms’. The media’s owners – the merchants & the moneylenders – all seek to undermine the last vestiges of ‘free education’. Look at the advertisements for private education both at home and abroad in the media. Meanwhile, this ‘free education’ policy – just like a hobbled independence bereft of economic sovereignty – was only ‘granted’ by the English when they were under siege by Japan & Germany, and a rising USSR. The media also studiously ignores that the universities in a supposedly independent Sri Lanka have failed to transform the country, let alone the educational system.
One of the proposed ‘reforms’ is the almost-disappearancing (yes, this spelling is deliberate) of history from future curricula.
‘The last 200 years of world history has been
a major historical anomaly & all historical
anomalies come to a natural end. It is quite
natural for China & India to become number
1 & 2 again sometime in the 21st Century.’
– Kishore Mahbubani (see ee Economists,
There is No Need to Reinvent the Wheel)
*
Indeed, history is a major challenge as ee Focus concludes SBD de Silva’s ‘Introduction’ to his classic The Political Economy of Underdevelopment. Last week’s ee excerpt ended with SBD’s assertion that the challenges with which his book were concerned, spanned ‘an area almost too vast to be dealt with in a single study and too complex for final answers’. De Silva links underdevelopment in our world to development elsewhere: for ‘a study of underdevelopment unlike that of development is also beset by comparisons of ‘what is’ & ‘what might have been’…’ No intelligence, natural or artificial, has sought to extrapolate, what if Sri Lanka has not been successively invaded for 100s of years, and what if we had prevented the imposition of the colonial import-export plantation fraud that has de-industrialized us?
Indeed, Colombo’s merchants invited the Singaporean eminence Kishore Madhubani (see above), at Rs50,000 a ticket, to hear him assert the world is due for a planetary correction, though he did briefly repeat the hoary nonsense that ‘Ceylon’ had been a model for Singapore’s founding leaders – they certainly did not extend an import-export plantation economy, but heavily industrialized, albeit under the English & US cannon.
SBD de Silva’s ‘Introduction’ (see ee Focus) confronts such confusion by noting that a framework to examine the roots of our discontent ‘inevitably includes the process of colonial expansion & imperialism’. He was very well aware we are up against the hegemon of a daily mis-education by the school system and the media, and yet asserted,‘the burden of proof is on those who say that things are not what they seem to be’. He however pointed out the need for learning history to understand ‘how economic & non-economic facts are related to one another’, while emphasizing that history is not a matter of a chronological laying out of dates and personages. It requires going back & forth in time while traversing societies & world, and examining in particular the advances (including the horrific ones) made by the white settler states – understanding the monkey through ‘the man’:
The rudiments of more advanced forms of a social phenomenon
that are present in the less advanced forms, explained Marx,
can be understood only by studying the more advanced forms.
– SBD de Silva
*
‘The rubber industry should manufacture
high-performance niche products such as
resistance bands for therapeutic use,
instead of shipping raw rubber.’
– Mangala Gunasekera, Elasto Group
(see ee Economists, Trade with US would fall
heavily due to tariff burden, simulation shows)
*
So, what’s the deal? It is dismal that such ‘band-aids’ are proposed, without even mentioning where the machinery to make such ‘niche’ goods would come from. Still rarer is the media that exposes the export game as far cruder than a hunter’s bloody leg trap. Rather, the news continues to grovel & salivate at the supposed US ‘reduction’ of their inflated tariffs. And even rarer is the media that deconstructs the so-called exports that the US government is sniveling about.
*
‘Over 25% of Sri Lanka’s exports
& nearly 60% of its apparel shipments
are destined for the US market… [involving]
the livelihoods of over 350,000 garment sector workers’
– see ee Economists, No Final Tariff Deal Yet
between Sri Lanka & US, Says President
*
While Indian media is highlighting that the US in reality gets a surplus of $30-35bn from India, it is curious that no nationalist or socialist economists (we cannot expect the media-economist mafia to do this) have calculated the inputs (from needles, pins, threads, textiles) imported for this sacred garment fraud imports, as well as the machines. Where is Japan’s Juki, and England’s Courtaulds, etc? How much of these garments involve paying IPR (intellectual property rights) royalties etc? Welcome to silence.
We apparently haven’t learned any lessons: like a drug dealer/pimp who keeps beating up a junkie/prostitute and then gets them to buy more dope and offer more free sex, the oligarchs want us to keep going back for more, cos the USA has dirt on them, knows where they hide their money, is aware of their weird peccadilloes… This also accounts for the silence, after years of unrelenting propaganda, by the US- & EU-funded media economists & thinktanks (Advocata, Verite, etc), on the glories of free trade, and the perils of import substitution.
*
• Carmen, the Silent Digital Soap-Opera – Meanwhile, EU Trade Commissioner Carmen Moreno is ‘unable to give details’ of the EU agreement on US tariffs which s/he claims ‘is quite strange because the EU is normally transparent’. Really? Apparently, the EU ambassador is being ‘vague’ because the trade deal allows new US attacks on EU tech rules. The US claims the EU will not go ahead with so-called network fees, demanding that the largest online platforms, mostly US-owned Netflix, YouTube, etc, should ‘chip in for the cost of Europe’s telecom infrastructure’. In the 19thC opera, Carmen is a fiery ‘gypsy’ floozy who is killed by her jealous lover, a Spanish soldier. The EU ambassador maybe afraid such a fate awaits any disclosure of the EU’s submissions. Meanwhile, the US has ordered their diplomats to launch a lobbying blitz against the European Union’s Digital Services Act (DSA). The EU says they haven’t agreed to change the law, and claims the law will make the online environment safer and fairer, while the US accuses them of censoring” US citizens and multinationals. US tech companies like Facebook and Instagram parent Meta, Twitter (X) and Google-owner Alphabet are also opposing the EU law. The US conveniently does not calculate such ‘services’ as their exports, which squeeze out local technology and content. Meanwhile we gain a glimpse into an unfolding tragi-comedy with Indonesia agreeing to support a global moratorium on digital customs duties, also forcing Intellectual Property Rights provisions to ‘traditional knowledge, genetic resources, and compulsory licences’ that will allow US and EU corporations to ‘exploit traditional knowledge without consent or compensation and avoid compulsory licensing measures.’
*
‘Thorium in Sri Lanka is found mainly in alluvial deposits, beach sands,
& heavy mineral placers, with key sites in Galle, Balangoda,
Pulmoddai, Kondrugala, & gem-rich soils in Sabaragamuwa.
Monazite-rich stream sediments exist along the Bentota River;
Mannar deposits are less prominent. Further exploration could
reveal more viable sources. Although unextracted today, the
Geological Survey operated a pilot plant from the 1950-70s.’
Sri Lanka’s NPP government plans to phase out coal and embrace nuclear power in its 2025-44 energy strategy, notesVinod Moonesinghe in his exploration of ‘A Thorium-based Path to Sri Lankan Energy’ (see ee Focus). Noting the risks, Moonesinghe also points out that ‘Sri Lanka lacks nuclear experience & faces a shortage of skilled personnel due to weak education infrastructure & high staff turnover’. Yet he believes Sri Lanka’s thorium reserves ‘offer a once-in-a-generation opportunity to leapfrog into clean, scalable nuclear energy’.
*
Which brings us to an excellent though intricate tribute to SBD de Silva’s legacy by Dhanusha Gihan Pathirana, who sharpens de Silva’s insights into the tea plantation bamboozle in Sri Lanka. Pathirana examines how the plantation ‘elite’ led by the Planters’ Association of Ceylon (PAC) manipulates ‘tea pricing and productivity’ to suppress the wages of a largely female workforce (tho the merchant media loves to crow about gender equality, etc). Instead, brilliant London- & US-educated accountants help a ‘feudal landlord class’ to divert the surpluses into speculation and luxury consumption. Pathirana examines the history of wage demands and the basis of a workforce made insecure by various forces to submit to oppression, while being miscalled‘idle’ etc.
*
Sri Lanka’s feudal elite, thinly disguised
in modern capitalist clothing, appears
unaware of this reality…
*
The Planters’ Association claims workers are ‘unproductive’, yet they have failed to introduce mechanization, using all kinds of excuses and ‘false data’. The PAC maintains the colonial system of backward labor-intensive practices. Pathirana provides ample evidence that Japan, whose teas enjoys high prices, enables the use of machines. Interestingly, he also points to the inventions by the University of Moratuwa of mechanical harvesters that preserve quality. More importantly, Pathirana offers insight into a path by which workers, whose children exhibit high malnutrition, may pursue a political solution. He echoes SBD de Silva’s assertion that plantations, which occupy large acreages, offer no ‘scale’ advantages over the largely Sinhala smallholders, who are dominated by exports merchants who manipulate auctions.
*
US Fed monetary policy has little effect on the economy:
what matters are profits & their effect on investment
– M Roberts (see ee Economists, Tariffs & the US Economy)
*
‘Rent is not profit. Profits are part of value. That was what Marx contributed.
He said it is true that the industrialist makes more money than it costs
him to actually hire labor. But, this surplus value is the industrialist
contribution to production of organizing industry or creating markets
for it creating supply. And so profits are an element of value.
Rent is not an element of value.’ – Michael Hudson (ee Economists,
From Babylon to Wall St – How Bankers Make You Poor)
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We are awed by de Silva & Pathirana’s unparalleled & deft deployment of Marxist analysis, yet note Pathirana’s use of such anti-Marxist terms like ‘elite’ and the variable use & misuse of such concepts as ‘profit’, ‘rent’, ‘exploitation’ ‘feudal’, ‘aristocracy’, ‘bourgeoisie’ and ‘capitalist.’ Elite has been usually promoted by white academe as a replacement for ‘ruling class’; and while Pathirana casts doubt on these merchants as capitalists or modern bourgeoisie (Marx was precise in using the term as a machine-making class), Pathirana also calls them ‘feudal’ – which in Marxist terms refers to a phase in a capitalist trajectory, and a class pregnant with the possibility of modern machine-making capitalism. Also, while Pathirana invokes plantation and production practices in Japan and Kenya, he curiously does not mention Assam whose tea history also dates back to English colonialism, and is now being subject to the ‘unchecked expansion’ of such monocultures (see ee Agriculture, Assam).
Pathirana’s essay was first published in India’s reputed Economic & Political Weekly (EPW), and it is a tragedy there exists no media in Sri Lanka who would highlight such piercing commentary by premiering its publication (The Social Scientists Association (SSA)’s Polity remains a careerist retirement home for London, & US-trained academics). While Indian commentators refer to the plantations in India’s ‘suppression of indigenous forest-based livelihoods’, Pathirana fails to mention that the plantations in Lanka were imposed after the invasion and genocidal repression of the Sinhala people of Kanda Uda Rata. Any solution to the criminal oppression of tea plantation workers must not escalate the divisions between the original owners of the land and those whose sweat & blood have enabled the flourishing of a criminal class of merchants & moneylenders that rule the whole country. Any solution also has to take into the account the ‘geopolitical’ games played by India’s ruling class, who were complicit in the English attacks of the socialist leadership of the estate workers in the 1930s etc, reinforcing their Indian as opposed to Lankan identity, while modern day NGO evangelicals choose to call them ‘Malaiyahagam – Upcountry Tamils’ to reinforce fissiparous separatist tendencies.
While Pathirana notes the role played by the well-known tea companies in Sri Lanka, he fails to mention the huge English multinational Unilever in both Sri Lanka and India. Nawaz Dawood’s book Tea & Poverty, while not exhibiting the theoretical depth of an SBD de Silva, exposes the interlocking linkages between banks & agency houses & plantations & shipping interests, etc. The recent supposed withdrawal by Unilever from tea plantation management in Kenya, etc, and their sale to a US Citibank agency CVC Capital, as well as the sale of James Finlay’s plantations to the notorious Sri Lanka finance house LOLC, is also not mentioned. Still, ee will continue to reproduce this pathbreaking analysis of a backward largely alien merchant oligarchy.
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• Our history teachers claim there was a US ‘civil war’ (it was anything but civil) waged by an ‘enlightened’ US North to free the African ‘slaves’ in the US South. Few mention that the great Abraham Lincoln sought to deport all the enslaved back to Africa, and refused to free them or arm them until the very last moment. At that same time, the US was also waging a war on Chinese workers who had built the railroads, evicting them from 100 cities – (they went back to China and helped build a modern China). Indeed, in this ee Focus’ continuing excerpting of Gustavus Myers’ 1917 History of Tammany Hall we see how the rulers of the USA’s great ‘metropolis’, the ‘north’s’ New York, fully supported ‘the slave power’ in the USA’s plantation south.
Myers refers to but provides no discussion at all of a brief US historical moment called ‘Reconstruction’, which was a very energetic attempt by a ‘free’ African people after the US ’Civil War’, to rule themselves after centuries of enslavement. New York’s rulers however supported the ‘political supremacy of the white race’ even while claiming the battle was one of ‘capital against labour’. The alliance between Wall Street and the defeated slave owner would fund the rise of the terroristic Ku Klux Klan, who took over after overthrowing ‘Reconstruction’, to retain the plantation system in another form.
In this Tammany excerpt, which exposes the link between elections and the ‘spoils’ of office, we also see the first references to speculations in real-estate, in iron mines and railways, and the infamous US financier Jay Gould and the ‘great stock frauds… breeding a disastrous panic’. Gould inspired F Scott Fitzgerald’s novel The Great Gatsby, Gould’s mansions and social scene on Long Island’s Gold Coast, where the Goulds later had a large estate built, provided the setting for Fitzgerald to contrast the lifestyles of old wealth and the nouveau riche…
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Branded for Life – This ee also reproduces a dubious list of Sri Lanka’s ‘top’ 100 brands, by a London company, which curiously omits (see ee Random Notes) such luminaries as England’s Unilever, CIC, P&O, Standard Chartered Bank, US Citibank, Proctor & Gamble, Anglo-US Ceylon Tobacco Company, Swiss Baur’s and Nestles, Maersk, Brandix, MAS, Akbar Bros, Jafferjee Bros, Hirdaramani, etc. Are they not ‘Sri Lankan’ by now? Is London being ‘racist’? – a label that has been hilariously turned on Sinhala Buddhists, who have never invaded or enslaved other peoples. The London company instead lists such multinational fronts and major importers as Keells, Cargills, Hayley’s, Singer, Hutch, Tokyo Cement, Lanka Indian Oil Corporation, etc.
We not only lack or fail to highlight & honor modern researchers, but have ignored the crying need for an economic history of Sri Lanka, that would locate and expose such flim-flam. Such brand-recognition is supposed to incentivize a constantly award-winning & prize-giving oligarchy to greater mercantile & usurious heights, who don’t know or don’t care about the English word, ‘machine tool…’; instead they prefer to remain touts & tools themselves, to enable recolonization….
Real and staged crises present opportunities to reorient, innovate and think outside the box. Trump’s tariff ‘shock’ presents Sri Lanka’s business sector and national policy makers an opportunity for short, intermediate and long term economic and industrial policy shift out of the current neocolonial, services heavy, economic model.
At this time, the focus of discussion should be on Development of New Products and New Markets by businesses and entrepreneurs, in partnership with state agencies in order to grow the economy out of the Eurobond- USD debt trap and International Monetary Fund bailout business.
Sri Lanka has abundant fishery and high value Graphite and Minerals including Rare Earths such as Zircon, as well as, Titanium ilmenite, phosphates etc. These are low hanging fruit with huge potential to grow the national economy through value addition and integration into regional supply chains.
Firstly, it would be important to develop new export products by leveraging existing resources Marine and Mineral resources, industrializing and value adding in these sectors.
Secondly, identifying and targeting wealthy Central and West Asian markets, particularly, the post-Soviet Republics and Shanghai Corporation countries, as well as, Middle Eastern countries to export high value Sri Lankan goods would be beneficial. Sri Lankan businesses also need to pivot to the BRICS and their allies to grow the economy- particularly China and Russia.
Asia is the growth hub of the world and the West is in Decline at this time. South and Southeast Asian markets already have similar products, so targeting wealthy Central and West Asian markets where transport costs would be manageable makes sense.
Third, Sri Lanka has high quality agricultural products but not large quantities, or an economy of scale. Hence, priority should be given to identifying wealthy niche markets for traditional high quality products like spices, Cinnamon, pepper, tea, rubber and coconut products, and for new marine (fishery), and mineral exports, such as, Graphite, Zircon, Titanium, phosphates, etc.
Tariff Hype but Narrow Discussion Sans Data Analysis
Despite and perhaps because of the much hyped Trump Tariff ‘shock” and possible economic disaster scenarios in the corporate media echo chamber and among think tanks, there has been a narrow focus on negotiations with Washington by the Sri Lanka Government team.
There has been inadequate analysis of the country’s export products and export market profile also given questions about data accuracy, to assess any real impacts of the Trump tariff hike.
While the US makes claims that it is the biggest export market of Sri Lankan goods and hence the biggest contributor to foreign exchange earnings, the European Union (EU) has made a similar claim!
By making such claims, both the EU and US seek to exert influence in the country, to control its development trajectory and resources. Such claims have shaped the geostrategic island’s current pattern of dependent development on former Imperial powers, economic underdevelopment and failure to industrialize.
At a recent discussion at the Center for Poverty Analysis it was surmised that the Trump tariffs would have marginal impact on primary commodity exports such as tea, rubber and coconut sectors as these mainly go to other markets. However, women in the garment sector were the most vulnerable and likely segment of the population to face hardship if at all due to the Trump tariffs.
Data accuracy regarding the volume of Sri Lankan exports and their markets were necessary for an adequate assessment if any of the Trump tariffs impacts it was noted. This, also in the context of concerns about some firms that are heavily import dependent such as apparel, under-invoicing, tax evading and parking foreign currency overseas. The latter practice had also contributed to Sri Lanka’s staged first ever Sovereign Default in 2022 amid the Aragalaya chaos and regime change operation.
The Geopolitical Economic Big Picture and BRICS
At this time of a global Trump tariff shocks, we need lateral and critical thinking and analysis of the big picture of Geopolitical Economics. However, national media and think tanks have mainly focused on un-transparent negotiations in Washington by President Anura Kumara Dissanayaka’s inexperienced team.
India, one of the founder countries of BRICS how hit with fifty percent tariffs had a duel or parallel track negotiation process with Washington. The first track focused on national economic issues (e.g. protecting local agriculture and dairy from multinational Agri-business including GMO seeds were top priority of the Modi govt. also for its own survival). Sadly, Sri Lanka has already conceded these sectors that are crucial to national food security to the Bill Gates and Tony Blair Foundations!
The second track of Indian Govt tariff negotiations focused on geopolitical issues, which included Indian Govt. purchases of Russian oil amid Trump’s threats of secondary sanctions, as well as, defense corporation.
The BRICS challenge of de-dollarization and trading in local currencies, and other Geopolitical considerations clearly are the subtext of the global Tariff Shock. Leading BRICS countries, Brazil, China, India, have been hit with over 50 percent tariffs.
President Trump is fighting to maintain the hegemony of the US Dollar as the Global Reserve currency, increasingly, of last resorts, given a whopping $ 36 trillion US deficit as economist and author of Super Imperialism, Professor Michael Hudson has noted. Hudson has also pointed out that the tariffs are set to compound odious debt traps in Global South countries, and make debt servicing impossible. Hence, the only solution is for debt trapped countries in the Global South to refuse to pay predatory bondholders rather than remain in the IMF’s Odious debt restructure rabbit holes.[i]
At this time, questions remain as to what geostrategic security concessions were made by President Anura Kumara Dissanayaka’s team that went to Washington vis-à-vis the Trump’s Tariff Shock red herring? Did the NPP regime promise protection of Israeli Spy-der webs and Container smuggling operations in Sri Lanka to turn it into an Indian Ocean hub for Project Stargate’s Artificial Intelligence infrastructure and data centers? This would include surveillance of the Indian Ocean energy, trade and submarine date cable routes for the coming Third World War on China, the BRICS and Global South.[ii]
Was it an accident that in the same week that the Trump Tariff hype reached a crescendo and announcement was made that Arkia Israel Airlines would resume flights to Sri Lanka in September 2025? Flights from Israel has been suspended in May 2024 as the War in Palestine escalated. The Tel Aviv – Colombo route would be operated by Gullivair Airbus A330-200 aircraft it was announced. This, despite mounting opposition by citizens to Israeli land grabbing, shady business deals and tourism in strategic and environmentally vulnerable coastal and hill top areas, not to mention the Chabad house phenomenon.
The Ceylon Chamber of Commerce: An Absence of Imagination, Innovation and entrepreneurialism?
It is indeed laughable that the NPP regime in Colombo continued to import Salt and canned fish this year despite grand promises to develop the economy. Moreover, Sri Lanka is surrounded by the Indian Ocean, which is full of salt and fish and the country should have industrialized to export volumes of these products.
However, rather than address the issue of under-development and lack of industrialization, there has been a blame game between the business sector and the government. The private sector seems to prefer to passes the buck to the State, rather than provide leadership as the ‘Captains of Industry’ should.
There has been an abject failure by the private sector for decades to leverage existing resources such as Graphite, Salt or fishery– even to supply domestic markets, never mind export markets and industrialization.
In the context it bears repeating that the Trump tariffs present an opportunity for Sri Lanka’s so-called ‘captains of industry’ and the AMCHAM colonized Ceylon Chamber of Commerce to re-orient, and pivot to develop New Products and New Markets outside Euro-America by leveraging existing resources in the country.
The Trump Tariff Shock also presents the NPP regime in Colombo an opportunity for long and short term strategic economic planning to enable leveraging Sri Lanka’s valuable marine and mineral resources, such as, fishery and Graphite.
The failure to industrialize these sectors with a National Development Plan and an over-reliance on services and low end manufacturing (tourism and apparel), and exporting labour and brain draining the country in order to generate foreign exchange is reflective of a colonial dependency economy syndrome among the business community (so-called Captains of Industry) and National Policy Makers, which have contributed to the current ISB-IMF debt trap bailout business.
Private Sector: A Colonial Dependency and Hand Out Mentality?
When I briefly worked as a Consultant for the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC), on a ‘Constraints to Growth Analysis’ I was often asked by international experts: why is Sri Lanka, which is so well endowed in resources and talent so lacking in innovation, i.e. industrializing and leveraging existing resource? My answer would be that the so-called business community has been, sadly, an engine of de-industrialization and under-development because it remains highly dependent on Euro-American Development Aid, advisors and experts, and markets due to a colonial dependency mentality.
This dependency syndrome of the business sector and failure to recognize the real Wealth of the Nation is also true to a great extent of the local economic think tanks, research community, and policy makers, albeit with a few exceptions.
The Business community constantly plays a blame game and passes the buck to the government, as if the GoSL signing Free Trade Agreements with all and sundry is the solution to their lack of entrepreneurship.
We may call this phenomenon, geostrategic Sri Lanka’s Neocolonial Hang Over– in the Asian 21st Century because the country has long suffered from being a Donor Darling” with too many Economic Hitmen as ‘advisors and experts’!
A foreign Aid and Experts dependency mentality is clear in the current context of the failure to recognize the rise of the BRICS and the need to Pivot to Asian Markets which are the growth centers of the world at this time by the SL Chamber of Commerce and NPP policy makers alike.
Foreign Aid Dependency and Indian Ocean Resources in the Faux Anthropocene
The Marine and Mineral sectors should have been industrialized long ago and Sri Lanka should be exporting and not importing Sea Salt and canned fish. However, these sectors have been deliberately kept small scale and artisanal” while Distant Water States like France and Japan send industrial scale trawlers to harvest Indian Ocean fishery resources.
Maintaining under-development in the Fisheries Sector in Sri Lanka has been in line with OECD Donor agendas and in the name of ‘environmental protection’ in line with the United Nation’s faux Anthropocene, which is also being staged with geoengineering of climate disasters and the use of weather modification technologies, cloud seeding/ cloud bursts, heat dome, etc. generated with HAARP and Directed Energy Weapons (DEW).
The UN climate catastrophe and Anthropocene narrative increasingly serve to de-develop, de-industrialize and impoverish Global South countries in the name of environment protection”, while facilitating the financializing of Mother Nature and the marketing of Green and Blue Bond scams at this time.[iii] The result is depriving famers and fishers access to their tradition farmlands, forests and ocean areas in the name of ‘environmental conservation’ with a gravy train of conservation NGOs as the Transnational Institute Report on Ocean Grabbing shows.[iv]
Meanwhile, development aid donors of the industrialized countries particularly, the EU, Japan, Korea, Taiwan, China, etc. harvest Indian Ocean fishery as data from the Indian Ocean Tuna Commission show. [v] Although, these are not Indian Ocean countries they take out Indian Ocean fisheries resources with industrial fishing fleets and trawlers while Indian Ocean rim countries like Sri Lanka remain impoverished and engaged in ‘artisanal fishery’ – purportedly to save the environment and prevent over-fishing of the Indian Ocean![vi]
France has claimed almost 20 percent of the Indian Ocean Sea bed and valuable mineral resources at UNCLOS using colonial islands like Mayotte and Reunion and is in a dispute with Mauritius at this time. So too, a part of Sri Lanka’s extended Exclusive Economic Zone has been claimed by France, whose International development agency- AFD- funds various think tank research projects on fisheries and the Blue Economy to distract from EU’s Indian Ocean Grabbing![vii]
Performance of Private Sector
Sri Lanka has valuable minerals, Graphite, Zircon, Titanium etc. but only mineral sands are exported and there is little value addition or attempt to integrate into regional and global value chains and no contribution to the country’s GDP and export income.
There needs to be a broader critique of the SL Business Community and Ceylon Chamber of Commerce, which remains historically colonized, heavily Aid Dependent, mentally and materially, (including GSP Plus and minus). The ‘Captains of industry ‘seem focused on pleasing Euro-American donors with a few products (garments, primary commodities, tourism, etc.) and unable to pivot to Asian markets with value products leveraging local resources rather than imported raw materials like textiles for garments.
Simultaneously, there is need for concerted critical analysis of the performance and practices of the Business Sector in the county. At this time there is a need for Government and Think Tanks to develop a fuller analysis of the challenges and opportunities that the Trump Tariff shock presents, particularly, a Geopolitical Economic discussion that relates the micro-level to the Macro global dimensions. Clearly, the need of the hour is for proactive identification of new markets in Asia and Global South countries which are increasingly the growth hub of the world at this time for high value export products from Sri Lanka.
Finally, the Trump tariffs underline the need for countries like Sri Lanka to eschew US dollar dependency which exposes them to Exogenous Shocks and related currency manipulation, and have a long term strategy towards de-dollarization. In short, pivot away from neocolonial dependency and increasingly an IMF-fueled USD debt entrapment culture.
[ii] Israel, the forefront of the new, global and electronic Nazism by harry Davies and Yuval Abraham https://www.defenddemocracy.press/israel-the-forefront-of-the-new-global-and-electronic-nazism/
[iii] How much Debt can the Ocean Sustain? https://www.tni.org/en/publication/blue-finance
‘A million calls an hour’: Israel relying on Microsoft cloud for expansive surveillance of Palestinians
Revealed: The Israeli military undertook an ambitious project to store a giant trove of Palestinians’ phone calls on Microsoft’s servers in Europe
One afternoon in late 2021, Microsoft’s chief executive, Satya Nadella, met with the commander of Israel’s military surveillance agency, Unit 8200. On the spy chief’s agenda: moving vast amounts of top secret intelligence material into the US company’s cloud.
Meeting at Microsoft’s headquarters near Seattle, a former chicken farm turned hi-tech campus, the spymaster, Yossi Sariel, won Nadella’s support for a plan that would grant Unit 8200 access to a customisedand segregated area within Microsoft’s Azure cloud platform.
Armed with Azure’s near-limitless storage capacity, Unit 8200 began building a powerful new mass surveillance tool: a sweeping and intrusive system that collects and stores recordings of millions of mobile phone calls made each day by Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank.
Revealed here for the first time in an investigation by the Guardian with the Israeli-Palestinian publication +972 Magazine and Hebrew-language outlet Local Call, the cloud-based system – which firstbecame operational in 2022 – enables Unit 8200 to store a giant trove of calls daily for extended periods of time.
Microsoft claims Nadella was unaware of what kind of data Unit 8200 planned to store in Azure. But a cache of leaked Microsoft documents and interviews with 11 sources from the company and Israeli military intelligence reveals how Azure has been used by Unit 8200 to store this expansive archive of everyday Palestinian communicatio
According to three Unit 8200 sources, the cloud-based storage platform has facilitated the preparation of deadly airstrikes and has shaped military operations in Gaza and the West Bank.
Thanks to the control it exerts over Palestinian telecommunications infrastructure, Israel has long intercepted phone calls in the occupied territories. But the indiscriminate new system allows intelligence officers to play back the content of cellular calls made by Palestinians, capturing the conversations of a much larger pool of ordinary civilians.
Intelligence sources with knowledge of the project said Unit 8200’s leadership turned to Microsoft after concluding it did not have sufficient storage space or computing power on the military’s servers to bear the weight of an entire population’s phone calls.
Several intelligence officers from the unit, which is comparable to the US National Security Agency (NSA) in its surveillance capabilities, said that a mantra emerged internally that captured the project’s scale and ambition: A million calls an hour”.
The system was built to sit on Microsoft’s servers behind enhanced layers of security developed by the company’s engineers with Unit 8200’s instructions. The leaked Microsoftfiles suggest that a large proportion of the unit’s sensitive data may now be sitting in the company’s datacentres in the Netherlands and Ireland.
Disclosures about the role of Microsoft’s Azure platform in the surveillance project come as the US tech giant faces pressure from employees and investors over its ties to Israel’s military and the role its technology has played in the 22-month offensive in Gaza.
In May, an employee disrupted a keynote speech by Nadella in an act of protest, at one point yelling: How about you show how Israeli war crimes are powered by Azure?”
After the Guardian and others revealed in January Israel’s reliance on Microsoft technology during the war in Gaza, the company commissioned an external review of the relationship. The review, Microsoft said, had found no evidence to date” that Azure or its AI products were used to target or harm people” in the territory.
A senior Microsoft source said the company had held conversations with Israeli defence officials and stipulated how its technology should be used in Gaza, insisting Microsoft systems must not be employed for the identification of targets for lethal strikes.
A signal intelligence–gathering installation of Unit 8200, an Israeli intelligence corps unit responsible for collecting signals intelligence (Sigint) and code decryption, located on an observation point on the Israeli-Lebanese border near Rosh HaNikra crossing also known as Ras al-Naqoura crossing. Photograph: Eddie Gerald/Alamy
However, Unit 8200 sources said intelligence drawn from the enormous repositories of phone calls held in Azure had been used to research and identify bombing targets in Gaza. One of the sources said that when planning an airstrike on an individual located within densely populated areas where high numbers of civilians are present, officers would use the cloud-based system to examine calls made by people in the immediate vicinity.
The sources alsosaid use of the system had increased during the campaign in Gaza, which has killed more than 60,000 people in the territory, the majority of whom are civilians, including over 18,000 children.
But the initial focus of the system was the West Bank, where an estimated 3 million Palestinians live under Israeli military occupation. Unit 8200 sources said the information stored in Azure amounted toa rich repository of intelligence about its population that some in the unit claimed had been used to blackmail people, place them in detention, or even justify their killing after the fact.
When they need to arrest someone and there isn’t a good enough reason to do so, that’s where they find the excuse,” one said, referring to the information stored in the cloud.
A Microsoft spokesperson said it had no information” about the kind of data stored by Unit 8200 in its cloud. They said the company’s engagement with Unit 8200 has been based on strengthening cybersecurity and protecting Israel from nation state and terrorist cyber-attacks”.
At no time during this engagement,” they added, has Microsoft been aware of the surveillance of civilians or collection of their cellphone conversations using Microsoft’s services, including through the external review it commissioned.”
‘Tracking everyone, all the time’
The driving force behind the cloud project – described by one source as a revolution” within the unit – was Sariel, commander of Unit 8200 between early 2021 and late 2024. A career intelligence officer, Sariel was a strong advocate for projects of this scale.
Following a 2015 wave of deadly so-called lone wolf” attacks by young Palestinians, many of whom were teenagers unknown to the security services, Sariel had overseen a significant expansion of the volume of Palestinian communications that Unit 8200 intercepted and stored.
His answer was to begin tracking everyone, all the time”, said an officer who worked for Sariel at the time. Instead of traditional surveillance of specific targets, Sariel’s project relied on mass surveillance of Palestinians in the West Bank and used novel AI methods to extract insights.
Suddenly the entire public was our enemy,” said another source who worked on the project, which sought to predict whether someone represented a threat to Israeli security.
One system developed in this period, sources said, scanned all text messages between Palestinians in the West Bank and assigned each message a risk rating based on an automated analysis of whether it included words deemed to be suspicious. Still in use, the system – known as noisy message” – can identify text messages in which people talk about weapons or discuss wanting to die.
When Sariel became Unit 8200 commander in early 2021, he prioritised forging a partnership with Microsoft that would give the unit the ability to go further and capture and analyse the content of millions of phone calls each day.
At his meeting with Nadella later that year, Sariel does not appear to have explicitly stated his plan to store Palestinian phone calls in the cloud, referring instead to sensitive workloads” of secret data, according to internal records of the meeting.
But documents suggest that Microsoft engineers understood the data stored in Azure would include raw intelligence, including audio files, while some Israel-based Microsoft staff, including alumni of Unit 8200, appear to have known about what the unit hoped the joint project would achieve.
You don’t have to be a genius to figure it out,” one source said. You tell [Microsoft] we don’t have any more space on the servers, that it’s audio files. It’s pretty clear what it is.”
Microsoft’s spokesperson said: We are not aware of Azure being used for the storage of such data.” They said Unit 8200 was simply a customer of its cloud services and Microsoft did not build or consult with Unit 8200” on a cloud-based surveillance system.
However, in early 2022, Microsoft and Unit 8200 engineers worked quickly and closely together to design and implement advanced security measures within Azure to meet the unit’s standards. The rhythm of interaction with [the unit] is daily, top down and bottom up,” one document noted.
Among Microsoft staff, the project was shrouded in considerable secrecy and engineers were told not to mention Unit 8200 by name. Under the plan, vast troves of raw intelligence material would sit in Microsoft’s datacentres overseas.
A signals intelligence–gathering installation of Unit 8200 located near an observation point in Misgav Am, a kibbutz close to the border with Lebanon in northern Israel. Photograph: Eddie Gerald/Alamy
Files suggest that by July this year, 11,500 terabytes of Israeli military data – equivalent to approximately 200m hours of audio – was held in Microsoft’s Azure servers in the Netherlands, while a smaller proportion was stored in Ireland. It’s unclear if all of this data belongs to Unit 8200; some may belong to other Israeli military units.
According to the files, Unit 8200 informed Microsoft that it planned to move over timeas much as 70% of its data, including secret and top secret data, into Azure and was willing to push the envelope” with the kind of sensitive and classified information that intelligence agencies normally held on their own servers. They’re always trying to challenge the status quo,” one executive noted.
Asked about Sariel’s meeting with Nadella, Microsoft’s spokesperson said it is not accurate” to say the CEO provided his personal support for the project with Unit 8200. They said Nadella attended for 10 minutes at the end of the meeting” and there was no discussion” of the content of the data the unit planned to move into Azure.
However, according to internal Microsoft records of the meeting seen by the Guardian, Nadella offered support for Sariel’s aspiration to move so much of the elite surveillance unit’s data into the cloud, described earlier in the meeting as including sensitive intelligence material.
Satya suggested that we identify certain workloads to begin with and then gradually move towards the 70% mark,” one record states. It adds that Nadella said building the partnership is so critical” and Microsoft is committed to providing resources to support.”
‘The solution to our problems’
Several months before meeting Microsoft CEO Nadella in 2021, Sariel had published a book about artificial intelligence under a pen name – revealed by the Guardian to be the spy chief’s – in which he urged militaries and intelligence agencies to migrate to the cloud”.
Known within Israeli intelligence as a tech evangelist, Sariel valued what he characterised to colleagues as a friendly relationship with Nadella, according to a senior intelligence source. Yossi bragged a lot, even to me, about his connection with Satya,” they said. (Microsoft denied that Nadella and Sariel had a close relationship.)
He sold [the partnership] internally and got a huge budget,” another former intelligence colleague said. He claimed it was the solution to our problems in the Palestinian arena.”
Sariel declined to comment and referred the Guardian’s questions about the project to the Israel Defence Forces. An IDF spokesperson said its work with companies such as Microsoft was based on legally supervised agreements”.
They added: The IDF operates in accordance with international law, with the aim of countering terrorism and ensuring the security of the state and its citizens.”
After publication, the IDF issued a new statement. We appreciate Microsoft’s support to protect our cybersecurity. We confirm that Microsoft is not and has not been working with the IDF on the storage or processing of data.”
For its part, Microsoft viewed the multiyear partnership as a lucrative commercial opportunity. Executives anticipated hundreds in millions of dollars in revenue and an incredibly powerful brand moment” for Azure, according to the files.
[Unit 8200’s] leadership hopes to expand the mission-critical work tenfold in the coming years,” one executive noted.
As Unit 8200 began to make use of Azure’s storage capabilities in 2022, intelligence officers rapidly grasped the new powers at their disposal. The cloud is infinite storage,” one source familiar with the system said.
Calls – which include calls made by Palestinians to international and Israeli numbers – are typically retained in the cloud for about one month, though storage can be scaled up, allowing the unit to keep hold of calls for longer periods of time when needed, several intelligence sources explained.
This allows the unit to go back in time and retrieve the phone conversations of people who become of interest, they said. Previously, surveillance targets would need to be pre-selected for their conversations to be intercepted and stored.
Several of the sources insisted the cloud-based system had prevented deadly attacks against Israelis. One said saving lives” of Israelis was the principal motivation behind Sariel’s vision for the system. But it notably failed to prevent the Hamas-led attacks of 7 October 2023 in which nearly 1,200 people were killed in southern Israel and 240 people were kidnapped.
In the wake of the attacks, Sariel faced criticism for his apparent prioritisation of addictive and exciting” technology over old-fashioned intelligence methods, which some critics said contributed to the disaster. Sariel resigned last year, accepting responsibility for 8200’s part in the intelligence and operational failure”.
In the ensuing war in Gaza, the cloud-based system pioneered by Sariel has been put to frequent use alongside a series of AI-driven target recommendation tools also developed on his watch and debuted by the military in a campaign that has devastated civilian life and created a profound humanitarian crisis.
Israel’s destruction of Gaza’s telecoms infrastructure has reduced the volume of phone calls in the territory but sources said theinformation held in thecloud remained useful. According to one, enthusiasm for the system had grown among intelligence officers working on Gaza as the war progressed and they saw the military is heading towards long-term control there”.
Addressing the nation on live television on 5 August 2025, Bangladesh’s interim government head Dr Muhammad Yunus announced that the south Asian nation will go for 13th Jatiya Sansad polls by the first half of February next year (Bangladesh election authority later specified first week of February for the national event), where he also opined that a key condition for a thriving democracy is the freedom of the press. Marking the anniversary of the 2024 July-August mass uprising (that paved the way for installing lone Bangladeshi Nobel laureate as chief adviser of the caretaker government after dethroning Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina), Dr Yunus exclaimed that looking at the past days it becomes clear that the biggest and earliest obstacle to free journalism was the government itself. Delivered in native Bengali language, well known ‘banker to the poor’ reminded how 5 August last year witnessed the culmination of a massive uprising of students and common Bangladeshi nationals in the Muslim dominated country of 170 million people against the fascist regime in Dhaka.
Disclosing various initiatives for reforms in various sectors affecting the lives of Bangladeshi citizens, Dr Yunus stated that his government had taken a number of steps for removing all the obstacles to open up the space for criticism. Now, anyone, whether through mainstream or social media, can freely criticize the government. Even state-run media can now openly criticize the authorities, something that was unthinkable in the recent past. To ensure accountability among journalists, the government has restructured the Press Council of Bangladesh and initiated various types of training to empower the journalists so that they can counter disinformation. Mentioning about the Digital Security Act (later replaced by the Cyber Security Act), which was eventually weaponised by the past autocratic regime against media persons, Dr Yunus pronounced its repeal and hence all cases filed against journalists under this law were declared withdrawn.
However, the ground situation in the populous country remains disturbing while taking consideration of legal and social safety to media persons. The recent murder of Md Asaduzzaman Tuhin, who was associated with the Mymensingh-based newspaper Dainik Pratidiner Kagoj, reflected the gory picture of media freedom and safety in Bangladesh. Tuhin (40), was hacked to death by a group of assailants on the evening of 7 August at a local tea stall in Gazipur locality near Dhaka. According to the preliminary police findings, the scribe was targeted solely because of his filming a crime in progress relating to an extortion bid by some goons. The captured CCTV footage from a nearby building indicated that Tuhin sustained serious injuries and died on the spot. The police later recovered the body of Tuhin, who left behind his wife Mukta Akhter, two sons and many other close relatives.
Next evening, the police arrested four individuals (Md Ketu Mizan, his wife Parul Akhter alias Golapi, Md Swadhin, Sumon and Al-Amin) in connection with the murder of Tuhin, who was popular for media reporting on public interest issues. Later two more (Shah Jalal, Foysal Hassan) were arrested. Gazipur also witnessed another incident of journo-attack on 6 August, when Anwar Hossain of Dainik Bangladesher Alo newspaper was physically assaulted by a group of miscreants in broad daylight. Hossain was reportedly investigating an extortion bid by some individuals from local vendors and auto-rickshaw drivers in his locality. Earlier, another journalist (Khandaker Shah Alam) was killed by a released prisoner (who believed Alam’s reporting in Dainik Matrijagat finally put him in jail) on 25 June in Dhaka’s Nabinagar locality.
Attacks on journalists are not limited to physical harm (in Bangladesh). According to a recent Transparency International Bangladesh report, from August 2024 to July 2025, as many as 496 journalists were harassed, 266 were implicated in murder cases related to the July Uprising, and three were killed while on duty. During the same period, eight newspaper editors and 11 news chiefs from private television channels were dismissed, and at least 150 journalists were terminated,” said an editorial of The Daily Star, a prominent English newspaper, published from Dhaka. It also added that following the fall of Hasina’s autocratic regime, public expectations were high for a freer, less politically influenced media, but the current administration has yet to take visible steps to ensure press freedom.
Days back, the New Delhi-based Rights and Risks Analysis Group (RRAG) released a report claiming that a dramatic escalation in attacks, legal harassment, and official intimidation of journalists and media houses were recorded in Bangladesh since August 2024. Made public on the first anniversary of Hasina’s ouster from Dhaka, the report added that till July 2025, no less than 878 journalists were targeted (431 scribes faced physical attacks or criminal threats) under the reign of Dr Yunus-led interim government. RRAG director Suhas Chakma also revealed that nearly 195 criminal cases were filed against journalists over the past year. State institutions like Bangladesh Financial Intelligence Unit, which was not earlier misused against media personalities, had issued notices to 107 journalists over the past year, stated Chama, adding that at least 167 journalists were also denied press accreditation, many of whom allegedly maintained affiliations with the Hasina regime.
Besides homegrown media organizations, the Paris-based Reporters Without Borders (RSF) also called on the authorities ‘to bring to justice as soon as possible those responsible for these heinous crimes (murder of Tuhin and assault on Hossain), presumed members of armed gangs, and to take measures to guarantee the safety of journalists’. The Geneva-based Press Emblem Campaign (PEC) also demanded swift actions from the government in Dhaka to apprehend the perpetrators. PEC president Blaise Lempen, while condemning the crimes, exclaimed ‘it was pathetic how a journalist had to lose his life for journalistic works to expose the criminals’. He urged the interim regime to ensure the safety of journalists as Bangladesh prepares for national elections early next year.
President goes after petty cash issues, ignores major scandals such as e-visa fraud
Challenges President to submit Auditor General’s report on e-visa scam
SJB will be in opposition for 30 years if Sajith Premadasa remains leader
Says President’s closest buddy is involved in it
The United Republican Front (URF) leader Patali Champika Ranawaka, speaks to Daily Mirror on the way forward for Sri Lanka in the midst of U.S. reciprocal tariffs, the perceived moves by the government and its silence on major corruption issues.
Excerpts:
QThe reduction of U.S. tariffs on Sri Lankan goods is seen as an achievement by the government. Do you recognize it?
It is a kind of an achievement because Sri Lanka is on a competitive footing with the countries such as Vietnam, Bangladesh, Cambodia and India as well. But there is a hitch. The White House declaration – executive order by President Donald Trump – outlines that the countries like Sri Lanka had agreed or were on the verge of agreeing on meaningful trade and security arrangements during tariff negotiations. It means there are things agreed with – already signed or to be signed. The government should reveal these things. When President Anura Kumara Dissanayake visited China, he signed 15 MoUs. We do not know what they are. He signed seven MoUs with India. Everyone is in the dark. When they (the government leaders) were in the opposition, they fought for the Right to Information Commission (RTI). When MoUs were signed with India, the Foreign Affairs Minister cited the RTI as the place to get information. But, RTI remained defunct.
The U.S. allies like Japan and South Korea made additional trade deals. For example, Japan, the Philippines, South Korea and the U.S. are a bloc virtually called Asian NATO. Every time the U.S. waged any war, Japan paid the bill including for the one in Afghanistan. Still, Japan had to open up its market for rice and vehicles from the U.S. They are forced to buy U.S. gas and oil, which could be $ 150 billion per annum. They are forced to invest $ 500 billion in the U.S. That is how Japan was treated in tariff negotiations. The U.S. lifted sanctions on Myanmar in return for rare earth mining.
QDo you suspect that the Sri Lankan government has made some strategic compromises to the U.S.?
I do not know. I may suspect the LNG (Liquefied Natural Gas) sector. It is a difficult thing for the government. The last government led by Mr. Ranil Wickremesinghe offered it to a China – Pakistan consortium. In the short run, he even signed an agreement with India to purchase LNG. If the U.S. asked Sri Lanka to buy LNG, even the previous agreement reached by Mr. Basil Rajapaksa with U. S. firm New Fortress Energy might be opened up. The government will be fixed if the U.S. asks for LNG purchases. Another is oil purchases from the U.S. We cannot use U.S. crude oil because our refinery is somewhat different. Still, they might ask us to buy refined products such as diesel and petrol. Like for Pakistan, they might ask for exploration of our graphite, oil and gas resources. I welcome U.S. involvement in upstream development of the petroleum sector. We discovered such resources 15 years ago. Nothing has happened after. We do not know the terms. The U.S. might even ask us to sign a security agreement. The government must reveal what kind of agreements it signed or is going to sign. The government is trying to conceal these things from the general public. Yet, they will come out because President Trump is inclined to open up his mouth. That is his nature.
QIn your view, why did the government want to keep the RTI Commission defunct all this while?
They want to hide things. When there was a request made under RTI, the government even declined to reveal the names of those serving in the President’s Media Division (PMD). It is undemocratic and against the Constitution.
QWhat is your analysis of the government’s way of handling political situations?
The government is having a few strategies. One is to establish the JVP as the only party in the country.
QIs it heading in the direction of one-party rule?
Yes, it was asserted by JVP General Secretary Tilvin Silva. After he visited China, he said 18-20 years are needed to develop the country. The Chinese lesson is that there should be no opposition in the country if it is to develop. The ruling party is slowly and gradually taking control of all social organisations at grassroots levels including youth organisations, Dayaka Sabhas of temples.
They said earlier that though they took over the government, the state was not theirs. They are now trying to capture the state – the party state
QWill it be successful in your view?
I do not know. It depends on the democratic institutions of this country. They are now trying to control the powers of the non-JVP Members of Parliament including the Prime Minister. That is very clear.
QHow do you substantiate your argument?
We can see how the Prime Minister is openly harassed. Her credibility was totally tarnished because a senior minister contradicted her in Parliament.
QYou mean to say that divisions within the government are becoming prominent now?
Yes. It is going to happen soon. The IMF programme is the obstacle. It will last till 2027. Till then, the President will press ahead with what Mr. Ranil Wickremesinghe initiated. The current policies related to education, electricity, petroleum and casino are against what they professed when in the opposition. They were critical of these policies then. They are buying time till 2027. After that the party – the JVP – will try to capture the state by crippling the opposition. Opposition members will be jailed or crushed. The democratic institutions must resist this trend now.
Today, the parliamentary opposition is stifled.
QWill it trigger a public backlash then?
I do not know. When Mr. Gotabaya Rajapaksa came to power in 2019, he commanded the support of 6.9 million people. At the 2018 local government election, his party got five million votes. He improved it by another two million votes after that. Now it is a different scenario. The JVP started off with 400,000 votes. In 2024, they increased the base by an additional 6.4 million votes and won. It is like a pyramid turned upside down. People who voted for Gotabaya Rajapaksa sided with the JVP. However, at the latest local authorities’ election, one-third of people who voted for the JVP earlier, abstained or cast their ballots differently. In case of elections to the provincial councils at this moment, they know their vote share is only 30 percent. So, they need time to strengthen the party.
First, they cast aside non-JVP members elected under the Malimawa symbol (compass). In the formation of the local government administrations, they were particular to select JVP members only.
Next, they will crush the opposition on petty-cash cases. They are not going after big scams like the Central Bank bond scam, e-Visa fraud and e-passport issue. We see serious crimes being committed in the energy sector. Yet, they go after petty cash issues.
On July 12, 2024, the Committee on Public Enterprises (COPE) submitted a report to the House asking for the Auditor General’s report on e-Visa scam. This report is still missing. Why? That is because the first buddy of the President is implicated. I am challenging the President to reveal the Auditor General’s report. This is a Rs. 4 billion fraud. There is no action being taken regarding the unlawful release of containers. It is a clear violation. The Criminal Investigation Department (CID) has now become an arm of Pelawatte (The place where the JVP is headquartered). The CID is still unable to get a statement from Minister Wasantha Samarasinghe implicated in a court case.
QAgainst the backdrop, what are you going to do in politics?
We are going to form an alliance outside Parliament. We will give chances to new people who are professionally qualified.
QWhy are you leaving out traditional parties?
We are not talking about parties but individuals.
QWhat do you think of the traditional parties which are now in the opposition?
If Mr. Sajith Premadasa remains the leader, Samagi Jana Balawegaya (SJB) may remain in the opposition for another 30 years. SJB has very good leaders, though. They are not given a chance to lead.
QEconomic indicators remain positive under the current government. What do you think of its economic performance?
We have something called ‘potential output’. The country is growing, with or without the government, if other things such as capital market, labour market, electricity and weather factors remain intact.
Therefore, any growth below five percent can be seen as natural growth, according to former Deputy Governor of the Central Bank W. A. Wijewardane. It is a natural growth.
QWhy isn’t there a growth rate of more than five percent?
That is because the government is doing nothing. Remittances from workers will be around $ 7 billion. Earnings from tourism will be around $ 4 billion. That is a positive sign. These are temporary gains. These are vulnerable sectors. Mr. Wijewardane said Sri Lanka should have a nine percent growth rate. I think it is unachievable. Unless, otherwise, we are going to be bankrupt again.
QThere are no corruption allegations against the Ministers of this government. Do you recognize it?
Who knows that there is no corruption? Why don’t they reduce fuel and electricity prices? They curtailed renewable energy output for the benefit of diesel, coal mafia only.
Corruption is taking place in a different way. When the President visited some countries, he declared expenses related to air tickets only. Who sponsored? We learn later about a 35-year tax concession for a company operating from that country. This is corruption in a different way. The President is still not investigating the e-Visa fraud.
Sri Lanka’s youth clubs should not be drawn into political agendas, former President Ranil Wickremesinghe has stated.
The former President, while addressing concerns about the growing politicisation of youth organizations and on-going unrest among youth clubs, emphasized the importance of resolving issues through dialogue.
Making a special statement, former President Ranil Wickremesinghe proposed the Subject Minister to engage in discussions with both former and current officials of the youth clubs to find a solution that satisfies all parties.
About 40 years ago, in response to the demands of Sri Lankan youth, I initiated the Youth Society network. My intention was to create a space in villages for young people to come together for recreation, arts, and other activities, while also developing their skills and talents. This initiative was quite successful, and today, young people are contributing in many sectors of society,” he said.
Former President Wickremesinghe noted that over the past four decades, the youth society has grown into a major youth movement in the country. While some individuals from these societies have entered politics, others are active in business and other sectors — all contributing to the advancement of the original program.
However, he raised concern over the recent constitutional amendments proposed by the Minister, which have sparked widespread protests.
Currently, a National Convention is being held, and I hear there are plans for further protests afterward. If this continues, the youth society movement could collapse. Protesters claim the amendments are intended to politicise the youth societies.”
He urged that the matter be resolved peacefully and internally before it escalates further:
This must be resolved without dragging it further. I urge the Minister to meet with both the protesting former officials and the currently appointed district representatives, and work toward a solution that everyone can agree on.”
We must all understand that this youth society movement should not be politicised. This is something the Minister and both groups should come together to protect. If not, this could spiral into a political issue and eventually involve political parties — which would ultimately destroy the youth society movement.”
My only wish is to protect this valuable youth movement. That is why I decided to share this message with you,” the former President added further.
Hambantota Port has been wrongly portrayed as a symbol of China’s debt trap diplomacy.” In truth, it was a strategic infrastructure investment, misrepresented by local and foreign actors with geopolitical agendas. Here are the facts.
Hambantota Port: A Factual Q&A
Historical Maritime Significance
· The name Hambantota” is believed to derive from Sampan-thota,” meaning port of sampans—for small trading boats historically used by Chinese and Southeast Asian maritime traders.
· The area has been a long-standing maritime hub, with active trade links predating European colonial rule and extending across the Indian Ocean trade routes.
Origins of the Project
· Hambantota was a long-held dream of the southern region.
· The project was championed by President Mahinda Rajapaksa and formally initiated in 2007, aligning with his broader vision for national infrastructure development.
· India was offered the project first in 2005 but declined.
What is the strategic value of Hambantota Port?
· Located just 10 nautical miles from a major east-west shipping lane traversed by over 31,000 ships annually.
· Designed to complement Colombo Port, focusing on:
o Roll-on/Roll-off (Ro-Ro) vehicle transshipment.
o Bunkering and energy services.
o Bulk and break-bulk cargo.
Why was it initially called a failure?
· Funded by China’s Exim Bank (around 6.3%)
· Lack of a commercial business strategy.
· The broader “troika” vision of integrating port, airport, and industrial zone remained unrealized.
Was the lease to China a debt trap?
No.
The lease was not a debt-for-equity swap but a commercial lease agreement. It was initiated by the Sri Lankan government—not China—as a way to raise $1.12 billion in cash to service other debts.
The port remains under Sri Lankan sovereignty, with the Navy in charge of security. China’s role is purely commercial, conducted through China Merchants Port Holdings
Key facts debunk the myth:
· The lease was proposed by Sri Lanka—not China.
· Lease yielded $1.12 billion in cash, used to bolster foreign reserves and pay other international debt.
· The deal was not a debt-for-equity swap.
· Sri Lanka retains full sovereignty; the Sri Lanka Navy maintains control of port security
· It is a commercial port only.
What are the port’s achievements post-lease?
Under China Merchants Port Holdings (CMPort), Hambantota has:
· Specialized in Ro-Ro, bulk cargo, and bunkering.
· Attracted industrial investment, reviving the “troika” model.
· Achieved operational profitability.
· Created thousands of jobs locally.
Hambantota Port – Key Operational Statistics (2023–early 2024)
1. Vehicle Transshipment (Roll-on/Roll-off or Ro-Ro)
· 2023 Total Vehicles Handled: Over 730,000 units
· Hambantota ranked among thetop 10 vehicle transshipment hubs in Asia.
· Major clients:Kia, Hyundai, Toyota, Tata, Mahindra, Nissan, Volkswagen.
2. Container Throughput (TEUs)
· Though still growing, Hambantota handled over 150,000 TEUs in 2023 (a 35% year-on-year increase).
· Projected to cross 300,000 TEUs by end-2025 with new capacity investments.
3. Bulk Cargo
· Growth in imports & transshipment of cement, fertilizer, clinker, and petroleum products.
· Handles LPG, dry bulk (coal, clinker), and liquid cargo.
4. Infrastructure
· 11 berths, including:
o Ro-Ro terminals
o General cargo terminals
o Liquid bulk terminals
· Managed by Hambantota International Port Group (HIPG), a joint venture between China Merchants Port (85%) and Sri Lanka Ports Authority (15%).
Hambantota Port Income: Hypothetical vs Actual Performance
1.Hypothetical Earnings Without Leasing (Sri Lanka runs port alone):
· Assumption:Sri Lanka retained full control and funded development through loans or state funds.
· Reality:Before leasing, the port saw extremely low traffic:
o Less than200 ships per yearcompared to 5,000+ at Colombo Port.
o Annual revenue was under $1 million, while annual operating losses reportedly reached $10–12 million due to low throughput and debt-servicing costs.
o Throughput averaged less than 200 ships per year—minuscule compared to over 5,000 at Colombo Port.
· Challenges:Sri Lanka lacked:
o Expertise in port marketing and global shipping networks.
o Ability to drive transshipment traffic independently.
o Capital to modernize the port for commercial viability.
2.Current Model (Post-China Lease to CMPort):
· Lease Deal (2017):$1.12 billion paid to Sri Lanka (used to settle urgent foreign debt).
· Operator:China Merchants Port (85% stake), SLPA (15%).
· Progress:
o Over2,000 ships per yearas of recent data.
o Expansion into logistics, energy, and industrial zones underway.
o Long-term projected hub for Indian Ocean transshipment and energy.
· Sri Lanka’s Revenue:
o SLPA receives ashare of port-related income(undisclosed in public domain), plusemployment and tax benefits.
o Also retainedsovereignty and security control.
Had Sri Lanka retained full control, Hambantota would likely have remained a white elephant —draining national finances with minimal return.
The China lease enabled:
· Capital infusion
· Operational efficiency
· Growth in cargo volumes
· Strategic use of a once-idle asset
Thus, if Sri Lanka had held onto Hambantota without leasing it, the port would have remained a loss-making monument to debt. The lease arrangement brought in over $1 billion in urgently needed foreign exchange, but transformed a dormant facility into a growing logistics hub— something unlikely to have been achieved under Sri Lanka’s fragmented political environment, where infrastructure projects often became politicized instead of being prioritized – and strategic infrastructure often falls victim to short-term politicking rather than long-term national planning.
Port Achievements (2020–2023): From White Elephant to South Asia’s Maritime Powerhouse
Strategic Location:
· Positioned on the world’s busiest East–West maritime trade route.
Maritime Growth:
· Over 2,000 ship arrivals in 2023 — a 30%+ increase from 2020.
· Now the largest vehicle transshipment hub in South Asia, handling major global auto brands.
Local Economy:
· Thousands of new jobs created in logistics, port services, and support industries.
· Dedicated industrial zone now drawing increased FDI and regional trade interest.
Revenue Growth:
· Port revenue surged 81% from 2020 to 2023, marking a dramatic financial turnaround
Sovereignty Maintained:
· Sri Lankan Navy retains full security oversight.
· No military presence or strategic control ceded to any foreign power.
Sri Lanka’s Debt Reality
· Less than 10% of Sri Lanka’s total external debt is owed to China.
· Majority lies with Western bondholders and multilateral lenders like the IMF and World Bank.
· Sri Lanka never defaulted on the Hambantota loan.
Who Spread the Debt Trap” Narrative?
· Politicians: Harsha de Silva, Eran Wickramaratne, Ranil Wickremesinghe, Mangala Samaraweera, Anura Kumara Dissanayake, Sajith Premadasa, M. A. Sumanthiran.
· Think Tanks & Economists: Dr. Nishan de Mel (Verité), Dr. Ganeshan Wignaraja, Asanga Abeyagoonasekera, Akhilan Kadiragamar,
Ironically, those criticizing the China deal were the ones who executed the lease in 2016–2017 under the Ranil-Mangala administration.
Who Pushes the Debt Trap Narrative and Why?
· Western think tanks (CSIS, Chatham House, Carnegie).
· Indian lobbies (ORF, SVIF).
· Strategic players keen to keep Sri Lanka in their geopolitical orbit.
Comparative Silence on Indian Strategic Control
While Hambantota draws disproportionate international scrutiny, India’s expanding footprint in Sri Lanka’s strategic infrastructure receives little to no public or diplomatic pushback:
· Trincomalee Oil Tank Farms: India controls 85 of 99 tanks.
· Colombo Dockyard: Controlled by India’s defence ministry company -to build military ships in Sri Lanka.
· Colombo West Container Terminal: 51% owned by Adani Group.
· SAGT (via John Keells): Lease may be extended with Indian partnership.
· Renewable Energy Grid (North): Led by Adani; strategic implications for Sri Lanka’s grid sovereignty.
These deals rarely spark public debate-despite their implications for national sovereignty and regional neutrality.
Troika Vision Realized:
Hambantota’s potential lies in synergy:
1. Integrating Port + Airport (Mattala) + Industrial Zone.
2. Bypasses congested Colombo for direct access to global trade.
3. During COVID-19 pandemic, Mattala Airport played a key logistics role.
Think Strategically, not Emotionally
The so-called debt trap” narrative was never about protecting Sri Lanka. It was about limiting & controlling Sri Lanka’s choices and its partnerships.
Hambantota Port lease was a sovereign decision. It has delivered returns. It is generating income and employment. It preserves national sovereignty.
Instead of fearmongering, Sri Lanka must engage with all partners based on facts, mutual benefit, and strategic independence for national interests —not emotion or outdated ideological loyalties or geopolitical appeasement.
Sri Lanka must judge partners by outcomes, not narratives or compromise & appeasement.
Exploiting The Facilities of Mattala AirPort To Enhance The Tourism Potential Of Australia and New Zealand To Sri Lanka, Using The Potential Offered By The 8Emirates Air Bus A 380 Aircraft With Five Hundred Passengers per aircraft, That Fly Daily From Melbourne ((EK 407,EK 409), Sydney (EK415,EK417,EK 413) & Brisbane (EK 431 & EK 436) and another Emirates A380 Daily From Auckland (EK449), That Fly Over Mattala, Paying , Reportedly $2000/- Per Flight To Mattala, For Emergency Landing Rights, Because Mattala Is The Only Airport In Their Flight Path To Dubai, Once Past Australasian Airspace, That Has A Runway Long Enough To Land An A 380.
I was delighted view on television a few days ago of your comprehensive visit to the Mattala airport and to hear your commitment also that of President Dissanayake, to explore potential for developing Mattala from a loss making AirPort to profitability.
As one who has lived in New Zealand for over thirty five years, and one who has travelled many times in the Emirates A 380 flights above many times, where the Emirates Flight Captain often pointed out the Mattala Airport when it was newly opened, I have for over ten years now, harboured the hope that Sri Lanka would negotiate with Emirates for at least one of these nine A380’s, take it in turn to drop off and pick up passengers from Mattala every night, at least as a pilot project possibly in the coming summer season, preceding it with adequate publicity in Aus &NZ .
This will afford immense benefits to both Sri Lanka and it’s Tourism and the breadth of clientel to Emirates so outmaneuver it’s competitors as follows:
Benefits To Sri Lanka
Australia and New Zealand offers Sri Lanka a potential tourism market of 25-30 million , most of whom are affluent as well as travel hungry, especially to warm climes, golden sand beaches. They have a great interest in the Cultural Heritage and Archeological remnants of the places they visit. Over the years, Bali, Thailand and most recently Vietnam have become popular destinations. This is largely driven by ease of access , being able to do so with one flight. However the very poor connectivity and absence of direct flights from these cities to Sri Lanka, has been a great draw back to Sri Lanka , preventing SL drawing tourists for Down Under. Poor connectivity is a very common response we receive when we try to garner clients to visit Sri Lanka.
Emirates drop-offs as suggested would be an excellent way to fill this void, with very little additional cost to both Emirates and Sri Lanka with very little disruption to current flight schedules
Mattala is situated in many ways better than KIA to cater to tourism hot spots like Yala, South Western Coast Hot Spots Like HIkkaduwa, Unawatuna, Weligam Mirissa, Tangallae etc, less than two hours from Mattala , with the excellent motor way connections, with even Colombo being only threehours away..
Mattala, also provides far better access to the eastern coast destinations like, Arugambay, Pasi Kudah . It also is less than two hours away from Ella, the very popular destination for young travellers from the west and down under
If these are exploited SL would be the next Bali, as most young travellers from down under wish for now,
More tourist arrivals will create more accommodation facilities improving the livelihoods of all inhabitants in this region.
All these benefits would be low hanging fruits achievable in a short period if the Mattala utilisation improves.
Emirates A380 landing here would also be an impetus to utilise otherAir Lines flying A380’s over Mattala like Quantas
Connections To Southern Indian Destinations, is another rout of poor connectivity from down under and if connections to Chennai or Kerala can be arranged at Mattala, the residents down under from these origins would be another a large group that would be interested in this flight. Presently they fly to Delhi and fly back south or deviate to Singapore.
Benefits To Emirates:
With little disruption to it’s schedules and little additional costs a new market would open catering to tourism from down under to Sri Lanka and also as pointed out to South India.
What Needs To Be Done Now.
Initiate discussions between Sri Lanka & Emirates to explore these possibilities with earnest and urgency
I would be happy to provide more information if required.
I am also copying this to the SL High Commissioner in Wellington, HE Prasanna Gamage who is also very keen to support this idea.
Thanking you very much and hoping for the success of this idea
Yours Sincerely.
Dr. Chula Rajapakse MNZM
Spokesperson and Fmr President of USLA ( United Sri Lanka Association)
64 274768797
cc.
Hon Vijitha Herath Minister of Foreign Affairs , Foreign Employement and Tourism herath_v@parliament.lk
Prof Ruwan Chaminda Ranasinghe Deputy Minister of Tourism
I write in response to the article of the above title that appeared in the Sunday Island on 3rd August 2025. The article appears to be a statement by the ICJ (International Committee of Jurists). The article calls on the Sri Lankan government to ensure that the exhumations at the Chemmani site be carried out according to international standards so that there are no questions over the veracity of the findings later. The article also argues that because incidents such as Chemmani raise suspicions regarding government impunity for past crimes, it is essential that international monitoring under the Human Rights Council be continued. For instance, it says: Given the long-standing failure of domestic mechanisms to deliver justice, since 2012 the UN Human Rights Council has through multiple resolutions mandated the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) to monitor the situation, preserve evidence, and support accountability efforts, particularly through the Sri Lankan Accountability Project under Resolution 46/1. The ICJ considers that the ongoing exhumations at Chemmani render the need for sustained international oversight ever more urgent.” I take strong exception to the attempt above to link the Chemmani issue to an argument advocating the extension of the Sri Lanka Accountability Project, an evidence-gathering mechanism that has been operating from Geneva since 2021. The High Commissioner is scheduled to present a comprehensive report on this mechanism at the UNHCR’s upcoming 60th session. As I will explain in a moment, there are reasonable grounds to believe that the mechanism is contrary to the principles, procedures and mandate of the Human Rights Council. If true, then it is illegal. It is vital that members of the public distinguish between arguments designed to advocate for this mechanism, and arguments related to Chemmani.
There are two basic problems with the Sri Lanka Accountability Project: the first, based on the applicable law, and the second, on its possible contents. (The specific contents of the mechanism’s database is secret, but, from certain statements of the High Commissioner, it is possible to gain an idea of the type of material that this database might contain.) The legal problem with the mechanism is briefly this. Article 2(7) of the UN Charter prohibits the UN and its subsidiary organs from interfering unduly in the internal affairs of nations. Meanwhile, paragraph 4 of the UNHRC’s founding document (UN General Assembly Resolution 60/251) states, among other things, that the work of the Council shall be guided by the principles of ‘cooperation and constructive international dialogue.’ The Sri Lanka Accountability Project is a country-specific device. This means that, it is established exclusively for Sri Lanka. Nowhere in Resolution 46/1 (the resolution that establishes the mechanism) does it require the High Commissioner to submit the findings of the mechanism to the Council prior to forwarding such material to third parties in order for them to take action against Sri Lankan citizens. In a report to the Council in September 2023, the High Commissioner states that the OHCHR is in active consultations with the prosecutorial agencies of a number of countries on ways of taking such action. (See A/HRC/54/20, 6 Sep 2023). Meanwhile, the Government of Sri Lanka (GOSL) has consistently rejected the mechanism. It is not in dispute that, were the mechanism’s evidence to be submitted to the UNHRC, the GOSL, along with the accused persons, would have an opportunity to respond to such evidence before the Council. This, obviously, would be entirely consistent with the injunction that the work of the Council be guided by the principles of ‘cooperation and constructive international dialogue.’ In these circumstances, prima facie, the mechanism is contrary to the principles set out in Article 2(7) of the UN Charter along with paragraph 4 of the UNHRC’s charter mentioned above. The problem with the possible contents of the mechanism is briefly this. In the report to the Council in September 2023, the High Commissioner states: The team continues to prioritize the establishment and development of a repository of information and evidence, to maximize OHCHR’s long-term contribution to supporting accountability initiatives. The repository was originally populated with data from the earlier OHCHR investigation on Sri Lanka, together with other material collected over the years by OHCHR. It has been supplemented by material from nine key non-governmental organizations and academic sources. The project team is engaging with other stakeholders to seek to bolster the repository’s holdings, subject to appropriate terms of access.” (A/HRC/54/20, para 50, 6 Sep 2023) The above raises two important questions: first, does the mechanism’s repository contain the databases of Sri Lanka’s domestic mechanisms (ie. The LLRC and Paranagama Commissions)? Second, what are the identities of the ‘nine key non-governmental organisations and academic sources’ referred to by the High Commissioner above? If the Sri Lanka Accountability Project’s repository does not contain the databases of the domestic mechanisms, then the mechanism has been deprived of potentially exculpatory evidence that the domestic mechanisms might possess. If true, this would compromise the work of prosecutorial agencies who may be using the mechanism’s database in order to frame charges against Sri Lankan citizens. Meanwhile, in regard to the nine NGOs and academic sources that the High Commissioner mentions, if even one of them is funded or owned by Sri Lanka’s critics, it potentially taints the entire database. The Sri Lanka Accountability Project must stand or fall depending on whether its supporters can address concerns such as the above, not on whether the Chemmani site in being investigated properly. A word, however, about Chemmani. The government is currently investigating the suspected gravesite. There is absolutely no evidence that these investigations are compromised in any way. In this regard, it is important to recall that on two previous occasions, both in 2013, there were claims of mass graves being found. The first was in Mannar, and the second, in Matale. Extensive investigations were conducted on both sites. The human remains discovered at the Mannar site were carbon-dated to the Portuguese period (see ‘Bodies found in Mannar mass grave date back to the 1400s,’ www.asianews.it, 3rd Sep 2019). The remains found in Matale were dated to ‘an era prior to 1950’ (see ‘Skeletal Remains have no connection to 1989-1990 disappearances,’ www.sundaytimes.lk, 10th May 2015.) Therefore, it is possible that there is an innocuous explanation for the Chemmani site as well. On the other hand, it is possible that the investigators would reach far more disturbing conclusions. The reasonable thing to do is to keep an open mind and let the investigators complete their work. It is not in dispute that the UNHRC and the OHCHR have a duty to protect and advance human rights worldwide. They must, however, do this within the four corners of the law. One cannot advocate for the advancement of human rights while at the same time undermining the fundamental principles of international law. It is in everyone’s interest to ensure that the UN remain viable and respected, rather than constantly discredited and suspected of double-standards and bias. The Sri Lanka Accountability Project is coming up for a reckoning in September. It is vital that, members of the public be clear on the issues involved, and hold the UNHRC as well as the OHCHR accountable if they have exceeded their powers in regard to this mechanism.
Dharshan Weerasekera is the author of, A Factual Appraisal of the OISL Report: A Rebuttal to the Allegations Against the Armed Forces, (Sarasavi, 2020)
