Friends And Enemies Within And Without The Commonwealth
By Malinda Seneviratne and Chamara Sumanapala --November 13, 2013 |
Malinda Seneviratne
Recently some media reports from Kenya claimed that the African nation was planning to canvass support for a boycott of the Commonwealth Heads of Governments Meeting (CHOGM 2013) in Colombo. The Nairobi government denied this and the story faded away.
The story is interesting. It had nothing to do with the venue and the kinds of objections raised by Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper. It was about chiding the Commonwealth for its silence with respect to Kenya’s battle against the International Criminal Court (ICC). At a recent African Union meeting in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, the Kenyans garnered substantial support in its battle with the ICC. African countries charge that the ICC is biased as all cases currently probed involve African countries. Since one third of the member states of the Commonwealth of Nations are from Africa, any call for boycott would not go unheeded in the continent. That was the logic of the boycott call reported.Read More
On a quiet September morning in 1959, two men were waiting for an audience with an important man. Seated on the verandah of the Prime Minister’s house, Asoka Christopher Seneviratne and his uncle Stephen had come to ask for a certificate of character.
Sri Lanka: The Extraordinary Case Of The Prime Minister’s Murder
By T. Thurai - November 13, 2013 |
T. Thurai
On a quiet September morning in 1959, two men were waiting for an audience with an important man. Seated on the verandah of the Prime Minister’s house, Asoka Christopher Seneviratne and his uncle Stephen had come to ask for a certificate of character.
A mundane request for an insignificant piece of paper; the sort of thing used to support an application for a job or bank loan.
The man they had come to see was S.W.R.D. Bandaranaike, leader of the Sri Lanka Freedom Party, who had swept to victory three years earlier. Yet despite his electoral success, Mr Bandaranaike’s short incumbency had not been a peaceful one.
In previous months the country had been brought to a standstill by strikes and pushed to the brink of civil war by violent ethnic riots.
Yet, by 1959 peace appeared to have been restored.
Neither of the two men seated outside the Prime Minister’s home could have anticipated the momentous event that they were about to witness. Read More
