Expose ` -Tea ban drama was a camouflage to smuggle out Russian cyber criminal with knowledge of Maithri ! - Diplomatic sources exposure !

(Lanka-e-News- 28.Dec.2017, 8.15AM) Cyber criminal (Hacker) 

 Evgeni Meekayilovich Borgochev alias Farin Manokin  a Russian national who is  wanted by America and against whom there is an Interpol warrant was smuggled to Russia from SL via a subterfuge orchestrated by Sri Lanka president Maithripala Sirisena and Kili Maharaja team, and according to a foreign diplomatic mission spokesman  who did not wish to reveal his name speaking to Lanka e news   ,  the recent tea ban was a  fake drama enacted with full knowledge of Maithripala and Putin  the Russian president.

This most wanted criminal had been dispatched to Russia in the private jet in which Rosoborono export  owner Alexander Alexandrovich Mikheech arrived in SL purportedly to sign the warship deal. 

The world’s  No. one hacker Borgovich was arrested in SL last March by the police not because the  Police knew his actual identity but because he had arrived in SL on a passport bearing the name ‘Farin Manokin’

SL Police took Manokin into custody  in SL on money laundering charges in Weligama . He was later released on bail by  the intervention of the owner of the hotel where he was lodging .  Manokin thereafter did the vanishing trick , and never appeared in court , while the  foreign ministry secretary at that time instructed the police not to displease the Russians.

The same foreign mission spokesman revealed , after Manokin was released on bail , this Russian national was helped to remain hidden  via  the machinations  of a director of Kili Maharaja and the son in law of president Maithripala Sirisena.This was because Russia had requested to hand over this criminal to them .Russia did not disclose this criminal is Borgovich  on whom an Interpol warrant has been issued  , and Sri Lankans  did not know he is  Borgovich. 

Because Maithri-Maharaja mahajara team was mainly aiming at fixing the warship deal , they had acted to grant Russia’s request.  Meanwhile America getting wind of this  requested to hand over the criminal to that country under the laws governing extradition of criminals and the  pact signed with SL. America of course had not hidden the fact that Borgovich is the international hacker on whom an Interpol warrant has been served . But , since Maithri –Maharaja team was focused fully on the warship deal for obvious reasons, they   had been dancing  to the tune of Russia . Owing to this the team has informed America the ‘Russian’ has gone missing.

Russian hacker smuggled out via the private jet of the Rosoborono export owner who came to sign warship deal…

Meanwhile Rosoborono export owner Alexander Alexandrovich arrived in SL in his private jet to sign the warship deal.  This individual is so close  to Russian president Putin that they are like flesh and skin.  

This visit of Alexandrovich aroused suspicions because he came to sign just a US dollars 150 million deal in SL when he is the same Alexandrovich who did not visit India to sign   contracts involving thousands of  millions of dollars. 

This Rosoborono export Owner and his team that  arrived in SL were not bound by any Immigration and Emigration  laws , neither were they subjected to security checks during their 48 hours stay here . Even when he and his team were leaving SL after the deal was signed they were immune from security checks , and the Immigration and Emigration laws.

The most wanted criminal and hacker Bogovich alias Manokin had been smuggled out in  that private  jet along with his wife and daughter.

The diplomatic mission spokesman revealed to Lanka e news , all these manipulations were orchestrated with the knowledge and consent of president Sirisena’s son in law , and Maharaja’s director. Even the presidential security division were not allowed to know anything. The lifting of the tea ban after imposing it  was a drama enacted to conceal the conspiracy  from the world , the spokesman added.

While this conspiracy was in progress , the American FBI officers arrived in SL in search of the Russian criminal. Sirisena and the Russians after pulling the wool over the  eyes of the FBI have smuggled out  Borgovich alias Manokin.    The FBI officers were enraged over the weakness of the US ambassador in SL , and as a result the latter is likely to be called back to America , the spokesman noted.  

The Diplomatic mission spokesman further disclosed , in the not too distant  future , SL will have to face the repercussions of this conspiracy when  US officials take action .

In conclusion the spokesman lamented , by this incident the whole world has been made to know what exists in SL now is not a consensual government but a dual government .

This operation to smuggle out the Russian criminal hacker was not known at all  to the UNP of the consensual government  , or  the IGP or his intelligence divisions based on inquiries made from security divisions by Lanka e news.

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by     (2017-12-28 02:48:36)

‘Elephantitis’ representation is NO people’s democracy 

One Lok Sabha member for 2.8mn Indians in contrast to one MP for 93,333 Sri Lankans

Democracy cannot waste people’s hard-earned money in a country where 80% is indirect tax

For a billion increase, India added 56 MPs, while SL added 124 MPs for a 15mn increase

13th Amendment never discussed reducing numbers in parliament

We Sri Lankans have always been ‘talking big’ instead of ‘doing big.’ Long time ago in early ‘70s, there was this big talk of commissioning Asia’s biggest condensed milk factory in Polonnaruwa. A new brand of condensed milk was introduced as ‘Perakum’ after the importation of ‘Milkmaid’ was stopped. The rest is history. Mahaweli Development in early ‘80s was promoted as South Asia’s most sophisticated integrated development model. The talk was, we would ‘export’ hydropower to India. We virtually ended up importing electricity from India. Now the ‘big’ talk is that we would be the South Asian ‘Cultural Hub’ and Asia’s ‘Logistic Hub’ for naval and maritime affairs. Struggling with a crumbling free market economy that leads to breeding a new ‘filthy rich’ urban elite, we had the biggest bond scam in post-independent history. 

2017-12-29

In February, we will vote for a LG system turned obese. The irony is that the educated, urban professionals and the academia do not engage with this ‘big political talk’ to ground them in reality. These urban professionals and the academia simply swap intellectual responsibility with competition for super-luxury living. They go climbing on piles of money, looking for the sordid luxury of the filthy rich, and then lament the society is fast-losing its once noble culture and social values. But refuse to accept they contribute as well to the agonising death of all the good life this society once lived with. 
This heavily corrupt ‘Yahapalanaya’ has thus taken the chance to dump on this society a mega third tier in a tadpole like governance structure that hardly serves the people. Their wisdom in creating a bloated LG system that increased representation from 4,116 to a staggering 8,365 councillors goes without questioning. People now have to bear a cost of four billion plus rupees to hold LG elections this February to spend more than double the massive sum of nine billion rupees thereafter, we are told was the cost of maintaining less than half the new number of elected councillors. Some urban ‘pundits’ say, democracy comes at a cost. 

Yes, democracy does come with a cost. But democracy cannot be without public utility. Democracy cannot waste people’s hard-earned money in a country where 80 per cent is indirect tax. Democracy is not about establishing institutions that serve as appendages of political party hierarchies either. Democracy is not holding elections every five years. Democracy is a process where people’s participation decides their fate positively. The reason LG bodies go without any acceptance in this society is because they are denied of people’s participation and are packed with social nonentities by political parties. Also, LG administration can deliver on most basics without elected councils the people are satisfied with, as we experienced over the past two years.

Why should we agree to double the number of councillors for LG bodies, when we also elect provincial councillors and top them up with a nonsensical parliament of 225 members? 

Against this backdrop, why should we agree to double the number of councillors for LG bodies, when we also elect provincial councillors and top them up with a nonsensical parliament of 225 members? At all three levels in this country, we are awfully over-represented for no purpose and at a huge cost. And there were idiotic proposals a year or two ago to even increase the numbers for parliamentary representation. How many do we need to represent us at every level, when there are LG bodies, provincial councils and a parliament? Don’t they supplement each other in elected representative governance? 

It is worth therefore to visit the Indian structure of governance with the second largest population in the world counting 1.35 billion people end 2016. They have a massive network of elected local government bodies starting with ‘Panchayats’ that include ‘Zilla,’ ‘Mandal’ (Taluk) and ‘Gram’ Panchayats with about three million representatives, 50 per cent being women. That works out to one representative each for about 300 rural people. India also has ‘Nagar’ Panchayats, municipal councils and municipal corporations for the urban polity that is about 30 per cent of the 1.35 billion people. 

Urban professionals and the academia simply swap intellectual responsibility with competition for super-luxury living

At the next level is their State Assemblies. Indian State Assemblies are devolved provincial assemblies with more powers than what we have devolved to provincial councils. At national level, they have a bi-cameral parliament, the model we had under the Soulbury Constitution; the Lok Sabha with a Rajya Sabha. At national elections, the Indians elect 545 Lok Sabha members (MPs). With two tiers of governance below, India believes 545 members in Lok Sabha represent the 1.35 billion Indian people reasonably well and adequately. That works out to one Lok Sabha member for 2.8 million Indians. This in contrast to one MP for 93,333 people in Sri Lanka that also has LG and PCs as elected representative bodies. 

On democratic representation, a worthy comparison would be between the State of Haryana and Sri Lanka. Haryana presently has a population of 25 million as against 21 million here in Sri Lanka. It has six administrative divisions, while we have 24 administrative districts. Population wise, Haryana is roughly four times that of our Western Province populated by 5.8 million people. 

Parliament members should not be allowed to decide fundamentals of democratic representation on their own for their very selfish, vested interests

The Indian electoral system takes account of electoral representation at every level of representation, as they are serious about sharing of power between the Centre in New Delhi and their State Assemblies. The State Assemblies also pay attention to lower tier of local bodies with elected representation. Thus, Haryana people elect 90 MLAs (Members of the Legislative Assembly) to govern the Haryana State. That roughly means they elect one MLA for every 277,777 people in Haryana. Contrast that with our Western Provincial Council. We elect 104 provincial councillors for 5.8 million people in the WP. If Haryana State can administer and govern themselves with 90 MLAs, we should be able to do with 26 provincial councillors for Western Province. Mind you, our PCs don’t have the powers that Indian States are vested with. In reality therefore, WPC doesn’t even need 26 councillors. Yet, we have a four times exaggerated representation in WP. 

With 90 MLAs elected to the State Assembly held responsible for administration, governance and development of Haryana, the need for Lok Sabha representation is only for Indian socio-political and economic necessities in having a stake in national policy, legislation and in responsibilities that is constitutionally left with the Central Government. For which Haryana people elect just 10 members to the Lok Sabha and five to the Rajya Sabha elected by their 90 MLAs. 

What is also important is that in India, with a population of 0.36 billion in 1951, the Lok Sabha was constituted with 489 elected members at the first Lok Sabha election in 1952. Since then, despite an increase of almost one billion in population, they increased parliamentary representation to 545 MPs only. 

What was our progress from Ceylon to Sri Lanka? Our first parliament was a bi-cameral parliament with an elected assembly of 101 MPs with 95 elected by the people and a Senate with 30 members appointed and indirectly elected. In 1972, the first Republican Constitution did away with the Senate and the elected parliament is now the supreme governing body. The SL parliament now has 225 MPs with a population increase of about 15 million since 1947. For a billion increase, India added an extra 56 MPs, while we added 124 MPs more for a 15 million increase. We are certainly growing bigger in numbers, in unwanted places. 

India settled for 489 MPs at their first Lok Sabha elections in 1952, as they already had a devolved State with State Assemblies established in 1951. Therefore, they did not want a bulky parliament to deliberate and decide on issues of national and international importance. We did not sit with such wisdom when in 1987 after the July Indo-Lanka Accord we had to devolve power to the provinces under the 13th Amendment to the Constitution. With the 13th Amendment we removed a fair share of the provincial responsibilities the 225 member parliament was held responsible for till then. That responsibility was vested with the newly-established Provincial Councils with elected representation. Thereafter, we did not require as large a parliament as there was to take responsibility of national interests only. Yet, the parliament which adopted the 13th Amendment to establish elected PCs never wanted to even discuss the issue of reducing numbers in parliament. Reasons are obvious. 

Who should actually decide people’s representation? It should be the people who should decide how their sovereignty should be represented in an elected assembly. Similarly, the numbers in PCs and in LG bodies too. Parliament members should not be allowed to decide fundamentals of democratic representation on their own for their very selfish, vested interests. 

Miserably unfortunate this society is, the urban professionals and the academia are not interested in collective good of this country, nor are funded organisations that have chosen very comfortable themes like ‘free and fair elections.’ When they do engage in electoral reforms, they are extremely careful they don’t go outside the parameters set by the ruling political authority. Therefore, they would propose increasing numbers but not reducing them to reasonable and adequate numbers for democratic representation. 

But with this unbelievable increase in LG representation and a possible repeat with PCs, it is time the public take this responsibility into their hands in 2018, at least. 

The hunter becoming the hunted

By Dr. Vickramabahu Karunaratne-2017-12-28

After a long delay Local Government elections are scheduled to be held on 10 February 2018. According to the officials nearly 16 million people will be voting at these elections. No doubt this will be the largest election in Sri Lankan history. Luckily elections are held under the new system. The 'manapa' misery has been removed and these will also be the first elections under the mixed electoral system whereby 60% of members will be elected using first-past-the-post voting and the remaining 40% through closed list proportional representation.

However, as usual the turnover could be less than 70% and official anticipation is that the turnout of the electorate will be much less than previous ones. The last Local Government elections held in 2011 saw a voter turnout of 65 per cent. However, this time around the figure cannot be much less, looking at the political debates taking place. There is a stronger degree of voter attachment with the radical political parties.

In Sri Lanka Local Government has a history which goes into the beginning of civilization. The name Gemunu originates from village authority and refers to the village leader or the chairman of the village council. The Elara, Gemunu conflict was based on the powers of the Central Government and the Village Council in the periphery. In reality it was a socio-economic conflict between two systems.
Elara stood for strong village authority that controls the village tank and water management. Gemunu stood for the Asiatic State based on organized water management. Power of the Village Council is weak in relation to the Central Government. Buddhism backed the centralization of power with an organized clergy or Sangha. Later village culture, re-emerged as the centralized irrigation, broke down and it continued under the colonial powers. The British recognized the power of Village Council and they revived it with the support of local aristocratic authority while getting their support to the central colonial administration.

Today the Local Government elections are most important to the village and ward level political activist. In fact it was claimed that the 1971 insurrection was an indirect protest against postponement of Local Government elections. Therefore, the issues at local elections are usually not local ones, but national issues which are of more interest to the voters.

This election will be no exception. The Opposition in particular has been trying to induce voters to see the forthcoming Local Government elections as being of national significance. In particular the defeated fascistic political movement is raising the 'division of the country' issue as the main item in the political debate. Former President Mahinda Rajapaksa, who is heading the so-called Joint Opposition campaign has clearly stated that this election will not be about local issues but whether the people want to support or oppose the Government and the proposed new Constitution. Also he makes the accusation that the Government has not delivered on its promises for welfare of the masses.

At these elections, the parties forming the Government will be disadvantaged by the slowness of their performance in delivering on the promises made at the national elections that took place in 2015. The voter turnout at the last General Election in 2015, at which change for the better was the promise, was 78 per cent.

The Government's main campaign promises, in addition to resolving the Tamil national problem and improving human rights conditions, were with regard to quick results in economic betterment for the masses and meting out justice to those accused of large scale corruption. These promises galvanized the electorate. Some say that the irony in this campaign is to see the hunter becoming the hunted. Those accused of large scale corruption in the former Government have sought to become hunters. However, the fascistic forces are well exposed!

Muslim Politics In Forthcoming Elections

By Ameer Ali –December 27 2017 

With regional councils elections around the corner Muslim politicians, those in power already and the ones aspiring to capture it, once again have started searching for tactics and slogans to win the hearts and minds of Muslim voters. The ultimate objective of the first group is to arrest their diminishing popularity and placing their positions so strategically that when elections to the parliament follow they will be able to retain their parliamentary seats and capture lucrative ministerial positions. There is no doubt that religion and ethnicity will play the most crucial role in this dirty political game.

Muslim politics since the registration of the Sri Lanka Muslim Congress (SLMC) as a political party has taken the wrong turn leading to the political, economic and social detriment of the Muslim community. The leaders of SLMC, by changing colours and switching allegiance at convenience, more to maximise their personal than community’s gain, have quite deliberately placed the Muslim community in a collision course with the rest of the country. Never before in the history of this country did the Muslim community earn such an enormity of mistrust from other communities as it is confronting now.  The leaders of SLMC have been repeating ad nauseam that they would “fight for the rights” of Muslims without spelling out to the Muslim public what those rights are and how many of them have they achieved since they entered politics. In a democratic country like Sri Lanka what right for example, can an Abdullah have which an Appuhamy or Ambalavanar cannot have? Also, why do they always talk about rights in isolation without at the same time reminding their listeners about duties? Even now it is not too late for SLMC leaders to come clean with Muslim voters by listing the so called rights they have been struggling to win since the party came into existence and provide a balance sheet to the Muslim public accounting for the party’s achievements and failures.   

In this context, it is also relevant to ask a more general question from SLMC politicians: that is, do they think that the Sri Lankan Muslim community has gained more by way of economic, educational and cultural advancement before or after their party’s entry into politics? There is hard evidence to show that Muslims won the trust of other community leaders and achieved greater degree of progress when the community did not have a political party of its own. SLMC by putting quantity before quality in parliamentary representation has made any progress in the future more difficult. Although the party now has split into different factions and each faction is trying to form alternative configurations to win the political race their ethnic and religious bias remain permanent.

 

On a broader level, ethnic nationalism is the bane of Sri Lanka’s progress. Devoid of any testable plan in their campaign manifestos all political parties without exception have found salvation in promoting ethnic rivalry as the trump card to win political power. This is the pathology of Sri Lankan power politics. Is there a way out of this malaise? If one can look into the pre- and post-partition political history of India one can learn how that country lost two large chunks of its territory due to competing and uncontrolled ethnic nationalisms and how the ascendancy of supranationalism after that loss prevented further division of that country. I am referring here to the loss of Pakistan and Bangladesh for the pre-partition case and Tamil Nadu for the post-partition phenomenon. Dravidian ethnic nationalism in the 1950s threatened to shrink India further with its demand for separation when supranationalism under Nehru’s leadership succeeded in subsuming it by making Tamil Nadu a federated state of United India. It is unbelievable that Sri Lanka with a long and proud history of managing pluralism so successfully before independence is incapable of producing supranationalists to save the country from the ravages of ethnic nationalism.      

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Applying Election Laws to the Letter

by Jolly Somasundram-December 28, 2017, 10:15 pm 

"If one enters the University as a Mr Black, one can’t leave it as a Mr White."
Sir Ivor Jennings

C. A. Chandraprema’s article on the above subject, which appeared in the Island newspaper of 22nd December, eunuched me. I had spent my entire employment lifetime a bureaucrat- a proud one-, in the nonce contributing peripherally to every election- Presidential, Parliamentary, local government- conducted between 1961-1995. (I even watched the 1947 election as a kid, taken by my father to a polling booth in Udugama, in which he served as an official. The ballot box then, was painted in different colours, the ‘symbol’ of the candidate.)

Chandraprema, within the local government election syntax, paints an exaggerated caricature, blasting bureaucrats as a railhead for all bad decisions on elections. They "are waiting to find some excuse, however flimsy, to reject nomination papers and thereby stymie that very sovereignty they they are supposed to uphold", they indulge in "bureaucratic nitpicking", "raise piddling issues which give rise to a culture, of opponents trying to use (bureaucratic) means to knock off the other side even before the contest begins", "run elections like fill- in- the blank contests". Like Monsieur Jourdain, in Moliere’s play The Bourgeois Gentleman, who discovered that he was "speaking prose all his lifewithout even knowing it", Chandraprema’s accusations, generated a feeling that I had led a life of dissimulation, being a bureaupathologist without knowing it. Chandraprema is an honourable man.

From 1931, when the Election Department (EC) was created to implement the revolutionary innovation of universal suffrage, to the current changes where the forthcoming local government elections will be run under a complex electoral arrangement- 60% elected using the first-past-the–post-electoral system, the balance through a closed proportional representative system- the EC had been in the forefront of innovative change. It is a boundary pushing, entrepreneurial organisation. But, Chandraprema asserts that the EC is a bureaucratic organisation, and, sure, Chandraprema is an honourable man.

A number of innovations had been introduced to the recent Election Law, one- much applauded by civil society- wasto ensure a minimum of 25%women representation on the electoral list of a contesting group. It was a great stride forward in the female drive for a countervailing movement for reaching equality.To implement it, the names of all candidates are written on one column of the list, their gender demarcated in another. The qualification of a minimum number of women to be elected, is determined solely by perusing the gender column, since the name column could carry names, common to both genders. (The alternative is to undertake a physical check, which is abhorrent).If aprescribed minimum of women is not in the gender column a nuclear option is applied, the whole list is rejected. It is similar tounseating a member of Parliament because he/she hasdual citizenship, though the person had been elected by an electorate exercising People’s sovereignty (Ref Geetha Kumarasinghe).The inclusion of the nuclear option was a stern reminder to political parties not to play with legal provisions. The female requirement is not a trifling one, but an organic component in the innovations brought about by Parliament to the Election Law, to deepen and widen democracy by embracing women within it.Democracy is not merely a numbers game.Lists, which gutted the 25% minimum, were unemotionallyprevented from contesting the forthcoming local government elections. An electoral contest is not a tea party.Vive les Femmes!

C. A. Chandraprema, a renowned journalist, civil society activist and a prolific commentator on political issues, demurs on the action taken by the Election Commission. In the columns of the The Island newspaper of 22nd December, under the title "Stymying people’s sovereignty through bureaucratic nitpicking," he explains why. He takes the particular example of the Maharagama list which was rejected. He says, "the list has the requisite number of women but the gender of one female candidate had been inadvertently entered as male in the list."There has, so far, only been one form of sex change, that of surgical intervention- the scalpel method. Chandraprema endorses a second method, to surreptitiously introduce the name to the alternative gender list- the smuggler method.In these LGBT days, of gender cross-dressing and gender preening, vision as an indicator of gender demarcation could be horribly misleading. The only sure method is documentary evidence was unprovided at Maharagama. But, Chandraprema is implacable. He says, "to reject a nomination paper on the grounds that the gender of one candidate has been inadvertently misstated in the gender column, can only be interpreted as bureaucratic nit picking. Therefore, if the person handing over a nomination paper states that a particular candidate is female, even though the gender column has mistakenly stated her as male, that would be sufficient for the Returning Officer to accept the nomination paper. It would not be necessary to go to courts to get such a minor error rectified."Chandraprema is trivialising legal electoral provisions.

Chandraprema also quotes another instance, that of Weligama, where the list was rejected but for a different reason. A nomination list has to be handed over by a pre-determined authorised person, to prevent impersonation. In Weligama, an authorised person had not handed over the list but by another. The nomination list was rejected. Chandraprema, in justifying these instances, seems quite at home playing ducks and drakes.

Chandraprema says that minor errors should not attract the nuclear option but be subject to fines. Who will impose these fines? In election law, there are no minor or major errors. There are only errors, as much as there are no minor or major pregnancies, only pregnancies. Any requirement, not in conformity with the law should be dealt with according to the law not journalist whims. The courts should decide whether actions of the Returning Officer were valid or not. Interpretation, on matters of Election Law, should be exercised only by the courts and not by public servants, who could be subject to bureaupathologies. This is the only method by which the people’s sovereignty could be safeguarded.

The organisation vested with responsibility for carrying out election responsibilities in Sri Lanka- the EC- is a living, heritage institution. It is accountable to Parliament, not to journalists or civil society. The EC has built for itself an enviable niche for excellence. After every election, Parliament, which is in the bestposition to judge whether people’s sovereignty has been safeguarded and fulfilled,had always given the EC its fullest endorsement for elections past:no better endorsement is required.

In this article, a journalist is exercising his privilege to be wrong. That is his right.

(Jolly Somasundram was a member of the Ceylon Civil Service (CCS))

Politics move to the village, will it work?

Friday, 29 December 2017 

Whilst the economic challenges remain in Sri Lanka stemming from exports to foreign remittances, from tourism to FDIs in the backdrop of a sluggish economy growing at 3.4%, we now move to the political battle at the village level.

Village elections – 1st time

On 10 February, 15.8 million Sri Lankan’s are expected to vote to elect 8,293 members into the 341 local authorities. This will consist of 24 MCs, 41 UCs and 276 DCs.

The 2018 elections will be unique as it will be the first time where a unique system will be in play in the country; 60% will be elected using the First Past-the-Post methodology whilst the remaining 40% will on the Proportionate Representative methodology.

If I do a deep dive the First Past-the-Post voting method is where the voter indicates a candidate on the ballot paper. The person with the highest votes wins. Almost one-third of countries globally use this system, including Canada, India, Pakistan, the UK and USA, hence it is a tried and tested practice in a democratic country.

The balance 40% get elected in the PR system. This characterises an electoral system reflecting proportionately in the elected body. A key point to note is that 25% female representation being mandatory, that became a contagious issue at nominating times.

0.8m affected by poverty

Even though 2016 data state that poverty is at 4.1% which is 0.8 million people that is actually affected, poverty in Sri Lanka has become a multidimensional situation where the low income people are faced with a situation where there is increasing pressure on the purse for one’s basic consumer needs to be satisfied.

This situation is key to the health of the political debate given that overall NCPI (National Consumer Price Index) headline year-on-year change is 8.8% whilst on average the number is at 4% which means that a small shift in this indicator will take the overall poverty level to double digit. The logic being that the scatter of the poverty belt is at a very close level to the tipping point. This is the reality in Sri Lanka.

If one carefully analyses the data, the poor are faced with gaps in access to quality education, healthcare, water and sanitation, which prevents an individual from moving up the socioeconomic ladder and results in lower drive for personal development, which in turn contributes to the vicious cycle of poverty in the country.

World Bank insight

World Bank poverty and equity data released indicated that the poverty headcount ratio, which is the percentage of the population earning below $ 1.25 a day (PPP) in Sri Lanka, declined from 14% in 2002 to 7% in 2007 and in 2016 it stands at a commanding 4.1%. Elsewhere in the South Asian region, 43.3% in Bangladesh in 2010 earned below $ 1.25 per day, while Pakistan recorded 21% in 2008. In Nepal 24.8% of the population earned less than $ 1.25.

The 4.1% means that the number of people affected by poverty is 0.8 million Sri Lankans on the 15.8 million that will vote on 10 February 2018. The World Bank reiterates that the non-poor are closely clustered just above the poverty line, which means that the number of poor is subject to sharp increases when there are slight changes in economic conditions which is what the Government is trying to avoid by introducing a maximum retail price for 13 items in the basket of food. The issue is that unless the supply chain is examined, these price controls will remain just academic in nature.

If we do a deep dive we will also see that in the rural and urban sectors, the headcount ratios are way above for the former, which means that poverty is essentially a rural phenomenon. This is why the power of the village comes into focus. This is the essence of the political discussion today given the 10 February 2018 elections.

Village and agriculture link

In the strategy of driving growth through the village, the agricultural sector will play a major role. If we analyse the numbers in the agricultural sector, GDP has fallen while the workforce employed has remained more or less the same. Hence, one can argue that a higher level of agricultural output can drive down the poverty level like what we experienced some years back where due to the favourable weather condition we had positive production in tea, coconut, paddy and rubber.

However, poverty does not seem to be inversely related to the growth in overall GDP. This throws out some interesting implications. Merely attempting to raise agricultural subsidies may not raise the per capita incomes of farmers unless accompanied by measures to reduce the workforce engaged in basic business practices like efficient logistics, better warehousing, and value addition strategies like attractive packaging and branding.

Cash grants don’t work

From the above it is evident that any cash grants given for political reasons in the near future will not help a typical villager move out poverty. A strategic initiative must be sketched out to identify opportunities for the poor to participate in economic activity through skill enhancement at the village level. This includes building irrigation projects, causeways and village level warehouses. Provide concessionary funding and technical knowhow by mobilising resources from donor agencies that include promotional support for marketing the produce to indirect exporters to name a few.

Another approach – Chinese strategy

China adopted a unique strategy in 1979. A so-called Village and Town Enterprise (VTE) program was launched. This was essentially a small and medium scale enterprise initiative. The learning to the world that was conceptualised was that one does not have bring the village to the town and drive manufacturing up or hand out subsidies to drive development

A more strategic growth was embarked on by way of taking manufacturing to the villages and agricultural sectors. The phenomenal growth of the Chinese economy was based mainly on the growth of the VTEs. May be Sri Lanka can do the same on the sound footing. After all, who ever thought that a villager from Pannala would become the world’s best maker of lingerie?

Village level credit

A lesson in time as highlighted above is that merely raising budgetary allocations to the agricultural sector is not going to reduce poverty levels. The village level developmental must be covered with a Rural Development Act. This can lead to a drive of extending rural credit to rural non-agricultural occupations. The Bangladeshi Nobel award winning work of the Grameen Bank is a case in point. Maybe the private sector can do the same on a micro basis.

Another best practice I can remember when I worked in India was when Hindustan Lever developed a program on the theme ‘Shakthi Amma,’ which helped the rural area become an integral part of the growth model of the company.

Conclusion 

Given the above background, we see that if the 2018 elections are to make a difference at the village level, one will have to convince the voter with strategic initiatives and not with short-term injection of cash.

Given the debt payments touching $ 3 billion yearly for the next three years, strategic investments at village level will be a tough agenda to follow. The million dollar question is, how will a typical village react at the 10 February 2018 elections?
[The writer is a former Chairman of the Sri Lanka Export Development Board, Sri Lanka Tourism and National Council for Economic Development (NCED). He was also the Commissioner General for Sri Lanka at World Expo 2015. Currently he is CEO of an international property company based in Sri Lanka.]

PRESIDENT SIRISENA APPOINTS A COMMITTEE TO LOOK INTO ISSUES OF REGIONAL CORRESPONDENTS

28/12/2017


President Maithripala Sirisena has given instructions to appoint a special committee to look into the professional issues of the regional news correspondents of media institutions and to submit recommendations regarding the solutions for those issues.

This committee will comprise of the Director General of the Government Information Department, an Additional Secretary to the Ministry of Mass Media and Commissioner General of Labour, the President said that adding that the report of this committee should be submitted to him within three months.

He gave these instructions during a special meeting held at the Presidential Secretariat today (27) regarding prevailing professional issues of the regional media correspondents.

During this meeting, special attention was drawn regarding the salaries and allowances given to the regional news correspondents and also paid attention regarding the other difficulties faced by them in news reporting.

It was also discussed in detail about the facts included in the letter presented to the President at the 6th convention of the Media Employees’ Trade Union Federation.


President of the Media Employees Trade Union Federation Karunaratne Gamage, General Secretary Dharmasiri Lankapeli also  participated in this meeting.

National action plan to combat bribery and corruption

Amali Mallawaarachchi-Thursday, December 28, 2017

A National Action Plan on anti-corruption will get off the ground early next year which envisages a collective effort among stakeholder agencies to tackle bribery and corruption, Director General of the Commission to Investigate Allegations of Bribery or Corruption (CIABOC) Sarath Jayamanne, PC said.

“In the absence of a strong framework to combat bribery and corruption, the National Action Plan will become a “road map in the coming years” outlining guidelines in the fight against bribery and corruption,” he said.

“A National Action Plan on anti-corruption will indicate that the government is in full support of the anti corruption initiative in the country,” he added.

“This move will also project Sri Lanka as a progressive country in the international arena,” PC Jayamanne added.

He pointed out that most countries under different international organisations have pledged to fight corruption and have adopted their own National Action Plans on anti-corruption.

Responding to the Daily News, Jayamanne said the CIABOC together with the Presidential Secretariat and the Foreign Ministry and other key stakeholders such as the Ministry of Public Administration, Law and order, Judiciary and Education will present a general framework for the National Action Plan on anti-corruption as the initial step within the setting up of the National Action Plan.

“A special meeting with the participation of all key stakeholders will take place in the next two weeks to set the general framework, which will include vision, objectives and deadlines relevant to the task at hand,”Jayamanne also said.

“This meeting will most probably be headed by President Maithripala Sirisena.

“While having an extensive discussion on the plan, we can also set the basics, objectives, other priorities and deadlines at this discussion. In three months time, we will be able to compile the main body of the action plan,” he added.

The proposal made by Justice Minister Thalatha Athukorala to compile an action plan for empowering anti-corruption agencies in controlling corruption and creating awareness on the negative impact of corruption, was approved by the Cabinet of Ministers recently.

“The action plan mainly focuses on preventive measures whereas adversarial approach to the matter will be strengthened by the amendments to the Bribery and Corruption Act that will also be introduced by early next year,” Jayamanne said.

 The action plan also includes coherence and coordination, implementation of the convention against corruption, enhancement of the independence of the Bribery or Corruption Investigation Commission, education, awareness creation, capacity building, and technical assistance.

“Some believe that an adversarial approach to bribery and corruption will solve the major part of the problem. Yes, it will definitely have its advantages. However, it is important that we give equal focus on corruption prevention as well. For example, according to recent success of Malaysia in corruption prevention, 40% of their success is due to preventive measures. This is where the education sector comes in. We are looking forward to include corruption prevention topics into the school curricula so that children will be expose to this idea from a young age,” he explained.

“The National Action Plan will be compiled not only with the contributions from the public and private sectors, other vital stakeholders but with the contributions made by the general public as well,” Jayamanne said.

“The contribution of the public to this action plan is of immense importance. We will reach people in rural areas to receive their contribution to the compilation of the national action plan. It is equally vital that we raise awareness on this national action plan among the public as well,” he explained.

The Director General also pointed out that the National Action Plan will strengthen the CIABOC which is a multi tasking organisation that investigates, prosecute, prevent and corroborate internationally to matters regarding bribery and corruption in the country.

“A full recognition from the government along with a national consciousness on the matter of bribery and corruption will strengthen our Commission immensely. Even though our Commission has our own action plan, we cannot extend it as part of the national interest. We had a very weak system against bribery and corruption. So it is the responsibility of the government to establish a national action plan on anti corruption for which the CIABOC can be the cheif coordinator and a key contributor,”the CIABOC Director General pointed out.

UPFA launch ‘Pledge for Freedom’ with 31 political parties

By Yusuf Ariff-December 28, 2017 

The launching ceremony of the ‘Nidahase Sammuthiya’ (Pledge for Freedom) with the participation of leaders and representatives of 31 political parties affiliated to the United People’s Freedom Alliance  (UPFA) for the upcoming elections was held under the patronage of President Maithripala Sirisena at the BMICH today (28).

The ‘Pledge for Freedom’ for good governance free of fraud and corruption was presented to the Maha Sangha including others religious leaders by the President.

Expressing his views, the President said that he will not consider political differences or relative relationships in his journey to build a clean and pure political culture for the future of the nation.

President Sirisena said that through this local government election the SLFP expects to create a sincere, novel political faction which does not bow down to the fraud, corruption and waste as well as who loves the motherland and its people and said that by selecting clean and honest persons who are suitable for a clean people centric political movement, we should mark the approach of building a good government in the future.

He also said that no person in the field of politics can have a personal agenda, but everyone should have a common agenda for the future of the country, nation and the people.

The ability to hold the local government elections under the new mixed electoral system is a great achievement, and the approach to a good political culture will be achieved through this system, the President said that recalling the struggle made for this during the past two years within the government as well as in the opposition.

The ‘Pledge for Freedom’ declared by the United People’s Freedom Alliance is a concept  for the betterment of the country and the nation, as well as for the future generations, the President said that adding through this concept a group of people necessary for  a clear political vision and a clean political movement will be emerged  in the country.

The President also emphasized the dedication of all who are in the election campaign to conduct the campaign in an exemplary manner which follows the elections rules with great discipline.

The UPFA General Secretary Minister Mahinda Amaraweera presented the vow for the Pledge for Freedom and all members jointly took their oaths.

S.B. ‘s new Palace is so huge that a Bhikkhu who attended pirith ceremony loses his way !

(Lanka-e-News- 28.Dec.2017, 8.15AM)  Some weeks ago , minister S.B. Dissanayake who spent  Rs. 115 million ! to construct a huge palace held a pirith pinkama ceremony following its completion. Unbelievably  in a country where public funds going  missing is most common , a most uncommon  incident took place ! One of the monks who attended the ceremony went missing according to reports reaching Lanka e news.

Minister Dissanayake had built this palace of his on a large  land about 4 acres in extent in the vicinity of Thalathu oya Marssana road , at Kapuliyedda . To mark the opening of the palace a pirith ceremony was held some weeks ago.

One of the bhikkhus who attended the ceremony had an urgent need to rush to the lavatory  and one of the householders  had accompanied the bhikkhu to the newly built wash room cum  lavatory.

When the monk emerged  from the washroom cum lavatory after attending to his need  , the  consort who accompanied him had gone missing. Consequently , the monk who  tried to go back to the venue solo where the pirith ceremony was being held had to face a traumatic experience . This monk had lost his way  because Dissanayake’s Kapuliyedda palace is so monumentally large –Mind you ! a colossal  expenditure of Rs. 115 million had been incurred to build that, and the money spent for the land is about  Rs. 20 million !

This massive palace of Dissanayake  is not in the google map  prepared in 2015 , meaning that  the Kapuliyedda  palace was built after Dissanayake secured the ministerial portfolio under  the good governance government which came into power subsequently .

Meanwhile Lanka e news had occasion to reveal details earlier on of  the 100 acres land situated in Red Rock area belonging to S.B. The latter had started a coconut cultivation on that land , and according to reports reaching Lanka e news, during the drought season , the minister had been using the vehicles belonging to  Samurdhi  to transport water to his  land .

The clearing of part of the forest land on  100 acres had been halted because a hotel is to be constructed for S.B.’s youngest son, sources close to the minister  divulged. 

Minister S.B. Dissanayake  who  has no additional income from business or any other ,otherwise than his ministerial emoluments must reveal to the people how he accumulated so much wealth ?  As a representative of the people , it is incumbent on him to  reveal the truth behind this.   At least he can teach the other Sri Lankans too how to become wealthy using his method (provided he has earned legitimately) so the whole country too can become prosperous.

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by     (2017-12-28 02:54:38)

A melody for a milieu From Hubert to Clarence

As an art form, as a means of self-expression and articulation, music is largely self-referential. It has nothing outside itself; the standards and the yardsticks created for it, by various exogenous factors, are subsumed, sometimes eventually, almost always at once. 






2017-12-28

This is why of all the art forms we are acquainted with now, music is the least easy, and the most difficult, to propagandise. The moving image and the live theatre thrive on the mediation of two levels of consciousness; that of the performer and that of the spectator. As such it’s easy and despicably so to elevate those levels of consciousness by resorting to a message, whether that act of elevation debases rather than elevates the art itself being a topic for another debate. Music, in any case, is purely a product of its milieu, the milieu that manufactures and then consumes it. The act of consumption, in other words, is no different to the act of production; there can be no mediation between the two, only a levelling down of any and every barrier. 

Part of the reason for this, of course, is the comparatively frugal economic base that can sustain a song or for that matter an orchestral performance. The movies will always remain the most industrial of all art forms, reliant on technology in ways that no other art form can hope to match, but the advent of digitalisation and web helped liberate music from the opera house and the concert hall in much the same way that the blogosphere and YouTube helped disseminate criticism and the moving image. The dichotomy between production and consumption that you come across in the cinema, television and of course literature is simply not there in the realm of music. 

The transformation of our cultural sphere, from a largely esoteric affair reserved for the colonial elite to the more plebeian catalogue of art forms (cinema, theatre, literature, etc) after 1956, and the revolution it wrought, went hand in hand with an explicit need to liberate those art forms

The evolution 

And because such a dichotomy does not exist, the milieu to which the producer – the vocalist, the lyricist, and the composer – belongs is roughly also the milieu to which the audience, despite any personal quirks individual members may have, belongs as well. The 20th and 21st centuries, with its differentiation between production houses and opera houses, with its democratisation of an entire art, helped sharpen this unique quality, which is how in Sri Lanka you can trace the evolution from the high-flown, high-strung rhetoric of the old composers – who derived their inspiration from the Parsee theatre and a mishmash of Hela Sinhala and several Indian languages, in their songs and musical pieces – to the Pop quality, low key to some, of Neville Fernando, Clarence Wijewardena, and closer to our time, Bathiya and Santhush and Sanuka Wickramasinghe. It is this latter pop sensibility that I wish to explore in some detail here, because in their milieu we see an interesting phenomenon being played out. 

The transformation of our cultural sphere, from a largely esoteric affair reserved for the colonial elite to the more plebeian catalogue of art forms (cinema, theatre, literature, etc) after 1956, and the revolution it wrought, went hand in hand with an explicit need to liberate those art forms from the straitjacket of verbal and visual profundities (which were really, at the end of the day, shallow and hollow) indulged by, inter alia, the plays of John de Silva and Sirisena Wimalaweera, the novels of Piyadasa Sirisena and W. A. de Silva, and the cinema of the Minerva Players. Kadawunu Poronduwa begins with a tableau which culminates with the death of the main character Ranjani’s (Rukmani Devi) father; this tableau, in which the individual characters are identified with reference to their race and social position, reflected the verbosities that our filmmakers, playwrights, and writers in general liked to go for. It is with W. D. Amaradeva that we see a much needed toning down of those verbosities, with his attempts at linking the literary with the romantic through his sarala gee canon. 
Retrospective review

In a retrospective review of Rekava and Maname, written for the Lanka Guardian in 1982, Regi Siriwardena, our foremost critic writing in English, contended that contrary to the belief held at the time, Sarachchandra’s plays (especially Maname) initially appealed, not to the poor, but to a class that had been left out (absented) by every Government until then; the middle class Sinhala speaking bourgeoisie. This was not really a bourgeoisie, rather a petit bourgeoisie aspiring to be the bourgeoisie, who would patronise the moral exhortations, at times chauvinistic, at times explicitly archaic, echoed in not just Sarachchandra’s early plays, but also the work of the Colombo Poets and the moralistic yet romantic films of L. S. Ramachandran (Deiyange Rate, Kurulubedda, Sikuru Tharuwa). Eventually this petit bourgeoisie, alluded to as a distinct social subset by Ajith Samaranayake in a tribute to Camillus Perera, congealed into a class who called the shots in our cultural spheres. Amaradeva was their icon, their manifest destiny. They would have been nothing without him.

Amaradeva was the peak and the grand culmination of a trend that began with Devar Surya Sena, whose attempts at compounding our traditional sivpada and pal kavi with the grandiosity of the opera and the Church service were criticised as imitative by Sarachchandra and warmly reflected on by Tissa Abeysekara (indicating the manifest differences of opinion Sena’s work compelled and continues to compel today).

Those who laid the groundwork for the later masters – including Hubert Rajapakse, whose eloquent recitation of Danno Budunge, misconceived as a Buddhist song by our nationalists, would find its pivot decades later with Kishani Jayasinghe (only this time provoking, not infatuation, but hatred) – were not fully aware of what they were doing. 
Buddhist ethos

From these two masters we come to Ananda Samarakoon and Sunil Shantha. Rajapakse and Sena were scions of the Anglican elite, who reflected a sensibility different to the more vernacular community from which the latter two hailed. Shantha in particular, who extensively resorted to the piano and organ (a staple of the Catholic Church) in his work (including his tribute to Munidasa, “Kumarathungunge”), did not have a polished voice that could reckon with the past masters, and neither did Samarakoon, but they were truly, deeply connected with the Buddhist ethos which they went to in some form or the other (Samarakoon converted to Buddhism, while Shantha, a fervent Catholic, in his later phase pared down his melodies to invoke the unmusical intonations of the Buddhist faith, particularly with “Po Da Daham Sihile”). The shift from the Anglican elite to the Catholic poor was essential at this juncture because it opened up a crevice that would be filled, after 1956, by the baila and the calypso singer: from Neville Fernando (“Gayana Gayum”) to Paul Fernando (“Golu Hadawatha Vivara Karanna”). Amaradeva was more or less a product of all these. 
 At the heart of the baila and calypso that preceded Amaradeva was a contradiction, particularly with the two foremost second generation singers, M. S. Fernando and Anton Jones. Their lyrics, which are for the most devoted to their own workings and rhythms and nonsensical shades of meaning, articulate a dichotomy between a life of luxury and ease and enjoyment and the lack of any money or financial security which was needed to maintain such a life. 

Clarence pandered to the milieu which, while shirking the proletarian (if one can use that term) and self-indulgent ethic of the second generation baila vocalists, enthralled the milieu which produced them (the petit bourgeoisie, the middle class, the thuppahi) by bringing about a fusion between their low key sensibilities and the sensibility that thrived on a more literary, witty, and meaningful conception of music. For it to work, and for it to ensnare the consumerist, hedonistic middle class (Buddhist or Catholic, located predominantly in the metropolis), however, the songs that Clarence put out had to subsist on a class rift between the householder and the servant. It is this rift, which you come across in ‘Mango Kalu Nande’ and ‘Mame Ape Kalu Mame’, which earned Clarence, the Moonstones, and the Super Golden Chimes their place in the sun. They were poking fun at a way of life they had got out of, a way of life Anton Jones celebrated, a way of life they attributed to their helpers, their maids, their aayas. 

In the end, therefore, by parodying them, he parodied the men and women we wanted to be. This curious paradox – between our affections for and repudiation of them – became its own standard, its own yardstick. And our own standard, our own yardstick.  

Greek Toga and Buddhist Robe — Links and Cultural Significance

The cultural synthesis, particularly, in the sphere of philosophy had been more marked during this period. For example, the Indian concepts of ‘Karma’ and ‘Rebirth’ are said to have influenced the world outlooks of Plato and Pythagoras and the practice of monasticism had influenced the philosophy and lifestyle of the monks in Greece.

by Lionel Bopage - Dec 28, 2017

Greek invasion of India 

( December 28, 2017, Melbourne, Sri Lanka Guardian) In the 4th century BC, the Greek invasion of India led by Alexander the Great opened a new dimension to the trade, commercial and cultural links in the Indian sub-continent.[1] He was said to be “unusually open to foreign religious influences”, “embraced many non-Greek deities and practices” and promoted “cross-cultural integration aimed at preventing and pacifying ethnic tensions in his settlements.”[2] Long before his arrival on India’s north-western border, there are references in early Indian literature calling the Greeks “Yavanas”.[3] This word appears in the Mahabaharata. For seventy-five years after Alexander the Great’s death, Greek immigrants poured into the East. The new Hellenistic culture spread as far east as India. Throughout the Hellenistic period, Greeks and Easterners became familiar with and adapted themselves to each other’s customs, religions, and ways of life.

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