This week’s highlights from Monocle Radio including takeaways from Sri Lanka’s presidential elections, correspondence from InnoTrans 2024 and an interview with Isabella Craddock, editor and founder of ‘Near+Far’. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Hello and welcome to the Curator on Monocle Radio with me, Laura Kramer.
Over the next 60 minutes, we'll be bringing you some of the very best interviews and reports from the past week of coverage on Monocle Radio with highlights from our studios here at Midori House and from around the world.
Coming up this week, two years after its economy collapsed, Sri Lanka voted for change at the polls.
We'll have the latest on the to secure a stable future for the country.
Also on the show, following their lives as they are living it, you become part of the fabric of people's lives.
And if you approach that with deep empathy and are holding space for people, then the camera can serve a very different role.
We'll meet the filmmakers of a powerful new documentary.
We'll also hear about Ibiza's restaurant scene.
The latest in Norwegian tv.
And this coming era, especially for Westerners, is one where we have to become accustomed to playing a less central role in different aspects of world affairs.
We'll meet the author of Westlessness, all that and much, much more over the next hour here on the Curator with me, Laura Kramer.
We'll kick off the show.
In Sri Lanka, which has ditched their traditional leaders and elected a new president, here's Andrew Mueller to explain.
Sri Lankan politics have generally been a family affair.
Before this past weekend's presidential election, Sri Lanka's previous two presidents, Ranil Vikrambasinghe and Gotabaya Rajapaka, had both been scions of well established political dynasties.
The Rajapakas in particular had come to believe themselves something akin to Sri Lankan royalty.
Gotabaya's brothers, Mahinda, Shamal and Basil, all served variously as president, prime minister, speaker of the house and minister of finance, Finance, among other appointments.
A Rajapaksa did stand in this election, Namal, son of Mahinda, but by way of demonstrating that the brand has become somewhat tarnished, won just 2.57% of the vote.
That is pretty much everyone called Rajapaksa or related to a Rajapaka and few besides.
We will return presently to the Rajapakas unwitting and certainly unwilling enablers of an extraordinary shift in their nation's politics.