Tracking Sri Lankan Judicial Cases

The Sri Lankan judiciary isn’t known for being fast and effective, with major issues being the long delays of cases and lack of convictions. Many cases drag on for years. It is reported that the average time taken from committing a crime to its high court judgement is 10.2 years. As a result of these issues, I think there should be a trilingual website that holds the Sri Lankan judiciary to account using information in the public domain similar to Manthri.lk by Verité Research that holds Sri Lankan parliamentarians to account. Websites and web pages holding the Sri Lankan government to account, have been increasing this year. Examples of this include the page tracking Sri Lanka’s Open Government Partnership commitments by Transparency International Sri Lanka, the Food Tax Tracker by Advocata Institute, a page on Manthri.lk tracking parliamentary election promises and the website Budget Promises by Verité Research that tracks Sri Lanka’s annual budget promises. A similar website for the Sri Lankan judiciary would add to the growing trend of Sri Lankan websites holding the government to account. I’ll now go into my ideas of how the site could function.

This site would have pages to give details of public interest cases such as cases of bribery and corruption. These pages would give summaries of what has been happening on the case with a link to news articles on the Internet for each point. The summaries could be the accused summoned to an anti-corruption agency, arrested, released on bail, indicted, called to court etc. If it’s possible and not too expensive, there could be an artificial intelligence (AI) component that goes through news stories from a list of sites and then sends the links to the team behind the site. The AI component would send the site team the list of articles from news sites, and the team would go through those articles and put the article or articles that they think is best suited on the case page. The team could also not post a single story from the AI suggestions if they find the AI suggestions to not give valid stories and they also could add stories on their own account if important news about the case has been breaking, but the AI is not picking this information up.

In additional to pages on public interest cases, there would be pages that offer general statistics on Sri Lanka’s judicial system. Those interested in Sri Lanka’s judicial system who look at both pages on public interest cases and general statistics can see if there are improvements or if things are getting worse. This opens the possibility for a wide range of analysis and observations of Sri Lanka’s judicial system. Trends could be spotted such as if certain cases take longer or are less likely to secure a prosecution. This site could also show if a case is progressing at a faster pace than expected.

Those in the government may look at the site, especially people working on court cases, which could result in them making improvements to the judicial system from seeing problems of the system displayed in the site.

If you think you are capable of creating or being involved in such a website, I encourage you to work towards making this site a reality. It will give Sri Lankans important information on the state of the judiciary. People will be able to look up cases they have an interest in, find out important information about the state of the judiciary & draw conclusions and the site’s existence brings about the possibility of a better judicial system for Sri Lanka.

If Tintin Were Set in The Present Day

Tintin is one of the most iconic comic book characters in the world. His adventures existed in the 20th century from the 1920s to the 1970s (or 1980s if you count the unfinished adventure Tintin and Alph-Art). I thought it would be interesting to write down ideas that could be explored in Tintin if there were Tintin adventures set in the present day. In this article, I am giving a list of what I’d like to see in present day Tintin. While most ideas are specifically related to the present day, there are a few that are simply things we haven’t seen before in Tintin I’d like to see. Let’s begin.

• Have Professor Calculus invent green technology, and not as a joke, but as cool useful technology that actually works especially with the environmental issues we’re currently facing.
• Tintin has had science fiction stories and elements, so have a science fiction story. It could be based on an invention of Professor Calculus or deal with issues of artificial intelligence.  
• Have an adventure where Tintin, Captain Haddock and Snowy take on ISIS in the Middle East. It could be tied to the state of Wadesdah (a fictional country run by the heroes’ friend Emir Mohammed Ben Kalish Ezab).
• If there’s a way to deal with it, feature the contemporary problem of racism and hatred in some of the stories, e.g. it could be with Syldavia (a fictional country in Tintin) electing a populist leader.
• Syldavia is enemies with their neighbouring state (also fictional) Borduria. Borduria is an aggressive state and they have the dictator Marshal Kurvi-Tasch who’s mentioned but only appears in photographs. Have the Bordurian leader Kurvi-Tasch appear and be the main villain of the story.
• Have a story dealing with cyber crime.
• Bring the Panama Papers into Tintin, and have some Tintin villains being part of it.
• Have a story dealing with automation.
• I did say to have a science fiction story, but I would like to see another specialised form of science fiction, which is time travel. Have a story where the heroes go back in time to an incident involving Captain Haddock when he was much younger with Captain Haddock avoiding contact with his younger self. Show the contrast between the two of them and the story would involve the heroes stopping the villains from altering history. Differentiate the two Captains by making the younger Captain Haddock without a beard.
• I would like to see a subplot in a story of insurance agent Jolyon Wagg suffering due to the annoying things he’s done to Captain Haddock.
• Captain Haddock’s Butler Nestor is very formal and we see little of what he’s really like as a person. Reveal what he’s really like by showing him interact with others casually, and possibly have his interactions with the heroes getting less formal. There could be a story of Nestor getting kidnapped with the heroes going to rescue him. That would give the opportunity to delve into his personality.
• Incorporate drones (the type that take videos and photos) into a story.

I hope you enjoyed my list of what I’d like to see in present day Tintin. I’d be interested to hear what your thoughts are on these ideas, if you have any expansions of them or if you have ideas of your own.