In 2015, artists of various disciplines from around the island were invited to a meeting at the Office for National Unity and Reconciliation with former President Chandrika Bandaranaike-Kumaratunga. Amongst the writers, artists and musicians were perhaps our most internationally celebrated filmmakers; Prasanna Vithanage, Vimukthi Jayasundara and Asoka Handagama. It was a town hall style meeting to discuss ideas and proposals for art that spoke to the national post-war conversation, art that would actively try to foster or reflect the need for reconciliation. Her. Him. The ...Continued

The recently concluded local government elections have been notable for a number of reasons. One of these is that for the first time in Sri Lanka a 25% quota was introduced for women representatives. It now appears from press reports that both the Chairman of the Elections Commission and some of the Political Parties and Independent Groups which contested the elections find implementing the quota to be too “burdensome” and “unfair.” Well, of course! Is it really fair for these women’s movement type people to ...Continued

The revelations of the Bond Commission Report where Lanka’s political and financial elite have conspired in the greatest scam ever in Sri Lankas history, the consequent revelations on money laundering and luxury penthouse kickbacks and the evasive statements made in parliament by the Prime Minister and other responsible public figures prompts me to take up this topic for comment. Forget public life for the moment. Let us get to basics first. What are the dimensions of the concept of integrity? Integrity encompasses many of the ...Continued

It is time to re-think how we elect representatives to our local administrative bodies. Local government means having our day to day needs attended to; be it the collection of garbage, repair of drains and culverts or maintaining a clean city amongst a host of other services. Basically it’s getting our worth for the taxes we pay to the local administration that oversees the city or village we live in. In Sri Lanka, the mandate of the local authority is to “provide for the comfort, ...Continued

In a year that has seen seismic shifts occur around the world, where often times the news has been a like a car accident, horrifying but with a chokehold on your attention span, cinema does seem like a distant concern. Any art does in moments of panic. But after the panic fades, it is the arts we go to; for escape, for reflection, and hopefully to gain some perspective on the world we occupy. There’s plenty to reflect on in the larger cultural shift where ...Continued

How did the backlash against sexual abuse of women become weakened by all the female counter-arguments and counter-counter-arguments over the right to call out the abuse? Women are so trapped by the instinct to nurture, to distance ourselves from aggression and the overt wielding of power, that we can’t go in for the kill on an issue. No, we slice and dice the subject, split hairs and chop logic in our anxiety to be fair and achieve an impossible equal balance of every possible factor ...Continued

A new year brings with it the promise of change.  Resolutions are made and often broken, even before the first month of the year comes to an end. The Yahapalanaya government came in on the promise of change.  This month, sees its third year in government and there is disillusionment all around. There was an air of expectation that January 2015. We were throwing out a regime that destroyed the core values of our society; arrogance, thuggery, nepotism and might is right was the order ...Continued

I agree, this has now become an oft heard cliché. And indeed, quite a relevant one in the current polemical debate and ensuing street protest and violence on the establishment of a private medical education institute in Sri Lanka – the SAITM. Ever since the fall of the Soviet Union and the Berlin Wall and the advent of a unipolar world under the hegemony of the USA; and the consequent grandiloquent pronouncement of Francis Fukuyama in 1992 that “The End of History and the Last ...Continued

As Sri Lanka approaches the 70th anniversary of its independence, it also approaches elections, albeit local government elections and no less significant for being so. Long delayed – in some cases for 3 years – these elections will be the first under the National Unity Government and the independent election Commission set up under the 19th Amendment.  The election will invariably be perceived as a referendum on the performance of the National Unity Government and a harbinger of things to come – provincial council elections ...Continued