Presidential Polls And The Deception Of Minority Nations
Dr. G K Nathan
Deception of Minority Nations is a Continuing Saga in Sri Lanka, Successive Governments Failed to Respect Political Democracy
The “political democracy is founded on the equal sharing of political power among all citizens”; this was the basis for different Nations coming together as one country called Ceylon (Sri Lanka) which gained independence from the British Colonial Empire, on 4 February 1948. Ceylon was constituted as one country by bringing together three former independent monarchies of the pre-colonial era by British Colonial Government in 1833. Ceylon was given independence in a platter without a struggle or sacrifices made by the peoples, after India won its freedom pursuing a long drawn out liberation struggle and making numerous sacrifices by almost all Nations in India, against the same Colonial Power. Probably, this may be the reason Sri Lanka failed right from
The 2015 Election: Shades Of 1956
H.L. Seneviratne
Shortly after the MEP coalition led by S.W.R.D. Bandaranaike trounced the UNP in the general election of 1956, novelist and scholar Martin Wickramasinghe wrote an essay titled Bamunu Kulaye Bindavatima (The Collapse of the Brahmin Clique), which has since become a classic. There is much in that essay that I heartily disagree with, but the socio-political scene it examines bears striking resemblance to the present. The Rajapaksa regime, consisting of family, clan and cronies is sociologically a new Bamunu Kulayathat parallels its the pre-1956 prototype.
In a nutshell, what Wickremasinghe says is as follows. All cultures, however “advanced” or “primitive”, are equal in status. Out of their ignorance of this fact, the entrenched political class of the pre-1956 era thought of their western derived culture as superior to the indigenous. The resulting derogatory view of indigenous culture and arrogance towards the people backlashed in1956 to produce their precipitous downfall.
