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Over 50,000 of Sri Lanka’s free trade zone (FTZ) workers are at risk of exposure to COVID-19 as a result of the unexpected Brandix apparel factory cluster which at last count was at 1,034 confirmed cases.
Programme Coordinator of Dabindu Collective Chamila Thushari told EconomyNext that despite (...)
It is true that the era that ends with the introduction of the 20th Amendment cannot be considered as an era of democracy. However it was a period of struggle for democracy filled with mass struggles and out right treachery. Ranil was fortunate to get the support of Samasamajists and radical (...)
Although it happened over 20 years ago, Mahesh* (32) remembers every excruciating detail of that day.
“It was at my grandfather’s funeral. I remember feeling confused, at first, when [he] started pulling down my pants, and that turned into fear very quickly at what happened next. I was ten years (...)
Labour Minister Nimal Siripala de Silva said that Section 38 of the EPF Act will be amended to enable Labour Tribunal presidents to hear the enforcement cases pending at the Magistrate’s Courts for several years to provide EPF benefits.
At present, there are many cases pending at the (...)
The proposal to abolish the 19th amendment to the constitution and to introduce the 20th amendment has been gazetted. According to the gazetted bill all but three articles in the 19th amendment will be repealed. The Provision to be retained are citizens right of access to information (...)
Sri Lankan prime minister Mahinda Rajapaksa and his brother, President Gotabaya Rajapaksa, have been implicated in egregious human rights violations against Tamils in the country, including accusations of crimes against humanity and genocide. Yet rather than being held accountable, the (...)
Sri Lanka is in a dilemma of tackling massive public debt restructuring in the next three months with an unprecedented debt load of Rs.3.05 ($16.4B USD) trillion for 2020, surpassing the earlier estimate of Rs.2 trillion ($10.8B USD), official data showed.
In light of urgent and unforeseen (...)
The proposed 20th Amendment to the Constitution seems to have received much opposition given that the incumbent Government has made changes in a way that fortified the powers vested in the Executive President.
Below are excerpts of The Sunday Morning’s interviews with Opposition party (...)
“The preservation of a centralised regime that is gradually moving towards authoritarianism has been the central theme of the constitutional change.”
Commenting on the 20th Amendment draft bill, Anura Kumara Dissanayake, the leader of the National Peoples Power is reported to have said that the (...)
When Justice AP Shah remarked recently that, ‘India is moving towards some form of elected autocracy’, he may have been speaking for the entire region and perhaps, swathes of the world in turmoil as it were.
Returning Sri Lanka ‘forward to the past’
But the fact that we are not the only (...)
Sinhala film Paangshu zooms into the trauma of enforced disappearances by foregrounding the struggle of a missing person’s family.
Like many Sri Lankans, academic and filmmaker Visakesa Chandrasekaram has been struggling to come to terms with the civil war’s gory end in 2009. The graphic visuals (...)
Once bodies are buried underground you do not know what happens to them There was partial justice, but not full justice. There was only reparation, but no punishments We are more tribal than feudal as a society. We keep re-electing family members We are lacking the rule-of-law because the law (...)
In different parts of Sri Lanka, families of the disappeared came together to hold events to commemorate the UN Day of the Victims of Enforced Disappearances on August 30. In Digana (Central province), families held a fair at a Catholic church. In Jaffna (Northern province), families from (...)
Issued before the 5 August 2020 election gave a landslide victory to the Rajapaksa brothers, this statement by Friday Forum identifies the risks facing Sri Lankan society.
On August 5th 2020, we as citizens will choose the people who may join the President in governing this country for the (...)
Two times postponed Parliamentary election 2020 in Sri Lanka was finally held on August 5, 2020. The election took place in the midst of three crises, namely, the epidemiological crisis, the economic crisis and the resultant multi-faceted political crisis, all are closely associated with the (...)
Two more days to the Parliamentary election to elect 196 members. On the basis of the results, additional twenty nine national list members will be selected by the respective parties. When this piece appears two days after the election, the full outcome of the election would be known if there (...)
The Sri Lanka Peoples Front (SLPP), a right-wing alliance headed by Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa, received 59.1% of the votes and won 145 seats in Sri Lanka’s 225 member legislature at the August 5 election.
In addition to criticising the economic record of the previous government, (...)
Elections in Sri Lanka resulted in a landslide re-election victory for the authoritarian populist President Gotabhaya Rajapakse and his party Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna (SLPP). Most other parties’ vote collapsed. The left went into these elections divided, with some historic left leaders (...)
This paper interrogates as to how caste-based differentiation exists among the Sinhalese in Sri Lanka despite the near absence of the economic structures that initially underpinned the caste system. It looks at the role of Buddhism and democracy, two supposedly egalitarian institutions, in (...)
SLPP secures nearly 60% of the vote; critics worry about consequences
Sri Lanka’s ruling party secured a two-thirds majority in the recent parliamentary election, Friday’s results showed, giving the Rajapaksa brothers the power they sought to amend the Constitution.
The Sri Lanka Podujana (...)
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