Wednesday, March 30, 2016

Boeing says it will cut more than 4,500 jobs

Wed Mar 30, 2016

Boeing Co will eliminate about 4,000 jobs in its commercial airplanes division by the middle of this year and another roughly 550 jobs in a division that conducts flight and lab tests, company spokespeople told Reuters.

The planemaker will reduce 1,600 positions in the commercial airplanes division through voluntary layoffs, while the rest of the cuts are expected to be completed by leaving open positions unfilled, spokesman Doug Alder said.

"While there is no employment reduction target, the more we can control costs as a whole the less impact there will be to employment," Alder said.

The job cuts, which will include hundreds at executive and managerial positions, will not done through involuntary layoffs, Alder said.

Boeing will also cut about 10 percent of the approximately 5,700 jobs in its test and evaluation division, which conducts flight and lab tests, spokeswoman Sandra Angers told Reuters.

The company had a total of 161,400 employees as of Dec. 31.

Reuters had reported last month that Boeing was considering offering voluntary layoffs to its professional engineers and technical workers.

In February, Ray Conner, chief executive of Boeing's airplane business, warned employees that job cuts were necessary to "win in the market, fund our growth and operate as a healthy business."

The Seattle Times had earlier reported that Boeing has taken steps to reduce its workforce.

(bit.ly/1q05U62)

(Reporting by Bhanu Pratap; Editing by Savio D'Souza)

The far-right German proposal to ban all mosques

People in Erfurt, Germany, take part in an anti-immigration demonstration organized by the Alternative for Germany party on March 16. (Jens Meyer/AP)

By Ishaan Tharoor-March 30

A wing of a far-right party in Germany is readying a proposal to ban the "construction and operation" of mosques. The plan was articulated in a 45-page policy document put forward by members of a Bavarian branch of the Alternative for Germany, or AfD, a far-right, anti-immigration party that hadan impressive showing in regional elections earlier this month.

The draft policy, titled "Courage to take responsibility," states that "Islam does not belong to Germany" and argues that mosques lead to "the spread of Islamic teachings directed towards the removal of our legal order," according to the Deutsche Welle news agency.

The Koran, the holy book of Islam, is full of "lies and deception," the paper says, warning that Islam "has already arrived at its declared path to world domination in 57 out of 190 countries."

[Donald Trump and the shadow of Europe's far-right]

This is a familiar theme now, both in Europe and the United States. The upheavals of the Middle East, the fears sparked by the arrival of tens of thousands of Muslim migrants and refugees, and the Islamic State militant group's campaign of terror in cities around the world have inflamed populist, xenophobic passions in the West.

The AfD's leadership in Bavaria distanced itself from the proposal, which apparently came from a particularly right-wing branch of the party in Lower Bavaria, an administrative region of the southern German state. It's unlikely that the call to ban mosques would ever be heeded.

About 4 million Muslims live in Germany, a country with a population of about 80 million. There are 184 new mosque projects underway in the country, according to a leading German Muslim group.
The AfD was founded in 2013 in opposition to Germany's proposed bailout of debt-ridden Greece. Its Euroskepticisim, like those of other populist parties on the continent, morphed with fears of Muslim immigration.

"It’s a similar phenomenon as [GOP front-runner Donald] Trump," Heinrich Oberreuter, a political scientist at the University of Passau, told my colleague Anthony Faiola this month when explaining the AfD's success. "People are angry at the political establishment, and they feel they are not being taken seriously. Political elites are the targets. Alternative for Germany is an expression, an articulation of this imprecise feeling of dissent."

The party's rise has been particularly conspicuous in Germany, which is understandably wary of far-right, ultranationalist politics. In its campaign literature, the AfD urged Germans to abandon their guilt over the Nazi past.

“A one-sided focus on 12 unlucky years of our history obstructs our view of centuries, in which a unique culture and state order was created," an AfD election pamphlet read.

Read more

As the route to Europe closes, migrants journey through grief
Migrant ‘exchange’: Turkey accepts mass returns but sends Syrians to Europe
Most of the refugees stuck in Greece are now women and children

Ishaan Tharoor writes about foreign affairs for The Washington Post. He previously was a senior editor at TIME, based first in Hong Kong and later in New York.

Book Sales Are Up. Reading Is Down. Are You on the Side of the Competitive Edge?

David Sable-Mar 29, 2016

28% of American adults say they have not read a book in the past year – book as in words…be it digital, print, whatever. And while I don’t know the matching statistics globally – help me if you can by checking your country’s stats – I imagine most of us are facing the same sad fact.

Sad as in this isn’t a print vs. digital coup or a traditional vs. new triumphor some Luddite vs. leading-edge victory…it plainly and simply means some people are just not reading, and I find this profoundly disturbing and potentially harmful to the future evolution of humanity.

And yet:

According to last week’s New York Times, “Sales at bookstores rose 2.5 percent in 2015 over the previous year, to $11.17 billion, for the first annual increase since 2007, according to the United States Census Bureau.”

And, as I have written before about the increase in sales of children’s printed books…all over the world…a trend I find exciting, powerful and a sign of hope for the future, as parents rediscover the joys of a fully tactile, immersive, interactive experience that involves and benefits both the reader and the audience.

Tell the truth! Have you bought a book recently…digital or otherwise? Read it? Enjoyed it? Experienced it? Immersed in it? Shared it? Old author or new…makes no difference…

Full confession time – as one who used to haunt bookstores and buy tens of books at a visit, and then, as time moved on, download even larger quantities to my Kindle and then my Kindle App, I find that I have slacked off.

Maybe it was time…I had so much “content” to cover; maybe it was fatigue…how much could I really absorb; maybe it was lethargy…who cares because I’m reading short summaries of everything…

Beyond Pedagogies of Repression

One of the most serious challenges facing teachers, artists, journalists, writers, and other cultural workers is the task of developing a discourse of both critique and possibility. This means developing languages and pedagogical practices that connect reading the word with reading the world, and doing so in ways that enhance the capacities of young people as critical agents and engaged citizens.

by Henry A. Giroux
Courtsey: Monthly Review

Introduction

( March 29, 2016, Boston, Sri Lanka Guardian) At a time when the public good is under attack and there seems to be a growing apathy toward the social contract or any other civic-minded investment in public values and the larger common good, education has to be seen as more than a credential or a pathway to a job, and pedagogy as more than teaching to the test. Against pedagogies of repression such as high-stakes testing, which largely serve as neoliberal forms of discipline to promote conformity and limit the imagination, critical pedagogy must be viewed as crucial to understanding and overcoming the current crises of agency, politics, and historical memory faced by many young people today. One of the challenges facing the current generation of educators and students is the need to reclaim the role that education has historically played in developing critical literacies and civic capacities. Education must mobilize students to be critically engaged agents, attentive to important social issues and alert to the responsibility of deepening and expanding the meaning and practices of a vibrant democracy.

At the heart of such a challenge is the question of what education should accomplish in a democracy. What work do educators have to do to create the economic, political, and ethical conditions necessary to endow young people with the capacities to think, question, and doubt, to imagine the unimaginable, and to defend education as essential for inspiring and energizing the citizens necessary for a robust democracy? In a world that has largely abandoned egalitarian and democratic impulses, what will it take to educate young people to challenge authority, resist the notion that education is only training, and redefine public and higher education as democratic public spheres?

Sea levels set to 'rise far more rapidly than expected'

New research factors in collapsing Antarctic ice sheet that could double the sea-level rise to two metres by 2100 if emissions are not cut

Antarctica’s snowfall was expected to keep the ice sheet in balance but it is less stable than previously thought. Photograph: Steve Mandel / Barcroft Media

Damian Carrington-

30th March 2016

Sea levels could rise far more rapidly than expected in coming decades, according to new research that reveals Antarctica’s vast ice cap is less stable than previously thought.

The UN’s climate science body had predicted up to a metre of sea level rise this century - but it did not anticipate any significant contribution from Antarctica, where increasing snowfall was expected to keep the ice sheet in balance.

According a study, published in the journal Nature, collapsing Antarctic ice sheets are expected to double sea-level rise to two metres by 2100, if carbon emissions are not cut.

Previously, only the passive melting of Antarctic ice by warmer air and seawater was considered but the new work added active processes, such as the disintegration of huge ice cliffs.

“This [doubling] could spell disaster for many low-lying cities,” said Prof Robert DeConto, at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, who led the work. He said that if global warming was not halted, the rate of sea-level rise would change from millimetres per year to centimetres a year. “At that point it becomes about retreat [from cities], not engineering of defences.”

As well as rising seas, climate change is also causing storms to become fiercer, forming a highly destructive combination for low-lying cities like New York, Mumbai and Guangzhou. Many coastal cities are growing fast as populations rise and analysis by World Bank and OECD staff has shown that global flood damage could cost them $1tn a year by 2050 unless action is taken.

The cities most at risk in richer nations include Miami, Boston and Nagoya, while cities in China,

Vietnam, Bangladesh and Ivory Coast are among those most in danger in less wealthy countries.

The new research follows other recent studies warning of the possibility of ice sheet collapse in Antarctica and suggesting huge sea-level rises. But the new work suggests that major rises are possible within the lifetimes of today’s children, not over centuries.

“The bad news is that in the business-as-usual, high-emissions scenario, we end up with very, very high estimates of the contribution of Antarctica to sea-level rise” by 2100, DeConto told the Guardian. But he said that if emissions were quickly slashed to zero, the rise in sea level from Antarctic ice could be reduced to almost nothing.

“This is the good news,” he said. “It is not too late and that is wonderful. But we can’t say we are 100% out of the woods.” Even if emissions are slashed, DeConto said, there remains a 10% chance that sea level will rise significantly.

Active physical processes are well-known ways of breaking up ice sheets but had not been included in complex 3D models of the Antarctic ice sheet before. The processes include water from melting on the surface of the ice sheet to flow down into crevasses and widen them further. “Meltwater can have a really deleterious effect,” said DeConto. “It’s an attack on the ice sheet from above as well as below.”

Today, he said, summer temperatures approach or just exceed freezing point around Antarctica: “It would not take much warming to see a pretty dramatic increase [in surface melting] and it would happen very quickly.”

The new models also included the loss of floating ice shelves from the coast of Antarctica, which currently hold back the ice on land. The break-up of ice shelves can also leave huge ice cliffs 1,000m high towering over the ocean, which then collapse under their own weight, pushing up sea level even further.

The scientists calibrated their model against geological records of events 125,000 years ago and 3m years ago, when the temperature was similar to today but sea level was much higher.

Sea-level rise is also driven by the expansion of water as it gets warmer and in January scientists suggested this factor had been significantly underestimated, adding further weight to concerns about future rises.

Recent temperatures have been shattering records and on Monday, it was announced that the Arctic ice cap had been reduced to its smallest winter areasince records began in 1979, although the melting of this already floating sea ice does not push up ocean levels.

What a WASTE! A fishing net, part of a car engine and plastic buckets are found in the stomachs of 13 sperm whales which washed up on a German beach

The 13 sperm whales washed up near the German town of Toenning
Experts believe the young adult male whales were starving when they died
It is believed winter storms prevented the whales from feeding properly
Tests found the animals died of cardiac arrest and circulatory failure

By DARREN BOYLE FOR MAILONLINE-25 March 2016

German experts who ordered post-mortems on 13 dead whales say that the animal's stomachs and intestines were full of plastic.

The 13 dead bodies were washed up on the beach near the German town of Toenning in Schleswig-Holstein.

According to the post-mortem they had died of cardiac and circulatory failure.

Environmentalists hold up some of the rubbish found in the stomachs of 13 dead sperm whales who washed up on a German beach following some violent winter storms which prevented them from finding calamari

Environmentalists ordered a post mortem on the 13 whales who were found on the German North Sea coast

The post mortems found the whales had not eaten anything other than plastic in the days before they died

Environmentalists ordered a post mortem on the 13 whales who were found on the German North Sea coast
According to experts, the animals were starving when they died although the plastic did not cause their death

In total 30 sperm whales have turned up dead on the German North Sea coast since the beginning of the year including the 13 bodies found in Schleswig-Holstein.

Ursula Siebert from the Hanover Veterinary College said that they did not believe the large amount of rubbish found inside the intestines of the sperm whales had been the reason that they died.

She said that instead it was believed that violent storms in the north-eastern Atlantic had shifted water and along with that the calamari which is one of the main foods of the sperm well into the North Sea.

She said it was believed that the sperm whales had followed food, and had got into ever shallower water before finally ending up stranded.

She said that all of the animals were young males, aged between 10 and 15 and weighing between 12 and 18 tonnes. She said that they appeared to have no problems with their internal organs and a normal number of parasites.

The animals however were also apparently starving, and had probably last eaten when they were in Norwegian waters according to the investigation.

A 15 ton sperm whale would need to eat around 450 kg of food to sustain itself but in their stomachs there was no evidence that they had eaten anything recently other than plastic.

The rubbish removed included a fisherman's net that was 13 m long and 1.2 m wide, as well as a 70 cm long plastic cover from the engine compartment of a car, and the sharp edge remains of a plastic bucket.

Schleswig-Holstein environment Minister Robert Habeck said: 'These findings show us the results of our plastic orientated society. Animals inadvertently consume plastic and plastic waste which causes them to suffer and at worst, causes them to starve with full stomachs.'

Tuesday, March 29, 2016

Sri Lankan minister’s visit to Jaffna fuels Sinhalisation of North-East

29 March 2016

The Sri Lankan Minister of Parliamentary Reforms and Mass Media visited Jaffna this weekend, as part of a government organised trip to the northern peninsula. Though Colombo claimed the project would build “professional solidarity” amongst journalists, the minister’s visit instead fueled fears that Sinhalisation of the North-East looks set to continue.

“The whole event was carried out under a Sinhala name,” said a Tamil journalist who was invited to the event. “There was no consideration given to the Tamil language at all.”

He was referring to the visit’s slogan “Enna Ekata Husma Ganna”, a Sinhala phrase which roughly translates to “let us breathe together”. It was printed on T-shirts using Tamil characters and distributed to journalists who were invited to accompany the minister across Jaffna.

T-shirts distributed to journalists in Jaffna

“It means nothing in Tamil,” said the journalist, speaking on condition of anonymity.

The neglect of the Tamil language was also highlighted in the construction of a memorial pillar for murdered journalists in Jaffna. The memorial, a proposal put forward by members of the Jaffna Press Club, the Working Journalists Association and Operational Group for Press Freedom last week, has been built with an inscription written in Sinhala only.

The inscription on the memorial written in Sinhala only using Tamil characters.

Journalists signing the memorial in New Park, Jaffna.

Media Minister Karunathilaka shakes hands with Sri Lankan Commander Major General Mahesh Senanayaka

Minister Gayantha Karunathilaka meanwhile stopped off at the headquarters of the Sri Lankan security forces in Jaffna, where he discussed the current state of the media sector in the North-East with senior military officials.

The minister and his deputy Karunarathna Paranawithana at the security forces headquarters' in Jaffna. The painting above them depicts ancient Sinhalese warriors marching to battle.

The military has kept a watchful eye on the project, holding a meeting with government officials earlier this month where they “exchanged their views with regard to the main event”.

See our earlier posts:

Tamil journalists call for strengthening of media sector (28 Mar 2016)

Memorial pillar for journalists proposed in Jaffna (18 Mar 2016)

The Tamils of Sri Lanka are still stuck between a bloody past and hope

Tomasz Augustyniak-March 28, 2016

On Friday evenings, vans and tuk-tuks usually form long queues before Jaffna’s only shopping mall. There’s a hint of exquisite perfume in the air. Mothers in kurtas mind their colourfully attired children. Single young men sporting oversized wrist watches zip around on motorcycles. Though rare, one can even sight a few women in high heels.

Multiplexes screen the latest Indian blockbusters. Pizzas, hot chicken wings and ice cream sell like, well, hot cakes.

Even as the boisterous crowd inside the mall swells, hundreds of tradesmen and shopkeepers around the city perform a peculiar ritual: they kindle little bonfires in front of their stores, symbolically seeking the good by burning the bad.

This bruised and battered city of 88,000 (2012 figures) does have a lot of bad to burn, forget and let go of.

Located on the northern tip of Sri Lanka, Jaffna was once the bastion of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE)—the dreaded terrorist group wiped out in 2009.

The nearly three-decade civil war between the LTTE-led ethnic Tamil minority and the government led to between 80,000 and 100,000 deaths and estimated economic losses of $200 billion–roughly five times the size of Sri Lanka’s GDP in 2009.

Its land once riddled with landmines and air constantly pierced by bullets, the capital of the country’s Northern Province has over the past few years been fighting a new battle: rebuilding itself.
A sudden turnaround story

Conflict taught Jaffna the virtues of thrift; for decades, it was on survival mode. “War-time economy was about producing one’s own food, using bicycles instead of cars and kerosene lamps instead of electric ones,” N. Vithyatharan, a senior journalist, recalls. There were no goods to spend on, so the locals accumulated wealth.

This saving habit, along with transfers from families abroad, gave Jaffna’s Tamils relative prosperity over those in the mainland’s Vanni region to the south. So, in recent years, many Hindu temples in Jaffna have been renovated. Several high profile restaurants have sprung up. Billboards of money transfer companies are found everywhere.

The city railway station was rebuilt with government funds and train connections with Colombo restored in 2014.

Tourism, though still anaemic, is growing. The city’s cultural institutions are expanding. Houses are getting rebuilt and new vehicles bought.

People, in general, are on a spending spree. The average monthly household expenditure in Jaffna district grew from Sri Lankan Rs22,725 ($158) in 2009 to Rs35,405 ($246) in 2013. The provincial GDP has doubled.

by Groundviews
- on 03/29/2016

Thousands of individuals from across Sri Lanka have been displaced for years, some multiple times.

For over a decade, the Centre for Policy Alternatives (the institutional home of Groundviews) has documented issues related to displacement and returns, advocating reform and litigating on unjust and arbitrary practices. Two cases CPA has followed closely for years, supporting litigation and advocating land releases and durable solutions include the areas in the Jaffna district and in Sampur, Trincomalee district. With the promise of reparations and reform by the present government, some progress has been made in both these areas -some land -owners being able to return home after years of displacement. In its most recent initiative, CPA has commissioned a documentary titled ‘SAMPUR’, capturing the continuing struggles with displacement, challenges awaiting return to ones home and the hope of a new future.

Shot and produced by the award-winning documentary filmmaker and visual journalist Kannan Arunasalam, the documentary will be launched on 6 April 2016 and will be available on www.tjsrilanka.org.

The trailer is available on Facebook and also on Vimeo. It can be also seen below.

SRI LANKA SHOULD NOT KEEP CENTRAL BANK OUT OF RTI BILL: ECONOMIST

29/03/2016

Attempts to put operations of Sri Lanka’s central bank out of the ambit of a draft ‘Right to Information’ bill are wrong and will deny economic democracy to the people, a top economist and former central banker has said.

W A Wijewardene, a former Deputy Governor of the Central Bank of Sri Lanka says through a section of the bill rulers have “denied the citizens the access to a wide range of economic information affecting their lives.”

Information over (i) Exchange rates or the control of overseas exchange transactions; (ii) The regulation of banking or credit; (iii) Taxation; (iv) The stability, control and adjustment of prices of goods and services, rents and other costs and rates of wages, salaries and other income; or (v) The entering into of overseas trade agreements have been exempted.

By keeping information on exchange rates or credit, the central bank has been effectively kept out of the RTI bill, he notes.

“The first two denials relate to the operation of the Central Bank, while the others to important economic policies that are being adopted by the Government,” Wijewardene wrote in an opinion column in Sri Lanka’s Daily FT newspaper.

“These denials are inconsistent with the Government’s avowed goal of establishing an economic democracy in the country. Economic democracy requires wide consultations on economic policies.

“As argued above, consultations would become unproductive if citizens are not empowered with requisite knowledge. Knowledge gets built up in citizenry only if they are allowed to have free access to information.

“If access to information is denied, the citizens would participate in economic consultation with the government without proper knowledge.

“Such a situation will defeat the Government’s objective of delivering economic democracy to people by making economic consultation a mockery.”

Parliaments were first set up in Europe to debate over taxes that the ruler (sovereign) charge from people and make sure that they are well spent. The first requirement was that a voter or a representative should be a tax payer.

However critics say now parliamentarians have acquired powers of the king, by exempting themselves from taxes and charging taxes from the rest of the population and mis-spending money just like European kings did.

Central Bank, with money printing powers are the most dangerous agencies ever created. By expanding money supply, they can boost credit, expand demand and destroy currencies and push up prices.

“It can cause the pendulum of a rising and falling market to swing gently back and forth by slight changes in the discount rate, or cause violent fluctuations by a greater rate variation and in either case it will possess inside information as to financial conditions and advance knowledge of the coming change, either up or down,” Senator Charles August Lindberg said protesting the setting up of the Federal Reserves.

“This is the strangest, most dangerous advantage ever placed in the hands of a special privilege class by any Government that ever existed.”

In the past central bankers who printed large volumes of money have been beheaded. There is now a debate in the US on how to regulate the Fed, after the latest economic bubble and economic collapse it created.

There have also been calls to reform Sri Lanka’s central bank to reduce its discretionary powers to print money and destroy the exchange rate.

The agency has also come under fire for corrupt practices during the last regime and also over the past year.

The government especially the central bank had a lot of insider information, which can be used to manipulate markets by those with access to the information.

“Through the exclusion of exchange rates, control of overseas exchange transactions and regulation of banking or credit, the draft bill has made the Central Bank unreachable by the citizens,” Wijewardene said.

“The wisdom portrayed by this exclusion relates to principles of central banking accepted by world nations in an era gone by long ago.

“The accepted version of central banking today is that since they belong to people and not to politicians in power, they must be made accountable too.

“Central banks earn the trust of people not because they are owned by the state but because they adhere to a set of governance structure that makes them accountable for the action they take.”

The Reserve Bank of India is not exempt from the RTI bill, Wijewardene said.

“The Reserve Bank of India is fully subject to the provisions of the Act and has informed the public through its website a detailed description of its activities including the salaries and emoluments paid to all officers of the Bank

“The Indian Supreme court has even directed RBI recently that it should disclose information relating to banks to the public.”

India’s Supreme Court has said that the country’s central bank “has a statutory duty to uphold the interest of the public at large, the depositors, the economy and the banking sector of the country, and not the interest of individual banks.”
Economynext

Can Sri Lanka’s RTI law make a difference?

*I saved Mahinda from the electric chair-MS

*Video: Ex-CJ says if not for his order Mahinda won’t be President today

*News1st Former CJ Sarath Silva tenders apology for a particular decision taken during his tenure

Sunday, March 27, 2016

For those inclined to greet this week’s tabling of Sri Lanka’s Right to Information (RTI) Bill in Parliament with exuberant joy, a note of caution must be struck. As a first premise, this law is certainly essential in order to achieve the minimum necessary in responsible governance. Its appearance in the House is despite the unenviable political quagmire that the Sirisena-Wickremesinghe leadership appears to be getting itself into. That must be welcomed.
However, our belief that laws alone will solve this country’s manifold problems of justice is touchingly naïve.

Resistance of the political establishment

Indeed, that assumption is belied by our history which is replete with reasonably good laws in the statute books that have little practical impact. Similar exuberance was evidenced in 1994 with the enacting of South Asia’s best law in torture prevention, namely the Convention Against Torture (CAT Act). At some levels of statutory deterrence, this law went beyond even the treaty norms established by the United Nations. It may have set a wonderful example for the rest of the region to follow.

But the converse occurred. The CAT Act became a bitter mockery of itself. Lacking requisite political will, its implementation was farcical. Indeed, the entire effort of various Presidencies and various governments during the past decades was to systematically defeat its reach and cripple its functioning. We saw this resistance similarly with the powerful National Police Commission (NPC) established under the 17th Amendment to the Constitution. The NPC had actual authority to bring the police to heel unlike the multifarious other commissions including the Human Rights Commission. It was also far more empowered than its pale shadow currently functional under the 19th Amendment.

At that time, the government and the opposition shamefully united to undermine the NPC under the ably authoritative leadership of the late Ranjith Abeysuriya PC. Politicians were incensed in being prevented from interfering with the command structure of the police. There is little doubt that the questioning of those in political power by virtue of RTI provisions will attract equally explosive reactions. Much will depend on the capacity and strength of the RTI Commission.

Underscoring the importance of RTI

Regardless, the many commonalities of the past and the present are frighteningly similar. For any law to function properly, the role of an independent judiciary is paramount. The Indian RTI law has been interpreted and upheld strongly by Information Commissioners, the High Courts and the Supreme Court to protect the right to know of ordinary citizens. But that assurance is far from being realized here.

Opinions may differ as to whether Sri Lanka’s judiciary will ever recover from the rude shocks successively administered to its integrity from 1999 as a result of the creeping politicization of a Supreme Court once acclaimed in the Commonwealth. While the Sarath Silva Court (1999-2009) marked the high point of bitter public controversy, the succession of each consequent Chief Justice was woefully more mediocre than the last. This Government may be justly be credited for refraining from giving phone calls to judges in order to influence decisions which was common under Rajapaksa. But its rash boast last year that the independence of the judiciary has been restored came after dismissing a sitting Chief Justice by executive fiat, rendering him virtually ‘non-existent.’ The many misdeeds of this ‘purported’ Chief Justice were no justification for such peremptory action. The complicity of the Bar Association in cheering and in fact, enabling this unwise presidential act was disgraceful. We may well hope that this dangerous precedent will not be invoked at a later time by a different President.

That being said, former President Kumaratunga’s pontifications on the value of an independent judiciary may be more convincing if she first apologizes for her misdeeds in regard to politicizing the judiciary. Apologies are of course dime a dozen in this country, even when they are proffered. Thus ex-Chief Justice Sarath Silva’s convoluted apologies for absolving ex-President Mahinda Rajapaksa in the Helping Hambantota case of misappropriating tsunami funds some years ago was thrown to the winds with his joining the ranks of ardent Rajapaksa fans once again. These are about-turns that should hardly shock us.

Shaking off an unhappy past

It has become a common characteristic of Sri Lanka’s political leadership at each and every historical juncture to squander the trust and confidence of the people with effortless ease. In retrospect, one wonders if there is a perennial curse on this land and the dark origin-legends of the ancient peoples do posses a smidgen of truth to them?

Twenty two years ago, a positive peoples’ mandate handed to Chandrika Kumaratunga was soon reduced to nothingness due to a flamboyantly intemperate leadership. Similarly Mahinda Rajapaksa used the South’s gratitude for ending the Northern war to transform Sri Lanka into a family fiefdom as he ruled with an iron hand. There was virtually no judiciary, no police and no public service.

Yet squandering the public trust is not the province of politicians or Chief Justices alone. Under the Kumaratunga Presidency as much as today, there was a direct co-opting of civil society into state structures and the covert support of those wearing several hats of trade union leaders, activist lawyers and the like. In the Rajapaksa years, many were star-struck into obedient submission by the Wanni war victory regardless of the circumstances in which this occurred and the pathos of the Tamil community.

Clear historical patterns

Overall however, Sri Lanka’s historical patterns are clear. At each and every point that a good law is enacted, the political blowback has been severe. Ways are found to undermine that reform, rather than to strengthen it.

Will the RTI law, once (and if) enacted, be an exception to this pattern? Will it radically transform the culture of secrecy that holds Sri Lanka’s political establishment in its iron grip? Answering these questions require more than extraordinary prophetic ability. But unlike other laws, the RTI law can be directly used by citizens to provoke, needle and demand accountability. To that extent, making sure that it works is our responsibility. And as far as civil society is concerned, the past should surely teach us that collaboration with government (if and when strictly necessary) is distinguishable from being co-opted into government. There is an important line between the two that must not be erased.

That much is clear.