Pri's blog

While one group of Colombo’s bold and beautiful gathered at the Lakshman Kadirigamar Institute for International  Relations and Strategic Studies to listen to a former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, Tony Blair,  protected by riot squads of Police who looked like they would welcome some excitement after almost an year of inaction, another section of Colombo’s bold and beautiful met at the Balmoral Room of the Kingsbury Hotel to celebrate the life of an important Sri Lankan, Deshamanya Vidyajothi  Ray Wijewardene , and to present The Ray  Award for Innovation 2015.  Just before both those events, yet another group, this time a group of Colombo’s intellectuals were at the Institute of Ethnic Studies (ICES) listening to Kumari Jayawardene, Farzana Haniffa, Ahilan Kadirgamar and Vijay Nagaraj  with Harini Amarasuriya moderating,  reflect on the past ethnic and religious riots, the impact it had on the individual and the collective, and speak abo...

There was an animated discussion via my facebook on the underrepresentation of women in the new parliament, following the General Election of August 17.  The debate was stimulated by the fact that probably the one woman from the winning UNFGG who has come to Parliament off her own bat (not because of male spouses, siblings or parents), Rosy Senanayake , lost her seat in the preferential voting.  The number of women in this Parliament has decreased to eleven, from thirteen in the previous one.    The national lists of all contending parties are also devoid of significant numbers of women, and what caused the FB furore was the fact that some of us were advocating that  the Prime Minister (and other leaders, though that was not quite so explicit) uses the national list to increase women’s representation, and perhaps bring people like Rosy back into Parliament. There are some people who think Rosy is arrogant – but by and large most people think she did a...