By Dr D. Chandraratna Courtesy The Island Issuing a statement to the media Mr Mahanama has urged the airport authorities to take steps to mitigate inconvenience to passengers in the future. According to his word our ex-cricketer has taken two out of the three vaccines in the UK. In the media statement he has released, […]

Donald Chandraratna Courtesy The Island The pile-on over Sri Lanka by UNHRC is a blatant use of human rights as a political weapon in the geopolitics of today’s world. Many have argued in these columns that Sri Lanka cannot capitulate merely on the grounds of allegations, which are serious in nature, levelled without regard to […]

by Dr D Chandraratna Courtesy The Island The Olcott Oration delivered to the Old Boys Association of Ananda College (November 2020, Perth, Western Australia) It can be gauged from the Buddhist publications in and around 1880s that the ordinary Sinhalese were experiencing an acute sense of despair and disquiet that colonialism had brought about a […]

Dr D.Chandraratna It comes as no surprise that with the change of government we have; unobtrusively it may be, moved on to a different political platform/perspective. Briefly stated there appears a shift from the more aggressive neo- liberalism of 2015, towards a reluctant form of socialism. Not quite to the centre of that paradigm yet, […]

BY DR D. CHANDRARATNA Courtesy The Island Just like RRW’s appreciative comment on Rajeewa Jayaweera, yesterday, I, too, never met Rajeewa except through his essays to this newspaper and other news sites. He was a regular contributor to these pages, for many years, and it was a pleasure to read and I enjoyed them every […]

Dr D.Chandraratna Countless are the pieces written lamenting the madness at Diyawanna Oya in the past so many years. Editorials, opinion pages and features in this daily alone demanded a proactive approach to stem the declining standards of our Parliament.  There is no denying that if unchecked constitutional democracy becomes unworkable because the system rests […]

Dr D.Chandraratna Given the rush to recruit personnel to the public service we need reassurance from the powers that be that the country is not condemned to be a banana republic in South Asia for decades to come. Those of us who worked in the Sri Lankan administrative service are generally aware of the methods […]

Dr D.Chandraratna During the last so many years we have agonized over the unsatisfactory state of affairs in our body politic and the helplessness of its citizens. If we are to survive this madness, simply switching off or merely ridiculing the current crop of Parliamentarians will not deliver. We must actively canvass our good intentions […]

Dr D. Chandraratna Dear Mr Secretary of State. As a peace-loving citizen of Sri Lanka I would like to place before you the following facts as a precursor to the dialogue that you intend to conduct with the powers that be in my country. International cooperation loses its legitimacy if the transactions between states are […]

DR. D. CHANDRARATNA As a peace-loving citizen of Sri Lanka, I would like to place before you the following facts as a precursor to the dialogue that you intend to conduct with the powers that be in my country. International cooperation loses its legitimacy if the transactions between states are not executed in a transparent […]

Dr D.Chandraratna The one and only aspiration of all Third world nations is to fast track their nations to the First world status but it is realized only by a few. In our lifetime that dream-objective was realized by Singapore, Malaysia and South Korea in the Asian region. Talking of Singapore in particular it was […]

Dr D. Chandraratna We need to examine the making of Islamic extremism now so that precautionary measures can be taken to avert future catastrophe/s.  Before you venture into rehabilitating the yesterday’s terrorist the government must start a conversation with those who have studied the problem to identify well in advance before they strike in order […]

Dr D.Chandraratna As peace loving Sri Lankans we are dismayed by the surreptitious accusations and innuendos cast on the majority Sinhala Buddhist community by Waleed Ali, an Australian TV presenter in his Column in the Daily telegraph, on the recent tragic events in Sri Lanka. This terrorist activity in Easter Sunday was directed at the […]

Dr D.CHANDRARATNA In realpolitik the use of the term objective is not completely valid. We all have our biases but we do not openly state ‘whose side we are on’. The writer of this article is no exception. The Sunday Island Features (18/11) had many who had expressed their points of view, given the inalienable […]

Dr D.Chandraratna I believe that when the Parliament is recalled in a weeks time monies have to be voted to carry on the task of government in this interim period till a finality is reached. A money bill of some sort has to be approved by the Parliament and this gives the caretaker Prime Minister […]

Dr D.Chandraratna Sri Lankan military and intelligence services happen to be on the front pages recently, and by general reckoning such public brawling is not good news. These are the very essential services in any country for the fulfilment of international obligations and for national security and peace. It is not that the public should […]

Dr D.Chandraratna Mr Moon was unfair to all Sri Lankans who are trying managing their affairs in a racially jumbled space by his comments implying that the Sri Lankan army is guilty of an act that bears some similarity to the massacre of Srebrenica in July 1995. This crime ‘which needs no Picasso for its […]

Dr D.Chandraratna, Perth The editorial in the Island (3/10) on the visit of the UNSG was indignant enough to provoke thinking. The thinking alone, if not the SG’s probe, hopefully will bring some consolation to the suffering inflicted on citizens, not only Tamils, by the LTTE whose political foot soldiers were the TNA. Placed in […]

Janaki Chandraratna Courtesy The Island June 27, 2016, 7:52 pm The Brexit referendum is a historic event for both the UK and the rest of the world. Britain voted to exit from the European Union (EU), with a vote of 52% to 48%, after 43 years of membership since 1973. The Exit camp listed 20 good […]

JANAKI CHANDRARATNA, PERTH,WA There was a regime change in Sri Lanka on 8 January 2015. Some people called it a ‘non-violent people’s revolution’, although it was nothing of the kind. It was indeed a well-organized coup by the West and Raw with the assistance of a few internal opportunists, to get rid of the Rajapaksa […]

Janaki Chandraratna, Perth Western Australia My recent visit to Sri Lanka on 13 January 2015, 5 days after the Presidential election, has left me appalled to the core. It was the annihilation of the vanquished that left me flabbergasted.  I had to pinch myself to ensure I am in the right country as the post […]

Dr. D. Chandraratna  It is rather distressing as a Sri Lankan to even think that a man from the rural hinterland has agreed to lead a Western sponsored Coup d’état. But his ignorance of world events and the machinations of hegemonic powers in a struggle for supremacy in the modern world after the collapse of […]

Janaki Chandraratna – Perth, Western Australia  After several clandestine meetings in Singapore and Vienna and strong denials of the existence of Ranil/Maithipala, Maithipala /TNA, and Ranil/TNA Agreements, the cat is out of the bag with TNA agreeing to support Maithipala in the forthcoming Presidential election.  TNA has made it clear that they are not interested […]

by Dr D.Chandraratna In 44 BC The Roman General and Director Julius Caesar was murdered in broad daylight in the theatre of Pompey by assassins led by Junius Brutus, Caesar’s best friend. Hence the famous words, Et tu Brute, Even you Brute said Caesar before he died. Only part of this tale is applicable because […]

Dr D.Chandraratna  It is true that the existing constitution helped to fight terrorism without unnecessary factionalism rampant in the Westminster system of democracy but the general opinion is that more power has to be passed on to the parliament to open up the political dialogue in peacetime. Much of this noise about regime change may […]

Dr D. Chandraratna Perth Though the topic under discussion in this essay, the Canadian terror episode, from the Sri Lankan perspective can be tackled in a hell cattish brew of fury and vengefulness, to do so will be to diminish oneself and the country. Sad indeed is the Ottawa murder of an innocent young man […]

Dr D.Chandraratna, Perth Yesterday (2/10/14) on the Australian Television (SBS) network was a scurrilous attack on Sri Lanka by a journalist David Corlett, Ph.D. who was doing a shallow type of investigative reporting on the torture of asylum seekers who were returned to Sri Lanka. The manner of unbalanced reporting was so surreal that the […]

Dr D.Chandraratna. Perth W.Australia Remember the time that Sri Lankans were under the hammer from the terrorists; the Central bank bombing, Anuradhapura massacre, the Airport destruction to name just a few. And every time we were exhorted to talk to the terrorists and soon forgotten and shelved until the next carnage eventuated. Sri Lankans felt […]

Dr D.Chandraratn Perth.  Recently in a National daily there was criticism of the President’s apparent trimming of the welfare budget and the increase in the public debt resulting from massive infrastructure projects undertaken, allegedly detrimental to public good aimed singularly at election victories. Obviously associated with these (or any other matter) two infamous issues were […]

Dr D.Chandraratna, Perth There is a dire need to revisit UN Conventions in the light of changing world conditions of the modern era. Be it refugees, humanitarian law, torture, friendly relations, human rights etc., the conditions of the modern world demand a revision of these Charters. There is a reason to take a dim view […]