Sri Lankan President Gotabaya Rajapaksa makes brother prime minister
Sri Lanka's new president has appointed a 15-member interim Cabinet including his brother as prime minister. President Gotabaya Rajapaksa, who was elected last week, also said Friday he would call a parliamentary election as early as allowed. The parliamentary term ends next August, and the ...
Muslim voters come under attack as Sri Lanka votes for president
Polls closed Saturday evening after a day of voting for Sri Lanka's next president, an election marred by shots fired at a convoy of Muslims heading to cast their ballots in what some called a coordinated effort to disenfranchise the minority group. There were no ...
Sri Lankan ex-defense chief Gotabaya Rajapaksa says he will run for president, tackle radical Islam
Sri Lanka's former wartime defense chief, Gotabaya Rajapaksa, said on Friday he would run for president in elections this year and would stop the spread of Islamist extremism by rebuilding the intelligence service and surveilling citizens. Gotabaya, as he is popularly known, is the younger ...
Ranil Wickremesinghe returns as Sri Lanka's prime minister, ending political crisis
President Maithripala Sirisena on Sunday reappointed as prime minister the same man he sacked from the job nearly two months ago, ending a messy power struggle that had paralyzed the island nation. Ranil Wickremesinghe, whose shock dismissal in late October threw Sri Lanka into constitutional ...
Sri Lanka's strongman is back, and he's brought his family too
In a compound secured by the Sri Lankan elite special task force that protects the island nation's top leaders, beneath framed photos of himself in army uniform, the brother of newly installed Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa is mulling a presidential run. "I'm not interested in ...
After sacking prime minister, Sri Lankan president suspends parliament as political rift deepens
Sri Lankan President Maithripala Sirisena on Saturday suspended parliament until Nov. 16, a day after removing Ranil Wickremesinghe as prime minister and replacing him with former leader Mahinda Rajapaksa in a surprise move that signals escalating political tensions in the South Asian nation. "The president ...
Culture of fear lingers in war-traumatized Sri Lanka
Civil war engulfed Sri Lanka from 1983 to 2009, with a death toll estimated by the U.N. at up to 100,000. The war was fought between the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, aka Tamil Tigers, and the Sri Lankan state. Civilians paid the highest price, ...
Former Sri Lanka president urges more development projects with Japan
Amid a proliferation of development deals in Sri Lanka, former President Mahinda Rajapaksa says his country and Japan could work on more projects together, including hospitals and highways. "I believe that the infrastructure projects are very important for Sri Lanka after the war," Rajapaksa said ...
Former strongman Mahinda Rajapaksa's recent electoral defeat means Sri Lanka can move forward on reform.
While the new president of Sri Lanka, Maithripala Sirisena, says he wants to build a nation based on Buddhist principles of nonviolence and compassion, it is not clear if he is prepared to investigate charges that war crimes were committed during the 26-year-long civil ...
Sri Lanka votes against fear and kleptocracy
The stunning ouster of Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa on Jan. 8 was good news for that island nation of 20 million, and further evidence of a universal yearning for good governance. After a decade in power, Sri Lankans chose to hold Rajapaksa accountable for ...
Rajapaksa: Sri Lanka's affable authoritarian?
Down in the deep south of Sri Lanka, where life usually moves at a leisurely pace, there is one small town that is less tranquil. Hambantota — population 20,000 — is expanding fast. There is a vast new deepwater port, built with $360 million ...
