Forgotten woes: Sri Lanka’s neoliberal politics
Chaminda Weerawardhana
Sri Lanka’s thirty-year war, which ended in May 2009, is fast being forgotten. In the post-2009 context, pressing fundamental rights issues in the island nation have been considerably sidelined. Key players in the international community do not perceive Sri Lanka as a strategic priority. In the most recent development, Colombo interprets its decision to hold a Northern Provincial Council Election on 21 September 2013, after a lapse of some twenty-five years, as a means of demonstrating its apparent respect for democratic best practice. The campaign, however, has been fraught with violence, especially against candidates of the Tamil National Alliance (TNA), the main exponent of constitutional Tamil nationalism, polemical concerns over the TNA manifesto, and anti-TNA smear campaigns emanating from governmental sources.
