Opinion
Opinion
Rising heat, rising risk: Regional policy actions
November 06, 2025
2024 was the hottest on record globally. In Asia and the Pacific, Bangladesh was the worst-hit country, with about 33 million people affected by lower crop yields that destabilized food systems, along with extensive school closures and many cases of heatstroke and related diseases.
Opinion
Beyond the Screen: Sri Lanka should rethink UX in the age of AI, especially in Fintech and Enterprise platforms
November 03, 2025
The conversation has changed. Has design? I walked into a University classroom in Sri Lanka to conduct a training session during my recent travel and I found design students immersed in Figma screens, crafting beautiful interfaces pixel by pixel.
Opinion
One more killing, and where is the nation heading?
October 26, 2025
The shocking killing of Weligama Pradeshiya Sabha Chairman, Lasantha Wickramasekara, in the council chamber during the Public Day, has taken the Law & Order situation in the country to a new low.
Opinion
A demographic disaster in waiting?
October 20, 2025
There is little acknowledgement among policy-makers that something needs to be done on the ‘demographic disaster’ that is waiting to happen in this country.
Opinion
To Hold or Not To Hold, the PC Polls
October 14, 2025
At last, SJB leader Sajith Premadasa’s announcement that his party (or, is it he?) will be working with the parent UNP may have set the tone for the nation-wide Provincial Council polls.
Opinion
Time to Put Ideology Behind…
September 30, 2025
The irony is striking. The incumbent JVP-NPP Government of President Anura Kumara Dissanayake seems to have taken after the post-war Mahinda Rajapaksa dispensation in replacing ‘devolution’ with ‘development’, especially for the Tamil areas, but with a difference.
Opinion
How Sri Lanka is not an election issue in Tamil Nadu
September 23, 2025
For those Sri Lankans, Sinhalas or Tamils, who still believe that the electoral fall-out of the ethnic issue or any other internal domestic affairs of the country influences bilateral approaches by neighbouring India, here is the raw truth.
Opinion
Privilege, Perception or Propaganda Prop
September 17, 2025
By N Sathiya Moorthy True, the crowds that reportedly gathered to see war-victor of a President in Mahinda Rajapaksa, when he left his official residence in Colombo’s Wijeyrama Mawatha to his family home in Tangallae in southern-most Hambantota district may not have been as big as the one that gathered after his poll-defeat in January 2015. Nor were long queues of sympathisers, especially rural women, who lined up at his Thangalle residence, for days together, as if to pledge their continued fa
Opinion
Making vocational training work
July 05, 2025
By N Sathiya Moorthy Prime Minister Harini Amarasuriya needs to be congratulated and thanked for taking constant and continuous interest in her ‘substantive’ portfolio as Minister of Education, Higher Education and Vocational Education. Very few Prime Ministers before her had held a ‘substantive portfolio’, that too in an area of their inherent experience and interest. As an academic and activist in her earlier avatar even when she was a National List MP of the then three-member JVP-NPP parlia
Opinion
What next from the UNHRC?
June 28, 2025
By N Sathiya Moorthy Reading between the lines, the visiting UNHRC chief’s Volker Türk’s message was that the Government should take (back) the ownership of the accountability mechanisms — and make it credible and functional. It is a significant departure from the past position of the human rights affiliate of the UN system, which had always insisted on ‘independent investigations’, ever since the UNHRC began passing periodic resolutions and thus strictures over allegations of war-crimes and ac
Opinion
Has UNHRC outlived its utility?
June 21, 2025
By N Sathiya Moorthy The upcoming visit of UNHRC chief Volker Türk to Sri Lanka has revived limited interest in media discourses – and from expected quarters. Not all of them are Tamil, who have their litany of unaddressed woes, woes unaddressed not only by the government but also the UNHRC, on which they had counted the most, when the ethnic war ended 15 years back. Most Tamils in the country have given up on it. Their politicians alone seem to talk to them, especially every March and Septemb
Opinion
When Anura Kumara Dissanayake takes wings to Europe
June 16, 2025
By N Sathiya Moorthy Incumbent Anura Kumara Dissanayake has chosen Germany for his first European destination as President, his fourth this year, and fifth since assuming office. All five have been state visits, starting with neighbouring India in end-2024, followed by China, the UAE and Vietnam, in that order. It is not unlikely that the President may choose to visit the US, if not officially or on a state visit, but to deliver his maiden UN General Assembly (UNGA) later this year. For most p
Opinion
Future imperfect
June 09, 2025
By N Sathiya Moorthy The way the Tamil parties in the North are going about the (s)election of mayors and deputy mayors in multiple local government councils after last month’s nation-wide polls, it’s becoming increasingly clear that in the name of ‘policy differences’ they are actually playing out yet another ‘ego war’ that has ruined the community enough through past several years and decades. In focus is former ITAK parliamentarian, M A Sumanthiran, at present the party’s acting general secr
Opinion
Sri Lanka’s plastic dilemma: A nation of delayed action and purpose
June 04, 2025
By Lakshan Madurasinghe, a concerned citizen. Another year, another World Environment Day, and another theme to rally behind. This year, it’s ‘Ending Plastic Pollution’. Decades of talk, countless promises to act, yet Sri Lanka isn’t ending anything. We are choking in plastics due to delayed action, lack of a common purpose and never-ending excuses. Sri Lanka generates around 7,000 metric tonnes of solid waste daily. According to the Ministry of Environment, the total estimated municipal plast
Opinion
Where are the big fish?
June 01, 2025
By N Sathiya Moorthy The Colombo High has sentenced former Sports Minister Mahindananda Aluthgamage to 20 years RI and former Sathosa Chairman Nalin Fernando to 25 years RI, for having caused LKR 53- million loss in the procurement of carom boards and checker boards for sports clubs in the run-up to the 2015 presidential elections. Of course, the two will now prefer appeals, and that would take its own course before a final situation emerges. By itself, the loss to the government is not big co
Opinion
Believe, Behave, a Message for the Opposition, too
May 25, 2025
By N Sathiya Moorthy For those familiar with Sri Lanka?s emergence as a major cricketing country would remember this oft-quoted anecdote from the previous century, whether true or not. The famous one-liner, ?This one here wants to play cricket? has stuck in the memories of that generation, not just of cricket players in the country but also for fans of the game ? and why, even the average newspaper reader from those days. Years later, Kumar Sangakara, for instance, went on record as he recalle
Opinion
Only half of what it takes…
May 17, 2025
By?N Sathiya Moorthy In his May Day rally speech, President Anura Kumara Dissanayake urged trade unions not to press for pay-hikes. That he said so despite May Day celebrating the power of the labour world-wide, and? trade unions form the backbone of his ruling JVP-NPP combine should underscore the precariousness of the nation?s economy three years after the Aragalaya protests. Yet, two days down the line on 3 May, trade unions in the country jointly urged the Government to raise the national
Opinion
Modi warns Pakistan can survive only by destroying terror infrastructure?
May 14, 2025
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi warned that the only way Pakistan can survive is by destroying its terror infrastructure.? In an address to the nation in New Delhi, Modi said that India has only suspended its retaliatory action against Pakistan’s terror and military camps. Full speech : My dear countrymen, Namaskar! In the past days, we all have witnessed both the strength and patience of our country. First of all, on behalf of the people of India, I salute the valiant forces of India, t
Opinion
Tamils snub NPP this time, pass on the mantle to GenNext leaders
May 10, 2025
By?N Sathiya Moorthy Strategists of the ruling JVP-NPP alliance can defend their relatively poor showing in the nation-wide local government (LG) elections by taunting the ?losers?. Back to 42-per cent votes from the presidential elections and 18 per cent down from the latter-day parliamentary polls, they have even argued that being the single largest party is as good as obtaining an absolute majority in terms of votes, leaving aside the number of seats and / or local government institutions th
Opinion
Ball is in your court, Mr President
May 03, 2025
By N?Sathiya Moorthy Give it to the international media and they would see, rather create, chinks in bilateral relations where none exists. Thankfully, their knowledgeable counterparts in this country did not join the chorus, by declaring that President Anura Kumara Dissanayake had snubbed Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi by inviting a Chinese Communist Party leader to the ruling JVP-NPP?s May Day rally. The fact is that not only did? Peng Xiubin, director-general at CPC?s Bureau of South a
