Sri Lanka News Updates with Discussions

COLOMBO, Nov. 25 (Xinhua) -- A third candidate entered the race of Sri Lanka`s presidential election on Wednesday while the election date is yet to be announced.

Wickramabahu Karunaratna of the Left Front called himself the common left candidate pitted against incumbent President Mahinda Rajapakse and the main opposition candidate yet to be named.

COLOMBO: Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa on Tuesday ruled out the re-merger of the Northern and Eastern provinces to form a single Tamil-speaking province.

Explaining this to editors N Vithiyatharan of Sudar Oli and Devaraj of Virakesari at a breakfast meeting with the heads of media institutions here, Rajapaksa said the merger of the two provinces had been a demand of the LTTE and there was no question of entertaining it now.

Sri Lanka Navy has arrested two human smuggling multi-day fishing trawlers heading for South Eastern deep waters carrying over sixty occupants in the high seas of Southern Sri Lanka.



This is considered one of the highest and major break-throughs in the human smuggling operations in Sri Lanka where the major network would be probed to effectively arrest this criminal act. Occupants have paid large sums of money for the human smuggling and who are operating with maritime terrorists and criminals for their ulterior motives. Sri Lanka Police is also assisting Sri Lanka Navy in this combined effort.

The toughest sentence of seven years in was given to Nadaraja Matinthiran, whom the court heard was the leader of the LTTE.

A French court on Monday jailed 21 Tamil Tiger militants convicted of extorting millions of euros from the Tamil diaspora in France to fund their armed campaign in Sri Lanka.

The toughest sentence of seven years in was given to Nadaraja Matinthiran, whom the court heard was the leader of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) organisation in France.

Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa on Monday afternoon signed a proclamation setting January 23 as the date for Presidential election.

President Mahinda Rajapaksa today decided to hold the next Presidential Election and issued instructions to his Secretary, Lalith Weerathunga with regard to gazetting the Presidential proclamation to enable the Commissioner of Elections to conduct the poll , a report on the Government Information Department web site (www.news.lk) said.

The talk of the town is election fever these days, but speculation surrounding the polls has been confounded by a series of non-events that were expected to materialise this week, but did not.
It was widely expected that President Mahinda Rajapaksa would announce which polls - presidential or general - would be held first. The declaration was expected at the annual convention of the Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP) last Sunday, but even before the event, there were newspaper headlines proclaiming that the much awaited pronouncement would not be made.

Sri Lanka`s 72 percent married population, the highest in the world, has helped the country rank the highest ever, at 17, in social capital in the 2009 Legatum Prosperity Index, ahead of countries such as Germany, Japan, France, China, Jordan and Saudi Arabia, among many others.

The annual report, which is the world`s only global assessment of wealth and wellbeing, says Sri Lanka`s strong social capital index highlights the importance of the country`s familial support network. According to the report, compiled using data from the Gallup World Poll, a large number of Sri Lankans, 85 percent, rely on friends and family for help in time of need. Thirty-nine percent extend this good will beyond their inner circle by engaging in volunteer activities, the report notes.

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The gazette notification announcing the date of the much anticipated mid-term Presidential election, due to be held in January next year, will be issued at midnight tomorrow, ending widespread speculation as to which of the two national elections would come first, informed government sources told The Nation yesterday.
A proclamation by President Mahinda Rajapaksa declaring his intention to seek a fresh mandate to hold office for a further term will precede the gazette notification.

President Rajapaksa can continue in his office for another two years as the mandate he received at the 2005 Presidential election is valid for a six-year term. However, he has decided to seek a fresh mandate for a second term on completion of four years in office as provided for by the Constitution.

Senior Presidential Advisor MP Basil Rajapaksa, who visited the Menik Farm welfare village in Vavuniya this morning, said that the Internally Displaced People (IDP) in the camps will have greater freedom of movement with effect from the 1st of December.



The chief of the President`s Task Force for Rehabilitation and Resettlement made the official announcement as part of government moves to improve the rights and privileges of Internally Displaced People housed at welfare centers and villages in the North.

Mother you are so beautiful

An estimated crowd of 2736 displaced civilians, remained housed at four Jaffna based IDP Welfare Centers found way back to their original places of residence in Jaffna, Mannar and Vavuniya districts during past three days after Army troops facilitated their return under government`s `Northern Spring` (Uthuru Wasanthaya) programme.

Those people rescued from LTTE clutches during the height of humanitarian operations in Wanni were temporally sheltered in Gurunagar Welfare Centre, Kopai Welfare Centre, University Welfare Center at Kaithady and Children`s Welfare Center at Kaithady, Mirusuvil Welfare Centre and belonged to 957 families. Some of these people selected their places of resettlement in the Jaffna peninsula itself under fifteen Divisional secretariats.

New LTTE leadership`s grand idea of a Transnational Eelam Government suffered an inglorious defeat when 90 percent of the Tamil diaspora showed its contempt by abstaining from voting for the transnational government.

The LTTE leader Nediyavan, who succeeded K P as head of the terrorist outfit suffered a humiliating setback when Tamils in Norway rejected his leadership on Sunday.

Norway based LTTE leader decided to hold the first phase of Eelam Transnational election in Norway itself with the strategy of obtaining a resounding victory to force the sympathetic Oslo regime to recognize the Transnational Eelam Government. But only 2667 Tamils out of a total of 27,000 Tamils in Norway exercised their franchise.

Nov. 18 (Bloomberg) -- Sri Lanka`s central bank cut its benchmark interest rates to spur credit demand and support a recovery in the island`s economy.

The Central Bank of Sri Lanka lowered the reverse repurchase rate to 9.75 percent from 10.5 percent, according to a statement on the Colombo-based bank`s Web site today. The repurchase rate was reduced to 7.5 percent from 8 percent.