Former parliamentarian Bharatha Lakshman Premachandra and two others were killed and Colombo district UPFA MP Duminda Silva was critically injured in a shootout at Mulleriyawa yesterday.

Police said that Premachandra and Silva accompanied by their supporters had been travelling separately in the Mulleriyawa area in support of UPFA candidates contesting yesterday’s local government poll for the Kolonnawa Municipal Council.

It is time to recognize and acknowledge that the Government’s counter-thrust to the campaign to hold investigations on alleged war crimes has flopped, and flopped badly. The countries arrayed against us have been the US, the EU member states, and their allies, and judging from what has been going on at Geneva and other indications the Government’s counter-thrust has not made one whit of difference to them. In fact, the antagonism shown towards the SL government could be becoming worse. The Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper has been reported as having advocated a boycott of the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting scheduled to be held in Sri Lanka in 2013. In Australia the New South Wales Senator moved a motion in the Senate to suspend Sri Lanka from the Commonwealth. True, the motion was defeated, but that initiative as well as the Canadian PM’s statement would some time ago have seemed to belong to the realm of the entirely unthinkable. They have become not just thinkable but actual. They seem to testify to a worsening international situation for Sri Lanka.

"Contrary to the opinion generated by the Ceylon Chamber of Commerce praising the revival of the stalled CEPA negotiations, Mawbimalanka urges the Government of Sri Lanka to draw attention to matters beyond the realm of trade & mutual political goodwill.

We would like to point out that the CCC membership is made up of non-Sri Lankans & multinationals. Thus the CCC is dominated by large scale traders interested in only developing their trades. With only a few industrialists as members the voice of the trading community dominates quorums purely based on the advantages accruing to them & do not echo the voice of Sri Lanka.

World Economic Forum: Global Competitiveness Report

• Scores well on macroeconomic stability, infrastructure
• But things get worse: labour market efficiency, trust in politicians,  irregular payments, and independence of the judiciary decline

Sri Lanka has jumped an impressive ten places on the World Economic Forum’s latest issue of the Global Competitiveness Report, moving from 62nd in the 2010-11 report to 52nd place, a further improvement from the 79th position it held in the 2009-10 rankings.