Political unity to develop Sri Lankan youth… one student at a time

Is our youth ready to face the challenges of smart and intelligent manufacturing processes?

• “If we teach today’s students as we taught yesterday’s, we rob them of tomorrow” – John Dewey

 Friday, 1 March 2019 

The learned reader would have been pleasantly surprised to spot a chord of synchrony amongst the highest

President Maithripala Sirisena

Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe

echelons of political establishments recently, related to proposed modernisation efforts of the education sector with a heavy focus on technology to change the fortunes of our economy. This insight was provided through their own speeches delivered at various ceremonies and the writer attempts to capture the positive sentiments expressed by them with reference to education reforms and introduction of technology in a learning environment, to make our youth more relevant to the industries in the digital world.

The address made by the President at the Independence Day celebrations and the address by the Prime Minister at the opening of the medical faculty of the Sabaragamuwa University are captured to highlight the likeminded thinking currently available at the highest political offices of our country in spite of the never-ending political bickering we have now got used to post Yahapalana era. This is a welcome change that should be nurtured and protected at all costs since the subject directly has an impact on transforming the capacity building of our youth to be ‘future ready’.

Therefore, the writer is of the opinion that those who govern at official capacities at respective institutions namely, the presidents, the prime ministers and the Ministry of Education, should use this opportunity to create a platform to collaborate with each other to propel these ideas forward and finally get them implemented in a planned manner to realise the desired change.

Since funding has also been made available through both the Asian Development Bank (ADB) and World Bank (WB), it is only the policy direction and relevance that needs to be established through collaboration. What we must as a nation strive to achieve is to ward off the common pitfall of getting into silo’s and implementing such projects of national significance and future bearing on a short sighted way resulting in a below par achievement of the outcome we originally set out to achieve.

Quoting from the Daily FT of 5 February, the President has expressed the following sentiments reference to education, “We must take prompt action to provide technical education, incentives and infrastructure facilities to drive young people of the country to step into the future through new innovations. Our educational reforms need to be done immediately to create an educated nation. It is our duty to safeguard the cultural child and the technical child, of which I spoke in 2016.”

The President has articulated and recognised clearly that the present economic woes we face today are directly related to the policies we adopted and actions that have never been initiated nor continued albeit implemented resulting in a high level of poverty, unemployment and an alarming lack of contribution from youth to our economy. The latter could be attributed thanks to millions of lads’ preference to sit behind the wheel of a trishaw or the lasses opting to stand behind a counter in the supermarkets or hyper markets that are mushrooming in every corner of Sri Lanka.

The President has also been forthright in identifying that our country’s future can be turned around only by investing wisely in the capacity building of our youth through the introduction of right technical education, strengthening their creativity and knack for innovation to face the future with their heads held high.

As stated in the Daily Mirror on 18 January, the Prime Minister during his address at the inauguration of a new medical faculty at the Sabaragamuwa University, had reportedly requested that urgent steps be taken to change the present university curriculum to produce manpower needed for the industries coming up in areas such as Hambantota. The Prime Minister stated that with over 100 factories expected to mobilise at the proposed industrial zone surrounding Hambantota port areas, universities should focus on such developments and accordingly new technology be introduced to higher education to roll out a suitable task force that can handle new technology.

The Prime Minister had also outlined clearly, how wise investments in education envisioning the future can have a positive impact on the society as a whole when he elaborated that “the real meaning of socialism is allowing people to climb up the social ladder and that the country’s education and health sectors should be effective to pave the way for the people to do so.”

Another serious concern is the current student enrolment for higher education in Sri Lanka which is at about 15% as revealed by the World Bank sources. Countries in the region showcase a much healthier and an impressive progress with India, Malaysia and Thailand, accounting respectively for 24%, 39% and 51% in gross enrolment rates for tertiary education.

Given the above scenario, the discussion relating to upscaling the skills and competencies of our graduates become even more significant. Since it is only a fraction who get the chance to enrol for higher education in Sri Lanka and if they too are provided with outdated knowledge which is of less relevance to modern industrial demands, we as a nation are looking at an abyss with no end since education and health are considered the prime pillars that will define and shape a country’s economic progress and prosperity.

Whilst it is heartening and encouraging to recognise the unity of direction and general consensus that prevails within those who govern our state as at present reference to how our education, higher education and vocational training, should be transformed to arm our most important asset to face the future, challenging prospects lie though in the path of its implementation.

As stated earlier one of the ways in which we can keep it all aligned is by clearly communicating to all authorities, the big picture we as a nation strive to achieve post these reforms. The competence and capacity built in our youth should result in the ready availability of an industry friendly technology savvy, energetic youth force that can handsomely contribute to the national wealth creation. The resulting energy when correctly channelled by either local entrepreneurs or international corporations who are looking forward to mobilise their production facilities in Sri Lanka in the many industrial zones that are in the making or ones that have already been in place, has the potential to diversify the export basket and thereby to significantly improve our export income by having a direct positive impact on our Balance of Payment (BOP).

Since these current initiatives to modernise the education sector should be delicately managed with an end in mind to finally realise the mechanism to change the country’s fortunes in the medium term, the writer proposes an integrated and structured approach as follows be adopted to maximise the effectiveness and efficiency of this endeavour.
A. Establish an apex body with all stakeholders
Initiatives have already begun at multiple institutes over the last three to four years to introduce technology driven subjects and we should ensure that these programs are not allowed to be carried forward with a tunnel vision resulting in creating individual domains which are disintegrated from each other. Since the direction and guidance needs to originate from the highest authority to show the seriousness with which we approach this task, the writer proposes to set up an apex body comprising of senior policy makers, academics and intellectuals from the offices of the President, Prime Minister, Ministry of Education, Ministry of Higher Education and the Ministry of Skills Development and Vocational Training.

Given the interest already expressed by both the President and Prime Minister as well as the Minister of Education, they should from time to time sit at these meeting to encourage and inspire the committee members of this apex body to perform with a passion for excellence and create a solid foundation from which the other programs could be successfully rolled out.

The committee should raise pertinent questions such as, what technology trends are shaping the industry today? What skills and competencies would be expected from engineering or technology graduates five years from now? Which type of industries the country would like to attract through its many Free Trade Zones and Foreign Direct Investment promotions in the medium term? What type of skill gap is available from school – vocational and schools – university level education, etc. to identify the direction in which their efforts should be channelled to develop the blueprint and macro framework of engagement?

Such planning and interaction between all the key institutes that have been tasked with the execution of this national program from the onset will ensure that there is synchrony in the approach with minimum duplication, resulting in maximum utilisation of multi-million dollar funds spent on this endeavour through State resources as well as funds provided by other agencies such as WB and ADB.
B. Adopt a ‘reverse engineering’ model
The concept of reverse engineering has been put to best use not only by corporations but also by countries alike such as India, China and Korea in their quest to duplicate the manufacturing excellence which was once exclusively dominated by the West. This is a process by which an object is deconstructed in order to reveal its design and architecture to duplicate or enhance the product.

Accordingly, we should determine the quality of graduates we require for the digital age and identify the skill set and competencies they should carry to be globally competitive. Once this is established then an appropriate curriculum should be developed combining both theory and practical aspects to provide the right learning and exposure to students. Once this curriculum is in place we should then focus thoroughly on the ‘train the trainer’ method to inculcate the required teaching techniques to improve the standards of the academic staff including the lecturers, demonstrators and technical instructors.

Next would be to integrate the required technology comprising of simulators, work stations, working models, etc. to provide the right hands on skill and exposure to modern production technologies by deploying basic elements of the 4th industrial revolution which is characterised by artificial intelligence, industrial robotics, 3D printing, internet of things, flexible and advance manufacturing techniques etc.

Such laboratories should have space and volume in order to create the required ambience to foster and nurture innovation and creativity amongst the students and should provide opportunities for them to interact and participate in plenty of group work and experiments without fear of failure.
C. Leveraging on the STEM approach
Teaching and learning Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics in an interdisciplinary and applied method termed as STEM has now been incorporated into our school curriculum already. Given, however, our traditional and deeply rooted bias for subject specific learning and testing, introducing an integrated learning platform is nothing but challenging. This is exactly why we should take time to plan and introduce such methods in a structured manner so that both parents and students can visibly confirm a pathway of progress through this option.

Another pain point that should be addressed at the designing stage is the smooth transition of such students who complete an 11-year or a 13-year school based education to universities to pursue either technology or engineering streams or to vocational training institutes to follow the NVQ qualification. The writer has observed that currently there exists a significant gap in the competency level between the school and university level, especially in the technology and engineering streams making it quite difficult for the students to comprehend, grasp and adopt basic principles.

Some of these difficulties cannot be purely attributable to deficiencies in student’s capacity but partly due to teacher, curriculum and technology made available to learn and master these subjects. Therefore, it is in the best interest of our nation that policy makers spend time to seamlessly integrate school – university – industry or school – vocational training – industry transformation of our youth by making sure that the output of one is ideally suited as the input for the other.
D. Collaboration with regional centres of excellence
Many countries in the region have successfully implemented such modernisation and future ready capacity building programs and a number of excellent reference centres are available in China, Singapore, Malaysia, and Korea. We should identify and collaborate with such institutes to learn from their own experience in order to guide and manage our approach. In this context, we are all too aware that many such centres would be ready to share their knowledge through bilateral knowledge and technology transfer agreements with little or no cost at all.

Such collaborations will not only provide the required input for curriculum development, train the trainer programs but also an opportunity to test our current thinking regards to skill and capabilities the future engineering or technology graduates should possess to be recognised and absorbed to mainstream production or service industries at a premium.

Such international partnerships will also facilitate sustainability and continuous improvement of the investments being made for technology transformation in our universities and schools as these will have a very strict Continuous Development Program (CDP) and international validation programs on a yearly basis.
E. Hi-tech industry partnerships
There is no better way to learn to swim than by getting into the waters and similarly what better method to test and validate the improvements and capacity building of our youth than giving them an opportunity to work in the real world. In order to develop this university – industry collaboration the state must step in to define a broad framework of hands on training and exposure that should be given to such trainees in order to ensure that this mechanism actually acts as a complementary element to strengthen their learning.

Therefore, the universities or vocational training institutes should hand pick such companies and industries in which they want their students to be given industry placements. The private sector and representatives from such industries should be encouraged to form a think tank and provide feedback to the institute as well as to the apex body which the writer discussed earlier. Such a mechanism will allow to close the feedback loop enabling automatic checks and balances regarding the effectiveness of this strategic intervention which have become a rare commodity in present day public institutions.

Given that Sri Lanka will have the fifth highest aging population by 2030 in the region growing at a rate of 21% and that our region is poised to exponentially grow to become an industry hot spot led by India’s tremendous growth moving them into the position of the third largest economy in the world by 2030, todays’ youth carry the double burden of becoming relevant to the fast changing opportunities as well as to make a significant contribution to the economy in order to offset the expenditure to be incurred on the welfare facilities provided to the growing elderly population in the country.

It is in this context that the write is pleased to connect the dots amongst VIP political persons who demonstrate a common thread at least in the area of education reforms and introduction of technology in the learning environment. We should definitely consider this a silver lining on a dark cloud and take immediate steps to leverage on this common platform to launch a sustainable program that is capable of making positive ripples in our economy for many decades to come.

According to information available in the public domain the following programs aimed at education reforms are currently on going at national level affiliated to various ministries.

• Thirteen years guaranteed education
• General Education Modernisation Project (GEM)
• Technological Education Development Program
• Science and Technology Human Resource Development Project (STHRD)
• Accelerate Higher Education Development Expansion and Development (AHEAD)

It is, however, pertinent to question whether these programs have been designed and created under a unified umbrella and whether there is an authority that oversees the integration or monitor interconnectedness of such initiatives to evaluate the final outcome.

The writer has made an effort to encourage a public discussion and draw the attention of all stakeholders for the subject initiatives through this article in order to ensure that vast amounts of funds that are being spent currently for technology introduction in education, achieves the very objectives spelt out by the President and the Prime Minister, enabling at least the next generation of Sri Lankans to achieve the ‘economic independence’ considered by some economists the truest measure of a nation’s independence.

Breaking News Example Of Yahapālanaya In Australia: Cardinal George Pell Found Guilty & Set To Go To Jail 

By Shyamon Jayasinghe –FEBRUARY 26, 2019

Shyamon Jayasinghe

“Technically, even if a Buddhist sees a robe hanging on the washing line they should, under this social logic, run and worship the piece of fabric. Mercifully, we don’t witness that!”

Could this ever happen in Sri Lanka?

Could this ever happen in Sri Lanka if a Mahanayake of any of the nikayas was found guilty of criminal conduct like sexual abuse and rape of kids under their care? Or a Muslim Mullah? Or even our own cardinal Revd Malcolm Ranjith? However serious the case may be, it would never have reached court in the first place. Furthermore, if it was a high politico, the complainant would have been sent missing under Gota’s kind of ‘disciplining.’ That has become the Sri Lankan way.

Cardinal Pell’s Case

The case in Australia is about a most sensational court verdict handed down to one of the Catholic Church’s highest ever dignitaries. The Cardinal was found guilty by a Melbourne County Court of sexually abusing two choirboys in St Patrick’s Cathedral in East Melbourne. This incident had been 22 years ago. However, the issue was raised a few years ago and authorities had to act on the complaint as the law requires.The verdict was given as on December 11th last year but Australian media has been barred from reporting the verdict until now, due to a court-imposed suppression order. The details were out today (26/2/19).

As stated by The Age Newspaper columnist Tony Wright, “[the verdict] will rattle confidence in the structures of the Catholic Church, all the way to the inner sanctums of the Vatican City, as no sex abuse scandal has done before.”Adds Wright: “Here is a Prince of the Church, handpicked in 2003 by a Pope himself, John Paul II, as a cardinal; a prelate, set above others, entitled to be called His Eminence.” Cardinal Pell was one of those 113 privileged Cardinals who sat in conclave at the Vatican to appoint the new Pope Francis. Every reason for special hush hush and protection in a Sri Lankan context.

Law above Persons

On the other hand the scenario is vastly different here in Australia. No person, however eminent and powerful can escape the law. The Australian law stands above everyone. This also means the judiciary, which is at the pinnacle of legal system, is held sacrosanct and is never interfered with. This is the essential core idea of our own Revd Sobitha’s yahapalanaya mission. The United Front government campaign in 2015 was for replacing the lawless and arbitrary regime of the Rajapaksas with a system where the law is above all. Maitripala Sirisena was made common candidate while Ranil Wickremesinghe, head of the largest single party in Sri Lanka, voluntarily sacrificed the opportunity he himself had.

19th Amendment

There are many critics of Ranil Wickremesinghe and the United Front government  but what cannot be denied is that this government managed to bring in the 19th Amendment and this bit of law had provisions embedded to keep the law above all. Unfortunately, the new law could not do away with the absurd immunity allowed for the Executive President. Maybe because that provision needed a referendum. The rest was fine. President’s direct ability to pick members of the judiciary was taken away as the the Constitutional Council was entrusted with the task of picking form among the nominees given by the President. I think even that amount of leavage should not have been left for the President. The structure of the Constitutional Court  reflected an adequate amount of political representation but its independence had been made secure. 

And see the results today: Judges and judgments are free from the President’s and Prime Minister’s interference. No Chief Justice had  been obligated to give the verdict required by any political power.

The power of the yahapalanaya concept was more than amply demonstrated when our judges saved our democracy both from a crazy President who joined  the Opposition forces led by Mahinda Rajapakse in the shameless and frightening October 26th coup that went on for 52 days stalling the operation of governance in the country and holding our people to ransom.

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Gota’s Freedom to Live no joke

Why would not Gotabhaya fit the bill of Sinhala Buddhist voters, who want a decent and a civilised country 

1 March 2019 

The Daily Mirror on 12 February 2019 carried an interview with Gotabhaya Rajapaksa, who believes he is the ideal candidate for the next Presidential Election.  
He is being paraded by a few ex-military officers supposed to be “Professionals”, who believe he can be projected as the Sinhala Buddhist war hero to collect all Rajapaksa votes.  
If Gotabhaya’s memory isn’t short as Prabhakaran said it is with Sinhala people, he would remember I asked him to contest the Hambantota District when Provincial Council candidates for the March 1993 elections were being discussed.  
He should also remember how he shrugged off that suggestion saying “Politics is not for me….I don’t know politics. I am a military man. Chamal aiya and Mahinda aiya are there. That’s enough”.  
Interestingly, despite his siblings Chamal, Mahinda and Basil still in active politics and nephew Namal also there, today he is talking politics as the only political leader this country could have in getting it out of the mess it is in.  
This Government has failed and investors don’t come when there is no stability he opines. He also talked about post-war Reconciliation, unaware he is exposing his ignorance on all things political.  

"Gotabaya claims he will be the ideal candidate for President "

Answering a question from Kelum Bandara about his plans as a candidate he says (Quote) As for reconciliation, what people really need is an environment to live happily in. A lot of people talk about freedom. The freedom to live is the most important thing. (Unquote) He now believes people should have the “Freedom to Live”.  
His track record as Secretary to the Ministry of Defence doesn’t seem to match that.  
He gradually usurped power as Defence Minister. President Rajapaksa either gave in or was in no way able to discipline his brother to be the administrative head of the Defence Ministry.  
As administrative heads and as chief accounting officers in Ministries, Secretaries have no right to go public on political decisions the government ought to take.  
As public servants, they are liable to be punished if they do so. But not Gotabhaya. He played politics with authority as the decision maker in government policy.  
He decided publicly what the Rajapaksa government’s position should be on UNHRC Resolutions. Decided on LLRC Recommendations and had the Committee appointed to draw up a work plan for Reconciliation under him.  

He decided what security forces should do in post-war North-East. The media often ran to Gotabhaya to have voice cuts on everything the government would decide.  
Was he not conscious he was overstepping his mandate as a Ministry Secretary? He simply wallowed in that “power”, taking decisions and having them executed.  
That brute power was amply exhibited in his interview with BBC Hard Talk on June 7, 2009.  
Answering a question from Stephen Sackur about Sarath Fonseka, Gotabhaya yells, forgetting he is in front of the camera and not in his ministry office. When told by Sackur that General Fonseka as Commanding Officer at the time the war concluded, has said he is prepared to go before any war crimes investigation, Gotabhaya yells at Sackur “That’s treason. We will hang him if he does that. I’m telling you… How can he betray the country? He is a liar, liar, liar.” Mark that fiery authority, “I’m telling you”. Anyone who disagrees will not have the “Freedom to Live”.   
Wasn’t he ashamed of such behaviour? Far from it. It was just that when he called Working Journalists’ Association leaders Poddala Jayantha and Sanath Balasuriya to his office and threatened them.  

"He always denied entering politics before"

He warned them they are being watched. That perhaps told the journos “Your freedom to live is in question”.  
The two journos had to flee the country.  
Another, whose “Freedom to Live” was in doubt, was the Sunday Leader Editor Frederica Jansz, who sought asylum in the USA.  
That was reported by The Economist on 11 July 2012 as “Gota explodes – Press Freedom in Sri Lanka”.  
Introduced as Sri Lanka’s Powerful Defence Secretary (Not Secretary to the Ministry of Defence) The Economist reported, “Gotabaya Rajapaksa, seemed to threaten a senior newspaper editor with death in a profanity-strewn outburst. The cause for his rage was that she called to check whether the state-run national airline had changed aircraft for a scheduled flight from Switzerland.”  

There was a reason for Ms Jansz to double check her information with Gotabhaya. Her information at hand was that the change of aircraft was “To deliver a puppy from Europe to the Defence Secretary’s wife” and the flight was to be piloted by “Mr Rajapaksa’s niece’s pilot-boyfriend”.   
This “Powerful Defence Secretary” has left a legacy of organised crime within State security forces and the Police. 
Investigations into the recent brutal murder of two young businessmen from Rathgama has unearthed the existence of a ruthless “criminal gang” in the Police Department.  
Investigations led to fifteen Police personnel in the Southern Province Special Crime Investigation Unit to be transferred with immediate effect.  
Other sources according to Asian Mirror on February 22 said the Police criminal gang bore a strong resemblance to the ‘death squad’ operated by former DIG Vass Gunawardena.  
This Southern “Police criminal gang” is thus a replicate of what DIG Vass Gunawardena ran for contractual  killings as revealed during investigations.  
He was proved guilty of murder along with his son.  

There is yet another case where even his wife is complicit. His heydays as a powerful DIG were under Defence Ministry Secretary Gotabhaya Rajapaksa, as a loyal officer to Gotabhaya.  
Those were also days when Minister Weerawansa could call Gotabhaya on the mobile phone while protesting in front of the UN Office in Colombo and on that same call Gotabhaya could blast the DIG on duty and ask him to get away from the place where the protest is.  
Those were also days when navy personnel ran organised extortion rackets. The Economy Next on August 29, 2018 reported:  
“The CID has uncovered chilling details of how children and young men of wealthy families were abducted for ransom by a gang of naval officers, allegedly led by Hettiarachchi, and subsequently killed after holding them at naval facilities in Colombo and Trincomalee between 2008 and 2009.”  
By now, former Navy Chief Karannagoda stands implicated in the abduction and killing of 11 youth and so is Chief of Defence Staff Admiral Wijegunaratne, who was remanded by the Colombo Magistrate Ranga Dassanayake.  

There can be only two explanations for these organised crimes within security forces. One is that they operated with the tacit support of Gotabhaya Rajapaksa as the “powerful defence secretary”, or without any knowledge of Gotabhaya. On the first, if that is right, if he was behind those gangs, he would not be a presidential candidate who would guarantee “freedom to live”.  
On the second if that is right, that he was not aware of such criminal gangs, it only proves he was the weakest and the most inefficient Secretary in the Defence Ministry in post-independent Sri Lanka. One who did not know what was happening under his feet. No qualification for a presidential candidate.  
He claims in the DM interview that (Quote) Maybe our intelligence agencies used Hi Ace vans which are white. I did not introduce it. It happened under all the previous Governments (Unquote).  

Yes, there were arbitrary arrests, torture and perhaps murder in the war that dragged on for over 25 years.  
That was justified in the Sinhala South as fighting a terrorist war forgetting the fact it was a political blunder by the Sinhala Buddhist leaders that led to a North-East armed conflict.  
In the past when abductions, disappearances and extrajudicial killings were confined to the North-East, South was complacent.  
During the Rajapaksa era under Gotabhaya, all that came to Colombo and into the Sinhala society as well.  
White vans were used against those who criticised the government. It was used against media that did not fall in line with Gotabhaya’s war against the LTTE.  
White vans thus became a brutal icon of Rajapaksa rule.  
These clandestine armed groups allowed in the name of war against terrorism don’t remain within their undeclared, unspoken mandate. They created space for crime and a culture of impunity in security forces.  

"He played politics with authority as the decision maker"

Unchecked freedom to operate on their own, they turn out as deadly outfits, even the security forces personnel would fear to speak about. That was evident when Magistrate Dassanayake told Chief of Defence Staff Admiral Wijegunaratne “I am denying bail because in your position you are able to influence witnesses and disrupt investigations,”  
This legacy of Gotabhaya has runoffs too.  
Two Army officers have been arrested a few days ago extorting money from a businessman in Hambantota. Four days ago, 05 Air Force personnel were arrested while transporting illicit cigarettes in an Air Force vehicle. There were many more such crimes reported in the past. 
It wasn’t allegations and accusations on complicity for crimes that Gotabhaya is burdened with. It is also heavy corruption.  

The Special High Court fixed trial on alleged misappropriation of Rs. 49 million by Gotabhaya Rajapaksa to establish the D.A. Rajapaksa Memorial Museum. There is also the sale of army land by the Galle Face Green to Shangri-La Hotel.  
The Secretary of Defence Ministry has given the approval to operate a special bank account on a Cabinet Paper for the sale of that land.  
Cabinet approvals cannot be given to violate handling of public money.  
Stability apart, will this Gotabhaya fit the bill of Sinhala Buddhist voters, who want a decent and a civilised country?  
Mahinda Rajapaksa would have to decide, says Gotabhaya.    

The Elections Commission: A madhouse within a madhouse

The Constitutional Madhouse – Part 5

By C. A. Chandraprema-February 28, 2019, 9:09 pm 

The 19th Amendment led to the setting up of the following independent Commissions with the stated objective of depoliticising the conduct of the day-to-day affairs of the government.

The Election Commission

The Public Service Commission

The National Police Commission

The Audit Service Commission

The Human Rights Commission of Sri Lanka

The Commission to Investigate Allegations of Bribery or Corruption

The Finance Commission

The Delimitation Commission

The National Procurement Commission.

Article 41B (6) of the present Constitution, as amended by the 19th Amendment, states that all these commissions other than the Election Commission, shall be responsible and answerable to Parliament. Thus, according to Article 41B (6), which appears in Chapter 7 of the Constitution dealing specifically with the Constitutional Council, the Elections Commission will be the only independent Commission that will NOT be responsible to Parliament.

However, Article 104 B (3) of the Constitution, which was also introduced by the 19th Amendment which falls under Chapter 9 of the Constitution, dealing specifically with the Elections Commission, states as follows: "The (Elections) Commission shall be responsible and answerable to Parliament in accordance with the provisions of the Standing Orders of Parliament for the exercise, performance and discharge of its powers, duties and functions and shall forward to Parliament for each calendar year a report of its activities for such year."

So, which one of these provisions is true? Is the Elections Commission responsible to Parliament or not? Under Article 41 B (6) the Elections Commission is not responsible to Parliament. Under Article 104 B(3) it is not only responsible to Parliament but also required to report annually to Parliament on its activities. Personally, this writer would prefer 104 B (3) because all Commissions dealing with public affairs should be responsible and answerable to the supreme legislature of this country. If I remember correctly, at the committee stage of the 19th Amendment Bill, Prof. Tissa Vitharana put up a fight to get these Commissions made responsible and answerable to Parliament. However, because of contradictory provisions in the Constitution, today no one knows whether the Elections Commission is responsible to Parliament or not.

When the question of the President’s power to dissolve Parliament went before the Supreme Court, it was held that while Article 33 (2)(c) conferred the power to dissolve Parliament on the President, the manner in which it was supposed to be done was laid out in Article 70(1) and that this was buttressed by the provisions in Article 48(2) which referred only to Article 70(1). If the question of whether the Elections Commission is responsible to Parliament or not goes before the SC, it will not be that easy to solve it. Article 104 B (3) says, ‘It is’, and Article 41 B (6) says ‘It is not’. How is the SC to decide between such provisions, by tossing a coin?

The legality of a legally invalid meeting

Under Article 103 (1) of the Constitution as amended by the 19th Amendment, the Elections Commission consists of three members appointed by the President on the recommendation of the Constitutional Council. Article 104 (1) states that the quorum for any meeting of the Commission shall be three members. It is what comes after this that would have many people scratching their heads.

Article 104 (2) (a) states that the Chairman of the Commission shall preside at all meetings of the Commission and in the absence of the Chairman, a member elected by the members present from amongst themselves shall preside. (However, the Chairman is only one of three members on the Elections Commission. Since three members are required for a quorum, If the Chairman is absent, there will be no quorum and a meeting of the Elections Commission cannot be held legally. What then is the point in having a provision in the Constitution saying that in the absence of the Chairman, a member elected by the members present from amongst themselves shall preside at such meeting?

Article 104 (2) (b) states that the decisions of the commission shall be by a majority of the members present and voting and in the event of an equality of votes, the Chairman or the member presiding at the meeting shall have a casting vote. (This is a meaningless provision because if a decision is to be taken by a majority vote, it will always have to be a two to one decision and any talk of a casting vote for the Chairman makes no sense.)

Article 104 (3) has a mind-numbing provision. What it says is that the Elections Commission ‘shall have power to act notwithstanding any vacancy in the membership of the Commission, and no act or proceeding or decision of the Commission shall be invalid or be deemed to be invalid by reason only of such vacancy or any defect in the appointment of a member’. (Can anyone even imagine the implications of such a provision? The Elections Commission consists of only three members and the quorum is three members. No meeting of the Elections Commission can take place legally without the quorum. Yet Article 104 (3) clearly states that the Elections Commission ‘shall have power to act notwithstanding any vacancy in its membership and no act or proceeding or decision of the Commission shall be invalid or be deemed to be invalid by reason only of such vacancy. What Article 104 (3) is saying, in other words, is that an illegal meeting of the Elections Commission without a quorum, will still be legally binding and valid.)

This develops further in Article 104 A (a) and (b) of the Constitution, which states that no court shall have the power or jurisdiction to entertain or hear or decide or call in question on any ground and in any manner whatsoever, any decision, direction or act of the Elections Commission, made or done or purported to have been made or done under the Constitution or under any law relating to the holding of an election or the conduct of a Referendum as the case may be, which decisions, directions or acts shall be final and conclusive; and that no suit or prosecution or other proceeding shall lie against any member or officer of the Commission for any act or thing which in good faith is done or purported to be done by him in the performance of his duties or the discharge of his functions under the Constitution or under any law relating to the holding of an election or the conduct of a Referendum as the case may be.

Under Article 104 A, the only instances in which the Elections Commission can be taken to courts will be over fundamental rights issues under Article 126 of the Constitution, the writ jurisdiction of the Court of Appeal which in the case of the Elections Commission will be exercised by the Supreme Court and not by the Court of Appeal, and with regard to petitions pertaining to the conducting of presidential elections, referendums or appeals relating to election petitions pertaining to parliamentary elections.

Thus, no one knows whether the Elections Commission, which was set up under the 19th Amendment is responsible to Parliament or not. And there is a question mark over the legality of meetings of the Elections Commission when one member is absent. One provision of the Constitution says that such a meeting will not be valid in law while another provision says that such meetings will be fully valid and cannot be called into question in a court of law.

The Elections Commission is arguably the most important of the independent commissions because it presides over the process of electing governments into power. Can any country afford to have such constitutional uncertainties in relation to such a body? But that’s Sri Lanka under the 19 th Amendment.

It’s not surprising that there is much talk of drug addiction and substance abuse among MPs in Parliament. In the opinion of this writer, the first people to be tested for substance abuse should be the drafters of the 19th Amendment and the drafters of the proposed new Constitution.

The entire speech by former US Secretary of State Samantha Powell at the Celebration of Minister Mangala Samaraweera

(Lanka e News - 01.March.2019, 7.30AM)

At Bandaranaike Memorial International Conference Hall

Colombo, Sri Lanka

Thursday, February 28, 2019

Gratitudes:

• His Excellency President Maithripala Sirisena
• The Honorable Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe
• The Honorable Minister Mangala Samaraweera

I am extraordinarily honored to be here today. It is wonderful to be back in Sri Lanka, for the first time since 2015, when I visited as a member of President Obama’s cabinet.

Sri Lanka has been a true partner of the United States, and I am grateful that many of the relationships I was able to form while working with your country have endured, and become very meaningful friendships.

Right now, I am in the final weeks of finishing writing a new book. I have been working non-stop to meet my deadline. I won’t even leave my house to buy groceries. But if there is one person who could get me to travel over 8,000 miles at the moment, it is Mangala.

Mangala is one of the most remarkable people I encountered during my eight years serving in the US government. So I simply had to be part of this occasion.

Those of you who know our guest of honor will not be surprised that, when I asked him how I should approach my remarks today, he said, “The less said about me, the better.” Now, considering this is an event about Mangala, this was surprising to my American ears. I come from a country where, as President Teddy Roosevelt’s daughter once said about her dad, politicians want to be “the corpse at every funeral, the bride at every wedding and the baby at every christening.”

I have decided to compromise. I will speak today about what we can learn from Mangala’s 30 years in politics about the central challenges of our time – and how we must confront them. The three themes I believe run through Mangala’s life’s work are dignity, modernization, and democracy. So in his honor, I would like to say a few words about each.

Dignity

We have heard about how Mangala began his career, thinking he might become a fashion designer. The late fashion photographer Bill Cunningham once said that, “Fashion is the armor to survive everyday life.” Well, Mangala seems to have concluded from an early age that the most meaningful way to spend one’s days is to use one’s influence to help people. And, specifically, to help people to not only survive daily life, but to help ensure that they are able to build lives of dignity.

His inspiration to get involved in politics came in the late 1980s, when the government was suppressing the Marxist youth insurrection in the South, and dead bodies were being hung on lampposts in his home town. The son of a remarkably enlightened, trailblazing mother and a pioneering human rights lawyer father, Mangala thought to himself, “Maybe I can make a difference.”

“Maybe I can make a difference…”

Mangala, rest assured, you have made one hell of a difference. And you are only getting started!
When I asked his colleagues and peers about his lifetime of service, the word I kept hearing was “dignity.” Dignity, dignity, dignity. The belief that every individual is worthy of respect. The word comes from the Latin, dignitas, or “worthiness.” The pursuit and promotion of individual dignity seems to be the animating principle in Mangala’s career.

When I think of dignity, what springs to mind is the last civil rights protest Martin Luther King, Jr. was involved in before he was gunned down. It was in Memphis, Tennessee in 1968, when sanitation workers decided to go on strike to protest poor pay and the crushing to death of two workers in garbage compactors. The striking workers carried signs that said simply, “I AM A Man.”

I think of June 1989 and a slight man in grey slacks and a white shirt carrying two shopping bags, who decided to confront one of the hundreds of tanks that were mowing down student protesters in Tiananmen Square. This Chinese man, seemingly on his way home, who we have not seen since, standing before the turret of that tank, embodied the assertion of dignity.

I think of December 2010 and a Tunisian fruit seller named Mohamed Bouazizi who was so worn down by the humiliation and corruption he endured every day that he decided to set himself on fire in protest, sparking uprisings that would cascade across the Middle East and North Africa into the Arab Spring.

And I think of the mothers I have met here in your country, who clutch the weathered, faded photos of their missing sons and daughters, begging people to hear their cries. Or the heads of household who, needing money to feed their families after the war, relied on micro-lenders for small loans – micro-lenders who extorted them, charging spiraling interest that these families would never be able to pay back.

Respecting human dignity means not patronizing those who are less fortunate, but listening to – hearing – the reality of the lived experience of others. Making sure that nobody is invisible.

If decision-makers or leaders – whether of countries, of companies, or of classrooms -- can put themselves in the shoes of others, if they can cross this essential imaginative threshold, they will have the motivation we need to act.

Mangala did this back in 1990 when he founded the “Mother’s Front” with Mahinda Rajapaksa – creating a network dedicated to tracing down information on the disappeared and pressuring the Sri Lankan government to provide compensation.

Mangala is well known for taking the fundamental step of recognizing past abuses and the critical need for reconciliation. As Foreign Minister he spearheaded the creation of the Office of Missing Persons, which is now finally operational. He helped push a law through parliament that will provide for reparations for war victims and survivors.

And more recently, as Finance Minister, he has orchestrated the forgiveness of loans taken out by those desperate families after the war. And he has just launched another debt relief program for those affected by the crisis of severe drought. As Nelson Mandela once said, “Overcoming poverty is not a gesture of charity. It is an act of justice. It is the protection of a fundamental human right, the right to dignity and a decent life.”

But the best measure of Mangala’s regard for the dignity of those who have lost their loved ones or their livelihoods is that he knows none of this is nearly enough.

It is the deficit of human dignity that explains so much of the tumult of our age. We ignore it at our peril.

Modernization

Second, Mangala has shown his belief in modernizing Sri Lanka. He has prioritized opening up this beautiful country to the rest of the world, including to the United States.

He secured the launching of the first-ever US-Sri Lankan strategic dialogue. He announced in 2015 Sri Lanka’s joining of the Open Government Partnership. And he shepherded Sri Lanka’ application to the Millennium Challenge Corporation through a long and tortured approval process—dedication that is now paying off, as it will soon bring some $480 million in concrete benefits for a number of infrastructure projects in transportation and agriculture.

Long before this recent phase in his career, when he was Minister of Post and Telecommunications, it was Mangala who spearheaded the privatization of Sri Lanka’s telecommunications industry. This initiative introduced competition for the first time and knocked down barriers between the privileged Sri Lankans who had phones and those who had to wait as long as seven years to get one. Today Sri Lanka has one of the highest number of phones per person in all of Asia, and, despite being a country of 21 million, Sri Lanka is apparently home to 34 million cell phone subscriptions.

This progress has been absolutely essential as a foundation for economic investment and growth. However, for all of the good we know technology can do, rapid advances in fields from social media to AI to automation are also posing profound risks to our democracies. These tools are going to be decisive in global development going forward, but governments must confront their dark uses as well as their boundless possibilities.

I believe we need to dramatically increase our scrutiny of the effects of new technologies. That will require fresh thinking, critical perspectives, and bold steps by policymakers to find a better balance than we currently have—a balance that takes into account the impact that tech is already having on politics and human rights.

In the United States, in the wake of Russia’s interference in our elections, and because of the deep divisions in our society, we are seized with the question of how falsehoods and echo chambers enabled by social media impact our domestic politics.

But these platforms also have potentially deadly impact when it comes to the rights and well-being of marginalized groups.

The UN, for example, has found that the spread of violent hate speech and falsehoods on Facebook in Myanmar played a “determining role” in the mass atrocities perpetrated against the Rohingya. From the Philippines to India to Mexico to Indonesia, technology that barely existed 15 years ago is being used to scapegoat vulnerable populations, exacerbate societal cleavages to the point of violence, and empower the most extreme voices.

Last year, here in Sri Lanka, after hate speech and conspiracy theories about Muslims disseminated on social media led to violence and destruction, one of your government officials made a profound observation that I believe the entire world must heed: “The germs are ours, but Facebook is the wind.”

Mangala himself was one of the first political leaders to take to Twitter during the crisis to condemn the viciousness, sending a clear message of zero tolerance for politicians and others who incited racial violence.

In societies like ours – with mixed ethnicities and religions, with free speech and extreme voices – we ignore this reality at our peril.

I cannot overstate the impact of social media platforms. Despite going worldwide just 13 years ago, “Facebook has as many adherents as Christianity.” Thinking about it another way: at its height in 2018, Facebook was worth more than the economies of 167 countries in the UN – that is more than 85% of nations in the world!

Here in Sri Lanka, apparently some 6 million people regularly use Facebook. This will surely grow as mobile technology becomes cheaper and more widespread. Asia is already the company’s fastest growing market. And when you include the total percentage of people who use WhatsApp, YouTube, Twitter, and even newer platforms, you are already talking about a significant portion of the population.

When it comes to companies like Facebook, Twitter, and Google, which failed for too long to grapple with the dangerous uses and effects of their products, it does now finally seem that they are seized with the abuses that their platforms have enabled. Excellent investigative journalism, public outrage, and the threat of oversight has certainly helped. But these companies need to prioritize contributing to the health of democracy as a goal, right alongside making yet more money.

I was encouraged to hear that Facebook has committed to serving up to 20,000 Sri Lankan children in a digital literacy program to be run this year, and that they are participating in the Information and Communication Technology Agency’s SMART Social Circles initiative, which aims to prepare people to better discern, as Mangala puts it, “the good from the bad, and the true from the false.”

This is important: the education and leadership of well-rounded, tech-savvy and civic-minded young people is going to be critical to reigning in the negative effects of new technologies.

However, given the human consequences, this is a drop in the bucket. We need to think far bigger. In my country, I would like lawmakers and policy leaders to think about a number of approaches:

• Instituting regulations and heavy fines for failing to remove hate speech;

• Greatly restricting the ability of advertisers (or nation states disguised as such!) to micro-target users with messages designed to mislead and enrage;
   
• Re-thinking the type of anonymity afforded to users so as to cut down on the spreading of lies with impunity;
• And probing seriously whether some of these tech monopolies have become so dangerously big – and so dangerous to open society – that they need to be broken up.

Governments like yours also have an essential role to play. You are going to have to insist that Facebook uphold its “Community Standards” for all of Sri Lanka’s national languages, or face serious repercussions. It is simply not acceptable that Facebook has not invested more in equipping itself to monitor posts in languages like Tamil or Sinhala. A platform with this much influence and reach cannot get by just doing the bare minimum—Facebook needs to be far more transparent, so that experts and civil society can guide the company in how to do better in the context of the unique challenges Sri Lanka faces.

As always, talking about technology is complicated – many countries would like nothing more than to have the grounds to regulate social media and the internet or to enhance censorship and surveillance—not to protect their people, but to protect themselves from scrutiny.

Indeed, at the other end of the spectrum, repressive governments are increasingly able to use technology to control and manipulate their populations.

Women in Egypt have been tracked down and arrested for sharing their experiences under the #metoo hashtag.

The Mexican government has infected the phones of local journalists and members of civil society with sophisticated spyware that allows them to capture every text and conversation.

Turkey – a member of NATO! – currently blocks access to 100,000 websites.

But I think what Mangala’s career shows us is that we in public life have a responsibility to take into account the human consequences of our tools – and our laws. At all of his stops along the way, Mangala has demonstrated how public policy can be crafted to address societal ills that others would prefer to ignore. The tech companies won’t have any sustained urgency to change unless those with power – all of you – make it known that you care, and insist that they care too.

Democracy

Third and finally, Mangala has not only been a believer in democracy and the institutions that are the cornerstone of our respective systems, he has himself worked to strengthen them. He has been, in his way, an institution, a one-man check and balance.

I am not sure what is on the best-seller list here, but in the United States people are buying books with titles like:
1984.
How Democracies Die.
How Democracies End.
The People vs. Democracy.
Can It Happen Here? Authoritarianism in the US.
Fascism: A Warning.
These books, and the feeling that democracy is in retreat, do not come from nowhere. They are moored in disturbing trends.

• Thirteen straight years of freedom in decline around the world, according to Freedom House, which has documented that it is consolidated democracies that are suffering from the worst setbacks. Overall, 68 countries suffered net declines in freedom in 2018 on measures like individual rights, freedom of expression and belief, and rule of law.
• Instead of rule of law, the Carnegie Endowment has documented how more than seventy governments in the last ten yearshave instituted rule by law, taking a number of serious measures to restrict civil society (from legal means like regulation to straight-up intimidation campaigns).

There are no silver bullets when it comes to trends like these. But fatalism cannot be the answer. Yet a confidence gap seems to have overtaken our world – authoritarians strutting around, though their model rests on very fragile foundations; democrats, meanwhile, seem to be running for cover.

When I graduated from college in 1992, a book about the global triumph of liberalism – Francis Fukuyama’s The End of History and the Last Man – had spent a month on the best-seller list, with its thesis “that there is a…common evolutionary pattern for all human societies…in the direction of liberal democracy.”

Things did not turn out that way. Today, though, people have begun speaking of democracy’s decline with the same certainty.

We must not make the mistake of replacing one triumphalist narrative – about the inevitable spread of democracy – with its doomsday opposite.

Recent events within established democracies like the United States are a wake-up call. We cannot take for granted all that we have taken for granted – the durability of liberal institutions, the status of science, attachment to facts.

But if you look at most autocracies and what lies ahead in terms of their ability to deliver for their people, I believe each of us would choose the resiliency and possibility for self-renewal of democracy.

And recall: despite the very real and worrisome backsliding, looking at all four of the most widely used and accepted databases that assess democracy over time, the percentage of democratic countries in the world in 2018 were at or near their all-time high.

You will unfortunately hear very few democratic politicians making these points, but allow me to summarize the essence of the argument: democracies have the better model!

• In autocracies economic growth is likely to be impeded by stagnant state-owned enterprise and a lack of transparency in the economy. Even in China growth is slowing, and one wonders how secure investors will feel with the arrest of expatriates and the absence of due process and property rights.
• Autocrats often overreach because they don’t hear from critical voices in their inner circles and often prefer the company of sycophants. If you worked for a strongman, you would likely be reluctant to be the bearer of bad news to your leader.
• In the military, the most capable officers may be less likely to rise than the most loyal.
   
• When you have no term limits or put in place a President for life, it can breed decay.
   
• While innovation is flourishing in some sectors within certain autocracies, we have reason to question whether innovation will be undermined in the long term by the absence of freedom of speech and the presence of fear.
• And finally, one of the biggest factors explaining the appeal of illiberal or populist leaders is inequality and the feeling of many that they are being left behind – a trend that will increase with growing automation. But there is no reason to expect that autocratic or authoritarian systems that concentrate power at the very top will more equally distribute benefits than liberal democracies.

I do not mean to understate the challenges of maintaining a truly democratic society. My country and your country are facing turbulent times.

The last time I was here, I could never have guessed that an American President would attack the judiciary, the press, women, minorities, our diplomats, our intelligence professionals, our law enforcement officers, and many of our closest allies.

In the US, many of the ills we face – intense inequality, big money in politics, gerrymandering and restrictions on voting rights, corruption, polarization, racism and exclusion – have raised serious questions among our own people about how functional our democracy is in the twenty-first century.
Sri Lanka has experienced its own political crisis, which raised alarm bells all around the world.
But critically, while our respective institutions have bent, they are not breaking in the US, and they are not breaking in Sri Lanka.

In the United States, journalists have done an extraordinary job investigating corruption and calling attention to abuses of power. In a number of cases, dogged reporting has led to resignations and exposed terrible wrongs. After doing almost no oversight for two years, our Congress has just been reinvigorated. There are more than 100 women in the House of Representatives for the first time in American history. More young people and women and minorities are running for office than ever before. And our state and local governments have taken a stand on many pressing issues, from climate change to immigration to voting rights, that the federal government is failing to address with any seriousness.

Here in Sri Lanka, during the recent crisis, your citizens made themselves heard, with many of them speaking not for parties or personalities but in defense of your hard-earned democracy. Your streets were home to the country’s first-ever spontaneous, popular protests not initiated by a particular party, proving US Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis’ great wisdom that, “the most important political office is that of private citizen.”

One woman who participated in a protest commented, “As a mother, as a grandmother, I want to see democracy restored. I’m not against any person or any party but as a citizen of Sri Lanka.” Another said, “We’re doing this for the next generation, for the future of this country.”

Both traditional and new media outlets were able to play a key role in keeping Sri Lankans informed and keeping institutions accountable. Civil society – and again, both new and established groups – were active and effective. And your judiciary stood by the Constitution and enforced the rule of law with great independence and seriousness of purpose.

All of this is a credit to the resilience of Asia’s oldest democracy and to the checks and balances that Mangala championed over the years.

I hope that for both of our countries, the response to the challenges we are facing – and navigating – will end up affirming the enduring strength of democratic institutions and necessity of democratic accountability.

Your hope, Mangala – that Sri Lankans “create a civilized society where humanity and decency flourish and the rule of law is respected” – is what I hope for both of our countries. And I look forward to the continued friendship between our two nations as we work together to make it happen.
Allow me to conclude with a little history. Around a century ago, German sociologist and economist Max Weber was invited by a liberal student association at the University of Munich, in Germany, to give a series of lectures on the theme of intellectual or spiritual work as a vocation.

Germany had surrendered in the First World War not long before Weber delivered one of his lectures, “Politics as a Vocation,” on January 28, 1919. The utter destruction wrought by the war – human, physical, moral – was unprecedented in its scale. It was not a time of much confidence in the capacity of politics to be a force of human progress. It was surely one of the more difficult times and places in which to make the case for politics as a vocation.

Yet against that backdrop, Weber set about trying to answer, in his words, “what kind of a human being one must be to grasp the spokes of the wheel of history.” Weber laid out three interdependent qualities, each of which he considered indispensable to the vocation of politics: proportion, responsibility, and passion.

Proportion, in Weber’s view, was about maintaining the appropriate distance from a policy decision or endeavor in order to be able to analyze it rigorously and objectively, and to bring a necessary degree of humility to one’s ability to shape the world.

Responsibility involved remembering to think through the likely consequences of proposed actions and interventions – regardless of how well-meaning or logical the motivations behind them.
Passion was what Weber defined as a kind of “inner gravity” – the driving force behind one’s convictions.

At the end of his lecture to the students at the University of Munich, Weber declared: 

“[O]ur entire historical experience confirms... that what is possible could never have been achieved unless people had tried again and again to achieve the impossible in this world… The only man who has a ‘vocation’ for politics is one who is certain that his spirit will not be broken if the world... proves too stupid or base to accept what he wishes to offer it, and who, when faced with all that obduracy, can still say ‘Nevertheless!’ despite everything.”

We are not coming out of a harrowing world war, but Sri Lanka suffered a brutal 26 year civil war that ended only a decade ago, and all of us are living in times that can test our faith in politics.
And yet I am as convinced as ever that despite all the cynicism out there, our strength will rest where it always has – in those individuals willing to serve, and the convictions they bring to the human endeavor of politics. Individuals who see the flawed world as it is, but are willing to say, “Nevertheless!” and strive to build a better world.

Mangala is one of those individuals, and I join you today and all days in thanking him for his thirty years of service.

We all know the best is yet to come.