Saturday, December 31, 2016

Sri Lanka's bleak political outlook in 2017

Dec 31, 2016

ECONOMYNEXT - Sri Lanka's President and Prime Minister mark two years of their "unity" government in January with their uneasy coalition facing mounting challenges to its stability and cohesion.

Our political correspondent examines the possible outcomes in 2017.

Best case:

President Maithripala Sirisena and Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe will sink their differences over the government's perceived failure to prosecute high profile individuals of the previous regime accused of corruption and murder. Killers of Lasantha Wickramatunga and Wasim Thajudeen will be brought to justice.

The rule of law will be strengthened with the Police Commission and the other independent bodies taking a more pro-active role in living up to the expectations of people who voted for change in January 2015.

Neither leader will try to undermine the other nor will allow their aides to do so. President Sirisena will strengthen his hold on the fractured Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP). With Wickremesinghe's United National Party (UNP), the two main Sinhalese political groups will approve a new constitution that will devolve more powers to the provinces, including the Tamil-majority north.

The government will escalate reconciliation moves and set up the long-delayed mechanism to investigate allegations of war-time atrocities. Both the SLFP and the UNP will support prosecution of war criminals and Sri Lanka will win back the support of the international community. International investor confidence rises and Sri Lanka will be truly on its way to becoming a rapidly developing economy despite adverse global conditions.

Worst case:

Tensions between President Maithripala Sirisena and Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe will escalate over the government's failure to pursue allegedly corrupt high profile individuals of the former regime.

Wickremesinghe will support opposition MPs such as Wimal Weerawansa and Udaya Gammanpila to prevent the two SLFP factions coming together. Despite UNP attempts, the two SLFP factions unite and engineer defections from the UNP to oust Prime Minister Wickremesinghe through a no-confidence resolution in parliament. Sirisena forms an SLFP-led government and appoints a strong loyalist as his Prime Minister.

The 2015 agenda for constitutional reform is abandoned. There is no move towards reconciliation, accountability or a political solution to the decades-long ethnic conflict. Sri Lanka regains its international pariah status, will rely even more heavily on China for economic and diplomatic support to stave off international censure.

High profile corruption and murder investigations are stalled and the judiciary goes back to its old ways. Nationalism rises and the country adopts protectionist economic policies, market manipulators return and, paradoxically, the stock mark starts to rise, albeit artificially.

Most likely outcome:

President Maithripala Sirisena and Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe keep up public appearances of a coherent unity administration despite escalating tensions. The President will struggle to increase his hold on the SLFP, but former president Mahinda Rajapaksa will remain a key factor that divides the party.

Despite his rhetoric, the Rajapaksa faction will not be able to take full control of the SLFP to mount a serious challenge to Prime Minister Wickremesinghe. The government is unlikely to be able to push through a new constitution that will address minority demands for sharing greater political power at the provincial level because of opposition from powerful nationalistic elements within the two main political parties.

However, Sri Lanka will be able to buy more time at the March UN Human Rights Council sessions, but the international community's patience with Sri Lanka will wear thin by the end of the year. There will be little progress on reconciliation and even less on ensuring accountability for war crimes given the strong nationalistic forces within both the SLFP and the UNP.

The Tamil National Alliance (TNA), despite its 16 seats in parliament will not be able to make an impact on the government to push constitutional reforms. Former president Rajapaksa's vow to topple the government in 2017 will help him remain relevant within his group of supporters, but he will not have the means to achieve his objective. The economic front will also be challenging.

The government will not be able to get its "Agency for development" established as provincial councils have already shot it down. Sri Lanka will rely on Chinese funding, but apart from that getting foreign direct investment will be a serious challenge given the domestic political risks and the global economic complexities.

Voter frustration will rise as the government is unable to conclude any of the high profile cases dragging for many years. Judicial integrity will be a key issue in the New Year with Sri Lanka set to face censure over two judgements that saw members of security forces accused of high profile killings go scot free. The New Year will see a period of drift, both economically and politically with no party able to drastically change the status quo.

Two Years Down The Line

By Shakthi De Silva –December 31, 2016

Shakthi De Silva

Two Years Down The Line: What Has This Government Achieved & What Should We Look Forward To In 2017?

As we know, the present government of Maithripala Sirisena came to power on a mandate of eradicating the country from nepotism and unimpeded corruption which was alleged to have run into the billions. It promised reconciliation and peace building to the international community and economic development along with sustainable debt management to the domestic public.

Ranked 83rd least corrupt country from a 168 (according to a transparency international report) the political leadership of Sri Lanka has revised and reevaluated investment project blueprints undertaken by the last regime. The country has been removed from the Committee to Protect Journalists Impunity Index, and has engaged in the grandiloquence of “transforming the island” to a financial and logistics hub in Asia. So is Sri Lanka on the path to rapid development and economic stability?

Well let’s not rush.

To start of, 2016 saw the Maithripala government co-sponsoring a resolution titled ‘Promoting reconciliation, accountability and human rights in Sri Lanka’ which decisively set it on the path to achieve lasting peace and reconciliation through a transitional justice process. The resolution promised to establish a hybrid court with a special counsel’s office, a truth and reconciliation commission, an Office for Missing Persons and an Office for Reparations among other pledges. Although critiqued by certain conservative sections as a step taken to put the country and its armed forces on the ‘electric chair’, the resolution has highlighted the government’s political will to get the reconciliation process underway. How fast this process goes however, can be debated. Concerns have also been voiced as to the process of sequencing and indigenizing reconciliation among the communities of the country. In an interview to the Huffington Post, Gehan Gunatilleke voiced these concerns:

“Local civil society actors have been pressing for sequencing that does not place accountability on the back burner. But this has not been the consistent view of international actors and advisors. I’m afraid the lack of deference to local demands has cost this process important momentum in terms of establishing an accountability mechanism.”

In his article to ‘Groundviews’ Professor Jayadeva Uyangoda similarly highlighted that: “As a concept, reconciliation has not been intellectually indigenized in Sri Lanka.” Thus indulging in rhetoric and promises that will never be fulfilled will not augur well with a rather politically charged community that has, since the defeat of the Rajapaksa’s, been more and more vocal in both traditional and modern media. March 2017 will also see Sri Lanka’s human rights situation coming up for discussion at the UNHRC where the progress of the 2015 resolution will be reviewed. So one can expect more pronouncements and rhetoric promising-action, come January 2017.

Sri Lanka also got underway with the task of introducing a new constitution. The public representations committee on constitutional reform concluded their painstaking task and submitted a rather hefty 219 page document to the prime minster and the parliament. The prime minister added a new twist to the ‘constitution making-tale’ by establishing a constitutional assembly from the existing parliament and at present, proceedings are underway to create a new constitutional which, if goes as planned, will see it go for a referendum in 2017. In this context one has to bear in mind that the year has not been very good in terms of predicting referendums. Referendums this year has seen the loss of establishment candidates in the U.S, BREXIT in the EU, opposition to the Colombia peace process with the FARC and the end of the tenure of Italian prime minister Matteo Renzi. Moreover survey conducted recently by the Centre for Policy Alternatives (CPA) revealed a rather shocking finding. A quarter of Sri Lankans are ‘unaware’ that there is even a Constitutional Reform process taking place, while “three-quarters of the population have not heard of the Constitutional Assembly.” So what will happen to the Sri Lankan constitution if it goes to a referendum next year? Only time will tell.

Although some may not know, the president went on to declare ‘2017’ a year to combat poverty in Sri Lanka; despite the lack of an institutionalized structure as yet. The ‘year of freedom from poverty’ declared by the president in his address to the 71st Session of the United Nations General Assembly will have to bring significant reductions in poverty levels which stands rather high in some parts of the country. This would require more than purely increasing taxes and would involve structural reform in the financial sector.

Noticeable achievements of the government this year include the passing of the 19th Constitutional Amendment and the Right to Information Act. Both have been hailed as opportune by many in civil society and has helped the government rank up its image abroad. This was compounded by the ratification of the International Convention for the Protection of All persons from Enforced Disappearance in May. Even the outgoing UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon in his visit to Sri Lanka in September this year remarked that steps such as singing the National Anthem in Sinhala and Tamil play a significant role in the path to peace building. Another high level visit to the island was by Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein, United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights who outlined his concern ‘that the Government has not moved fast enough with tangible measures to build confidence among victims and minority communities.’ While criticisms both constructive and otherwise continue in the domestic and international foray; as a Sri Lankan what can truly be valued is the very presence of criticism which had hitherto been silenced by political authorities of the previous regime.

by Asela Atukorala -Jan 1, 2017

( January 1, 2017, Colombo, Sri Lanka Guardian) I’m writing this at the end of 2016 looking at Sri Lankan issues from a political angle. I’ll start by mentioning recent disappointments from my perspective that happened in the last 3 months of 2016. I don’t intend to go into detail discussing or explaining them in this article. These recent disappointments include the President’s controversial speech at the Sri Lanka Foundation Institute, the recent emergence of racial crimes & hatred, issues regarding the Government & Police’s response to these incidents, the Inspector General of Police being caught on a phone call implying he’s protecting someone under investigation, the possibility of increased fines for traffic violations cancelled due to a strike by private bus companies, a strike at the Hambantota port, the Navy Commander assaulting a journalist at that strike etc.

I think it is important that the Sri Lankan Government resolve the problems arising from these issues. This Government really needs to deliver in 2017 in light of these issues, and as more needs to be done based on what they were voted in for. On the positive side, there are some events set to take place in 2017 that could bring real benefits to Sri Lanka. Firstly, the Cabinet recently approved a yearly event National Integration and Reconciliation Week beginning from the 8th to the 14th of January 2017. This event will be promoting national integration among school children, creating sensitisation and awareness in the media in all three languages, encouraging the private sector to be involved in integration programs, north south dialogue & inter-village exchange programs and a competition to promote national integration.

As expected in January, Sri Lanka will lease Hambantota port to a Chinese firm raising about USD 1.12 billion which should help Sri Lanka pay off the USD 8 billion owed to China for the development projects under the previous regime. I hope that the Chinese firm will be able to make the Hambantota port profitable to bring more benefits than just the money. In June 2016, the Right to Information (RTI) Bill was passed in Parliament. The RTI Act will come into effect on Independence Day, 4th February 2017. It is from that day onward when citizens can file RTI requests, making the Government more open to its citizens.

The Sri Lankan Cabinet passed the Open Government Partnership (OGP) plan in October 2016. The OGP plan gives a 12-commitment national policy plan and sets up a steering committee to monitor its implementation headed by both the President and the Prime Minister. This national policy plan has a schedule until June 2018. Member countries of OGP, in endorsing the OGP Declaration, show a commitment to “foster a global culture of open government that empowers and delivers for citizens, and advances the ideals of open and participatory 21st century government.”

A promise of the 100 day program was a Code of Conduct for Parliamentarians, which still hasn’t been made law. There is some hope as the Code of Conduct was mentioned in the Sri Lankan media recently, and it was tabled and presented in Parliament on the 10th of December. This gives an indication that it will get passed in Parliament in the next 6 months, providing it gets enough votes. Sri Lanka is working on a new constitution right now and it’s possible that the new constitution will get completed or at least make real progress next year. The Megapolis project is in its early stages right now, and I hope to see much progress on it next year.

So these are some of the opportunities for Sri Lanka based on events set to occur in 2017. I don’t have any idea how 2017 will play out for Sri Lanka, but if the Government is mostly successful in the opportunities I mentioned, as well as in other events, 2017 could be a good year for Sri Lanka, compared to 2016.

The Angoda mental hospital case

President Sirisena in bid to outdo Judas IscariotJVP gets head start over Joint Opposition

December 31, 2016, 6:57 pm

It was perhaps supremely fitting that we ended 2016 with a scandal involving a key cabinet minister and the Angoda mental hospital. This scandal became public for the first time due to a video posted on SlVlog.com by journalist Darshana Handungoda who explained the whole sordid episode in great detail with a powerful cabinet minister, his valet who got involved with a beautiful Korean woman, ending up with six electric shocks administered to the unfortunate valet’s head in the Angoda mental hospital. This video can be viewed on the following link - https://youtu.be/RLC7YGJb1Oo. We watched it and then forgot about it because the story was too Hollywood-like to believe. Such things can’t happen in real life was what we thought. Then last Thursday, the aggrieved valet appeared in person at a press conference with an affidavit attested by Commissioner of Oaths Mahanama Dissanayake dated 15 December 2016.

What the valet said at that press conference can be viewed on the following link https://youtu.be/Bzzjyw9KHrM. According to the contents of his affidavit, the name of this aggrieved valet is Harshsa Bandara Thilakasiri. He claimed to be an executive chef by profession who had got involved with the Anti-terrorism movement in the 1990s, and worked with Minister Champika Ranawaka for the past 16 years. He had been on Ranawaka’s ministerial personal staff for the past ten years in all the ministries that he had held from 2007 up to now. He had also been the executive chef of Water’s Edge hotel (no less) and the menial work he did for Ranawaka was obviously due to his allegiance to the cause. His task had been that of a personal valet, cooking for Ranawaka, washing and iroing his clothes and even massaging the Hon. Minister!

The long and short of the story is that this executive chef turned valet who also apparently speaks Korean got involved with an attractive Korean lady and a certain ministerial one had wanted to have fun with this lady which request the valet had refused and this led to a whole chain of events resulting in the valet falling out with the minister, leaving his service and then being literally abducted by the minister’s security guards and henchmen and taken to the Angoda mental hospital where he had been given electric shock treatment.

The fact that a minister and his valet fell out over a woman is not unusual – men do quarrel over women and even if a minister in heat tried to pressurize his employee to yield up his girlfriend to him and actually came to blows over the lady, that too is not unusual. But what is unusual is what is said to have gone on at the Angoda mental hospital. This Harshsa Bandara Thilakasiri in his affidavit claims to have been taken to the Angoda mental hospital on 10 September 2016 by a group comprising of a police officer called SI Herath, two other police officers, one Chandana Ranasinghe who is supposed to be a working director of the UDA and one Pradeep Alwis described as a driver of Champika Ranawaka. Tilakasiri says that he was kept in Ward No: 5 bearing Ticket No 5521/16 and that on the day he was warded, no patient in his ward had been permitted to receive visitors.

The next day, when his brother Lankendra Tilakasiri and a journalist by the name of Shantha Wijesuriya had arrived at the hospital they had not been allowed to see him. From the third day onwards, Tilakasiri claims to have been given electric shocks as treatment. The consultant psychiatrist treating him has been named in the affidavit as Dr Jayan Mendis. Tilakasiri claims that when he had asked this doctor to allow him to go home, the latter had refused to allow him to leave as he was not yet ‘cured’. Tilaksiri says that though the patient profile states that he had a history of mental disturbance twenty years ago and once again in 2013, that is false. If there is any truth at all in what Tilakasiri claims to have gone on at the Angoda mental hospital, this is the worst medical scandal to ever to come to light in this country.

Tilakasiri’s affidavit reads like a Hollywood film script with evil doctors waiting to do the bidding of conspiratorial politicians and declare perfectly same people to be insane. We have read of perfectly sane people being confined to lunatic asylums by the Stalinist regime in the Soviet Union. Hollywood has also produced some blockbusters including a fairly recent one starring Leonardo di Caprio where you have evil mental hospital administrators who seem only too willing to keep sane people in captivity and treat them for mental illnesses they don’t have. After this story hit the fan last week members of the medical profession were reeling in shock that such a thing could take place in real life in this country. Of course we have to be careful in this because just because someone says something even in a sworn affidavit it does not mean the story is true. We have a long history of false affidavits especially in relation to people in politics.

The Sri Lanka Medical Council should look into this matter very seriously and ascertain 1) whether an individual called Harsha Bandara Tilakasiri was admitted to the Angoda mental hospital, 2) who had brought this individual to be admitted 3) if those accompanying him were not his next of kin, who had accepted the patient 4) the psychiatrist who had first examined the supposed patient and decided that he was indeed mentally ill 5) whether the hospital inquired from the patient or tried to get the police to trace his next of kin before administering advanced treatment like electric shocks etc etc.

Insanity outside Angoda

In the meantime, things were not much different inside or outside the Angoda mental hospital. The exchanges between the the UNP and the SLFP (Sirisena faction) became shriller as the year came to a close. Usually, the run up to Christmas and the following days up to the dawn of the New Year and about two weeks into the New Year is a lean period for the media with most politicians out of the country and everybody taking a long break from work and infighting. But this year, we have reached the end of the year with no diminution in the sound and fury of the political give and take. Even the ministers who have gone abroad continued to make noises even in their absence. The almost daily exchange of recriminations and insults between the UNP and the SLFP continued last week as well with the UNP going on the offensive and responding more forcefully to the jibes and brickbats of their SLFP colleagues.

Last week Ministers Mano Ganesan and P.Digambaram holding a joint press conference told the SLFP group to leave the government if they are not happy. Then three UNP backbenchers including parliamentarian Nalin Bandara held a press conference at Sirikotha and said much the same thing. UNP parliamentarian Mujibur Rahaman wrote a letter to the President saying that the Presidential Media Unit has been carrying out chauvinistic propaganda. What he meant by this was that the statements that had been made about the Muslim people and Islam by Galagodaatte Gananasara during a meeting with President Sirisena had been circulated to the media by the Presidential media division. Rahaman had taken exception to the allegation made by Gnanasara to the effect that Islam teaches Muslims to destroy places of historical value. Last week, Dilan Perera, the official spokesman of the SLFP once again lashed out at the UNP on the Sirasa Newsline programme.

All this took place in the backdrop of resounding and embarrassing defeats for the UNP’s Development Special Provisions Bill in all the SLFP controlled provincial councils with the Joint Opposition and the SLFP government group as well as the JVP joining hands to defeat it. Unless the president had specifically instructed the chief ministers to oppose the Bill they would not have thrown their weight behind the Joint Opposition and the JVP. Yet this Bill had been approved by cabinet which is headed by the President. In fact after helping to defeat this Bill in the Western Provincial Council, Chief Minister Isura Devapriya told the media that it was the SLFP that was the decisive group in the government and not the UNP.

He crowed that since the Development Special Provisions Bill had been defeated in the Provincial Councils the only way to get it passed would be with a two thirds majority in Parliament and that too was not possible because the SLFP held the balance in parliament as well. This showed the President’s ability to throw the spanner in the works using the SLFP rump that supports him. There is a very thinly disguised attempt on the part of the SLFP group in parliament to masquerade as the opposition to the UNP because that is the only way they have any prospects of being able to survive the local government elections. Because of the SLFP (Sirisena Group’s), attempt to outdo the Joint Opposition in opposing the UNP, the UNP has been left holding the short end of the stick which is doing them untold damage among the floating voters. They were left with egg on their faces on the bond issue, and now again with the repeated defeat of the Development Special Provisions Bill in the SLFP controlled PCs.

It is just as well that the UNP has begun hitting back. This has been having some effect because every time the UNP reminds the public that it is they who made Sirisena President, the SLFP group in the government loses face. It can be seen that despite President Sirisena’s encouragement of the attacks on the UNP, only a handful of SLFP members like Dilan Perera and Chief Minister Isura Devapriya have been condemning the UNP, while the majority of the SLFP ministers serving in the government have kept quiet. Even S.B.Dissanayake has not really been attacking the UNP though he did make some offhand comments saying that the SLFP cannot continue for ever in partnership with the UNP and that there are difficulties in running a government in this manner. He is just telling the truth, without any undue criticism of the UNP.

Sirisena to serve hoppers to RW?

The reason why Dilan Perera’s voice tends to get amplified is because he is the official spokesman of the SLFP and he can’t possibly be saying all these nasty things about the UNP without a direct go ahead from his party leader. The awareness that Sirisena may be trying to do to Ranil Wickremesinghe what he earlier did not Mahinda Rajapaksa is poisoning the air. This would be like Judas Iscariot first betraying Jesus to the Romans and then betraying the Romans to the Huns – or any other barbarians who would happen to be clamoring at the gate! Everybody refers to Sirisena’s departure from the Rajapaksa camp as the ‘hopper theory’ of politics where you break bread with a man in the night and then stab him in the back in the morning. The possibility that he may be now trying to do the same thing to the UNP is certainly not going to endear him to the public.

In the meantime, 2017 promises to be an year of confrontations. Mahinda Rajapaksa put out a New Year message which was actually a call to arms. He had said that "2017 will be the year in which the future of Sri Lanka will be decided. The government’s devolution package to divide the country into what they call ‘distinct spheres of authority’, the ETCA with India to open up Sri Lanka to Indian service providers and workers, the privatization of the Hambantota harbour and other government owned assets, are just some of the unwelcome changes that the government has planned in the New Year. All this will come on top of the gross economic mismanagement, declining growth rate, declining foreign reserves, the deteriorating exchange rate, increased taxation, increased interest rates, increasing inflation and a phenomenal increase in the national debt that we have seen over the past two years."

MR’s call to arms

Rajapaksa made overtures to the SLFP group serving in the government by saying: "The SLFP members in the government who were elected to parliament on an anti-UNP, anti-government platform, but have since joined the UNP led government, now appear to be engaged in a struggle with their conscience. Uncertain of the correct path to take, they keep vacillating. While condemning Arjuna Mahendran over the bond scam they defend the Prime Minister. They criticize the UNP in public but vote with them on the VAT Bill, the Office of Missing Persons Bill and the Budget. They cooperate with the Joint Opposition to defeat the ‘super minister’ Bill, but at the same time they cooperate with the UNP on the devolution proposals. At this decisive moment, they should be mindful of the future of the country above everything else."

"Those who hold portfolios and vote with the government on important matters, are members of the government despite any criticism they may make in public about other political parties and ministers in the government. There are many Ministers and MPs in the SLFP group as well as the UNP who are genuinely perturbed by what the government has been doing. When the leaders of the Joint Opposition so decide, the doors of the anti-government coalition of forces will be thrown open to all such individuals. The sovereignty and territorial integrity of our motherland and the fate of future generations will hang in the balance in 2017 under this increasingly dysfunctional government. May all citizens of Sri Lanka have the courage and strength to meet the challenges that lie ahead from the first week of January onwards."

Within hours of MR’s message appearing on the websites on Friday, the news went around that Priyankara Jayaratne, the State Minsiter of Provincial Councils and Local Government had resigned. Some saw this as a sooner than expected response to MR’s call while others thought it could be another ruse by the SLFP group in government to delay the acceptance of the local government delimitation report. In any case, a minister would not have to resign just to avoid accepting a delimitation report – he could simply make himself unavailable like Minister Faizer Mustapha. In any case, those likeliest to resign from the government are the SLFP (and even UNP) members holding State Minister and deputy ministerial positions in the government. These are the people who have the least to lose.

The members of the SLFP holding ministerial portfolios have been very silent not committing themselves either way. The fact is that if you have a cabinet portfolio, whether you serve in a UNP led government or SLFP led government makes no difference – you will still end up with the same powers. The cabinet ministers would be more interested in safeguarding what they have at present for as long as possible without taking any unnecessary risks. The State Ministers and Deputy Ministers on the other hand have little to lose given the fact that their cabinet ministers are hogging all the power without anything trickling down to them. By any reckoning, 2017 promises to be an eventful year. Anura Kumara Dissanayake has already said that the New Year will be an year of agitation. The JVP did start following through with their thereat and organized demonstrations in Hambantota against the privatization of the port and the alienation of 15,000 acres of land to foreign companies. Nihal Galappatti was seen leading the demonstrations in Hambantota.

Even more eye catching than the well attended demonstrations of the JVP in Hambantota was the Michael Moore style ‘raid’ carried out by JVP activist Namal Karunaratne on the Paddy Marketing Board along with a group of cultivators and small scale rice mill owners. With the drought in the main paddy growing districts and a decline in the area planted, a rice shortage in 2017 is widely predicted. The JVP agitators accused the PMB of selling the paddy in the government stores to intermediaries who did not even own rice mills and they were making a killing without the paddy even leaving the stores of the PMB by selling what they had bought at higher prices to mill owners resulting in the price of rice going up in the market. Significantly, the same accusation was made by Dudley Sirisena, the President’s brother at a press conference. All fingers are now pointed at at Minister P. Harrison who is now called ‘Vee’ Harrison. The fact that Dudley Sirisena got involved in the whole debate means that there is a deepening of the rift between the SLFP President and the UNP government.

In Minister Harrison’s absence, Deputy Minister Ajith P.Perera came to Harrison’s defence saying that Harrison was trying to sell government stocks of rice according to a ‘transparent procedure’ and that it was really the ‘rice mafia’ made up of a few large scale mill owners who are responsible for the increase in the price of rice. It was not just the JVP, Dudley Sirisena and the Joint Opposition that was complaining about Harrison’s and the government’s handling of this issue. Even the generally pro-UNP website Lanka e News made critical observations concerning the rice shortage which can be summarised as follows.

* On the claim that there was a surplus of paddy in the country, Minister Harrison tried to sell 200,000 metric tonnes of paddy from the government stores as animal feed. But due to protests from various quarters, he was able to dispose of only 90,000 tonnes of paddy which is the equivalent of 60,000 tonnes of rice. The government is now trying to import 10,000 tonnes of rice to tide over the shortage created by the decision to sell off the existing stocks.

* Though the government has decided to retain one week’s supply of rice amounting to 50,000 tonnes from the buffer stock of 300,000 tonnes maintained by the Paddy Marketing Board, and release the rest into the market, under Harrison’s patronage these stocks were flowing into the chicken feed mills of the main poultry producers in this country.

* Due to the erratic water management during the past two years, farmers had not got water in time resulting in large tracts of paddy land lying uncultivated. Furthermore the Minister of Agriculture was actively discouraging farmers saying there was a surplus of paddy and that it was best that they cultivated some other crop instead. The fertilizer subsidy was now being given as a cash grant and as a result the fields were not being fertilized properly.

* The Prima Company had been given a subsidy for wheat flour by the government resulting in an increase of the consumption of wheat flour from 750,000 tonnes in 2014 to 1.4 million tonnes in 2016. Thus rice consumption decreased and the outflow of foreign exchange increased.

* Now that rice has to be imported, racketeers are having a field day with rice that is available for 350 USD per tonne in Bangaladesh being bought for 450 USD.

In addition to the privatization of the Hambantota Port, and the debate on the constitution which will come to a head in the first two weeks of the New Year, there are many other equally contentious matters that may turn the next year into a year of protests and demonstrations. One of them is the contributory pension scheme that Minister Ranjith Madduma Bandara plans to unveil in the New Year. A contributory pension scheme for all new recruits to the government service is certainly a good idea and there have been similar schemes that have been working well for years as for example the contributory pension scheme for university academic staff which has been operated successfully by the UGC. There is no reason why such a scheme will not work well with regard to other government employees as well. However, government servants tend to believe that their pension should come straight out of the government budget and woe be unto anyone who tries to say otherwise.

Hitting At Non-Being – Palitha Thawarapperuma Lashes At JO Tactic

By Shyamon Jayasinghe –December 31, 2016

Shyamon Jayasinghe

Palitha Thewarapperuma was a UNP leader who had in the past behaved rather outlandishly. I was under the impression he was a larrikin sort of guy who shoots off his mouth at will. In the days when the UNP was in opposition – and that wasn’t a brief span in time – he is reported to have once tried to assault the leader (nayakathuma), Ranil Wickremesinghe. It is to Ranil’s credit that he promoted Thawa as Deputy Minister of something or other in the yahapalanaya (YP) government. And, here and now, we observe Thawa blooming in redefined stature. Probably Ranil saw this potential in his former assailant.

Not only that, Palitha Thawarapperuma is an MP who didn’t accept the special attendance bonus offered to other MPs. I like this. He is not a moneyed guy.

Now, what has Thawa done so much for us to talk about? Ceylon Today (30/12) reports an interview the Deputy Minister had given to Rasika Hemamali. Thawa has hit a few Ranjan Ramanayake-type ‘one-shots,’ at the so-called Joint Opposition (JO) for protesting over mere proposals mooted even before related plans are drawn out. In doing so, Thawa took on a favourite and frequent tactic of the JO boys who are toiling to bring back Mahinda Rajapaksa in a ‘Mahinda Sulanga,’ (Mahinda storm). JO jumps to create a crisis of sorts by this manoeuvre with the objective of both killing the idea at birth and creating a demon out of ghosts, of the YP government. Let us call this strategy: ‘attacking non-being.’ The attack is incessant and relentless designed to make the people of the country to feel that nothing can ever be right about the YP government.

Palitha Thewarapperuma

In the interview, Palitha Thawarapperuma, comes out of the shadow to make an impressive rhetorical contribution to the work of the YP government. The UNP needs new leaders like this and leaders who can speak up for the progress of the government when sustained criticism by the Opposition and media is the order of the day. One wonders what the Deputy Leader of the party and other seniors are doing by observing silence when the battle is on. Thawa comes out impressively at the interview repudiating. He does so by picking at the JO strategy of attacking non-being.

The latest of such JO attacks is over the proposal to create a Minister with special powers for the purpose of acting as a one-stop -shop coordinating investment and development. JO cried foul about what they dubbed as a ‘Super Minister.’ Thawarapperuma gives a body blow that Muhammed Ali would have been proud of: “We saw,” he asserted, “that there were super Ministers in the previous government. Basil Rajapaksa was a Minister with super powers. Development was in their hands. Projects were also in their hands. Even Commissions as well as Institutions were in their hands.” And then Thawa came out with a classic expression straight from down-south coastal rurality: “This proposal has not even been presented in Parliament as yet. These people are tying on their amudes now itself although the tide is still a distance away from the beach.”

Thawarapperuma pointed out how during the Rajapaksa regime these uninhibited and vociferous JO Members of Parliament were so scared to protest: “They came to Parliament like kittens,” Thawa said, those parliamentarians who raise a hue and cry over nothing today were like little kittens back then. Every one sat down when ordered to do so. They stood up when they were asked to stand up. That is how they acted, he said. “Such a post is required in order to create job opportunities for the youth in the country, in order to develop it.”

JO’s habit of attacking non-being was observed from day one of the YP government. An earlier example is the proposal for a trade agreement with India (ETCA),which is still being worked out between the two governments. JO MPs thumped their hands on table at Parliament. They stopped short of sleeping in Parliament after a few tots. Yet, the ETCA is not even outlined yet. Talks are ongoing between the two government so that a workable arrangement is ready that benefits both India and Sri Lanka. As a product, the ETCA is yet a non-being. JO complains that the YP government was trying to repudiate China and get into the laps of rival,India.

When dealing with the project for a new constitution that is desperately required, JO seems to be having extrasensory powers to predict what the constitution proposals are going to be. The project is still in the gestation period. Incoming ideas from the public are coming in. A steering committee of Parliament are studying these proposals and it will draft a Bill to be presented to Parliament for a two-third majority. Thereafter, the Bill has to be approved by the people at a referendum.Hence, this is a long procedure and a very transparent one. But for the MPs of the Joint Opposition the Bill exists and they keep lashing at it. Tamils are to get Eelam, they say. Buddhism is going to lose special place. This is yet another illustration of hitting at non-being.

Where will all this end? Mahinda Rajapaksa has announced that he will overthrow this government long before it has a chance of doing anything. He has given next year itself as deadline. However, attacking nonbeing wouldn’t take him there. He has himself a long procedure to follow and let us remind him of that. First and foremost, he has to make a public expression of remorse for the appalling events of his tenure: for usurping of law and order; for doing nothing to find the culprits who murdered journalists like Lasantha, MPs like Raviraj, and the innocent Ruggerite Thajudeen; for dragging and jailing war hero Sarath Fonseka on framed-up charges and employing a controversial Military Tribunal procedure to justify what appeared more like revenge; for the large-scale corruption charges during his rule and for running the country broke.

As Thawarapperuma eloquence explained, “People, media men, politicians and others were killed on our main roads while the sons of the politicians of this country used war heroes to pile up sand bags so that they could engage in motor racing while the country was heading for destruction. There was no itinerary or principle in that. Court cases were heard at Temple Trees ! Under this system the economy of the country had fallen to zero. When the new government was elected it was as if we had taken over an empty house. To rebuild this everyone needs to contribute.”

Next, Mahinda Rajapaksa and the JO must present a policy framework and executive plan of how they are to going to do what they didn’t do, if they get into power. The targeted YP-government demolition year of 2017 is already on, and Mahinda and the JO had better cease hitting at non-being and enter the positive area of presenting plans for a national debt-recovery program and a reformed administration. The latter cannot expect the electorate to be enthused when they are trapped like this in a sterile and vacuous negative territory.

Intensifying repression against BDS movement shows Israel is becoming “desperate and irrational,” Palestinians say.Ryan Rodrick BeilerActiveStills

Nora Barrows-Friedman-30 December 2016

2016 began with a bang: French telecommunications giant Orange announced in early January it was dumping its Israel affiliate.

This came just months after boycott activists renewed their campaign against the company over its support for Israel’s 2014 assault on Gaza and its complicity in Israel’s colonization of the occupied West Bank.

The same week, a major Irish corporation yanked its cement contracts with Israel following boycott pressure.

Meanwhile, churches, student unions and local activists continued to organize strong boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) campaigns that caused panic among Israeli leaders.

Embarrassed by these significant victories, Israel spent 2016 waging “an all-out war” on the global BDS campaign, “in a desperate attempt to crush it,” according to the Palestinian BDS National Committee (BNC).

Bullying

Israel resorted to threatening and bullying individuals, adopting policies to expel suspected boycott activists and to bar others from entering.

This followed last year’s naming by Israel’s leading financial daily of Omar Barghouti, a co-founder of the BDS movement, among 100 people most likely to influence Israel’s economy in 2016.

Israel imposed an effective travel ban on Barghouti, following threats against him and other Palestinian human rights defenders by top Israeli government ministers in March.

Amnesty International condemned the threats, which included a call by intelligence minister Yisrael Katz for “targeted civil eliminations” of BDS leaders with the help of Israeli intelligence.

“Israel has attempted to stigmatize, demonize and in some cases delegitimize BDS from above, after failing to crush the movement at the global grassroots and civil society levels,” notes the BNC.

But throughout 2016, BDS has only grown stronger, the group adds.

“The logic of appeasing Israel’s regime of oppression has started giving way to the logic of sustained international pressure, which proved instrumental in ending apartheid in South Africa,” it says.

With that spirit in mind, here are the top 10 BDS successes of 2016, as covered by The Electronic Intifada.

10. Activists rose up against Hewlett Packard. Campaigners in dozens of cities across six continents participated in an international week of action against Hewlett-Packard, bringing attention to the company’s role in enabling Israel’s rights violations.

9. Irish company divested from Israel’s cement industry. One of Ireland’s largest companies, CRH, announced in January that it was chucking Israeli assets after sustained grassroots boycott pressure. CRH held 25 percent of the shares in Mashav, owner of Israel’s top cement manufacturer Nesher.

Nesher cement has been used in constructing Israel’s wall and settlements in the West Bank and in the light rail network serving Israeli settlements in occupied East Jerusalem.

8. Spanish municipalities declared themselves “apartheid-free zones.” More than 50 cities across Spain now declare themselves free of Israeli products in a campaign that began in July 2014, at the height of Israel’s attack against Gaza.

With more than 120,000 residents, Cádiz, in Andalusia, is one of the largest cities to support the campaign.

7. Norwegians ditched Israeli products. Two major cities in Norway voted to boycott Israeli goods and services produced in settlements inside occupied Palestinian territory.

6. Churches continued to mobilize for Palestinian rights. Denominations voted in 2016 to boycott Israeli financial institutions, and to dump or bar investments in corporations that profit from Israel’s occupation.

A church in California vowed not to purchase supplies from Hewlett-Packard, a company that provides equipment to Israel’s military and settlements.

Presbyterians reaffirmed their previous commitments to divestment, while 24 denominations together called for “economic leverage” against businesses or governments that violate human rights.

Lutherans voted to call for an end to US aid to Israel.

5. Governments and political parties stood up to anti-BDS bullies. Sweden, followed by the Netherlands and Ireland, publicly upheld the right of citizens to work for BDS.

Meanwhile, the European Union and the US State Department admitted that boycott advocacy is a protected free speech right.

The Canadian Green Party and the Dutch government rejected pressure by right-wing Israel lobby groups.

4. Activists helped defeat anti-BDS legislation. Grassroots campaigners fought back against a growing wave of legislation promoted by US state and federal lawmakers – and encouraged by Israel lobby groups and the Israeli government – to suppress BDS activism.

In Massachusetts, an anti-boycott amendment was withdrawn in the state senate in July following a campaign by Palestine solidarity groups.

The amendment, which was tacked onto an unrelated economic bill, would have blacklisted individuals and businesses that engage with the Palestinian-led boycott of Israel. Organizers said that in order to successfully counter the imminent anti-boycott legislation there, they knew they had to engage directly with lawmakers over a sustained period.

In the UK, a test case for banning BDS campaigning failed in the high court.

And in France, a court overturned a government ban on a meeting to support individuals facing trial for their Palestine solidarity activism. The BDS campaign in France continued to flourish despite the government’s crackdown.

In May, lawmakers in Ontario, Canada’s most populous province, made history: theirs was the world’s first full legislature to vote down an anti-BDS law.

3. G4S was forced to buckle under BDS pressure. Under years-long pressure by grassroots campaigns, the world’s largest private security firm, G4S, ditched most of its Israeli businesses.

Four UN agencies in Jordan and one in Lebanon ended their contracts with the corporation.

The city of Berkeley, California, also voted to divest from private prison corporations, including G4S, for its role in human rights abuses against undocumented persons in the US and Palestinians under occupation.

2. Telecom giant Orange quit Israel. The French telecommunications company Orange announced it was quitting Israel in January, following sustained international boycott pressure.

The campaign calling on Orange to cut ties with Israel’s Partner Communications began in 2010 and involved unions and groups in France, Tunisia, Morocco and Egypt, countries where Orange or its affiliates have tens of millions of mobile phone subscribers.

The campaign received a major boost in May 2015 when BDS Egypt called for a boycott of Orange subsidiary Mobinil, which has 33 million customers. This came after The Electronic Intifada revealed the extent of Orange’s complicity in Israel’s 2014 assault on Gaza.

“Orange had no choice but to realize that investing in occupation, profiteering from Israel’s colonization of Palestinian land and involvement in violations against Palestinian rights is a commercially bad investment,” said Abdulrahman Abou Salem of BDS Egypt, a coalition of trade unions, political parties and campaign groups.

Partner Communications, which operated under the Orange Israel brand, built and operated extensive mobile telephone infrastructure in Israel’s settlements built on Palestinian land in the occupied West Bank in violation of international law.

1. Students stood strong. Students in the US, Canada and the UK passed strong divestment measures in their student governments and trade unions, amidst intensifying smear campaigns by outside Israel advocacy groups and shady websites.

Students “are eventually going to be members of the public in various capacities after they graduate. And the rapidly shifting politics around Israel-Palestine on campuses is something that we should really take heart in,” Rahim Kurwa, a graduate student at UCLA, told The Electronic Intifada in August.

Since the beginning of 2016 alone, more than a dozen campuses around the US passed some form of divestment resolution or boycott measure, Kurwa, a member of Students for Justice in Palestine, said.

“People now realize that it doesn’t make any sense to claim that you’re a progressive or that you care about basic principles of equality and human rights if you can’t apply those principles to the question of Palestine … and a freedom struggle that has gone on for decades now.”