In a recent interview to a Tamil newspaper, M A Sumanthiran, TNA parliamentarian and international spokesman, has made an offer that sections of the Sinhala polity truly desirous of a political solution to the ‘ethnic issue’ cannot resist. Unless the idea of a new Constitution …
R.Sampanthan, the Tamil National Alliance (TNA) leader and Leader of the Opposition in the Sri Lanka parliament has told the United States House of Representatives Armed Services Committee delegation led by McClellen Thornberry, that the island nation’s leadership lacks courage to solve the Tamil issue …
Amid the global concern over China’s ‘debt trap diplomacy’, a bipartisan group of influential US lawmakers has visited Sri Lanka to gauge the ground-level situation. Cash-rich China has invested millions of dollars in Sri Lanka’s infrastructure since the end of a brutal civil war in …
Sri Lanka’s high debt burden is likely to limit the benefits of recent tax reforms, rating agency Moody’s Investors Service has said in a new report. “For many sovereigns, measures to broaden the tax base are unlikely to boost fiscal strength unless accompanied by enhanced …
Nine years after the war between the Sri Lankan armed forces and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) ended in May 2009, reconciliation between Sri Lanka’s majority Sinhalese and minority Tamils still appears to be a far cry. And most disturbingly, the logjam is …
The discourse on fundamental issues concerning Sri Lankan Tamils continues to revolve around political settlement, the two key components of which are greater devolution of powers to provinces and the merger of the Northern and Eastern provinces. These two aspects featured in the 1987 Indo-Sri …
Former UNP MP and media personality J. Sri Ranga has accused the four-party Tamil National Alliance (TNA) and other Tamil MPs of conveniently remaining silent on the possible use of ‘poison gas’ on the Vanni east front in 2009. The then government brought the war …
In 1990, Harvard Professor Joseph S Nye, called such an approach to building up support as the use of “soft power”. The aim of “soft power” is to create, in another country, a favourable impression of the “power” in question, modifying the impact of military …
India has always accorded priority to Sri Lanka in its foreign policy discourse owing to a combination of geo-strategic, political and socio-cultural factors. However, relations have often been determined by factors internal to these countries; India has been compelled to scale down its ‘active involvement’ …
Nine years is perhaps too short a time for deep wounds to heal, but it is enough time to begin to introspect. However, going by the polarised views around the anniversary of the end of Sri Lanka’s civil war, there are few signs of that. …