IGP, search these places too!

 Tuesday, 20 January 2015 

Based on information received by us, we are requesting that the police raids for various valuable items that had been taken away illegally by former president Mahinda Rajapaksa from Temple Trees and other state institutions be extended to cover the following locations too:

1.   The house at Hakmana road in Beliatte that belongs to the brother-in-law of Maj. Neville Silva, the chief bodyguard of the ex-president. (he has become wealthy within a very short period)

2.   The house at Hakmana road in Beliatte that belongs to Sarath Amaraweera, who was a coordinator for Rajapaksa in Hambantota. A large number of computes and photo copiers are being kept here.

3.   The houses and the offices of Bharatha and Murthi Kodithuwakku, who are top officials of Namal Rajapaksa’s Nil Balakaya.

4.   The home of Capt. Tissa Wimalasena, the head of motor transport of the internal ring of the ex-president.

5.   An eight-room villa at a 15-acre fruit cultivation at Dambe, Mailewa in Kataragama.

6.   The house of Col. Mahendra Fernando, the bodyguard of former sports minister Mahindananda Aluthgamage.

Mahinda Balasuriya had planned to arrest Maithri!

 

Tuesday, 20 January 2015 

Former IGP Mahinda Balasuriya, who had fled the country three days ago, had planned to arrest Maithripala Sirisena, had Mahinda Rajapaksa won the presidential election, say police department sources.

Mr. Sirisena was to be arrested based on a complaint by one Dhammika Bandara Illangasinghe that he had given foreign currency worth Rs. 160 million to one Athula Rohana Weerasinghe.

Illangasinghe had been given the complaint he had lodged, by Mahinda Balasuriya, who was the then secretary of the law and peace ministry. A group of lawyers had drafted the complaint at the ministry and given it to Illangasinghe to be filed.

Balasuriya had informed the IGP to act immediately with regard to the complaint, but the police chief had instead sought advice from the attorney general. Angered by that, Balasuriya had demanded the CID director to obtain a statement from Mr. Sirisena and produce him before courts. But, CID officials had refused to obey his order.

After all his attempts were foiled, Balasuriya had planned to sack the IGP and get the CID to arrest Mr. Sirisena, had Rajapaksa won. He had even prepared all the required documents. But, Balasuriya fled the country before the media came to know about this plan.

THE EXECUTIVE PRESIDENCY AND THE SRI LANKAN STATE: MYTHS AND REALITIES

Photo courtesy The Business Times

by Asanga Welikala

- on 01/20/2015 

If there was a central plank to the common opposition platform in the presidential election, it was about what to do with the executive presidential system in general and the Eighteenth Amendment in particular, in view of the crisis of democratic governance created by the insidious authoritarianism and pervasive corruption of the Rajapaksa regime. During the campaign, except for those who blindly supported the regime come what may, it was clear that there was a wide – and widening – consensus about the undesirability of the Eighteenth Amendment, both in terms of the abolition of the two-term limit and the removal of the Seventeenth Amendment restraints on presidential power. However, there was perhaps less of a consensus on the wholesale abolition of presidentialism, even though important sections of the opposition and civil society were committed to it. This was as it should be, for the positive case as to how a return to parliamentarism would address our problems with executive power is yet to be properly made. As I have argued previously, the malaise is with our political culture of democracy rather than institutions per se. But the new government must rigorously make the positive argument in favour of abolition and for parliamentarism, if that is the direction of constitutional reform that they intend now to take.

The Executive Presidency and the Sri Lankan State Myths and Realities by Thavam Ratna

Case For Public Control In Higher Education: Some Heretical Thoughts

By Sumanasiri Liyanage – 

Sumanasiri Liyanage

When state controlled educational system failed to 
deliver, privatization or private involvement in education has been proposed everywhere as a solution to the problem. This phenomenon is associated with the rise of neoliberalism. Sri Lankan discourse on higher education in the last decade or so has centered around three key issues. The first question has been focused on the inadequacy of higher educational opportunities that the state university system is capable of providing for young people who wish to continue their education after GCE A/L examination. The total yearly intake of the state universities are around 25,000 that is much less than the number of students who are qualified for higher education. The second issue is related to the quality of the degrees offered by the state university system. It has been said that there has been a gradual deterioration of the quality of university education so that the university degree holders are not fit well for the needs of the job market. Both issues are directly related to the low level of government expenditure on education that stands below 2 per cent of the GDP. The third issue refers to the bias of the Sri Lankan higher education system towards social sciences and humanities. This bias has been seen as the main source of unemployment of graduates.Read More

The Post-Rajapaksa Bravery

By Emil van der Poorten –January 20, 2015

Emil van der Poorten

The post-Rajapaksa bravery of some political commentators and my personal experience

I recently had, from an old friend in Australia, an email suggesting that I could begin writing quite freely to the media again because I had been tempting fate while the Rajapaksas were ruling the roost by writing critically of their government and that this threat was now behind us. The suggestion was that, ultimately, I had succumbed to pressure from my friends and family and gone silent and I should now take up cudgels again.

I found this quite interesting, not to say bemusing, in the context of what has really been the case for Sri Lankans with journalistic pretensions both before and after the removal (however temporary) of the Rajapaksa monstrosity from the body politic.

Many of those seemingly exhorting me to “again” begin writing to the mainline English language press, seemed totally unaware that newspapers in that category – with the exception of the Sunday Island, headed up by one of the few principled journalists in the country – had “shunned” me for the longest time for coming across as “anti-Rajapaksa” and, for that reason, likely to be a stain on their “national loyalty” escutcheon. Their need to demonstrate overall fealty to our Ultimate Leader while pretending at ethical objectivity in journalism was the name of the game. Long before I began a four-year association with the Sunday Leader, after the death of Lasantha Wickrematunge, and until Frederica Jansz was driven into exile, I had contributed columns on a regular basis to several English language newspapers. In fact, the first of these was Lakbimanews, then edited by the indescribable (more appropriate terms come to mind, but…) Rajpal Abeynayake. That association ended when he insisted on sending me a cheque made out to the pseudonym that I used for those columns which bore no resemblance to that carried by anyone in Sri Lanka, leave alone the first and last names to which I answered! Given the established character of Mr. Abeynayake, I think I need hardly suggest the motivation for this irrational behavior.Read More

Blow-By-Blow: How the AG Led The Prevention Of A Coup On Jan 8, 2015 in Sri Lanka

20/01/2015

By now the narrative of a peaceful transition of power between former President Mahinda Rajapaksa and the newly elected government has largely taken root. Newspapers, television airtime and the Internet are abuzz with photographs of President Rajapaksa humbly leaving Temple Trees even before the final election results were announced. There are no pictures of the sequence of events that took place in the corridors of power in the preceding hours, where Sri Lanka nearly received a death stab to the heart of its democracy, rescued from a knife edge only by the courage of Attorney General Yuvanjan Wijayatilake and a handful of fellow public servants.

By the time the polls closed on January 8, President Rajapaksa and his close advisors remained confident in their impending victory. The upper echelons of the regime, however, ever cautious about matters of totalitarianism, had a backup plan in place.

The shockwave hit Temple Trees long before the rest of the country, as the results of postal voting began trickling in after 10 PM. Innocuous and inconspicuous to most electors, the results were a mix of victory and defeat for both sides, from which no definite conclusion could be drawn.

To Mahinda Rajapaksa, a candidate of no less than three presidential elections and four parliamentary ones, the writing on the wall was crystal clear: disaster was looming. The postal vote comprises almost entirely of those in public service. These are men and women who, in the view of the regime, owed their livelihoods to the president, personally, and the enlisted men and women of the military, widely believed to hold fanatical loyalty to former secretary of defense Gotabhaya Rajapaksa. With near certain defeat just hours away, President Rajapaksa and his confidants began deliberating his options for ensuring that the executive presidency did not change hands.

At around 3.00 AM on January 9, Attorney General Yuvanjan Wijayatilake received a phone call summoning him to Temple Trees. Unknown to the Attorney General, just hours prior, military units attached to the Panagoda Army Camp received instructions to deploy in the vicinity of several counting centers in and around Colombo.

Before arriving at Temple Trees, the attorney general telephoned Solicitor General Bimba Thilakaratne to inform her that he had been summoned and ensure that she would be available for consultations if necessary. As Attorney General Wijayatilake arrived at Temple Trees, he was rushed into a meeting room where nothing in his 35 year long career in the legal profession could have prepared him for what was to come next.

The composition of the room itself was sufficiently shocking and preposterous to send a chill down the spine of any public spirited citizen. Present alongside President Mahinda Rajapaksa were not only his brother, Defense Secretary Gotabhaya Rajapaksa, his External Affairs Minister G.L. Peiris, and Western Provincial Council Minister Udaya Gamanpilla, but also the sitting Chief Justice of The Supreme Court of Sri Lanka, the Highest Court in the Land, Mohan Pieris.

The AG’s worst fears came through as the group explained their plan to him and instructed him to attest to its legality so that the necessary orders could be issued to the Inspector General of Police and the Army commander. The question placed before the attorney general was whether it would be legal for President Rajapaksa to annul the presidential poll by executive action, in the event of serious violence at counting centers, followed by the imposition of a state of emergency and the deployment of the army to impose order.

The answer, to the attorney general was morally obvious. There was simply no constitutional avenue for the president or any other official to stop the release of the election result or otherwise override the authority of the Elections Commissioner to decide the result of the election. The AG, immediately realizing the urgency of getting news of this plot out of Temple Trees, suggested that he would call and consult with the Solicitor General, Bimba Thilakaratne to help him make his determination.

Wijayatilake, in the presence of the gathered group, called Thilakaratne, informed her of where he was and who was present, and proceeded to explain the entire scheme to her under the auspices of soliciting her legal opinion. Thilakaratne too, upon realizing what was afoot, telephoned a senior colleague to relay the plot and get another opinion.

To all three state legal professionals, the subtext of the question of “legality” before them was crystal clear. All matters of legality or constitutionality are ultimately decided by the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, assumed to be an impartial judge of unimpeachable credentials. There was no doubt in any of their minds that the Chief Justice, Mohan Pieris, was present at Temple Trees for no reason other than to coerce them into meekly signing off on the legality of the plot.

In reality, this maneuver had the opposite effect on the seasoned state legal professionals, leaving no doubt in their minds that they were being asked to be party to a treasonous, unconstitutional coup de tat of a scale that would have eclipsed the abortive military coups of 1962 and 1966 in its sheer blatancy.

In no democracy in the world would it be accepted practice for the head of state to summon, consult with, or conspire with the head of the judiciary, especially in the dead of night when the sovereignty of the people by exercising their constitutional right to elect their leaders. By colluding with the president in his personal capacity to subvert the constitution, Mohan Pieris has set a high bar for ridicule and disgrace for the office of the Chief Justice, and the constitution that he swore to uphold. In effect, the president and chief justice were asking the attorney general to participate in an act of treason against the people of Sri Lanka, depriving them of their sovereign right to elect their leader. On the question of whether or not he was compelled to obey an illegal order from the president, a 2008 Supreme Court ruling by Justice Shirani Tilakawardene was the key precedent:

“The President does not have the power to shield, protect or coerce the action of state officials or agencies, when such action is against the tenets of the constitution or the Public Trust, and any such attempts on the part of the President to do so should not be followed by the officials for doing so will (i) result in their own accountability under the Public Trust Doctrine, betraying the trust of good governance reposed in them under the constitution by the people of this nation, in whom sovereignty reposes and (ii) render them sycophants unfit to uphold the dignity of public office.”

Despite the clear risk to their own lives and families from the most powerful individuals in the country who had made clear their willingness to spill blood to cling on to power, both the Attorney General and Solicitor General responded unequivocally that they would not certify the legality or constitutionality of the president’s scheme. With the IGP and army commander both refusing to participate in the scheme without clear legal authority, the plot came apart, with the president conceding the election and vacating Temple Trees soon afterward.

These events, if proven in a court of law, would constitute the most dastardly act of treason in the history of the Republic. The accused held the highest offices in the land across all three branches of government. The key eye witnesses are some of the most respectable and unimpeachable figures of Sri Lanka’s legal system. At stake was the very foundation of our democracy.

It is imperative that the new government move swiftly to initiate a commission of inquiry, recording statements from all concerned, and prosecuting those responsible for conspiring to subvert the country’s constitution, sovereignty and the will of the people, with the full force of the law. Failing to do so would set deadly precedent, and encourage future defeated leaders to follow in the footsteps of the conspirators.

– Democracy Sri Lanka

Ranil promises radical constitutional reforms to solve ‘national problem’

January 20, 2015, 10:25 pm 

UNP leader and Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe addressing parliament on opening day of the new session. President Maithripala Sirisena sits next to the Premier.
 (Pic by Sudath Silva)

by Saman Indrajith

Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe pledged in Parliament yesterday to bring about radical reforms to the Constitution to find a solution to the national problem within the first 100 days of the new government.

Ranil Promises Radical Constitutional Reforms to Solve ‘National Problem’ by Thavam Ratna

Appointment Of The Prime Minister : Constitutional Or Not?

President, Maithripala Sirisena appointed Ranil Wickremasinghe as the Prime Minister of Sri Lanka on the 9th January 2015 shortly after taking oaths as the President of the Republic of Sri Lanka before His Lordship Justice K Sripavan, Judge of the Supreme Court. This appointment by the President has raised some issues amongst various quarters with regard to its constitutionality or legality. It is necessary to find out whether this appointment, which is one of the first acts by the new president, is consistent with the Constitution of the Republic. Professor N. Selvakkumaran Senior Lecturer & former Dean Faculty of Law, University of Colombo provided this analysis for the Law and Society Trust.

| by N.Selvakkumaran

( January 20, 2015, Colombo, Sri Lanka Guardian) In terms of the present Constitution the President is empowered to appoint as Prime Minister the Member of Parliament who in the opinion of the President is most likely to command the confidence of Parliament [vide Article 43 (3)]. In other words, the MP chosen by the President should be capable of mustering the majority support of the Parliament. It is clear that the President should have entertained an opinion that Mr. Ranil Wickremasinghe is most likely to receive the acceptance of the present Legislature. It is immaterial, for the purpose of appointment, whether other Members, Parties or Institutions entertained such opinion or not! It is the opinion of the President that matters here. There is no express provision in the Constitution which requires a Prime Minister to demonstrate, through an affirmative vote of confidence, his or her ability to command the majority support of Parliament.

However the above authority of the President is not free from any constraint, politically speaking.The President’s opinion, and consequently his act of appointing Mr. Ranil Wickremasinghe, cannot be arbitrary or based on his whims and fancies. His opinion and the appointment could be subjected to a real test within a short period. If Mr. Wickremasinghe fails to command the confidence of Parliament in the well of the House, then he cannot continue to be the Prime Minister. As mentioned earlier, although there is no provision in the Constitution which requires the Prime Minister to demonstrate his ability to gather the majority support of the Parliament by an affirmative vote, the Members of Parliament have the power, under the Constitution, to pass a vote of no confidence in the Government and thereby to cause the consequential dissolution of the Cabinet of Ministers. When a vote of no confidence is passed the incumbent Prime Minister loses his position along with the Cabinet of Ministers [vide Article 49 (2)].

Incidentally, there is an issue raised as to whether the Office of the Prime Minister was vacant for His Excellency to fill the vacancy by appointing Mr. Ranil Wickremasinghe. It emerged in some sections of the media that the former Prime Minister had initially agreed to resign from the position after the presidential candidate Maithripala Sirisena was declared victorious at the Presidential election. It also transpired that when the former Prime Minister declined to resign later on, he was removed by the President once he took oaths and thereafter he appointed Mr. Ranil Wickremasinghe as the Prime Minister.

Therefore, the appointment of Mr.Wickremasinghe as the Prime Minister by the President is constitutional. If, for instance, the Parliament were to pass a vote of no confidence in the Government and thereby Mr. Ranil Wickremasinghe were to cease to be the Prime Minister in the near future, that will not make the President’s act of appointment unconstitutional. All what it will do is to reflect poorly on the political judgment made by the President.

From a comparative perspective, it is appropriate to consider the process of appointing Chief Ministers in the Provinces. According to the Constitution, the Governor of a Province is empowered to appoint as Chief Minister the Member of the Provincial Council who in the Governor’s opinion is best able to command the support of a majority of the Members of that Council. However this discretionary power is constrained under the following scenario. That is where more than half of the Members elected to the Council belonged to one political party, the Governor is under a duty to appoint the leader of that political party as Chief Minister; in such a case the Governor does not enjoy any discretion. The Governor is under a duty. This position is not made applicable to the appointment of a Prime Minister by the President under the Constitution [vide Article 154F (4)].

Having analyzed the Constitutional position, it is relevant to consider the political legitimacy of the appointment of Mr. Ranil Wickremasinghe as the Prime Minister. In this respect, the candidate Maithripala Sirisena made it very clear in many political platforms and through media interviews, during the period of canvassing, that he would appoint Mr. Ranil Wickremasinghe as the Prime Minister once he won the presidential election and took oaths as the President of the Republic. He had kept to his word to the people of this country and therefore the act of appointment made by the President commands political legitimacy and acceptance from a majority of voters who participated in the presidential election. It is up to the Prime Minister Ranil Wickremasinghe to demonstrate to the country that the President’s opinion over the former’s ability to command the majority support of Parliament is not misplaced or misconceived.

N.Selvakkumaran, Senior Lecturer & former Dean, Faculty of Law, University of Colombo

Charting a New Course: Sri Lankan Foreign Policy

Photo by Buddhika Weerasinghe/Getty Images, via Time

by Yohan Senarath

- on 01/18/2015 

There could not have been a better time to be a student or a professional of International Relations in Sri Lanka, given the geopolitical dynamics in the region. As one government official told me, “India and China are on the rise, we simply need to jump on this bandwagon.” However we should be mindful that the rise of these two powers mean that our neighborhood becomes more important in the geopolitical calculations of larger powers. The more important that our region becomes to them, the more policy options they would be willing to consider to get their way in our part of the world. In such an environment we should tread carefully always being mindful as to how our actions would be perceived by our neighbors and other more powerful states.

My foreign policy prescription for recently appointed Minister of External Affairs Mangala Samaraweera would be “India, India, India.” While Buddhism preaches that everything is bound to change sooner or later, one thing that is unlikely to do so for hundreds of thousands of years is Sri Lanka’s physical location in the world. No matter how much we complain about alleged “big brotherly treatment” from India, we should be mindful that India is here to stay with us permanently. We should seek to better understand India and strive to transform our relationship with them into one of partners. The decision taken by both Foreign Minister Samaraweera and President Sirisena to make New Delhi as their first international stop since taking office is a step in the right direction. By assuring India that its vital security interest of seeing Sri Lanka not being used as a launching pad for other military powers is secure, it would be easier for us to explain to New Delhi the need for our own space to deal with domestic issues.

The decision by the former government to allow Chinese nuclear submarines to dock in Sri Lanka was highly inadvisable. We should understand that whilst the Indians have deployed a sizable security contingent on their disputed border with China, their Southern Coast lies completely exposed. A Chinese military capability in Sri Lanka would have been seen by New Delhi as a number one security threat. It would have been the type of threat that the Indians would have been willing to go very far to neutralize, farther than the policies that they pursued in Sri Lanka during the 1980’s. This does not mean that we estrange Beijing. The Chinese have been one of Sri Lanka’s closest friends and we should treasure and strengthen that relationship. Their military assistance during our war against terrorism was critical and they have made a significant contribution to the development of our country historically. However, we should explain to Beijing, that given that we are far more important to New Delhi than to Beijing, India will always come first.

Apart from restructuring our relationship with New Delhi and Beijing, President Sirisena’s victory means that we have the opportunity to once again mend our ties with the West. The willingness of the West to do this has been amply proven by the swiftness with which Prime Minister Cameron and President Barrack Obama were to extend their congratulations to President Sirisena. A new window has opened and President Sirisena and Foreign Minister Samaraweera should seek to use that window of opportunity to convince the West to reconsider the UN Human Rights Council authorized investigation against us. We should explain to them, that doing this on their part would contribute significantly to the rebuilding of our relationship with them and would greatly boost the image of the West amongst Sri Lankans. It is also in our best interests to strengthen our relationship with the West, given the increasingly multi-polar nature of the world. With the West relinquishing power to the East, the international playing field becomes more even making all major powers incredibly important for us.

So far we have been quick to suspect the West of insidious conspiracies, and events such as Operation Ajax in Iran gives us good reason to do so. However with the US soon relinquishing its global super power status, it is likely that it would be China that starts to take actions that increasingly resemble that of what the Americans did during the last 50 years. Acquiring global superpower status is one thing, but to maintain that position is incredibly difficult. The Chinese would be especially compelled to act as an expansionist power since the legitimacy of the rule of the Chinese Communist Party lies on delivering economic prosperity and championing “Chinese Greatness.” To achieve both of these objectives the Chinese have been scouring the world looking for resources and ways and means to secure their transportation back to the homeland. For all of China’s staunch talk about China’s non-interference in the domestic affairs of other states which they constantly accuse the US of doing, Beijing too would soon have to confront the same dilemmas that Washington had to face during their heyday. To secure access to resources in other countries, Beijing would inevitably have to interfere in domestic politics.

In this sort of environment, the West which would have taken a backseat becomes a critical actor for us for balance of power considerations. Furthermore unlike the Chinese, we have far more room to influence Western powers given the importance that is attached to the role of civil society in that part of the world. In the West, the broad space in which civil society organizations and interest groups operate in, provides us with multiple entry points into their state system. Engaging China however is confined solely to approaching Beijing. When playing the game of international politics, we should remember that the face of imperialism or external conspiracies does not necessarily have to be a white face, it can be a Chinese one, an Indian one or an African one. We should be mindful that there will always be conspiracies against us, as countries jockey against each other to advance their interests in an international system which is devoid of an overarching authority.

To succeed in this type of environment we need to be aware of both our capabilities and limitations given our resources. This does not mean that we resign ourselves to believing that we are extremely powerless. Far from it, in fact understanding our capabilities and limitations is the first step to us formulating a stronger more effective foreign policy. We cannot win against the big boys and girls at their own games of power politics. In these instances, we should seek to find innovative ways to navigate safely without undermining the vital interests of these powerful parties. The offensive game should be waged in the conference halls of multilateral institutions where smaller countries derive influence by being bridge builders. The mastery of Singaporean diplomats in being able to fashion an image for themselves as being a bridge between the East and the West is a fantastic case in point in this regard.

Another route that could be taken is to become an advocate of a particular issue of international relevance that gives the most bang for Sri Lankan interests. Security considerations pertaining to disarmament rank very high on the big power agenda. Current policy issues include Syrian Chemical Weapons, North Korean and Iranian Nuclear Programs and the possibility of terrorist groups acquiring a nuclear weapon. Sri Lankan advocacy of disarmament enables us to gain access to the big powers on issues that are very important to them, it is this importance which they attach to them that can be leveraged to satisfy Sri Lankan interests. In sensitive issues such as disarmament, smaller countries have a higher likelihood of getting “bridge builder” positions due to their perceived low stakes in the game. One of the reasons why the Norwegians became so interested in “Peace Diplomacy” was because it provided them access to big powers. For example a recent report released by the Norwegians assessing their involvement in the Sri Lankan peace process explains as to how this initiative enabled them to gain access to higher ranking officials in New Delhi and Washington.

Conclusion

The victory of President Sirisena allows us to once again reassess our foreign policy priorities and strategies. We should also be aware though, that our room for maneuver internationally is contingent on developments in the domestic sphere. There are limits to how far diplomats can defend their country. Shortcomings by the previous regime to meet our international human rights obligations led us to side with certain nations with similar credentials in order to defend ourselves against criticism from the West. However what this also meant was that we were beholden to the former and they used this as leverage to compel us to take steps that were counter to our national interests. Adopting an antagonistic approach towards the West only further strengthened their resolve and the resolve of other regional powers to tighten the noose against us. It is critical that if we are to tread delicately and get the best of what the game of international politics has in store for us, that we are at our best behavior at home.

###

Yohan Senarath is currently a student of the Masters of Science in Foreign Service Program at the Edmund Walsh School at Georgetown University in Washington DC and a graduate of Clark University. He served as an intern with the Sri Lankan Mission and the Permanent Observer of the Caribbean Community to the United Nations in New York. Yohan is a member of the North American College Model UN All Star Team 2013-2014.

Being happy

January 20, 2015

• An assessment challenge

How do you assess whether a person is happy? Just after the euphoria of the triumph of the democratic process in our country, escaping from the brink of dictatorship and authoritarianism, would it be reasonable to say that most of the people are reasonably happy that we had a relatively peaceful election and a sensible transfer of power?
Or is this simply our democratic right – to be expected as the right of a citizen living under a democratic constitution, to have the capacity to act democratically – and nothing to be deliriously happy about? Or can people be said to happy that the possibility of economic largesse of a new Government, expecting to go before the people again in a short while, will result in prices going down and incomes going up?

Being Happy by Thavam Ratna

Canadian Tamil Congress celebrates its 8th Annual Thai Pongal

Published on: 01/20/15 08:03

The Canadian Tamil Congress’ (CTC’s) 8th annual Pongal Dinner was celebrated on January 17th, 2015 at the Sheraton Parkway Hotel in Richmond Hill. Attended by close to 1,000 people, the event showcased Tamil arts, culture and highlighted CTC’s impressive achievements in 2014 (Video).

Canadian Tamil Congress Celebrates Its 8th Annual Thai Pongal by Thavam Ratna

Noam Chomsky Slams West's Charlie Hebdo Outrage: 'Many Journalists Were Killed by Israel in Gaza Too'

Chomsky claims that "terrorist" attacks perpetrated by the West did not spark outrage such as the Hebdo attack.

By Noam Chomsky / Noam Chomsky's Official Site-January 19, 2015

After the terrorist attack on Charlie Hebdo, which killed 12 people including the editor and four other cartoonists, and the murder of four Jews at a kosher supermarket shortly after, French Prime Minister Manuel Valls declared "a war against terrorism, against jihadism, against radical Islam, against everything that is aimed at breaking fraternity, freedom, solidarity."

Noam Chomsky Slams West's Charlie Hebdo Outrage 'Many Journalists Were Killed by Israel in Gaza Too' by Thavam Ratna

Yemen rebels attack presidential compound in escalating attacks seen as coup bid

Members of the Shiite Houthi movement gesture outside a damaged building near the presidential palace in Sanaa, following fierce clashes against the presidential guards. (Mohammed Huwais/AFP/Getty Images)

By Ali al-Mujahed and Hugh Naylor January 20 at 12:24 PM

SANAA, Yemen — Shiite insurgents overran Yemen’s presidential palace and shelled the president’s nearby residence Tuesday in an escalating offensive striking at the heart of the Western-allied government.
Yemen Rebels Attack Presidential Compound in Escalating Attacks Seen as Coup Bid by Thavam Ratna

Latest Islamic State video threatens lives of two Japanese hostages

Militants demand $200m ransom for release of hostages named as Kenji Goto Jogo and Haruna Yukawa

A photo of Haruna Yukawa on his Google account. Photograph: Google

Shiv Malik in London, Justin McCurry in Tokyo and Martin Chulov in Beirut-Tuesday 20 January 2015

Islamic State has released a video threatening the lives of two Japanese hostages and demanding a $200m (£130m) ransom from their government.

The 1min 40sec film entitled “A message to the government at the people of Japan” begins with footage in English from Japan’s public broadcaster giving details of a multimillion-dollar Middle Eastern aid package announced just a few days ago by the prime minister, Shinzo Abe.
Latest Islamic State Video Threatens Lives of Two Japanese Hostages by Thavam Ratna