So the Northern Provincial Council and some civil society activists are reportedly gearing up to mourn May 18-19th and the week leading up to it as Genocide Week. May 18/19th marks the days the Long War ended, and Tamils, Sinhalese …

Mr. R. Sampanthan has let himself, his cause and his people down. I have always regarded him as the last of the old-school parliamentarians whom I used to watch as a boy, from the press gallery in the old Parliament …

(Courtesy of FT)

Last year, 2017, the Government and Opposition separately commemorated the centenary of the Russian revolution – actually of twin revolutions, liberal and socialist, of February and October, 1917. In an interesting twist, the result of the Sri …

(Courtesy of Daily Mirror)

The weekly evidence of the unprecedentedly dependent, servile character of the Yahapalana administration came in the form of a report in the prestigious Hindu by its smart, Colombo based correspondent Meera Srinivasan. Captioned ‘India keen to …

By Dayan Jayatilleka  

Prime Minister Modi’s two day visit to Sri Lanka was supposed to be non-political. Yet, in his address to the International Vesak Conference at the BMICH, he laid out the Modi doctrine for Indo-Lankan …

(Courtesy of Daily Mirror)

By Dr.Dayan Jayatilleka

A funny thing happened in-between the reconvening of the Steering Committee of the Constitutional Assembly (Feb 21) and the adjournment motion on the Constitution held the next day in Parliament. TNA MP MA Sumanthiran …

DR. DAYAN JAYATILLEKA

Mr. R. Sampanthan’s 90 minute (written) speech during the recent adjournment debate (Feb 22) on the Constitution was ‘historicist’, in the sense that he invoked a great deal of political history. But his argument was a-historical and …

By Dr Dayan Jayathilaka

You’ve heard of the “We Tamils” (who beat up High Commissioner Ansar). Now we have the “E-Tamils”–the “Eluga/Ezhuga Tamils” (or simply Eelam Tamils?). They shut down Jaffna, took over its streets, raucously demanding federalism, an international …

By Dayan Jayatilleka 

One must thank Chandrika for letting the cat out of the bag. In her recent address to “the national secretariat for national reconciliation” she has called for a federal, semi-secular constitution. I shall bypass the issue …

By Dr.Dayan Jayatilleka

The TNA-Tamil Diaspora-UNP project is a frail, minimalist State with a weak centre

Would India have allowed Ban Ki moon to travel to Kashmir and have a political dialogue with strident Kashmiri nationalists?

The Sri Lankan Government …