Police back to Balasuriya!

 Sunday, 12 October 2014 

Former IGP Mahinda Balasuriya, presently ambassador in the UAE, is due to be appointed secretary to the ministry of law and order, say ministry sources.

Accordingly, the government has ordered Maj. Gen. Nanda Mallawarachchi, the incumbent, to resign. Due to that order, Mallawarachchi has lost even his official residence. He is removing his personal belongings from the official residence today, say ministry sources.

Furthermore, the defence ministry has ordered IGP N.K. Illangakoon to resign. Thereafter, senior DIG Anura Senanayake, who is still in service thanks to a fourth extension, is to be appointed as the acting police chief.

All these changes are taking place to target the presidential election due to take place soon, add the sources.

Youthful Naiveté Confronts Chinese Stalinism

By Kumar David -October 12, 2014

Prof. Kumar David

Bright young faces, technically savvy, nimble of mind, polite and controlled in protest; 30 years of intimacy with Hong Kong, nearly 25 in universities in HK and China had not prepared me for this fortnight. I have not before seen the youthful flower of Hong Kong’s future bloom so bright; but not without its share of blunders which later cost it the public support it initially garnered. Thankfully, the control freaks in Beijing kept their tanks garaged and HK’s adults were shown-up as deficient of pluck and dim of wit. But the city will not be the same again. First in little ripples and then in waves, the debate about democracy will infiltrate the Mainland and the emerging economic superpower will change at its fabled glacial pace. “Full many a flower is born to blush unseen and waste its sweetness on the desert air”. Unseen until its autumn blooming, naïve in strategy, and green in tactical cunning, first flowers are always blown away. But they waste not their sweetness in Hong Kong’s ‘pragmatic’ air nor wither in Beijing’s Stalinist wilderness; in a globalised age of technological dazzle blossoming is quickened.

Strolling through Mong Kong and Admiralty, late on the evening of the sixth day (Saturday 4) of the Occupy Central protest, I estimated twenty thousand young idealists still there, much thinner than the 120,000 at the peak. The majority were students, but as the nubile companion of my stroll pointed out, a large number were not, they were just young people; the new working class ignorant sociologists still call middle-class. Occupying the main boulevards, pavements, and shopping arcades; sitting on the ground, happy in groups; speakers offering their encouragement here and there; it was three-quarters serious politics, one-quarter a carnival of youthful exuberance. Later in the night the crowd swelled, TV stations estimate to 100,000. Throughout five days they drifted in and out, went to university for a lecture and returned, dropped in at home for well earned sleep and popped back; some joined in the evening, after work. The cumulative number involved at some point in what is called the Umbrella Revolution was very much in excess of 200,000. Read More