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The seizure of 471 kilograms of crystal methamphetamine, or ‘ICE’, concealed inside a container, at the Port of Colombo, is being rightly treated as a significant Customs success. Yet the seizure should also provoke a more uncomfortable question. How long can Sri Lanka continue trying to secure a 21st century trading hub with an inspection system designed around methods that belong to another era?
The answer cannot simply be more inspections, more paperwork or more officials opening more containers. Colombo handles enormous volumes of containerised cargo, much of it legitimate. A single container can contain tonnes of goods, packed into hundreds of individual packages. When contraband represents only a fraction of the cargo, physical examination alone becomes an exercise in probability.
The challenge is not merely finding the needle in the haystack. It is determining which haystack is worth searching in the first place.
The Asian Development Bank identified this problem years ago. Its technical assistance assessment found that Sri Lanka’s trade logistics procedures suffered from a “lack of a modern risk management system and other modern customs tools”, combined with “insufficient use of automated systems”, contributing to cargo queues at the Port. It also found that the movement of cargo to and from Customs examination yards, which had poor access, contributed to congestion. These were not casual observations. They formed part of an ADB-supported programme intended to modernise Sri Lanka’s trade logistics system.
The findings were even more uncomfortable. The ADB identified “inadequate use of modern customs tools”, excessive documentation, insufficient automation, inadequate cooperation among border agencies, the absence of a port facilitation system, weaknesses in inland cargo clearance and inadequate capacity. It also reported that Customs risk rules were written in such a way that “80% of the consignments are targeted”. A system in which such a large proportion of cargo becomes subject to targeting inevitably risks undermining the very principle of risk-based Customs control. The more everything becomes suspicious, the less meaningful suspicion becomes.
The ADB-supported feasibility study for a new Customs inspection facility was initiated in 2020, with its final report submitted in December 2021. The study considered alternative locations before Kerawalapitiya emerged as the preferred site. The objective was not simply to construct another yard. The ADB Terms of Reference required the consultants to determine the physical and operational feasibility of the facility, assess potential demand, identify infrastructure requirements and prepare a comprehensive cost estimate. They were also required to identify the government stakeholders involved and “the time allocated for review and approvals”. The irony is difficult to miss. Years after the feasibility exercise, Sri Lanka is still discussing how to bring the facility into operation.
The proposed Kerawalapitiya Customs Verification Centre therefore represents something larger than another infrastructure project. It is a test of whether the Sri Lankan state can convert policy into implementation. According to reporting in 2024, the proposed facility was designed to accommodate around 3,000 containers. Yet the project remained caught in administrative and financial uncertainty years after the feasibility work had been completed. Government land was subsequently allocated and the government moved towards a hybrid public-private partnership model. The question now is why such a basic modernisation programme should have taken so long to progress.
This is where the private sector cannot simply be treated as an ideological inconvenience. Sri Lanka’s public sector has demonstrated repeatedly that it can commission studies, establish committees, formulate strategies and announce projects. The more difficult test is delivering complex infrastructure on time, within budget, and according to measurable standards. A modern Customs inspection centre requires sophisticated scanning equipment, electronic tracking, data systems, cybersecurity, maintenance and continuous technological upgrading. These are precisely the areas in which properly regulated private-sector participation can bring capital, expertise and operational discipline.
That does not mean privatising Customs. The authority to inspect, seize, investigate, impose duties and enforce the law must remain with the state. But there is no compelling reason why every piece of infrastructure, technology platform and operational service surrounding those sovereign functions, must be designed and delivered exclusively through traditional government mechanisms.
The government has already moved in this direction. Cabinet approved the establishment of the Kerawalapitiya Customs Verification Centre and subsequently approved a process to select a private partner under a hybrid public-private partnership model. The policy question is therefore no longer whether private-sector involvement is possible. It is whether the Government can structure that involvement transparently enough to prevent a new system from simply reproducing old weaknesses under a different ownership arrangement.
That requires radical transparency. The public should know who is selected, how the contract is awarded, what the operator is required to deliver, what technology will be installed, what performance standards will apply and what penalties will follow failure. The Government should publish a timetable with identifiable responsibility for every stage. Otherwise, “public-private partnership” risks becoming another phrase that conceals rather than solves institutional delay.
The technology must also be substantially more ambitious than a larger physical yard. The ADB found that existing cargo seals were “not tamper-proof” and that existing devices did not provide live tracking or alerts concerning tampering or diversion. A modern Kerawalapitiya
centre should integrate non-intrusive inspection, electronic cargo tracking, intelligence databases, automated risk profiling and secure digital records. Artificial intelligence may assist image analysis, but it should supplement trained Customs judgement rather than become an excuse to outsource accountability to algorithms.
The principle should be simple. Sri Lanka does not need 100 percent physical examination of containers. It needs 100 percent visibility of risk. That means legitimate traders should not be punished because the system cannot distinguish them from high-risk consignments. Low-risk cargo should move quickly. Suspicious containers should receive scanning and targeted examination. High-risk shipments should receive intensive inspection. The result should be stronger border security alongside faster trade, not security achieved by paralysing commerce.
The recent drug seizure demonstrates that Customs officers can and do intercept major threats. But individual successes cannot substitute for institutional reform. If Sri Lanka waits for every new seizure to trigger another debate about Customs weaknesses, it will remain trapped in a reactive cycle.
The ADB study has already identified the weaknesses. The government has already identified the land. The feasibility work has already been undertaken. The partnership model has already entered the policy process. What is missing is decisive implementation. Kerawalapitiya should, therefore, become a test of governmental accountability. Sri Lanka does not need another promise to modernise Customs. It needs a functioning facility, modern technology, transparent procurement and a deadline that cannot quietly disappear into another government file.
The real scandal would not be that criminals occasionally attempt to exploit weaknesses in a complex trading system. The real failure would be knowing where those weaknesses are, knowing how to fix them and still taking years to do so.
(Nirmala de Fonseka is a former Director of the Sri Lanka Ports Authority, and currently works as a consultant specialising in logistics management)
Sri Lanka’s elephants eat far more plants than scientists once knew
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With the Republican Party losing its clout in the US Congress in the wake of the recent midterm election setback the power balance in West Asia could very well be tilting against the US-Israel combine for the first time in decades. In all probability the Republican administration would from now on be challenged to initiate a policy reset in the region that is more amenable to Iran considering that the latter has emerged in a somewhat commanding position from the ongoing political and military turmoil in the region.
So powerful is Iran currently that it has unilaterally set out some seven conditions to the US to bring the conflict in West Asia within manageable limits. At present it is unclear whether the conditions are receiving the undivided attention of the US, given that the central Republican administration is in an effort to pull itself together and act with a degree of policy coherence in the aftermath of the recent polls debacle.
However, the Republican centre would have no choice but to concede some of the key Iranian demands in consideration of the ‘cost of living shock’ that the war in the region has administered to the average US consumer. Provided relief is quickly delivered to the consuming public, the chances are that the Trump administration would continue to witness a slide in its popularity and power. We have another reminder here that economics basically drives politics.
From the above viewpoint, conditions 2, 3 and 4, relating to the lifting of the US naval blockade on Iran, the reopening of shipping lanes and the release of frozen Iranian assets could prove vital since they are decisive in not only worsening the material hardships of the Iranian and US publics but also those of the rest of the world. They exercise a direct bearing, therefore, on the political fortunes of the US centre and may need to be met before long.
However, it is to the degree to which the immediate political consequences from the midterm polls are effectively and swiftly managed that the US centre could give the conditions its concerted attention. But the urgency of granting the key demands of Iran would only be increasingly felt in Washington, thereby denying it the ability to deal with the foreign policy issues at hand with greater ease and freedom of deliberation. That is, Iran would be acting and even negotiating with the US from what could be seen as a position of strength.
It is possible that the Trump administration is biding its time at the moment until ground conditions stabilize and greater policy clarity could be achieved on what needs to be done going forward, but a revival of military strikes on Iran could prove both politically and economically most costly. The administration would be acting in some of the US’ best interests by choosing its policy courses with utmost circumspection.
Meanwhile, it should not come as a surprise if the US is compelled to seriously consider a policy reset towards Israel as well. It is not the case that the US would be substantially downgrading its alliance with Israel in the days ahead but it is possible that there would be reduced financial and material backing by the US for Israel. After all, the US ‘purse’ is beginning to ‘pinch’ and the affordability of US financial assistance could emerge as a major worry.
In fact there has reportedly been an effort to scale down US assistance to a degree. Whether this would seriously undermine the US-Israel alliance is yet to be seen but the development could point to possible future strains that could stringently test the alliance.
It does not follow from the foregoing that Israel would be seeing a steady diminishing of its military power to the degree to which the US cuts down on its assistance. This is unlikely to be because Israel has proved more or less self-sufficient in most respects in the past. But the perception could gain ground among Israel’s enemies in the Arab world in particular that she would be weakened militarily in the absence of continued and substantial US help. This again is primarily a matter for the future.
However, a development of note in Israeli politics at present is the possibility of opposition leader Gadi Eisenkot forming the next government in Israel. He has reportedly been called upon by the Israeli President to do so. If this comes to pass we would have in Israel a more centrist coalition government that could prove less militaristic and less religiously hard line than the Netanyahu regime.
One message that the foregoing development conveys is that the Eisenkot regime could prove more amenable to negotiations in sorting out the Middle East tangle. President Trump is unlikely to easily hear of negotiations but an incoming Democratic Party controlled Congress is likely to. Such an administration could bring pressure on Trump to consider negotiations and political solutions to the outstanding issues in West Asia. Hopefully this opening for progressive change would be seized by the Democrats and sustainably followed through in the days ahead.
An incoming Democratic Party-dominated Congress would need to work on several fronts if it is to prove sensitive to the US public’s aspirations. It would need to end all forms of conflict and war in the Middle East, cut down on needless defense spending and invigorate the weak domestic economy. There is no getting away from the need for a two-state solution in West Asia. The recent mid-term polls results amply prove that these are main among the US public’s needs.
However, incoming more democracy-friendly administrations would also need to call on Israel’s neighbours, including Iran, to cooperate in finding peaceful, negotiated solutions to the problems that have been bloodily tearing the region apart. It will need to be impressed on these neighbours that Israel would not be negotiating from a position of weakness. It is simply that diplomatic, equitable solutions would do everyone concerned good.
Iran’s first demand calls for an ‘end to hostilities on all fronts’; including Lebanon, Gaza and Yemen. This is the way forward, but Iran needs to be asked to do more than what is seen as its part to end hostilities. It should not only down arms against Israel but prove its sincerity by recognizing Israel’s right to exist.
The nuclear option, meanwhile, needs to be shelved by all concerned. It needs to be perceived by all that unending war leads to the eventual annihilation of all.
“Pain which cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart.” Robert F. Kennedy borrowed these words from Aeschylus on the night Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated, speaking to a stunned crowd in Indianapolis. Two months later he was murdered himself.
I thought of that line in Washington, thirty-two years after my father, Ossie Abeyagoonasekera, was assassinated in Sri Lanka on 9 November 1994. At my book launch at the National Press Club, I met Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, Robert Kennedy’s eldest daughter. She spoke of losing her father at sixteen. I was sixteen when I lost mine. Our fathers belonged to different nations and traditions, yet violence left us the same inheritance: the knowledge that one moment can divide a life into everything before and everything after.
Some losses are not healed by time. Time only teaches us to carry them.
The assassin believes he has settled something. He kills a man to silence an argument and let fear decide the future. But the dead go on asking the questions the living would rather avoid.
My father’s question has not aged: how free is Sri Lanka to decide its own future? I believe the answer lies in two places at once, in how we deal with the world’s great powers and in how we treat our own citizens. A country cannot be sovereign abroad and fearful at home.
He led a small party in an age of executive presidents, ideological quarrels and armed insurgency. After his close friend Vijaya Kumaratunga was assassinated in 1988, he assumed leadership of the Sri Lanka Mahajana Party, which would lose 117 of its members to political violence. He stayed.
In 1986 he travelled to Jaffna with Vijaya to speak with the LTTE, when dialogue itself could be called betrayal. Years later, a former LTTE member told me my father had earned their trust. The irony is unbearable, and I will not soften it: the organisation with which he sought peace carried out the bombing that ended his life.
He did not oppose his country. He opposed the injustice that threatened it. In 1982 he challenged President J. R. Jayewardene with a symbolic rice-ration-book campaign. In Welikada prison he corresponded with Nelson Mandela, who encouraged his struggle. And he supported his opponents’ policies whenever they served ordinary citizens. Loyalty to a party, he understood, is not loyalty to a nation.
His travels took him to India, China, the Soviet Union, Libya and Europe. I lived with him in Bonn in 1988–89, as the Berlin Wall approached its fall, and learned that small nations are never alone in history. They are always being looked at by larger ones. Today the Indian Ocean is contested by India, China, the United States and others through security, infrastructure and investment. The danger begins when that competition shapes our domestic choices and the stories citizens tell about their country. A nation loses sovereignty not only when foreign soldiers cross its border, but when its leaders can no longer tell the national interest from someone else’s. Sri Lanka’s task is not to choose between New Delhi, Beijing or Washington. It is to keep the independence to decide what serves its own people.
That independence is tested at home too.
The government promised to repeal oppressive counterterrorism law. In October it tabled the Protection of the State from Terrorism Bill(PSTB) to replace the Prevention of Terrorism Act. Critics point out that it allows detention for up to a year without charge, followed by up to a year of pretrial detention, and that a magistrate cannot overturn a detention order. The Bar Association of Sri Lanka has urged the government to withdraw this bill and the Prevention of Organised Crimes Bill, citing the lessons of the old Act.
The Twenty-Second Amendment deserves the same scrutiny. It raises the retirement age of Supreme Court and Court of Appeal judges. The government presents it as a way to strengthen judicial independence and clear the backlog of cases. But the Bar Association notes that the sitting Chief Justice would be the first Supreme Court judge to benefit directly, and a UN Special Rapporteur Margaret Satterthwaite has written to the President with serious concerns.
Days ago, Gampaha Magistrate Bandula Gunaratne, who had asked the President of the Court of Appeal to begin contempt proceedings against the Inspector General of Police for failing to comply with a court order, was transferred to the Judges’ Training Institute with immediate effect.
The state has a duty to protect its people from terrorism and organised crime. But a law must be judged by what it lets a future government do, not by the intentions of the present one. A government elected on the promise of greater freedom owes the public an explanation of why its laws seem to narrow it.
I have now lived more years without my father than with him. In Washington I was returned to the sixteen-year-old who believed death was history’s last word. Time has taught me otherwise. The questions remain, patient and unanswered.
My father believed politics could be an act of love: the difficult kind that demands sacrifice and defends human dignity. As I prepare to launch the Sinhala translation of Winds of Change, I hope more Sri Lankans will read it in their own language and ask these questions for themselves.
My father died believing Sri Lanka could become a more just country. Our duty is to see that it also remains a free one.
The lead up to the festive season is now in full swing with entertainment galore!
In addition to the numerous musical concerts, dances, too, are very much in evidence, and that means we all have a choice!
What is also so special about these dances is that the old boys’ associations of some of the leading schools are in a celebration mood — and this year, De Mazenod College, Kandana, lit up the season in the grandest style!
The De Mazenod College Old Boys’ Association held its annual dinner dance, ‘Luminaria: MazenodiaNite ’26,’ on Saturday, 24 October, 2026.
The “Blue, White & Gold Gala” took place at the Grand Ballroom of Waters Edge, Battaramulla — and what a night it was!
It was a sold-out event and there was fun and excitement right throughout the night. From the moment the doors opened, the ballroom sparkled in blue, white and gold — the colours of Mazenodian pride!
Everyone present had a gala time and guests were heard to say it was a lovely night, meeting up with old friends, lots of laughter, and great memories. Old classmates hugged, teachers were remembered with love, and stories from schooldays flowed like fine wine.
It was truly a night for alumni, family and friends — generations of Mazenodians under one glittering roof.
The crowning of the queen of the night generated lots of excitement, and so did the baila competition.
Niduki Perera was crowned Mazenodian Queen 2026, while the baila competition was won by Ruwantha Cooray and Ranusha Wijesinghe.
Niduki got the nod from the judges as she was charming and strikingly lovely. She did sparkle under the lights — a true queen, graceful, radiant and unforgettable.
Ranusha Wijesinghe and Ruwantha Cooray: Baila champs
Akasha Senavirathne was the 1st Runner-up, while Ranusha Wijesinghe was placed third — a double celebration for Ranusha, who also shone on the dance floor!
According to reports, there was thrill and joy when the baila competition got under way as there was plenty of energy and action on the dance floor, with Ruwantha Cooray and Ranusha Wijesinghe emerging as baila champs. The crowd cheered, clapped and danced along — pure Sri Lankan baila magic!
Guests say it was a night of light, a night of elegance, an unforgettable night.
Musical sets by C-Plus and BLACK, kept the guests dancing until dawn, while renowned compere Faizal Bongso anchored the celebration with his trademark charm and wit.
From slow romantic numbers to foot-tapping baila, from golden oldies to modern hits — the dance floor was never empty!
Numerous alumni batches, including representatives from the 2001 batch, and others celebrating generational Mazenodian spirit, made up this memorable occasion. Fathers and sons, brothers and batchmates — all dancing together as one Mazenodian family.
As the night drew to a close, one thing was clear — ‘Luminaria: MazenodiaNite ’26’ was not just a dinner dance. It was a celebration of friendship, of brotherhood, of memories and of Mazenodian pride.
A night of Light. A night of Love. A night to Remember!
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