The Vermont senator continues his slow march toward concession and attacks Trump over his ‘campaign of bigotry’ and climate change denial
Sanders also savaged Donald Trump, saying: ‘We do not need a president whose cornerstone of his campaign is bigotry.’ Photograph: Lucas Jackson/Reuters
Bernie Sanders crossed a verbal watershed in his slow march toward conceding the Democratic nomination contest on Friday by confirming he would vote forHillary Clinton in November’s election.
Despite previous assurances that he would work with her to defeat Donald Trump, the remarks are the first time the leftwing Vermont senator has explicitly supported his Democratic adversary.
It may also help encourage his millions of supporters to more fully back the presumptive Democratic nominee after a period in which some have appeared reluctant to accept the legitimacy of the primary process.
Asked if was going to vote for Clinton in November, Sanders told a CNN interviewer: “Yes – I think the issue right here is, I’m going to do everything I can to defeat Donald Trump.”
He added: “We do not need a president whose cornerstone of his campaign is bigotry, is insulting Mexicans and Latinos, and Muslims and women, who does not believe the reality of climate change when virtually every scientist who has studied this issue understands we are at a global crisis. This is not somebody who should become president.”
Only the night before Sanders had declined to refer to Clinton or formally concede defeat during a speech in New York in which he stressed that his “political revolution is just getting started”.
But the more conciliatory comments on Friday morning appear consistent with a gradual withdrawal in recent weeks, first marked incomments outside the White House after a meeting with Barack Obama on 10 June in which he said he was prepared to work with Clinton following defeat in the California primary.
In an interview with C-Span this week, Sanders also acknowledged “it doesn’t appear that I’m going to be the nominee” when asked if he would be speaking at the party convention.
While appearing grudging or ambiguous to some Clinton supporters, Sanders campaign insiders say the gradual change of tone reflects a desire to exert leverage over the policy platform at the convention and migrate his huge base of backers onto a more lasting journey to reform the party’s agenda.
( June 23, 2016, New Delhi, Sri Lanka Guardian) Perhaps no where else in the World are the terrorism laws are being misused so blatantly as in Maldives for political purposes and that too with the active connivance of the Judiciary.
On the other hand, the real terrorists or potential terrorists are sneaking away to Syria while innocent political opponents and those opposed to President Yameen and his regime are being terrorised with terrorism laws.
Again, nowhere else in the World is the President being openly accused of large scale corruption as in Maldives with the opposition flaunting details of deposits made in President’s name elsewhere.
Judicial Tyranny:
Those outside Maldives who have an elementary knowledge of jurisprudence will be appalled by the way trials are conducted particularly by the “terror judge” Abdul Baree Yousouf who has been involved in sentencing former President Nasheed, former Defence Minister Mohamed Nazim ( it is coming to light that he was framed) and the Adhaalat chairman Sheikh Imran to sentences of more than ten years.
A rough copy of the speech made by Sheikh Imran on last year’s May day 2015 is enclosed for information and readers could make their own judgement whether this would first invite terrorism laws and if so whether a sentence of 12 years was justified. It is said that Judge did not even have the courage to look at the accused while delivering the judgement and that he just returned to his chambers after reading out the sentence with his head down!
In this particular case, Judge Baree Yousouf in the course of the trial declared in the court “I have already made a decision in the case”- ( to give him 12 years!). When the Defence Lawyers moved the court for change of the judge on several and ethical and disciplinary issues, it was rejected.
In the course of the trial, the Defence was given just one hour to produce the Defence Witnesses and when they asked for more time, it was summarily rejected. They soon found that their telephones have been disconnected and no defence witness could be called within the stipulated time.
Shiekh Imran is unlikely to get any relief in the appellate court as two of the three judge panel set up to hear the appeal were former criminal court judges who presided over the first hearing of the Sheikh Imran’s case in the lower court!
Fears over the Zika virus have contributed to a "huge" increase in the number of women in Latin America wanting abortions, researchers say.
Estimates suggest there has been at least a doubling in requests in Brazil and an increase of a third in other countries.
Many governments have advised women not to get pregnant due to the risk of babies being born with tiny brains.
The findings were published in the New England Journal of Medicine.
Sixty countries and territories have reported cases of Zika being spread by mosquitoes. More than 1,500 babies have been diagnosed with microcephaly caused by the virus.
A termination remains illegal in many parts of Latin America, but women simply turn to unofficial providers.
Women on Web, which advises women online and then delivers pills to end a pregnancy, is one of the largest.
The researchers analysed the thousands of requests received by Women on Web in the five years before the Pan American Health Organization issued its warning on Zika on 17 November 2015.
It used this to predict how many abortion requests would have been expected between 17 November 2015 and 1 March 2016.
The analysis of countries that advised against getting pregnant suggested Brazil and Ecuador had had more than twice the expected demand for abortions.
Country
Expected
Actual
Increase
Brazil
582
1210
+108%
Colombia
102
141
+39%
Costa Rica
49
67
+36%
El Salvador
18
24
+36%
Ecuador
34
71
+108%
Honduras
21
36
+76%
Venezuela
45
86
+93%
Analysis from other countries, which did not advise against pregnancy, suggested smaller increases in abortion demand.
One woman from Peru told Women on Web: "I'm very concerned, I'm two months pregnant and in my country Zika has been detected.
"We are all very alarmed and I do not want have a sick baby, please, I do not want to continue my pregnancy because it is very dangerous."
Another from Venezuela said: "I contracted Zika four days ago.
"I love children, but I don't believe it is a wise decision to keep a baby who will suffer. I need an abortion. I don't know who to turn to. Please help me ASAP."
'Tremendous surge'
Dr Catherine Aiken, one of the researchers, from the University of Cambridge, told the BBC News
website: "Everywhere governments said, 'Don't get pregnant' and there was Zika transmission, there was a tremendous surge in the number of women taking matters into their own hands.
"There were huge increases in abortions across the region."
Dr Aiken criticised the countries' "very hollow" messages to delay pregnancy that had generated "fear, anxiety and panic with no means to act on it".
Meanwhile Abigail Aiken, an assistant professor from the University of Texas at Austin, said: "Accurate data on the choices pregnant women make in Latin America is hard to obtain.
"If anything, our approach may underestimate the impact of health warning on requests for abortion, as many women may have used an unsafe method or visited local underground providers."
Prof Jimmy Whitworth, from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, said the report "agrees with what I have heard informally from several sources in Latin America about increased interest in finding out more, and in making requests for abortions".
He told the BBC: "This apparent increase in making requests for abortion looks plausible and is not surprising given the situation with the epidemic and societal pressures."
People of Panama refuse to accede to a government order to vacate their traditional land before the end of this month.
The order, issued by Lahugala divisional secretary L.A. Somaratne, is totally unreasonable and protests will continue against it, said Punchirala Somasiri, organizer of organization for protection of Paanam Pattuwa.
During the Rajapaksa regime, land and houses of Panama residents were seized on 17 July 2010, and they have been staging protests ever since.
Govt. promise
The present government, in a cabinet paper on 11 February 2015, promised to return their lost land rights, but that did not happen by March 26, when they started occupying the land by force.
They temporarily stopped the demonstrations when the DS gave them a written undertaking that they would be allowed to return to their land before April 10.
That is yet to happen too.
Previously, a human rights activist Francis Priyankara Costa has noted a warning by a top police officer that they would not intervene if people entered the land again by force.
The people’s alliance for land rights last July lodged a complaint with the Human Rights Commission against the failure of the Ampara district secretary and other authorities to grant land back to the Panama villagers.
Houses burnt down
Also, justice has not yet been done with regard to a complaint lodged with police over the burning down of the homes and the eviction in 2010 by masked, armed men.
Last year, the Environmental Conservation Trust revealed that the Navy and the Air Force has taken over the land in question and the former has even built a tourist hotel there named Panama Lagoon Cabana, gagana.lk reports.
It was a day in the year 1976. A teen aged boy returning from his calculus class stops his bicycle at a political rally and listens to persuasive arguments from the stage. It was, in the eyes of the young boy, emotional, narrow minded nationalistic thinking at its very worst.
“It is all the fault of the ‘other’,” the young boy heard the speaker lament. “It is all because of them, it is they who have controlled our economy, sent troops and bombs to suppress us, erased our great identity, and taken away our sovereignty. It is their fishermen who sail down here and take our fish away. We should be free to mind our own affairs and re-establish the greatness we once had,” speaker after speaker thundered from that stage.
There, however, was no acknowledgement of the societal injustices we ourselves had created from within.
There, however, was no clear analysis of how feasible minding our own business was going to be.
There, however, was no plan of how to move from freeing ourselves from the clutches of the other, to that imagined state of milk and honey flowing in our very own sovereign state.
There, however, was no acceptance that the problems of our few that were being exaggerated to take us down a path that was going to affect us all.
Aspiration of a few power hungry politicians to take control of their party was to be confused with a far more serious issue of how to tackle known problems.
Emotion drove a people into the abyss.
S.J.V. Chelvanayakam
The event the young boy witnessed, readers ofColombo Telegraph will readily recognize, was the Vaddukkoddai resolution of the Tamil nationalists in Sri Lanka, calling for the establishment of a separate state in the North and East of the country, being passed.
The genie that was let out that day in 1976 enjoyed a long field day starting with a killing spree and enjoying thirty years of war, the end of which came about only by the total destruction of a community and its way of life. Even seven years after its bitter end, you only need to travel two hundred yards in either direction perpendicular to the A9 highway to see its residual scars. That is the cost of letting the genie out.
Inside India’s Central Information Commission, Professor M Sridhar Acharyulu is hearing a case on illegal occupation. The applicant wants to know if the Registrar of Co-operative Societies, (RCS) which deals with housing, has complied with an order to evict an employee from one of its flats. Despite repeated reminders, leading to an order for the employee to vacate, the applicant believes no action has been taken. Acharyulu makes his decision. “The appellant has filed an RTI application seeking for a compliance report,” he dictates to another employee to types out the order. Printing it out, Acharyulu promises the appellant that he will get a response within 20 days.
The whole process doesn’t take more than 10 minutes. As the afternoon wears on, more cases are heard – one person wants to know about a fraudulent society, another wants copies of audit reports. Some of them are coming to the Commission for the second or third time, since the government departments concerned have chosen not to take action.
Acharyulu dispenses each case swiftly and decisively. A former lawyer and journalist, he is one of the few civil society members in Delhi to hold this post. His role however is not to be a judge. The Information Commission isn’t for grievance redress – it is simply meant to order departments to give out information, unless it’s classified.
Acharyulu in his office in New Delhi
India has been operating under an RTI Act since 2005, and has developed a vibrant culture around the requests it makes. People from all walks of life walk into Acharyulu’s office – from school teachers and principals to government officers. Applicant and government representative sit opposite each other at the same desk. In India, the RTI has acted as an equaliser, empowering citizens to receive information that affects their day to day lives.
The Right to Information (RTI) Bill has been the subject of limited discussion in the media in Sri Lanka even though it has been tabled in Parliament, and is scheduled for debate on June 23rd.
The common perception in Sri Lanka appears to be that this Bill is solely for journalists and the upper class – but this couldn’t be further from the truth.
In fact, examining history, RTI has been used not just by journalists, activists and the upper class, but also by the marginalised, the poor – and even by children.
An Overview
The first RTI law was passed in Sweden in the 18th century, at a time when India was economically more developed than Sweden, Venkatesh Nayak from the Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative (CHRI) revealed at a learning programme on the RTI in Delhi recently.
The RTI in Sweden was spearheaded by a Finnish clergyman, Rev. Anders Chydenius, who was influenced by the good practices of Tang China in 7th century AD.
The second country to pass an RTI law, 122 years later, is still classed as a developing country today – Colombia.
France was the first to recognize the Right to Information as a human right as far back as 1789, at a time when most French revolutionaries hadn’t even been to school. In India, the use of RTI was galvanized not by journalists or the upper middle class – but by a group of villagers in Rajasthan.
Today, 22 countries have RTI laws in Asia alone, with the latest being Afghanistan in 2015.
While the Right to Information has ties to freedom of speech and expression, it is also linked to rights which might not be apparent at first glance, such as the right to access health services, water and food.
Yet it has been a long and arduous struggle for many countries to enact RTI legislation in their countries.
Take Nepal – while the Right to Information was recognized as a fundamental right in the Constitution in 1990, the Act was only passed in 2007 following pressure from civil society, including lawyers and journalists. In Pakistan, where the Supreme Court recognized the RTI in 1993, it was only introduced as a fundamental right in 2010.
Closer to Home
India’s struggle too spans several decades – beginning with sporadic demands for transparency around rail accidents and conflict. The Supreme Court of India held RTI was to be considered a fundamental (human) right in the 1980s. The actual push to implement a dedicated Right to Information Act could be said to have begun with the Bhopal Gas tragedy of 1984, which saw a push for transparency on environmental issues. However, it was in the state of Rajasthan that a grassroots level sparked a national conversation on RTI. Villagers in Rajasthan eventually filed an RTI exposing massive corruption and misallocation of funds at the local government level. It was this adoption of the cause by villagers, rather than by journalists or dedicated activists, which sparked a national conversation, as Professor Shekhar Singh, former Convenor of the National Campaign for People’s Right to Information (a collective of civil society actors invested in promoting democracy and transparency through the use of the RTI) pointed out.
The NCPRI formulated a model RTI Act and presented it to the Government in 1996, whereupon it was promptly watered down and buried. It was only in 2002 that the Supreme Court ordered the Government to pass the Freedom of information Act.
Even then, this Act, which had several flaws, was never notified. It took a change in political leadership and years of lobbying and protests until the Government finally agreed to introduce an RTI Bill in Parliament, in 2004 – and even then, it only covered Central Government, not the states. Finally, in May 2005 the Government, after making over 100 amendments, made the Act applicable to the whole country.
Sri Lanka’s journey towards a Right to Information Bill has been no less rocky.
Traditionally, legislation such as the Official Secrets Act of 1955 and the Establishments Code of 1971 have encouraged an atmosphere of secrecy for government officials. In practice, this has meant that any interaction with a government office is a frustrating, slow-moving experience, involving many return trips and additional documentation, as Groundviews has already recorded. In a larger sense, however, this focus on secrecy has led to imbalance in power between the state and the general public on many fronts – from the passage of legislation to the simple process of getting a birth or death certificate.
It has also undeniably hampered journalists’ work – particularly investigative journalists, who have had to rely on cultivating contacts and personal connections. It is perhaps for this reason that the push for legislation pertaining from the Right to Information began in an attempt to reform media law.
The Push in Sri Lanka
The mid to late 90s saw a Committee being set up with the aim of reforming media laws and laws pertaining to freedom of expression. The recommendations of this Committee included the suggestion for a Freedom of information Act. In 1996, a draft Bill was submitted by the Sri Lankan Law Commission, which was imperfect, and was never submitted in Parliament. Following attempts to make constitutional reform in the 2000s, a draft Constitutional Bill gave the right to information the status of constitutional protection. From 2002 to 2004, media and civil society representatives, including the Editors Guild, met with the Government with the aim of pushing through a law related to RTI. This law too had weaknesses, and was stymied by the toppling of the Ranil Wickremesinghe government, leaving the RTI movement at a virtual standstill.
Former President Rajapakse made it clear that he would never endorse a Right to Information Act while he was in power. Despite this, several MPs, notably Opposition MP Karu Jayasuriya in 2011, made continued efforts to introduce the RTI Draft Bill into Parliament, as a Private Member’s Bill. Following pressure from the Government to withdraw, the Bill was eventually defeated in Parliament. It was only after the election of President Maithripala Sirisena in 2015 that the idea of Right to Information was revived, with Sirisena including it in his 100 day plan.
The Bill is set to be debated on in Parliament on June 23, with a decision made the same day. Sri Lanka stands at a crucial crossroads – but it is important to remember that the simple passage of the Act is only the beginning of the battle, as Singh pointed out.
There has been continued criticism of the RTI Bill in its current form – notably on the exemption dealing with international trade agreements and information on economic and financial policies.
However, international groups such as Article 19 have pointed out the current Bill is actually fairly strong, with the addition of the ‘public interest’ clause, which says that if information is deemed to be in the public interest, it should still be provided, even if it does fall within one of the exemptions.
Several other weaknesses have been highlighted, including the lack of penalties for Information Officers (who will be appointed for different Ministries and government bodies, and tasked with giving out the relevant information). Currently, officers who have been found to wilfully obstruct the provision of information, destroy information, refuse to appear before the Commission or otherwise refuse to implement a decision of the Commission will be fined after a summary trial in the Magistrates Court – which given the heavy case backlogs and delays already associated with Sri Lanka’s legal system, may not act as much of a deterrent.
In addition, there is no whistleblower protection for any public official who might want to flag instances of corruption or misuse of power by placing it in the public domain. E publication of information is also not mandatory under Sri Lanka’s current Act, hampering accessibility to information. Poor reporting cycles could also lead to delays or unnecessary requests – the Bill has called for annual reports to be submitted by Ministries on the number of requests received and action taken, but no deadline for these reports has been specified.
It remains to be seen how well the Bill, if passed, will be implemented on the ground. Will government officials cooperate willingly with requests for information or adopt a more defensive approach?
More pertinently, history has shown that RTI Bills, once enacted, will be of little use where not supported by sustained public advocacy and debate – and not just by civil society, but by the public at large. This has been the case in countries such as the Maldives and Nepal, for instance, Nayak pointed out.
Without sustained activism and pressure on the part of the public, the passage of the Act will lead to Sri Lanka committing to a culture of transparency in name only. What’s more, without public pressure, the weaknesses highlighted in the Act will become insurmountable stumbling blocks.
There are, in fact, many ways in which RTI legislation can help ordinary citizens in their interactions with the state – everything from filling out routine paperwork to on whether your local area is being properly maintained. However, without vibrant discourse, the struggle of over 20 years will have been in vain.
It was a treat to hear Dr. Jayampathy Wickramaratne at the Jaffna Managers’ Forum on 12 June, 2016. He was there with his LSSP Cohorts (the majority group of the LSSP, he carefully stated several times) to explain where things are with the constitution.
Mr. S. Krishnanathan (Rtd. Director, North-East Provincial Council) chaired the meeting effectively with a short introduction to the legal process to come, and at one point when he gave article numbers that Wickramaratne was not sure of, was congratulated by the latter for knowing the constitution better. Mr. C.V.K. Sivagnanam (Chairman NPC) in his welcome address gave the Tamil nationalist expectation – not asking for confederation or separation but for power sharing with the North-East through restoring the lost rights of the Tamils which they exercised through the Kingdom of Jaffna (the largest in the island when the Portuguese arrived, he said, quoting K.M. de Silva), the state as the unit of power sharing, and a minimal role for the governor as the representative of the centre. He expressed confidence based on Wickramaratne’s leftist credentials with the reservation that it was a leftist who robbed minorities of their protection afforded under Article 29 of the colonial constitution.
Mr. Janahan Muttukumar (Jaffna University Law) gave a brief biographical sketch of the speaker with his impressive credentials following which Wickramaratne took the floor. In his preamble, he said the 1972 constitution was a creature of the right wing of the SLFP. That is a little difficult to swallow given Colvin R de Silva’s authorship and the left parties’ full participation. Professor S. Mahalingam of Peradeniya told me of how Colvin would write in English and the Professor of Sinhalese would go every weekend to Colvin’s Colombo house to translate that week’s work. And then, the constitution declared that the original Sinhalese version shall prevail in case of doubt! I hope that English as the international language we all need will receive its rightful place in the constitution.
Doing a brief historical sketch, Wickramaratne equivocated on the legitimacy of the 1972 constitution. First he said that in 1972 all Tamil MPs attended the initial meeting of the Constitutional Assembly. Then he said that they contributed to the lack of legitimacy by being absent at the final vote.
The Regional Plantation Companies (RPCs) have put forward a modified proposal on the wages of estate/plantation sector workers, which via a hybrid solution attempts to bridge the gap between the demands of the unions and the need for productivity improvement emphasised by the RPCs since the inception of the current round of wage negotiations.
Accordingly, the modified proposal suggests the remuneration of the workers based on the existing attendance-based wage for 12 days of the month and the other working days for the workers to be remunerated based on the ‘productivity based revenue sharing’ model; that is based on the actual amount of kilos of tea leaves plucked.
This productivity based model is practiced widely in most of the sustainable and progressive Tea economies and has been found to be a success in enhancing worker engagement – resulting in increased earnings for those involved.
For 12 days of the month on which the attendance-based wage is applicable with all the current practices, despite severe financial constraints, considering the expectations of the workers, the Regional Plantations Companies propose the increase of the daily package by Rs. 100 to Rs. 720. On the other working days (on which the productivity based revenue sharing method is applicable), a predetermined per kilo rate has been proposed by the RPCs. This rate is significantly greater than the current per kilo rate paid to the pluckers in the Tea Smallholder sector who are responsible for more than 75% of the national green leaf production.
The Regional Plantation Companies are confident that by incentivizing greater productivity through worker engagement – in which Sri Lanka is significantly lagging behind all other major tea producing nations – the new proposal enables workers to earn a substantially higher income than what they receive at present. The Regional Plantation Companies are of the view that by linking remuneration with output instead of mere attendance, productivity in the estate sector can be improved by as much as 50% and that the incomes of the workers can improve by the same extent.
“While the Regional Plantation Companies would strongly prefer remuneration being linked entirely with output as in most tea and rubber producing nations around the world, we have done our utmost to provide at least a temporary solution acceptable to the unions and the workers,” said Roshan Rajadurai, the Chairman of the Planters’ Association of Ceylon – which represents the Regional Plantation Companies (RPCs). “We expect this to lay the foundation for the adoption of remuneration/earnings based entirely on output in the near future, which we are confident will benefit all industry stakeholders – especially considering the highly successful adoption of revenue sharing at many RPC estates.”
The archaic attendance-based wage system, with the mandatory offer of 300 days of work by the estate for all the workers irrespective of field or worker outputs or any other consideration, is the basis on which workers in tea and rubber plantations managed by RPCs are being remunerated at present. This has contributed substantially to low productivity and high production cost leading to the industry becoming unsustainable.
These long-standing wage and productivity issues exacerbated with the the sharp fall in the prices of both tea and rubber globally – leading to heavy losses in both tea and rubber. The rubber prices have dropped almost by 50% in the last five years while the daily labour wage in the estate sector has increased by 20% during the same period. Similarly in tea, the Cost of Production (COP) and the Sale Average were almost equal in 2005 but thereafter the daily wage has increased dramatically to far outstrip the Sale Average by almost 63%. Therefore by the end of 2015 the RPCs were incurring a loss of approximately Rs. 72 on each kilo of tea and Rs. 82 per kilo of rubber produced.
In this light, to ensure the sustainability of Regional Plantation Companies and the livelihoods of the nearly one million population who depend on and reside within the RPC estates, the RPCs and the Planters’ Association has been continuously calling for output-linked remuneration. Earlier the RPCs presented proposals on productivity based wages in the estate sector or revenue sharing (similar to the smallholder model) but these were rejected by the labour unions.
Speech by Foreign Minister Mangala Samaraweera at the Norwegian Institute for International Affairs (NUPI), Oslo, 21 June 2016.
Ladies and Gentlemen, in fact all of you are aware, that on the 08th of January last year in a historic election, in fact what the world calls the rainbow election of 2015, the people of Sri Lanka voted for change, and for democracy, reconciliation and development, the three pillars on which the Government of President Maithripala Sirisena and Ranil Wickremesinghe are taking the country forward today. In fact on that day, the people of Sri Lanka chose free and fair elections, good governance and the rule of law over authoritarianism and impunity; they chose stability, reconciliation and peace over the politics of fear and hate which had prevailed for many, many years previously. And they eschewed isolationist crony capitalism for openness to the world and a competitive, transparent rules-based economy.
In fact, this victory in January was repeated again in August where extremist political parties on all sides of the divide were again decisively defeated and for the first time in Sri Lanka’s history, the two principle political parties which have governed Sri Lanka since independence chose to be on the same side leaving aside the bitterness of the past. And also for the first time, the leader of the TNA, the party which represents the Tamil community in Sri Lanka was chosen as the leader of the opposition and thus I feel a new window of opportunity was opened for Sri Lanka after many years to rectify the mistakes of the past and go forward towards a new future.
In fact as you all may be aware, when Sri Lanka gained independence in 1948; it was a country which the world believed will succeed in no time. I have seen an article written in the, I believe it was the London Times, the day after Sri Lanka gained independence from the British. The editorial in that paper says Ceylon, as it was called then, which gained independence will in no time become the Switzerland of the East because of its strategic location, because of its human and natural resources. Not only that, as recently as 1965, Lee Kuan Yew, the new Prime Minister of Singapore then having just broken away from the Malay Union presenting his first budget says that my ambition in 65 of course is to surpass the growth rate of Ceylon in the first five years meaning that we were way ahead of even Singapore at that time. But of course by 1983, Mr. Lee Kuan Yew went on to say that Sri Lanka is an example that no country should follow because we had all the opportunities, we had all the reasons to succeed but because we could not come to terms with our own diversity as a nation, what could have been easily solved at the early stages then became in to a bitter war and as a result, Sri Lanka again today has to I believe start, recommence that journey all over again, trying to catch up for lost opportunity.
Because as I said, the new conjunctions have given Sri Lanka an opportunity it has never had for a long time. We have a Government which consists of the two principle parties. We have an opposition and a leader of opposition who represents the moderate aspirations of the Tamil people and other minorities of Sri Lanka and therefore we also have a Government which is indeed committed to the three pillars of governance as I mentioned earlier, that of democratization, of reconciliation and development.
In fact again as some of you may know, we have achieved a considerable amount, many victories, in a short period of time in the area of democratization. Within the first 100 days itself, President Sirisena pruned down many of his executive powers as much as he could without going through a referendum as the Supreme Court requested. He reintroduced term limits for the Presidency. He again took away all the institutions like the Judiciary and the Public Service Commissions, the Corruption Commissions all out of the grip of Presidential rule and independent commissions are now functioning again and also committed himself to a new Constitution, not merely Constitutional Amendments, a new Constitution.
Once a new Government was formed after the General elections, which as I said took place last August and in Jan 09th of this year when the President was celebrating his first year in office, we converted the Sri Lankan Parliament to a Constituent Assembly tasked with the objectives of drafting a brand new Constitution for Sri Lanka. That was because we felt that the two Constitutions which were in place since independence, the two Republican Constitutions of 1972 and 1978 did not take into account the diversity of Sri Lanka as a nation.
As you know, Sri Lanka is a multi ethnic, multi religious, multi lingual, multi cultural nation. The Sinhalese and the Tamils have lived in Sri Lanka since history was written. The Muslim community came as traders and then lived there and had contributed immensely to the history of our country for the last 1000 odd years and we have other communities like the Burghers, the descendents of the Dutch and the Portuguese. We have the Malays and we even have indigenous Sri Lankans, the Veddas but unfortunately because the two earlier Constitutions were basically majoritarian in nature, we feel that paved the way for one of the most bitter civil wars Sri Lanka and the world in fact has ever seen and our Government, the non – recurrence being one of our primary objectives, first and foremost we must now create a Constitution which will celebrate the diversity of Sri Lanka and that is what we are doing now.
In fact the first report of the consultations with the public was tabled last week in parliament. The work of the draft is going on very seriously and fairly quickly in parliament, in the Constituent Assembly. In fact we have told the people who are doing it that we would like to have the first white paper on the Constitution distributed sometime in September and hopefully before the budget of Sri Lanka which is usually presented in the late November.
We are hoping to present, the new Constitution to parliament for ratification by a two thirds majority, which most probably will have to be again followed in the New Year by a referendum. But of course with both the principle parties working together on this, we are confident of the two thirds majority as well as “Yes” at a referendum in the future.
Along with the new Constitution, we have also being bringing various new laws to strengthen the democratic framework. As I said the 19th Amendment which again freed all the legal mechanisms and the media, the Public Service Commission, and free media from interference from the government. In fact I won’t be there for the vote but tomorrow even the Right to Information bill, which has been something which Sri Lanka has been wanting for long time, will be presented in Parliament and passed.
And of course the other area in which we have been concentrating is the area of reconciliation, because without reconciliation as I mentioned Sri Lanka cannot achieve the promise it has. So that is why the new government was elected on a very strong mandate for reconciliation and a mandate also gave us power to start a domestic mechanism to inquire into the various allegations of human rights violations, perhaps even war violations during the earlier period.
In fact, that is why Sri Lanka took the very bold step of co-sponsoring the resolution presented in Geneva by the United States initially. After discussions, we decided that co-sponsoring is the best way we can bring justice to those who need it in Sri Lanka.
In fact, some people like to say that, specially the extreme nationalist wings which are still very much alive and kicking in Sri Lanka, with hand in glove with one or two ghosts from the past. They like to say that we did it under International pressure. I like to say to you ladies and gentlemen, No! it was not the resolution, the decision to co-sponsor the resolution and to commit ourselves to a reconciliation process. A process which will basically take into account (that) our past was taken not because of the international community but we as a Government feel that it is the only way Sri Lanka can move forward. The only way that is come into terms with our past so that we can move forward as a united nation.
So in order to do so, we talked about 4 possible mechanisms. The mechanism to seek the truth, the truth seeking mechanisms. And the second one was a mechanism for accountability, for justice. The third one was of course reparation and the fourth one is to ensure non-recurrence, to ensure that some of the tragedies which took place in our beautiful little island in the last so many years since independence do not ever, ever happen again.
So with that in mind, we have been working hard in the last several months, especially since the resolution was passed unanimously on the first of October last year. We have now in fact, the first of these mechanisms which we proposed, the Permanent Office for Missing Persons has now being finalized and also got unanimous approval by the Cabinet and the next step of publishing it as a government gazette was also completed two weeks ago in all three languages and the final step would be to present it in Parliament within the next month or so once the due time frames are completed. So the OMP or the Office for Missing Persons, I feel is a huge, massive step forward.
Then of course, we have also created what is called the SCRM, Secretariat for Coordinating Reconciliation Mechanisms and that is working with leading members of the civil society, conducting consultations on the other mechanisms now. Consultations with all the stakeholders, the victims of the war, members of the armed forces, wives of the missing and the different political parties etc. That process has already started.
Meanwhile we have been working with the government of South Africa about their experiences in setting up a Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Of course we aren’t guided by the South African model of the TRC because we feel that a model based on confession and forgiveness which I believe, if I am to simplify the South African process which is not as simple, but is not what Sri Lankans want. Many of them want justice. So we are working out the contours of not only the TRC but as I said what should come afterwards is the setting up of the special courts.
Of course there’s a certain degree of controversy on how it should be setup and the level of international participation. That too will be decided after the consultations are over but all I can say now is whatever we decide upon, will and must have the approval, not only ourselves but of the victims those who suffered. This is not an exercise to please ourselves. So the final contours of the architecture of the courts we are hoping to set up will be in discussion. Especially with parties like the TNA and other groups which represent the victims.
Along with that we have also taken certain steps to further kick start the process. As I said earlier, with the intention of de militarizing the North and the East immediately after coming into power, we appointed civilians, two highly respected civil servants as the Governors of the North. The demilitarizing process has started but of course not complete but we are now in the process of even giving back the land which has been taken over for military purposes over the years. In fact I know that during the course of this week another 700 acres will also be released. So far nearly 4000 acres but perhaps an equal amount of land remains to be released and that too we have told the military, that all must be released in a timeline going up to the end of 2018.
Of course we did ratify the convention of enforced and involuntary disappearances for the first time and the enabling legislation will be presented to Cabinet, which is done by my Ministry, the moment I am back in Sri Lanka in July. Hopefully that will certainly confine the white van culture of terror we had earlier to the pages of history.
Today in Sri Lanka, two Marxist insurgencies or two JVP insurgencies and one 26 year old war later, Sri Lanka has started a new journey towards what I would like to call a new Sri Lanka. In fact, the legacy of this bitter past, I feel has united us in a collective determination to prevent, the torment of such violence from ever reoccurring in our country again. Of course when you try to wrestle with a past of this nature, you still have to deal with the ghosts of the past. As I said you still have to deal with the old mindset which sometimes are entrenched in certain sections of the bureaucracy and sometimes it’s very frustrating because it’s not happening as quickly as we would like it to happen, but all I can say is Sri Lanka does have the will, whatever the challenges are to overcome all these difficulties
And we have. In fact, again I don’t want it (to be) like the monkey praising his own tail, (to) go on about the achievements we have made but in the short period of time, we have made some remarkable achievements and we are continuing to do so. But I saw some of our friends in the international arena call what we have done in this time as ‘baby steps’ but to them I’d like to say that even though it may look like baby steps to some of you in the international community, I think if I may paraphrase Armstrong going to the moon, It’s a giant leap for Sri Lanka and we will move forward.
From here I go to Geneva next week where I will be making a statement on what we are doing now and also the fact that the Government is united in its determination to come to terms with what happened earlier. Again certain newspapers and social media like to say that the President has one view, the Prime Minister has another, the Foreign Minister yet another but it is not so. We are working unitedly. In fact, those of you who heard President Sirisena addressing the nation on the 4th of February during the independence day of Sri Lanka this year, he said “ It is now time for us to seize the current opportunity that is before us to implement the provisions of the Geneva resolution, not because of International pressure, but because as a nation, we must implement these provisions for the sake of restoring the dignity of our nation, our people and our military, in order for Sri Lanka to regain her due position as a strong democracy among the community of nations.” So we are moving ahead as I said with confidence and meeting the challenges head on.
But of course if democracy and reconciliation is to succeed, we feel that the third part of our pillar, which we are moving the country the pillar of development, must also succeed. The people of Sri Lanka must now feel that their pockets are fuller, that they are better off economically, their standards of living has risen because of our open policy to the world and our policy of coming to terms with our past. That is why I am here and this morning I had the opportunity, (which) the ambassador arranged, a meeting where we addressed many investors who are willing to come to Sri Lanka. Sri Lanka is a middle income country. We are no longer eligible for handouts or aid or grants. We must look after ourselves and in order to do so Foreign Direct Investment is of paramount importance in order to kick start the economy. Sri Lanka I would say has huge potential. In fact, Sri Lanka has been known as a paradise for tourists for a long, long time but now we also want to make Sri Lanka also a paradise for foreign investors. In fact we feel that it is strategically placed today. As the East or Asia grows in importance, we could be a strategic gateway to the Indian Ocean and to the Indian subcontinent.
We have, even though our own market is relatively small. 21 million is our population, but we have Free Trade Agreements with both India and Pakistan. We are now in the process of negotiating a Free Trade Agreement with China and Japan which I’m sure as I said earlier makes it an exciting gateway for investors from this part of the world to come there.
We have been getting a lot of support from the West since the new government came into power. There’s a tsunami of goodwill I’d like say but that good will must now transform itself into practical day to day realities and the best way you can help as I said is by choosing Sri Lanka as your destination of choice for investment for trade.
We have ended the previous government’s policy of self isolation and confrontation. Today we have embraced the world. We were totally dependent on China and China along for nearly 10 years but I’m happy to say that we have restored our relations with our neighbor and friend, India to a level of excellence after many years.
We have restored our ties with the European Union. In fact just last week the fishing ban imposed on Sri Lanka was restored unanimously in the European Parliament and yesterday we handed in our official application to have the GSP + concession restored. Earlier it was again taken away because we did not or we had violated many of the criteria, which was required to get it initially but now are ready to get it back again and offer and restore the thousands and thousands of jobs lost as a result of that. With the United States, we have raised our relations to a level we have never seen before and from this year we started the US – Sri Lanka partnership dialogue in Washington in February with Secretary John Kerry. With Japan, President Sirisena was the first leader to be invited to the Outreach Summit ever in its history and all the G7 countries have promised to help us.
If you want to know what kind of diplomacy Sri Lanka is following, I would like to go back to something Jawaharlal Nehru said in 1947. He said “Whatever policy you may lay down, the art of conducting foreign affairs of a country lies finding out what is most advantageous to the country.” So I think today it may sound very selfish but we aren’t ideologically driven but self interest is I would say is the driving force in our foreign policy. Because we want to ensure that the people of Sri Lanka, even at this late stage, get the future that they truly deserve.
Finally thank you again, thank you very much for giving me this opportunity to go through some of the developments and I would like to invite all of you, (as) today there are no restrictions in visiting any part of the country.
All the Norwegian people here, I’m sure many of you have come here because you have an interest in the country and you should come back and see for yourselves. Of course for the Sri Lankans who are here, the Sri Lanka Diaspora who are here also, we would like to invite you to please come back and see for yourself and become partners in the forward march of your country.
