“We don’t have a Mahinda Rajapaksa phobia. We have defeated him and he is no longer a threat to us. Remember, our party is not in politics to defeat Rajapaksa,” says Nishantha Warnasinghe, Media Spokesperson of the United National Front for Good Governance (Jathika Hela Urumaya). Following are excerpts of an interview with Warnasinghe:

Chathura Senarathne, son of Minister Rajitha Senarathne, has openly challenged former President Mahinda Rajapaksa to contest the next general election from the Beliatta electorate, saying that he would too contest from Beliatta and defeat the former President. The young politician made this challenge at a conference held at the Sugathadasa Indoor Stadium last week. The conference was organised by the Democratic National Movement of which Chathura Senarathne is the leader.

The International Labour Organization (ILO) revealed that recent global estimates suggest that nearly 120 million children between the ages of five and 14 are involved in child labour. Boys and girls in this age group are equally affected. This persistence of child labour is rooted in poverty, lack of social protection and failure to ensure that all children are attending school until the legal minimum age for admission to employment.

Sri Lanka is now reverting to a foreign policy based on a principle of "dynamic active non-alignment", the country's former President said.

In the first government response to the outrage in India over Sri Lankan Prime Minister Ranil Wickremsinghe’s controversial comments on the “right to shoot” fishermen who trespass, Foreign Minister Mangala Samaraweera defended the comments. He spoke on the comments, India-Sri Lanka talks, and the legal process against former president Rajapaksa in an interview to Diplomatic Editor Suhasini Haidar.

At an event in the British parliament on Tuesday 10 March, the producers of multi-award-winning, Emmy-nominated feature documentary No Fire Zone: The Killing Fields of Sri Lanka launched the Sinhala language version of the film in what will be seen as a direct challenge to the new government over its commitment to a free media.