by Dayan Jayatilleka

 Sri Lanka’s most successful Army Commander, serving under Sri Lanka’s militarily most successful Commander-in Chief and President, and most dedicated Defence Secretary, has held an important discussion with Colombo’s foreign correspondents on our most essential topic, the war. That General Fonseka is our most successful army commander may be hotly debated in the subjective and partisan Sri Lankan media, but not by top professionals overseas.

The story of MAS Fabrics and its efforts to present Sri Lanka as the preferred apparel sourcing destination to the world

 When Timothy Speldewinde, CEO - Stretchline Holdings, says that his company manufactures 1.5 million metres of elastic a day, he is not stretching the truth. "That means we make enough elastic each year to wrap around the world 10 times over - and that's without stretching it," he says. This is just another feat at MAS Fabrics and one more chapter in the MAS Holdings success story.

by Dayan Jayatilleka

In 1987, the Sri Lankan armed forces had the initiative, and if the operation was taken to a finish, the Tigers may have been defeated. Instead, by the second half of the year the Sri Lankan army was in barracks and the Tigers were off the hook. Both Sri Lanka and India paid for that turn of events, leaving only Prabhakaran the beneficiary. That tragic turn of events was made possible by a cluster of factors, ranging from a Sri Lankan foreign policy which departed from our traditional Non-aligned stance and sought to ignore India and ally with the West, to the power of the Tamil Nadu factor upon decision-making in Delhi.

All I had to do was ask him if he liked Benny Goodman or Fats Waller or Louis Armstrong. At the time, I knew nothing of his chosen musical confections, for that would have made the writing rather more about the Mervyn I knew, than the one I had to get to know through distance learning.

by Dayan Jayatilleka

If Douglas Devananda did not exist, the democratic system would have had to invent him. Any resolution or even sustainable management of North-South relations in Sri Lanka, any successful attempt at nation-building and conflict transformation, devolution and autonomy, requires the fulfilment of the following four conditions: that the Sri Lankan state have a moderate Tamil partner; that the Sinhalese – especially the Sinhala leadership-- have a Tamil leader they can trust; that the Tamils have a moderate leader who can negotiate with the State as well as the Sinhala community; and that this moderate Tamil leader is capable of survival and standing up to Tiger terrorism.