‘Democracy’ and ‘Crisis’ are words we have come to associate them in the same sentence.

In this site and elsewhere, many people have lamented over the conduct of the present administration; Its blatant disregard for anything remotely ‘democratic’ – be it in a lack of accountability in public finances, due process of parliament or a total disregard of the freedom of the press, the Rajapakse administration have both directly and indirectly communicated that such democratic nuisances are too much of an inconvenience, especially ‘when fighting terrorism’.

One can, being good citizens of what is still, at least a quasi-democracy; place the blame squarely on the President, his brothers, the hundred-something ministers and hope the blame game would lead to some sort of …

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The forcible eviction of Tamils from Colombo drew much criticism from both local and international quarters, forcing the government to provide for the return of some of the evicted people back to Colombo. This latest action clearly makes mockery of the government’s initial claim that it was merely facilitating a ‘voluntary’ transfer of people from Colombo to the North/East.

Now that the Prime Minister has apologized for the incident, and His Excellency has ordered for a probe on who accidentally pressed the ‘evict-the-Tamils-button’, and also given the fact that the Supreme Court has issued an order preventing the police from carrying out further evictions, it’s most likely that the government will try its utmost to sweep this incident under the rug …

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From time to time at various forums and speeches the idea of promoting a single Sri Lankan identity has been put forward as a factor in finding a solution to the conflict in Sri Lanka. Rarely though, these sometimes passionate pleas to build a common Sri Lankan identity have proven to be anything more than lip service, or speech enhancers. Given the historic context of the evolution of the post-colonial Sri Lankan state, and its monumental mistakes of the post-independent era, there is a need to institutionalize or at least put in place institutional enablers which could prosper a common identity.
For lessons in cultivating a common national identity we need not look much further than across the Palk Strait and …

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