Accuntability, Efficiency And Pluralism: The Need And The Possibility Of Urgent Reform
By Rajiva Wijesinha -August 24, 2014
Prof. Rajiva Wijesinha MP
It is not likely that the President will be awakened swiftly from the enchantment cast upon him by his closest advisers. However, if and when he does realize that a change is essential if he is to preserve not just his legacy, but even perhaps his Presidency, he has some obviously desirable remedies to hand.
For though the Parliamentary Select Committee has thus far achieved nothing, it has had some very sensible proposals brought before it by moderates within government. The Liberal Party made suggestions made on its experience of acting as a link between successive governments and representatives of Tamil parties, but even more important were the suggestions made by Vasantha Senanayake on behalf of a group of young politicians and professionals. Subsequently the Liberal Party, after studying the proposals, wrote to the PSC endorsing them.
Vasantha was the scion of a great political family. His great grandfather D S Senanayake had been Sri Lanka’s first Prime Minister, and his great uncle Dudley had been elected Prime Minister three times. Both had presided over Cabinets with representation from popular Tamil political parties.
Vasantha however had left the United National Party, which his great grand father had founded, and now sat in Parliament as a member of the Sri Lanka Freedom Party, to which the President belonged. He, like many other promising youngsters, had been sidelined by Ranil Wickremesinghe, who had, on the pattern of his mother’s cousin, J R Jayewardene, wanted absolute control of his party, and thought ability less important than personal loyalty. Read More
Basic Social Etiquette For The Buddha
By Darshanie Ratnawalli -August 24, 2014
Darshanie Ratnawalli
“Buddhaghosa’s role, as well as that of Mahanama, the author of the Mahavamsa, was to translate the available material into Pali (see Mhv. Tika, i, 36, etc., loc. cit., pp. Ivi). As the Tika states, the Mahavamsa was a faithful rendering of the original Sinhalese source-material with the only change that it was put into Pali verse. Compared with the previous clumsy attempt at versification in the Dipavarnsa, Mahavamsa stands out as a work of considerable poetic achievement though it falls short of the elegant poetry of the Canonical metrical literature. The fact that it was a metrical rendering could have placed certain restrictions and limitations on the author as regards presenting a faithful rendering of the original material. In the case of the Bahiranidana there were no such restrictions, and undoubtedly one may suppose that it is even more faithful to the original Sinhalese source than the more elegant literary product, the Mahavamsa. It is partly on this basis that minor discrepancies in some proper names between the Bahiranidana and the Chronicles are to be explained, e.g. Issaranimmana, Kalingakula, Pakundaka, Tavakka, etc. (see notes to Translation). However, the word-for-word similarity between wholesale passages of the Bahiranidana and the Chronicles (see Geiger, the Dipavarnsa and Mahavamsa, 106 ff.) shows that there were no wide divergences between them. This similarity does not presuppose the fact that the chronologically later work was based on the earlier work, but that they go back to a common tradition.” - (p XXIV, N.A. Jayawickrama;1962[i]- full text)
‘Holmes, if we were to introduce this lady to the sources of Mahavamsa through carefully selected paragraphs like the above, do you think it would make any difference?’ Read More
