What Ranil, Mangala and Mano Ganesan said on 3 September at a Platform for Freedom Press Conference on the IDP issue was fairly widely covered in the print and electronic media, but three other contributors, Siritunga Jayasuriya, Nimalka Fernando and Herman Kumara failed to attract coverage. They were more sharp and interesting, but not being parliamentarians, I guess, less news worthy. I will focus on them to redress this imbalance.

Is the Rajapaksa regime caught in the grips of the ME Syndrome? - Missing the Enemy, that is. Over the last two weeks, the leading lights of the regime have warned of conspiracies to destabilize the regime and even to replace it and have used the state controlled media as well as the defence ministry website to launch propaganda attacks against alleged conspirators, this columnist included.