China officially handed over 26 motorcycles and 100 desktop computers to the Sri Lanka Police Department.
The donation was made aimed at enhancing the operational capabilities of the Sri Lanka Police Department.
During the official handover of documents, Ambassador of China to Sri Lanka Qi Zhenhong presented the donations to President Ranil Wickremesinghe.
Amid speculation of a widening rift within the ruling Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna (SLPP) over its political future, the main opposition Samagi Jana Balawegaya (SJB) has called the SLPP’s bluff, challenging it to defeat the upcoming budget if they want an election.
Former SJB parliamentarian Mujibur Rahuman said the SLPP can defeat the upcoming budget if they want a parliamentary election.
“If the Rajapaksas want to go for an election, they can defeat the budget. We don’t know if they’ll take that decision,” Rahuman said speaking to reporters.
“What we see is that they talk big outside, but turn into kittens at the sight of President Ranil Wickremesinghe. Those are the Rajapksas that are visible to us,” he said.
SLPP legislator S M Chandrasena said his party will be the “main factor” at future presidential and parliamentary elections, speculation over its internal divisions notwithstanding.
Chandrasena told reporters at the party headquarters Friday November 10 morning that no one can bring the SLPP down.
“Many are slinging mud at the SLPP, claiming the Pohottuwa (party symbol) was what caused the economic crisis and other crises. We know that for years, particularly during the Yahapalana government, the country took 12 billion dollars in loans. With nothing to show for it, as we know,” the MP said.
“So our party cannot be brought down. Our party is the main factor in the election of the next president and also in the formation of the next government,” he added.
Meanwhile, according to National People’s Power (NPP) leader Anura Kumara Dissanayake, the SLPP is in a predicament. Dissanayake said at an event in the US earlier this week that an early parliamentary poll would prove disastrous to the Rajapaksa-led party, so they would have to throw their weight behind President Wickremesinghe at the presidential poll, which would also spell a shift of power to Wickremesinghe’s associates and confidantes in his United National Party (UNP).
The only way for an early parliamentary poll would be for the president to dissolve parliament, which he is unlikely to do, with the upcoming budget also unlikely to be defeated, Dissanayake, who leads the Marxist-Leninist Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP) said.
Dissanayake currently leads at least one opinion poll on presidential election voting intent.
(ICC) – The International Cricket Council Board has suspended Sri Lanka Cricket’s membership of the ICC with immediate effect.
In a statement released on Friday night, the ICC said that the SLC had breached its obligations as a member, in particular the requirement to manage its affairs autonomously and without government interference.
In its statement, the ICC said: “The conditions of the suspension will be decided by the ICC Board in due course.”
The ICC Board is set to meet on November 21, after which the future course of action is expected to be clearer.
Sri Lanka is scheduled to host the ICC Under-19 Men’s Cricket World Cup across January and February 2024.
The Sri Lanka men’s team have had a forgettable time at the ICC Men’s Cricket World Cup 2023, winning just two of their nine matches and finishing with four points. They sit at No.8 in the points table with three more matches to be played in the league phase.
The World Bank’s Board of Executive Directors approved $150 million in financing for Sri Lanka to strengthen the resilience of the financial sector on Friday (10).
“Sri Lanka’s economic crisis highlights the need for strong safety nets to support the financial sector. Stable and reliable banking sector is essential for the economy, businesses and individuals, small businesses and poor households,” said Faris Hadad-Zervos, World Bank Country Director for Maldives, Nepal, and Sri Lanka.
“Strengthening the Deposit Insurance Scheme will help protect the savings of smaller depositors, including women and people living in rural areas. It will also sustain the confidence in Sri Lanka’s financial system, a critical part of building the country back better,” he added.
The Financial Sector Safety Net Project is designed to boost the financial and institutional capacity of the Sri Lanka Deposit Insurance Scheme (SLDIS), which is managed by the Central Bank of Sri Lanka.
The financing will help boost reserves of SLDIS which could be used towards the payout to insured depositors of banks and licensed finance companies.
In parallel, the project will support institutional strengthening of the SLDIS in line with international good practices for effective deposit insurance schemes.
“Strengthening the financial sector safety net is crucial for maintaining financial stability during a macro-debt crisis,” said Alexander Pankov, Lead Financial Sector Specialist and the Task Team Leader for the project.
“A robust deposit insurance system, along with enhanced supervision and resolution frameworks, will safeguard public confidence in the financial system and protect people’s savings,” he added.
The SLDIS was established in 2010 and has conducted several payouts for failed licensed finance companies in recent years.
Currently, the SLDIS guarantees the deposits of households and enterprises up to LKR 1,100,000, which covers more than 90 percent of deposit accounts in Sri Lanka.
The legal framework for deposit insurance in Sri Lanka was upgraded earlier this year through the approval by Parliament of Banking Special Provisions Act.
SLDIS should now be strengthened institutionally and financially for it to be able to effectively fulfill its legal mandate of protecting the financial sector stability.
The Sri Lankan government is in discussions with various bodies to establish water supply to the island’s north through the ‘River for Jaffna’ policy, which was proposed by an engineer decades ago.
“There is an acute water shortage in the north. To mitigate this dangerous situation, we are in discussions on how to implement the ‘River for Jaffna’ project which was proposed by professor Arumugam,” Prime Minister Dinesh Gunawardena said in parliament on Wednesday.
Gunawardena said that the government is in discussions with engineers, relevant specialist institutions and international bodies on how to implement the policy, and resolve the water supply and irrigation obstacles in the region.
Gunawardena pointed out that desalination was costly and would incur heavy prices for consumers.
In 1954, Engineer Arumugam, former deputy director of the Irrigation Department, proposed a River for
Jaffna for the benefit of the Jaffna peninsula water resources and environment.
Over the years, the irrigation department, Mahaweli Authority, various local and foreign consultants, and international agencies have contributed to and improved the proposal.
Chairman of the Delimitation Committee Mahinda Deshapriya has alleged that continuing the tenures of the current local government bodies without holding the polls dealt a ‘deathblow’ to the country’s democracy.
Speaking to the media in this regard, the former Chairman of the Elections Commission revealed that the Delimitation Committee has had no influence on the decision to postpone the Local Government (LG) elections.
Commenting further, Deshapriya also highlighted that it is impossible to hold the Presidential Election either before, or after the time allocated for such activities as per the Constitution of Sri Lanka.
Accordingly, he said, “The Presidential Election cannot be held soon. Neither can it be delayed. It must be held between the 17th of September and 17th of October, 2024”.
Sri Lanka and Argentina remain very vulnerable amid a worsening in global financial conditions while China has suffered a sharp deterioration in financial resilience since pre-COVID times, a think-tank study found on Wednesday.
The resilience indicator, published by the Washington-based Center for Global Development, assesses which countries would be most economically and financially affected if an external shock were to materialise. It is based on data published by the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and governments.
China was found to be “most weakened country” across a sample of 37 countries, having ranked among the top 10 most resilient emerging economies in 2019 and dropping to 18th place in 2023.
Emerging markets were now more vulnerable than in 2019 on an overall basis, economist Liliana Rojas-Suarez wrote in the report.
“The scars of the 2020-2022 shocks that started with the COVID pandemic and the subsequent multiple shocks, such as Russia’s war on Ukraine and the U.S. Fed’s increases in interest rates, are deep and have weakened emerging markets’ economic and financial conditions,” Rojas-Suarez wrote.
A severe shortage of dollars tipped Sri Lanka into its worst financial crisis since independence from Britain in 1948 last year, triggering its first foreign debt default in May 2022.
Argentina is in recession for the sixth time in a decade, with triple-digit inflation and foreign net reserves in the red.
The study also showed that debt sustainability has declined over the last four years across emerging market economies.
“In 2019, only Tunisia, Pakistan, Argentina, and Sri Lanka had ratios of external financing needs above 100%. Now, 12 of the 37 countries we examined, or about one third, are in that position,” Rojas-Suarez said, adding these countries have very large and unsustainable large public debt ratios.
The study calculated external financing needs by measuring short-term external debt plus current account deficits as a proportion of international reserves.
Bolivia, Egypt, Turkey and El Salvador are also on the list of vulnerable countries, while the study shows that Indonesia, Peru and Bulgaria are the most resilient countries in the group.
A complaint has been lodged with the Human Rights Commission against the arrest of six university students returning from a protest by Tamil dairy farmers at Mailattamadu.
Students of the Eastern University lodged the complaint with the HRC’s Batticaloa office on 06 November.
Speaking to the media thereafter, student leader K. Robinson said they strongly condemned the arrests.
Students of Jaffna and Eastern universities extended support to the dairy farmers on an indefinite protest to demand the return of their pastures taken over by Sinhalese for Chena cultivation.
On November 05, students were returning from attending that protest, when police stopped their bus at Sandiveli in Jaffna and took them into custody for not having student identity cards in their person.
Produced before courts, they were enlarged on sureties of Rs. 100,000 each.
Jaffna university student leader Alagarasa Vijayakumar said police action would make them more determined and stronger.
It is alleged that Sinhalese have captured 2,500 acres of pastures for Chena cultivation, denying feed for cattle owned by Tamils.
Sri Lanka’s leftist National People’s Power (NPP) may have to reach out to individual MPs of other parties in the event the NPP is victorious in a parliamentary election but is unable to secure 113 seats, party leader Anura Kumara Dissanayake said.
Speaking to a group of Sri Lankan expats living in the United States, Dissanayake said if the election result indicates that the voters have attempted to form an NPP government as opposed to relegating it to its traditional role of “watcher” or security guard of parliament, the party would be obligated to honour that verdict.
“If the voters have attempted to give us power and not to relegate us to the role of a watcher but we were somehow unable to get 113 seats, we think we may have to go into an agreement, not with the other parties, but with some elected MPs,” said Dissanayake.
“If the people’s wish is to form a government, we have no right to disregard that. They have tried to give us a government but were unable to give us 113. To fulfill that we have to come up with a strategy,” he said.
The NPP leader, who also leads the Marxist-Leninist Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP), the party that effectively controls the NPP “collective”, said, however, that there is little chance of an election before the presidential election that’s due in October 2024.
According to Dissanayake, it is not in President Ranil Wickremesinghe’s interest to call a parliamentary election before the presidential election as doing so would negatively impact the latter’s chances at a presidential poll. Even a local government election would reflect voter sentiment that would prove a challenge, he said.
The ruling Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna (SLPP) on the other hand, said Dissanayake, is in a predicament. An early parliamentary poll would prove disastrous to the Rajapaksa-led party, so they would have to throw their weight behind President Wickremesinghe at the presidential poll, which would also spell a shift of power to Wickremesinghe’s associates and confidantes in his United National Party (UNP).
The only way for an early parliamentary poll would be for the president to dissolve parliament, which he is unlikely to do, with the upcoming budget also unlikely to be defeated, the JVP leader said.
Dissanayake currently leads at least one opinion poll on presidential election voting intent.
Julie Chung, the US Ambassador to Sri Lanka, believes presidential elections will be held in the island nation next year.
She said that timely elections are important to any democracy, and that is why there will be a presidential election next year.
She said that the US is also hopeful that, as per the constitution Local Government Elections, Parliamentary Election, and Provincial Council Elections will also take place accordingly.
“All those things give the people a voice, to be able to voice their opinion through the ballot box and to be able to choose their leadership.,” she told News 1st.
“We hope that the elections stay on schedule next year and onwards, and we are looking forward to seeing that free and fair election, and that culture of free and fair elections that’s been in Sri Lanka for decades continue,” she added.
