Key Army commander accused of steering a contract to ex-classmates

By Craig Whitlock June 21 

A key Army commander in the U.S. war against the Islamic State has been reprimanded by the Pentagon for steering a defense contract to a firm run by two of his former classmates at West Point, becoming the latest high-ranking officer to land in trouble for personal misconduct.

Maj. Gen. Dana J.H. Pittard, who as the Army’s deputy commander for operations in the Middle East oversaw the training of Iraqi forces, was formally reprimanded in February after a three-year investigation by the Army’s inspector general, according to documents obtained by The Washington Post under the Freedom of Information Act.

An Army review board is considering whether to strip him of his rank as a two-star general before he is allowed to retire this year.

Pittard, long considered a rising star in the Army, returned to the United States in April from his headquarters in Kuwait. The Army has not previously disclosed Pittard’s departure, and an official Army Web site still lists him as its deputy commander in the Middle East. An Army spokeswoman said that he completed his assignment and that his return was not related to his misconduct.

The U.S. military has been tarred by a series of ethical breaches committed by generals and admirals in recent years. Although Pentagon officials have vowed to crack down, the armed forces often seek to keep such cases out of the limelight to protect the reputations of their top brass.

Last year, for example, military officials said the commander of Special Operations forces in Central and South America had retired for “health and personal reasons.” In fact, it was uncovered in June after a review of documents that the commander, Army Brig. Gen. Sean P. Mulholland, had been disciplined for repeatedly becoming intoxicated in public and getting into altercations.

Similarly, the Navy has withheld details of misconduct committed by admirals in a corruption and bribery scandal involving an Asian defense contractor. In February, the Navy announced that it had censured three admirals, but it has refused to release public records documenting their actions or to identify other officers who have been subjected to administrative action.

The investigation into Pittard began in 2011 after an anonymous whistleblower alleged that the general had “abused his authority by awarding lucrative renewable energy contracts to his friends” while serving as the commander of Fort Bliss in Texas, the documents show.

Global Cost of War Was $14 Trillion Last Year

Smoke and flames rise following an explosion in the Syrian town of Kobani, also known as Ain al-Arab, as seen from the southeastern Turkish village of Mursitpinar. | Photo: AFP

Published 19 June 2015

This content was originally published by teleSUR at the following address: 

If “global violence were to decrease by 10 percent uniformly, an additional US$1.43 trillion would effectively be added to the world economy.”

A new report released Friday said that the global cost of war was soaring as it was US$14 trillion in 2014.

The report by the Institute for Economics and Peace (IEP) also claimed that conflicts in Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan were responsible for most of the deaths in the world.

According to the report, Syria remained the least peaceful place on Earth, followed by Iraq and Afghanistan, with the United States contributing violence in all three nations. “Last year alone it is estimated that 20,000 people were killed in terrorist attacks up from an average of 2,000 a year only 10 years ago,” the report said.

The Global Peace Index report said that war spending amounts to 13 percent of the global GDP, which is almost the combined value of the economies of United Kingdom, France, Germany, Canada, Spain and Brazil.

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Musab Yousef @musabyousef1

Global cost of war reaches $14 trillion, as a report of Institute for Economics and Peace (IEP)

15:17 - 18 jun 2015

Steve Killelea, Founder and Executive Chairman, Institute for Economics and Peace said if “global violence were to decrease by 10 percent uniformly, an additional US$1.43 trillion would effectively be added to the world economy.”

“[Year] 2014 was marked by contradictory trends: on the one hand many countries in the OECD [Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development] achieved historically high levels of peace, while on the other, strife-torn nations, especially in the Middle East, became more violent. This is a real concern as these conflicts become even more intractable they spread terrorism to other states,” Killelea added.

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World Economic Forum 

✔@wef

Which is the most peaceful country in the world? http://wef.ch/1MOdOUT  #peace @GlobPeaceIndex

10:30 - 18 jun 2015

Published annually since 2008, the Global Peace Index uses 23 indicators and three key themes; “level of safety and security in society,” “the extent of domestic and international conflict,” and “the degree of militarization.”

Those killed as a result of conflicts has risen from just 49,000 people in 2010 to 180,000 in 2014, as the Middle East and North Africa became the least peaceful regions in the world since the index began in 2008.  

The Odd American View of Negotiation

The give-and-take of negotiation serves at least a couple of functions that parties on both sides of any issue would be smart to exploit. One is that this aspect of negotiation is a form of information gathering, in which the parties feel out what the other side cares about the most and cares about less, and thus where within the bargaining space the most mutually advantageous deals can be struck.

by Paul R. Pillar 

(June 22, 2015, Boston, Sri Lanka Guardian) One of the unfortunate corollaries of American exceptionalism is a warped and highly asymmetric conception of negotiation. This conception can become a major impediment to the effective exercise of U.S. diplomacy. Although the attitudes that are part of this view of negotiation are not altogether unique to the United States, they are especially associated with American exceptionalist thinking about the supposed intrinsic superiority of U.S. positions and about how the sole superpower ought always to get its way. The corollary about negotiation is, stated in its simplest and bluntest terms, that negotiation is an encounter between diplomats in which the United States makes its demands—sometimes expressed as “red lines”—and the other side accepts those demands, with the task of the diplomats being to work out the details of implementation. Or, if the other side is not going along with that script and acceding to U.S. demands, then the United States has to exert more pressure on the other side until it does accede.

This is markedly different from the rest of the world’s conception of negotiation, in which each side begins with positions that neither side will get or expects to get entirely, followed by a process of give-and-take and mutual concession to arrive at a compromise that meets the needs of each side enough that it is better for each than no agreement at all.

Americans’ domestic experience with negotiation has been only a partial corrective to their warped view of international negotiation, and that experience has become even less of a corrective in recent times. The United States has a long history of labor-management negotiations that have determined wages and working conditions of many Americans. But it also was in the United States that there arose Boulwarism, an approach to labor relations named after Lemuel R. Boulware, a vice president of General Electric in the 1950s, consisting of management putting a single, inflexible, take-it-or-leave-it formula on the table and refusing to make any concessions to unions. Boulwarism was found to be an unfair labor practice, but with the decline over the past few decades of labor unions and of the significance of collective bargaining for American workers, it in effect has come to prevail in much of the American economy.

Domestic American politics have followed a similar trajectory. Once upon a time, give-and-take and finding compromises were the daily stuff of American politics, including as practiced on Capitol Hill. Now, in a coarsened and hyper-partisan environment, they are so rare as to be a news item when they do still occur. What is now standard is the imposition of red lines—maybe called something else, such as litmus tests or no-tax pledges—and a focus on what kinds of pressure or extortion could achieve total defeat of the other side. Domestic trends, political and economic, thus have reinforced American ways of thinking about bargaining that have further entrenched the idiosyncratic and unhelpful American view of international negotiations.

A consequence of this view is to regard concessions and compromise not as necessary parts of negotiation but instead as a source of shame or a badge of weakness. We have seen this amid the flak the Obama administration is taking from its political opponents regarding its handling of the nuclear negotiations with Iran. Among the criticisms, as if this really should count as criticism, have been observations that the United States has not rigidly held to what may have been earlier positions and demands. This sort of flak is found, for example, in a recent letter to the president from Bob Corker, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Corker expresses dismay about how the negotiations have involved movement from the administration’s “original goals and statements,” and he voices “alarm” about reports of—you’d better sit down before reading this—“potential concessions” by the United States on some issues on which full agreement has yet to be reached.

The proper response to such statements is: yes, the United States has been making concessions, and the Iranians have been making even more—that’s called negotiating.

Americans may not like to think that they are in the kind of bargaining relationship one might be with a rug merchant, but a bargaining relationship may exist whether one party says so or not. Even Boulware was in a bargaining relationship with labor unions, despite trying to approach the issues at hand as if he weren’t. Inflexibility is an approach toward bargaining, though not necessarily a good one; it is not a way of making the bargaining situation go away.

The fallacy of asymmetry in the American exceptionalist view of negotiation gets exposed when other parties issue reminders of how negotiation is really a two-way endeavor. Members of the Iranian majles did so this week with a bill co-sponsored by a majority of that legislature’s members. “At the moment, the negotiating team is facing excessive demands from the United States,” said the chairman of the national security and foreign policy committee. “The bill is being introduced with the aim of supporting the negotiators,” he said, “and to protect the red lines drawn up by the supreme leader.” The bill then stated demands regarding some of the remaining issues regarding international inspections, research and development, and the timing of sanctions relief. The majles members probably know as much about rug merchandising as do legislators in any other country, and it is unlikely that their bill betokens any failure to understand the need for compromise. The measure instead is a message being sent to their counterparts in Washington that two can play the same game and that no one issued an exclusive license to the United States to draw red lines.

The give-and-take of negotiation serves at least a couple of functions that parties on both sides of any issue would be smart to exploit. One is that this aspect of negotiation is a form of information gathering, in which the parties feel out what the other side cares about the most and cares about less, and thus where within the bargaining space the most mutually advantageous deals can be struck. Making a particular concession might, of course, be a dumb move, but it might instead be a prudent response to having found out more, through the negotiation process, about the other side’s preferences, objectives, and fears.

The give-and-take also means using concessions to get concessions. However distasteful some Americans may find this sort of trading, it is a fact of negotiating life, in international diplomacy as well as in other negotiating situations. Good negotiators recognize that, which is why they begin with “original goals and statements” that they fully expect they will not adhere to rigidly.

The American exceptionalist demand-and-pressure conception fosters misunderstanding of these realities. And this failure of understanding can lead to blowing good opportunities to use diplomacy to the fullest to strike bargains that advance U.S. interests.

Paul R. Pillar is Nonresident Senior Fellow at the Center for Security Studies at Georgetown University and Nonresident Senior Fellow in Foreign Policy at the Brookings Institution.  He is a contributing editor to The National Interest, where he writes a blog.

©2015 The National Interest. All rights reserved. |

"Reasonable" Greek offer raises hopes of deal but Germany urges caution

Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras (L) is welcomed by European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker for a meeting ahead of a Eurozone emergency summit on Greece in Brussels, Belgium June 22, 2015.

A woman waves a Greek flag during an anti-austerity pro-government rally in front of the parliament building in Athens, Greece, June 21, 2015

BY RENEE MALTEZOU AND JAN STRUPCZEWSKI- Mon Jun 22, 2015

Euro zone officials welcomed Greek concessions on Monday as a possible step towards a deal on averting a default, but politicians dismissed expectations of a breakthrough at a summit later in the day to secure the country's future in the euro.

Hopes rose on financial markets as the officials accepted the reform proposal for the first time as a "reasonable" basis for negotiating an aid-for-reforms agreement between Athens and its creditors at the EU and IMF.

But Germany, the biggest European contributor to Greece's bailout programmes, warned that the meeting in Brussels of euro zone leaders could be only "a summit of consultations" without a detailed technical agreement.

Chancellor Angela Merkel signalled that any settlement could take days to reach and her Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble said he had seen nothing new from Athens, even though Greece faces a 1.6 billion euro repayment to the IMF on June 30 which it probably cannot make without help from its creditors.

After months of acrimony, accusations and wrangling between Greece and its creditors, positive mood music in Brussels injected new hope that a long-awaited aid agreement might be near.

European shares surged and the Greek stock market jumped nearly 7 percent while the borrowing costs of Italy, Spain and Portugal - the countries most likely to be hit if Greece headed for the euro zone exit - fell sharply.

In the proposal sent early on Monday, Greece moved to acquiesce to lenders' demands for tax increases and pension reform by offering to raise the Greek retirement age gradually to 67 and curb early retirements. It also offered to reform the value-added-tax system to set the main rate at 23 percent.

"This is now, for the first time, a reasonable paper on which you can have an informed and productive discussion," one euro zone official said. "I cannot predict it will lead to an agreement tonight, but it is what was expected in form and in substance from such a paper." the official said.

Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras headed into a series of talks with figures including European Central Bank President Mario Draghi and IMF head Christine Lagarde before the summit which is due to start at 7 pm (1700 GMT).

European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker, a veteran EU dealmaker, gave Tsipras a warm welcome after he arrived in Brussels, taking him by the shoulders and patting him on the cheek. This contrasted to earlier this month, when a frustrated Juncker rebuked Tsipras for failing to observe the "minimum rules" of friendship.

"NOTHING NEW"

Merkel held open the possibility of a deal. "There are still a lot of days in the week in which decisions can be taken," she told reporters in the eastern German city of Magdeburg.

But Schaeuble, who has taken a consistently hard line with Athens, was pessimistic. "There is nothing new beyond many trying to create expectations which are not supported by substance," he said. "Without substantial proposals which can be examined seriously, we can't seriously prepare a euro summit."

Other European ministers played down the prospect of an agreement at the summit, saying there was too little time for officials to examine the proposal

"There is always time, there is the will for a good agreement. Today an agreement is not possible," said Spanish Economy Minister Luis de Guindos. "We still need to analyse many details. There are many versions of the Greek proposal. I don't know which is the definitive one."

However, EU Economic Commissioner Pierre Moscovici said he was "convinced" that euro zone leaders would find a resolution on the basis of the latest proposal.

"If we get a deal tonight, that would be better, but if not, we'll need to set the foundation tonight so that a deal can be reached in coming days," French President Francois Hollande said in Paris before he was due to travel to the summit.

Underlining the urgent need for a deal on Monday, Greece's central bank last week warned lenders to brace for a "difficult day" on Tuesday if the summit ended without a breakthrough, banking sources have told Reuters.

The country could be forced to impose capital controls within days to stem the outflow of billions of euros from banks by savers fearing they could be stuck with a sharply devalued new currency should Greece be forced out of the euro.

There were no immediate long queues or signs of panic outside Greek banks in the capital on Monday. The ECB, which has kept local lenders afloat with infusions of liquidity, raised its emergency funding once more.

"I believe there will be a deal today. This is a normal visit to the bank," said one Greek saver outside a bank branch.

An exit from the euro would create economic dislocation in Greece and severe consequences for its banks' liquidity and solvency, which could lead to the banking system being nationalised, credit ratings agency Moody’s warned in a report on Monday.

NO FEAR OF BLACKMAIL

Comments by Greek Deputy Labour Minister Dimitris Stratoulis on a morning news show underscored the tightrope Tsipras must walk to reach an agreement that will win over both the creditors and his own leftist Syriza party.

"We are not afraid of blackmail, and our priority is the public interest," Stratoulis, a Syriza hardliner, told Antenna television. "Let's see if there will be a deal tonight."

Syriza stormed to power in January promising to roll back years of austerity it says has worsened Greece's plight.

Thousands gathered in central Athens on Sunday to protest against a new round of cuts, which is expected to be countered by a demonstration in favour of staying in the euro later on Monday.

(Reporting by Karolina Tagaris, Angeliki Koutantou, George Georgiopoulos, Michelle Martin, Alastair Macdonald, Astrid Wendlandt, Jan Strupczewski, Lefteris Karagiannopoulos and; Andrius Sytas; writing by Matthias Williams; editing by David Stamp; Greek debt crisis timeline; link.reuters.com/nuf94w; Greek government debt and deficit; link.reuters.com/car38s; Greek unemployment rate by age;link.reuters.com/dab48s; GDP per capita since 2007; link.reuters.com/xug94w; GDP per capita since joining the euro zone; link.reuters.com/dyg94w; Greece real GDP growth;link.reuters.com/gyg94w; Euro zone periphery bank deposits; link.reuters.com/vep58s; Greek stock market; link.reuters.com/dar38s; Greek current account;link.reuters.com/qem79t)

The 12 most corrupt countries in the world

Russian President Vladimir Putin gestures as he speaks at the 10th business forum "Business Russia" in Moscow on May 26, 2015.

• MATTHEW SPEISER
 -

• JUN. 17, 2015

The recent FIFA scandal shone a spotlight on the prevalence of global corruption.

A recent report from Verisk Maplecroft, a risk analysis and forecasting company, now identifies where similar occurrences happen most often in the world.

Defining corruption as "exerting influence, often through the provision of money or favours, to obtain a service," Verisk examined the economies of 198 countries from August 2012 to August 2014 based on reports by Transparency International, Freedom House, and the US Department of State and determined that developing countries in sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle East suffer the most from corrupt practices.

Throughout the two-year period, Verisk tracked five factors: the frequency of corruption, the duration of the corruption, the spread of corruption, the severity of the corruption, and the ability of those committing corruption to operate with impunity. 

Analysts at Verisk Maplecroft then quantified this data into a predefined scoring system on a scale of 0 to 10, with 0 being at extreme risk for corruption and 10 being at low risk for corruption.

REUTERS/Essam Al-SudaniIraqi workers stand near a pipeline as it ejects oil at Al Tuba oil field in Basra, southeast of Baghdad, February 19, 2015.

In particular, Verisk determined that 45% of the countries deemed at "extreme" risk for corruption are located in sub-Saharan Africa. In addition, oil, gas, and mining firms are the businesses most frequently exposed to demands for bribery, which dragged several Middle Eastern countries, as well as Russia, toward the bottom of the rankings.

"[Corruption] risks are particularly prevalent in developing economies,” Trevor Slack, legal and regulatory analyst at Verisk Maplecroft, wrote in the report. “Factors such as weak rule of law and a lack of institutional capacity in these markets undermine efforts to combat entrenched systems of patronage, while exposure to corrupt public officials and a reliance on third party agents is also higher.”

Out of the 198 countries, Verisk found 73 at "extreme" risk for corruption, 64 at "high" risk, 38 at "medium" risk, and 23 at "low" risk. (Denmark was rated as the least corrupt country, the US was rated 23rd-least corrupt).

Russian engineer implants travel card chip into his hand to speed up commute

Kashmira Gander, The Independent | Jun 20, 2015

We can all appreciate how important those extra minutes in bed in the morning are, but one man is so committed to speeding up his commute that he has inserted his travel card under his skin. 

Russian engineer Vlad Zaitsev has implanted NFC chips from both his travel card and his office swipe card into his hand. 

To extract the chips, Zaitsev dissolved the cards in acetone. He then covered the resulting metal pieces into silicon, making it safe to insert the technology into the side of his hand. 

A gory video of the procedure shows the silicon disk being placed into a deep opening in his hand, as well as his large scar when he is sewn back up.
Vlad Zaitsev, who used his hand as a guinea pig (Image: YouTube/Madrobots.Ru)

Zaitsev now hopes to inject a chip from a credit card into his other hand, according to a Madrobots.Ru YouTube video.

"It is the perfect solution to not have to worry about losing an expensive season ticket, although I admit it's not going to be everybody's cup of tea," he said according to the Metro.


Although less drastic, travellers on the London's transport network have also found inventive ways to use their Oyster Card chips.

By snapping open their cards to retrieve the tiny piece of technology, Londoners have been known to attach chips to everything from key rings to wands.

Zaitsev's experiment comes after Tim Cannon, a self-styled biohacker in Germany, inserted an implant into his arm which records data from his body which is transferred to his Android smartphone, Vice News reported.

Meningitis B vaccine to be offered to 'all babies'

SUNDAY 21 JUNE 2015
All babies in England and Wales are to be offered vaccines against meningitis B from September, the government announces.

In a move described as "lifesaving", parents will be able to get jabs for babies at the ages of two and four months, with a booster at one year, the Department of Health and Scottish Government said.

They said the programme, available from GPs, meant England and Scotland were the first in the world to begin "national and publicly-funded meningitis B immunisation".

Teenagers aged 17 and 18 in the final year of sixth-form and other students aged 19 to 25 who are starting university this year will also be able to receive a vaccination against the A, C, W and Y strains of the infection from August, the DoH said, adding this is "particularly important" for those heading to university.

Around 1,200 people, mainly babies and children, get meningitis caused by the meningococcal group B bacteria each year in the UK, with around one in 10 dying from the infection.

Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt announced plans to roll out vaccinations in March, after the government reached a deal with drug maker GlaxoSmithKline. This decision followed controversy over the Bexsero MenB vaccine after it emerged it was still not available to children despite being recommended by health advisers a year previously.

Sue Davie, chief executive of the Meningitis Now charity, said: "We're delighted that yet another milestone in the journey to introduce these vaccines and protect our newborn babies and young people from the devastation meningitis causes has been reached - these measures will start to save lives straight away and for years to come."

Ranil to shoot down 20A if …

By Ajith Alahakoon-June 21, 2015, 10:34 pm 

Prime Minister and UNP Leader Ranil Wickremesinghe yesterday vowed to vote against the 20th Amendment to the Constitution if it was a threat to minor parties and paved the way for a two-party system, according to JVP leader Anura Kumara Dissanayake.

Dissanayake told The Island soon after attending a meeting Prime Minister Wickremesinghe had with minor and minority parties at Temple Trees that they had vehemently opposed the proposed 20th Amendment.

Leader of the SLMC Minister Rauf Hakeem, TNA Leader R. Sampanthan and M. A. Sumanthiran MP, ACMA Leader Minister Rishad Bathiudeen MP, Western People’s Front Leader Mano Ganeshan MP, JVP’s trade union wing leader former MP K.D. Lalkantha and he had represented the minor parties, the JVP Leader said.

UNP Minister Kabir Hashim had been present with the Prime Minister, Dissanayake said.

The JVP leader said that he and all others had pointed out that the reforming electoral system as envisaged by the provisions of the 20th Amendment would do away with the multi-party system and pave the way for a two-party system. "We pointed out to the Prime Minister that such a situation would deprive the smaller parties of parliament representation. We also informed him that the enactment of 20th Amendment in its present form was a danger to democracy."

"Hence, we requested the PM to withdraw the proposed 20th Amendment."

Prime Minister Wickremesinghe promised to look into the matter and pledged to vote against and defeat the 20th amendment if it posed a threat to the smaller parties and democracy, the JVP leader said.

Wilpattu – Where The Lion’s Reign Ends

By Muhammed Fazl

 –June 21, 2015

Muhammed Fazl

“There may be times when we are powerless to prevent injustice, but there must never be a time when we fail to protest” – Elie Wiesel

Much has been said, petitions submitted and protests held, but what is disconcerting to the Muslim community is the absence of even a single case in a court of law against possible encroachment of lands belonging toWilpattu forests or its reserves… and to this day. In this context, rise it does questions about mala fide propaganda and allegations leveled at Minister of Commerce and Industry, Mr. Rishad Bathiudeen and against original inhabitants-turned-refugees in the Mannar/Puttalam districts.

At a time when the judiciary and concerned departments are operating far more independently, the ‘holy truth’ cannot be more obvious than when men in saffron colored robes jump into the fray when issues concerning Muslims and/or Muslim politicians surface. As an investigative writer/activist, I hope I am not alone in sensing a deep-rooted and a well organized campaign against Muslims taking shape.

Wanting to see ground realities for myself and intending to expose the truth, I set on a journey a couple of weeks back to all areas surrounding the Wilpattu jungle. Having met local inhabitants and settlers while on the inspection tour, I am of the view that at no stage, illegal grab of state or protected lands had taken place in order to settle Muslims who were living as refugees for almost a quarter of a century. Interestingly, it is the Sinhalese community from Hambantota areas who had ‘invaded’ and who had set up shop in lands foreign to them. And that too at a time when around 100,000 Muslims continue to live as refugees.

Every Sri Lankan, irrespective of race or religion should have the right to settle down in any part of the island at any stage. But when the Rajapaksa government intervened and relocated 2860 Sinhalese families in the Mannar district (from elsewhere) by presenting 3 acres of land to each family as against half (1/2) acre for a Muslim family, does it not signal a pattern of clinical discrimination of Muslims? Under these circumstances, would it be fair to make unsubstantiated allegations against Mr. Bathiudeen solely for standing up for the rights of his community?

The following video interview with Rev. Athuraliye Rathana Thero, Rev. Galagoda Atte Gnanasara Thero ofBBS and with Minister Rishad Bathiudeen was to give each one of them an opportunity to air their individual versions of the story and for the intelligent viewer to make better judgements.

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Heavy wait battle: Sirisena wants to wait, 

but UNP cannot

By Our Political Editor-Sunday, June 21, 2015

• Conflicts and confusion over 20A and dissolution of Parliament; smaller parties to launch countrywide protests
• President offers ‘distinguished position’ to Rajapaksa, but former leader rejects it
• Senaratne’s slip is showing, but SLFP split now inevitable

President Maithripala Sirisena was in Ampara last Sunday when news reached him about the contents of the Sunday Times (Political Commentary).  He wa briefed about the remarks made by Dinesh Gunawardena, a close ally of former President Mahinda Rajapaksa and leader of the Mahajana Eksath Peramuna (MEP), a partner in the United People’s Freedom Alliance (UPFA). Gunawardena had said in a Q & A that a “new political front” was in the making under the leadership of Rajapaksa. A programme of work (or a manifesto of sorts) for this “front” for the next parliamentary elections was being formulated, he added.

Heavy Wait Battle Sirisena Wants to Wait, But UNP Cannot by Thavam Ratna