CALLS TO AMEND SECTION 81 TO INSTITUTE CIVIC DISABILITY

Sandasen Marasinghe and Camelia Nathaniel-Wednesday, February 7, 2018

A sum of Rs. 12 billion of Perpetual Treasuries has been withheld and the Central Bank Governor has assured that the money is there, Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe told Parliament yesterday.

He made this observation in Parliament moving the adjournment debate on the Bond Commission report and on the Presidential Commission report on Serious Crimes and Abuse of Power (PRECIFAC).

The Premier also suggested that Parliament should consider amending Section 81 of the Constitution, the section that imposes civic disability on the recommendation of a Presidential Commission.

He also queried if the party leaders were ready to amend section 81 of the constitution or if they were scared to do so, he asked.

Moving the adjournment motion, the Premier said the President had presented two Presidential Commission reports, namely the Bond Commission Report and the PRECIFAC report on December 30.

“However as the members needed to debate on the same, I sent a letter to summon sittings on January 10.”

He added that the Chief Opposition Whip Anura Dissanayake pointed out that it was impossible as the reports had not been presented to Parliament. He added that the reports were presented to Parliament on January 23.

Thereafter, on the request of the members, the debate was fixed for December 8 and then the Election Commissioner said that if the debate was taken on February 8 the Local Government Election will have to be postponed by two days. “Therefore,Speaker Karu Jayasuriya and I decided to take up the debate on February 6 (yesterday),” the Premier said.

He said that action, in connection with the Bond Commission Report has already been taken. Statements have been taken from relevant persons, some have been produced before Courts and some have been remanded.

“With regard to the PRECIFAC there are steps yet to be taken. There are around 30 persons involved. A new Act will be presented on the Central Bank.We will reform the Central Bank by way of a new Financial Act,” the PM said.

The government will also present legislation to create a Budget Office soon. He also added that Parliament will have to consider on amending Section 81 of the constitution. 

A Double Bind: Reflecting On Women’s Lived Realities on Independence Day

Editor’s Note: This piece was submitted as part of an ongoing series marking 70 years of Independence.

SHASHINI GAMAGE- 02/06/2018

As Sri Lanka marks 70 years since Independence, yet again gearing up for an overt display of pageantry that stands as an annual reminder of our own militarised past and present, we are in need of a rigorous rethinking of how we perceive this day, beyond sovereignty from the coloniser. The discourse around nationhood, citizenship, and decolonisation, that remains very much a part of interpreting the fourth of February continues to be framed through a patriarchal and majoritarian thesis, entrenched in the glorification of victory from the coloniser and since 2009, victory for the majority.  

Nationalist narratives of independence often tend to be embedded in patriarchal generalisations, historical subjectivities, and is majoritarian by design. In such a discourse around independence, in particular commemoration, a gender perspective is largely absent and the celebrations are distant from women’s lived realities. Such a narrative, more often than not, reinforces reactionary and old-fashioned value systems that are detached from the realities of today’s women’s lives, centering only on their traditional gender roles as mothers, nurturers, wives and symbols of the cultural purity of this nation.

As migration scholar Nira Yuval-Davis points out, a gendered reading of citizenship considers women’s citizenship in relation to ‘women’s affiliations to dominant or subordinate groups, their ethnicity, origin and urban or rural residences’  in contrast to that of men. A feminist analysis of citizenship is necessary to denaturalise and unpack the ‘totalising claims of nationhood’, as cultural scholar Purnima Mankekar argues.

Both traditional and new media content in Sri Lanka has increasingly become melodramatic, blurring the divide between news and entertainment. Most mainstream and web-based media content in Sri Lanka are largely focused on generating emotional reactions from people, rather than producing factual, contextual, and impactful stories. Women, in particular as interview subjects, then become further pulled into being objectified through sensational gossip-style stories, targeting their bodies, sexualities, privacy, and personal choices. In this sense, the first question this article raises is the absence of women’s representation and a gender space across media platforms in Sri Lanka, since 70 years of independence.

Addressing this gap, I began to document women’s narratives, in the form of question and answer in-depth profile interviews, with a feminist intent and through a female gaze as part of my PhD project. The site, Women Talk, produces a collective narrative of women, as feminists,activists, scientists, environmentalists, conservationists, entrepreneurs, financiers,sportswomen, psychologists, artists, writers, musicians, designers, photographers, filmmakers,educators, journalists, politicians, challenging and questioning the traditionalist patriarchal narratives and gender roles that are usually assigned to them in ethno-nationalist discourses. Indeed, when women write culture they ‘reverse emphasize’ cultural inscription, as feminist scholars Ruth Behar and Deborah Gordon have argued in their notable work decades ago.

How do these interviews that are oral accounts of women’s expertise, knowledge, experience, and views contribute to examining independence, citizenship, and nationhood in Sri Lanka through a women’s rights and gender lens that is also intersectional?

Firstly, the interviews show that women’s rights and women’s roles as feminists have been questioned and rejected as far back as the formative years of the women’s movement in the early 1980s in Sri Lanka. As expressed in many interviews, a ‘feminist’ is still seen as a toxic person with the word having connotations that imply feminist as a woman who breaks the sanctity of the marriage and the family, propagating Western virtues and values.

As a result, feminists that have been pioneering the struggle for gender equality and women’s rights for decades as well as young feminists working in gender spaces in Sri Lanka continue to be received within these labels, as non-conformists, dismantling tradition and therefore, disturbing the nation.

In this regard, as interviewees have expressed, it is still extremely challenging to engage and generate a public dialogue on rights and issues relating to sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR), LGBTIQ rights, gender based violence, relationship education, and MMDA and MPL reforms that concern the rights of women’s bodies, freedoms, expression, sexualities, and gender diversity.

Many feminists find themselves being harassed and targeted, in ways unimaginable, in particular on online spaces. Increasingly, the virtual space of the internet has become a manifestation of the real life violence and inequalities that is deeply entrenched in the everyday lives of Sri Lankan society against women, minority groups, and LGBTIQ persons.

Therefore, gender based violence and violence against women is not merely an online phenomenon but part of a larger culture of violence, against both women and men who do not conform. As interviews show, domestic abuse, marital rape, and intimate partner violencecontinues behind closed doors as well as out in the open in Sri Lankan society.

Women are discouraged from seeking help or leaving their marriages. Women who have opted to counter this violence are, in many cases, rejected by the society as well as their own familial circles. Immediate support services, such as trained police, shelters, and counselling, needs strengthening in order for women to stand up to the everyday violence in their lives.

While the initial steps made to set up official mechanisms for transitional justice are highly commended by women working across diverse fields, they emphasise the need for action on many issues.

In particular, interviewees stress the need to address mental health issues that are prevalent in war-affected areas and paying attention to the socioeconomic and cultural rights of marginalised groups of women, such as that of female ex-combatants and war widows. Livelihoods, resettlement, and community empowerment needs acceleration, paralleling transitional justice mechanisms. In this sense, several interviews highlight the potential of social enterprise and the role small and medium entrepreneurship can and have played in strengthening women and communities.

For women in politics, while achieving quotas was a significant accomplishment in terms of women’s rights in Sri Lanka, they continue to face suppression, simultaneously navigating the highly patriarchal culture and behaviour of politics in the country.

The contribution women in arts have made in terms of producing culture, in particular in times of war and peace in Sri Lanka, remains overlooked and in need of recognition and mainstreaming, as women’s roles in art, as writers, poets, filmmakers, photographers, artists, musicians, performers, actors, and many more, tend to be generated, often, in alternative spaces, as interviews with women in arts show.

Issues and rights relating to environment, conservation, and climate change, too, require gendered approaches, in all thresholds of law, policy and action, in order to address these aspects in ways that could benefit women’s positions in Sri Lanka.

What needs to be kept in mind is that it is not entirely a dystopia out there because women have been working on creating an equal and just society for decades in Sri Lanka, from the grassroots to the alternative to the mainstream, despite the opposition and suppression their work faces on a daily basis.

If 70 years of freedom from the coloniser is a milestone worth celebrating through pageantry, the work and struggles of these activists, feminists, women’s groups, and women, fighting for freedom from a patriarchal system is worth celebrating through strengthening laws, policies, attitudinal changes, and visibility. A celebration of freedom from the coloniser and the nationalist inclination today to publicise a definition of the nation and womanhood through the Victorian moralities of that very coloniser forms a double bind.

For more content around Independence Day, click here. To view a video series featuring voices around Independence, click here. 

HERE ARE SOME ELECTION RESULTS

Mahinda likely to win the highest number of local authorities but it could read otherwise at Presidential Election

• New vote will talk the result but still remains an unknown factor till the count.
• Many will intentionally not vote or spoil the vote. Party that carries a bulk non – vote is the loser
• UNP leader looks weak after the findings of the Central Bank Bond Inquiry

2018-02-07


Political parties - carry no credible second strings or alternate leadership –are calibrated according to the leaders’ needs. The problem lies in getting voters to walk a distance to a booth to vote for a dowdy politician.

Many will intentionally not vote or spoil the vote. Party that carries a bulk non – vote is the loser.
Many of the under-45 generation may spoil ballots or become home birds. One thing is for sure - counting of votes will take less time, percentages will be less than at previous local elections.

Colombians think the UNP can win because of the minority vote and the split in the SLFP vote. The UNP is, forever, in the realm of wishful thinking...

UNP leader looks weak after the findings of the Central Bank Bond Inquiry; Mahinda Rajapaksa is unable to address coherently to swing votes and leaves his more popular brother Gotabhaya in the lurch and hogs the limelight that does not endear him to the middle vote.

Mahinda might be banished from Parliament for supporting a party he does not represent.

President Sirisena and his cahoots without a whiff of a chance, trail as the third force even in his home district; relies on carrying a breakaway vote from the prime parties and the middle vote by trying to become a born again Good Governance disciple - does not appear convincing - looking at his record of three years in office.

Events have made Sirisena more competitive – he hopes UNP would look to him as their alternate leader. He finds he cannot walk his talk.

Urban voters desire not to contribute towards electing corrupt politicians witnessing their comfortable lifestyles: reinforced by the painful cry of the under-45 age group -“All politicians are corrupt but for the JVP that talks mumbo-jumbo.”

Mahinda Rajapaksa will gain a majority of the ‘don’t–care- a damn’ senior voters from rural constituencies that are justifiably loyal to the Rajapaksas for making life secure and comfortable with less economic hardships, knowing little, how his financial Czars manipulated assets to a virtual zero.
Under - analysed under-45 voters, hold the key to the elections, watching television to acquire insights by shifting channels, as a family unit, constitute the silent majority of 2018 as in 2015, where a mighty Government was downed by pen and pencil.

It is the emerging pattern amongst the senior voters of the over-45 years age group, 20 minutes drive away from Colombo at a traffic-less time, in the urbanised hamlet of Hokandara [‘Kopi Kade’ is filmed and is poised for ‘shooting’ as the celebrated final ‘village’ closest to Colombo] in the Kaduwela PS that gave Rajapaksa a majority of around 25,000 in 2010 when Wimal Weerawansa [WW] roosted the Sinhala-Buddhist belt, where temples divide devotees as to their proximity to the temple to service them effectively –are poised to vote for Rajapaksa again.

That is the traditional blue stock vote minus the middle - floating vote.

Sirisena enacts the jocular element in his new role with a born-again synthetic image of ‘A Johnny trying to look good belatedly’.

Rajapaksa and Wickremesinghe have gone beyond two generations of new voters and seek to go into their next generation. 

Green belts have gone underground where die-hards will surface at voting time.
Most want Ranil out of contention - to win next time, without him. Wimal Weerawansa carries a deflated image, living in a luxury home built within the electorate while Champika Ranawaka is deemed a worthless chump, where most monks are for a saffron- robed politics without the milky white usurpers in national dress (Gammanpila & Ranawaka) remembering the days when JHU sent 10 monks to Parliament without laymen.

Today in Hokandara, most kids are wedded to the temple via the Sunday School - routine.
Youth are genuinely more civic conscious than the doctrinal Buddhists– a factor in the coming election. Freedom and Rights on a righteous path means more than kamma and dhamma.

New vote will talk the result but still remains an unknown factor till the count.

Votes for Rajapaksa would have reached a near number majority as in 2010, if the ‘buddy party’ of the Rajapaksas carried the romantic name of Gotha (Remembered fondly for winning the war and for his urban development that gave Kaduwela two much-used walking paths).

But with the leadership in the “Hands of slick Basil and doddering Peiris” - MR voters have zapped away from their leader.

He has sadly outlived his time: most voters believe he will not pass the baton to his popular brother to ensure his sons to gain ascendancy.

Youth (under-45 vote) will send their message loud and clear at the forthcoming election.

Rajapaksa and Wickremesinghe have gone beyond two generations of new voters and seek to go into their next generation. Will the grandchildren take to the odd couple! Vote for Rajapaksa is a vote against the present leadership and not for a mission with a vision.

Rural population overwhelm urban voters - rural family ties make elders rooted to continue a lifelong romance with the political party of their forefathers and kenneling them as famed names of SLFP/UNP families within the constituency.

Much depends on the rural under-45 voters as Rajapaksa wing of the SLFP needs hefty majorities reached in borough constituencies in the South to minimise the avalanche coming against them from the North, East and the Centre where minority voters vote more.

Senior citizens in Sinhala villages keep to family traditions and hardly make a shift in the vote other than for the rebellious youth. Much of the UNP/SLFP can be attributed to such.

Out of touch with reality, Colombians think the UNP can win because of the minority vote and the split in the SLFP vote. The UNP, forever in the realm of wishful thinking, tried to postpone Local Government elections with the Sirisena in toe, in fear of losing, now, walk the streets as if they are easy winners. People are more concerned in wielding the big stick to teach the rulers a lesson to remember at the poll.

Youth are more civic conscious than the doctrinal Buddhists– a factor in the coming election. Freedom and Rights means more than kamma and dhamma.

That was long before the Bond Inquiry findings clipped the wings of Ranil Wickremesinghe. If future elections are held on schedule, UNP will become a serial loser of many more, if this result shows a way forward.

A favorable result is compelling to Ranil Wickremesinghe and Mahinda Rajapaksa; otherwise they may have to retire gracefully with their oldies and baldies after internal party squabbles.
Beware of the politically minded Public Servants that shift their allegiance as well.

They are a motley crowd as named by the Auditor General.

They are ultimate careerists and desire to remain with the winning side, searching for a sure winner.
Presently on the edge, they will hunt with the Government/Opposition on their reading of the results.
Many are in service, due intakes that were patently with political affiliations, which readily shifts with the turn of events.

Voters desire to punish a Government in power and to teach it a lesson for bringing hard times on them.
Results will show whether UNP voters desire to save Ranil or jettison him? If UNP fares badly, Ranil’s days are numbered.

At most Local Government Elections - held mid-term - people vote with the party in power but it is unlikely this time as support is waning for the Government rapidly.

Rosy Senanayake with her good looks, the UNP’s surest winner – not for being attractive alone (It is a disadvantage as green -eyed women cast less votes for beauty than the men) because her haunt is the Colombo Municipality- the last stop for a waning UNP.

Muslim Female LG Candidates Face Brunt Of Communal Clerical Misogyny

By Ruwan Laknath Jayakody –February 6, 2018

• The Face of Muslim Terror / The Cult of Maulavi Niyas Siddeeq Siraj et al
• “Even in or as groups, only a few contestants are left now to go out for canvassing,” –  SLMC Puttalam District LG Candidate/SLMC Puttalam District Women’s Congress Coordinator Bisliya Bhutto

Misogyny is a most potent prejudice, a heady brew of fragile egos and colossal insecurities, delusions of power and wounded machismo, inflated narcissism and unrepentant ignorance, with the fear of female sexuality acting as the piston jackhammering the molten core of the nucleus of social order – the rubric of the family; the effects of which are akin to a Molotov cocktail. The concept of possessing the autonomy to articulate one’s existence as being one that all human beings including females are born with seems alien to a group of Muslims, specifically three Lankan citizens claiming to be religious leaders representing the Islamic clergy.

The Victims and the Culprits

Take for an example, Maulavi/Mullah Niyas Siddeeq Siraj, against whom the Women’s Action Network, acting on behalf of female Local Government (LG) candidates contesting from the Puttalam District on the Sri Lanka Muslim Congress (SLMC) ticket, namely Cader Ibrahim Rinoosa, S. Rasika Udayangani (Tamil) and Bisliya Bhutto (also the Coordinator of the SLMC’s Puttalam District Women’s Congress), has complained in writing to the Election Commission (EC) on 18 January, 2018. As is most often the case, the herded follow the herd and so the beta males follow the alpha’s twisted trail and appetite for dominance and subjugation. In the wake of Niyas’s public utterings, two acolytes of Muhammad, eddying the effluvial terrain of the Quran and the Hadith, one going by the name of Abbasi (based in Puttalam) and another by the name of Abdul Jabbar Mohamed Azeem, have echoed and reiterated sentiments similar to those of Niyas. The latter is reported to belong to the Sri Lanka Thowheedh Jamath/Jama’ath (SLTJ), specifically the Jamiuth Thowheedh Thihari (the latter standing for Thihariya). He is also reported to run a madrasa (educational institution) and a media unit called the TMC, both located in Thihariya.

 

The Incidents and an Analysis of the Applicable Legal Regime

Niyas in sermons delivered on or about 5 January this year, from the Jamiuth Thowheedh mosque in Thihariya, video clips of which are circulating online on social media, has expressed disgust at females contesting at the LG Elections around the corner, claimed that the women in question are sinners and of loose morals, ridiculed and shamed the males in the candidates’ families for allowing them to contest and also the political parties for accommodating Muslim women, and issued a clarion call to the society, specifically to the Muslim community, to correct (as the butler in Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining would put it) the women candidates.

The second republican Constitution of Sri Lanka of 1978 provides answers to the question of females contesting at polls. Article 12(1) of the Constitution guarantees the right to equality and provides equal protection of the law while Article 12(2) of the Constitution further provides for the freedom from discrimination on the basis of race, religion, sex and political opinion, among other such grounds. Simply put, if men are allowed, so too should women be allowed.

Article 14(1)(g) of the Constitution allows for one to engage on one’s own or in association with others, in any lawful occupation  and seeking to be an elected representative of the people comes well within this category.

Article 21 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (soft law) and Article 25 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR – hard law; to which Sri Lanka is a State Party to), both hold that everyone shall have the right and opportunity to directly take part in the government of one’s country and in the conduct of public affairs.

 

Back in Sri Lanka, Article 12(4) of the Constitution states that special provisions may be made by way of law, subordinate legislation or Executive action for the purpose of the advancement of women. In this respect, Section 27F(1) of the Local Authorities Elections (Amendment) Act, No. 16 of 2017, which is an affirmative action, holds that the total number of women members in each Local Government body (Municipal Councils, Urban Councils and Pradeshiya Sabhas) shall not be less than 25%.

The law then is clear about women contesting. Is this spewing of bile by Niyas and company, mere political posturing which is common at the time of elections or invective that is symptomatic of a more general malaise?

Regardless, the singling out of family members of female candidates, in particular the males in their lives for shaming, thus making them lose face in the eyes of the community in terms of their reputation and social stature, is especially insidious, as although such is not the case in Sri Lanka at present, the causation of many an honour killing that has taken place in families belonging to tightknit communities elsewhere in the world, again especially among those in Muslim communities, has similar origins.

The activist who penned the letter to the EC in this regard has derided the said public speeches as being discriminatory on account of one’s sex and gender, and has deemed it as constituting hate speech that incites violent provocation against Muslim female LG Election candidates, impacting their safety and security and dignity including of their loved ones, adversely. The mobility of such candidates and even of their family members owing to being publicly targeted in such a manner, could be made restricted by virtue of such speech, therefore affecting free movement in a negative manner, in contravention of the freedom of movement enshrined in and guaranteed by Article 14(1)(h) of the Constitution.

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UNP draws first blood on bond scam arrests

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• Says arrest possible due to Govt. protecting judicial independence as “sacrosanct” 
• Arrests example of good governance in action, insists UNP remains committed to 2015 mandate 
• Reiterates PM instructed AG to take action in 2016, wants greater resources for AG
• Calls for PRECIFAC reports to be given same attention, offenders apprehended in timely manner
• Recaps steps taken by UNP including Ravi and Mahendran removal 
• Insists UNP has “moral responsibility” to hold offenders accountable and “purge” them from ranks 

Wednesday, 7 February 2018 

The United National Party (UNP) yesterday sought credit for the arrest of bond scam suspects and insisted it was possible because the Government had protected judicial independence, as well as promoted investigations and called for greater resources to be allocated for investigations concerning the previous administration. 

UNP General Secretary and Public Enterprise Minister Kabir Hashim yesterday released an extensive statement noting that the arrests were an example of “good governance in action” and that the party remained committed to fight against corruption in line with the mandate given at the 2015 presidential elections.

The Minister also called for more resources to be given to law enforcement officials to investigate cases against the previous administration and hold offenders responsible without delay.

Given below is the full statement released by Minister Hashim.

On Sunday, officers of the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) placed Perpetual CEO Kasun Palisena, and beneficiary owner Arjun Aloysius, under arrest after they were named on Friday at the Colombo Fort Magistrate’s Court as suspects for having committed serious financial crimes against the state. These arrests come in the wake of the report of the Commission of Inquiry into the Issuance of Treasury Bonds, which found that former Central Bank Governor Arjuna Mahendran had provided inside information that allowed Perpetual Treasuries to be illegally enriched through Treasury bond auctions that took place during his tenure.

Notwithstanding the many months for which we have all waited patiently for results after Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe instructed the Attorney General’s Department to take action against the offenders in November 2016, the country owes its gratitude to the officers of the CID whose tireless efforts and dedication led to today’s arrests. Their work has been unimpeachable and untainted by personal or political agendas. The decision to place Aloysius and Palisena under arrest, and to seek the attendance of Mahendran before court, was a decision taken unilaterally by the CID in consultation with the Attorney General.
These officers investigating this serious financial crime and all other crimes can be assured that under this Government their independence will continue to be sacred, and that the President and Prime Minister are committed to supporting the law enforcement community and justice system to prosecute all offenders no matter what their political affiliation.
 This is Good Governance in action. It is what the people of Sri Lanka voted for on January 8, 2015, and it is a vision to which we remain committed.

It is instructive to compare the investigation into the Treasury bond scandal to the hundreds of criminal investigations into acts of violence and graft committed by the Rajapaksa regime.

Unlike the billions of dollars stolen from the mouths of our people through the likes of the MiG deal, Helping Hambantota, the Norochcholai Power Plant deal, these Treasury bond crimes occurred on our watch. This Government and the UNP have a moral responsibility to hold those responsible accountable and purge those involved from our ranks.

Arjuna Mahendran has been removed as Governor of the Central Bank. A UNP minister has stepped down from his Cabinet position and post within the party. The law enforcement community dedicated unprecedented resources to getting to the root of the bond deal, exposing wrongdoing, and holding the culprits accountable. No politician from any party can claim credit for these acts. The accomplishments of an independent police and Attorney General’s Department can be credited primarily to the 19th Amendment to the Constitution, which the UNP and President Sirisena both fought for vigorously.

This Government is committed to safeguarding the independence of these sacred institutions as well as the Judiciary. That is Yahapalanaya. The department and police must embrace their independence and use the maximum extent of their powers under the law to prosecute and convict all offenders, including those named as suspects in the 34 reports forwarded by the PRECIFAC commission into serious crimes, fraud and corruption under the previous government.

These thirty-four complex financial investigations combined have to date received fewer resources, less manpower and attention from the police and attorney general’s department than did the Commission of Inquiry into the bond scandal.

The public cannot be blamed for wondering how many more criminals could be brought to justice and how many more billions of rupees in stolen state assets recovered if these other investigations too received the same attention.

This government will not interfere with the police and Attorney General’s Department and dictate their priorities. If there is an absence of resources to achieve the results that Sri Lankans deserve, it must be brought to our attention by law officers, so the Government may solve the problem. This is how the FCID and Special Presidential Task Force on Asset Recovery (START) came to be, and the Digital Forensics laboratory of the CID.

Equally important as our duty to protect the independence of these institutions is our duty to empower them with the tools, resources and political will and support necessary to carry out their duty without fear or favour.

Our police and prosecutors have several more challenging investigations and criminal trials of national importance before them, from the vicious murders of Lasantha Wickrematunge and Prageeth Eknaligoda, to the corruption of the likes of the MiG and Avant Garde deals.

Our message to the prosecutors, police and other public officers is a simple one: Conduct your investigations with thoroughness and speed. Deliver the justice that the people of Sri Lanka deserve and have long awaited. Your Government proudly stands by you and salutes your service.

SL High Commission in London suspends defence counsellor

Walter Wuthmann-Wednesday, February 7, 2018

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs said it has taken “serious note” of a video circulating online showing the Defence attache to the Sri Lanka High Commission in London making threatening gestures towards protestors on Sunday.

“In this connection, instructions have been sent to Sri Lanka’s High Commissioner in London today, February 6, 2018, to suspend him from work, with immediate effect,” the Ministry said in a statement.

The video shows the counsellor behaving in an offensive manner towards Tamil protestors across the street from the High Commision.

“Authorities in Sri Lanka including the Sri Lanka Army will initiate inquiries on the incident immediately,” the Foreign Ministry said. 

Ukraine requests Abu Dhabi to return Udayanga

2018-02-06
Ukraine authorities had reportedly requested the Abu Dhabi authorities to handover former Sri Lankan envoy to Russia Udayanga Weeratunga to Ukraine as he holds Ukrainian citizenship.

Weeratunga who was detained in Dubai on Sunday (4) while in transit to the United States was later transferred to the authorities in Abu Dhabi by the Immigration and Emigration officers as per an INTERPOL warrant issued.

He was accused in a probe into the acquisition of MiG-27 fighter jets from Ukraine, while he was also accused of supplying weapons to anti-Government forces in several countries and was absconding the Sri Lankan authorities using a Sri Lankan Diplomat Passport.

Meanwhile, Police Media Spokesman Ruwan Gunasekara said that a special investigation team was to leave for Abu Dhabi this evening to hold discussions with the Abu Dhabi authorities over the possibility of extraditing the former envoy to Sri Lanka.

The team that is to be sent to Abu Dhabi consists of seven officers including a Financial Crime Investigation (FCID) officer, two senior officers from the Attorney General's Department, an Immigration and Emigration officer, two Criminal Investigation Division (CID) Officers and an official from Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

Although reports said that a red warrant had been issued to arrest Mr. Weeratunga, reliable sources told Daily Mirror that only a blue warrant had been approved by the INTERPOL which only permits “to collect additional information about a person's identity, location or activities in relation to a crime”.

However, addressing a public meeting in Galle today, Law and Order Minister Sagala Ratnayake said Sri Lanka is to request the Abu Dhabi government to return the accused ex-diplomat to Sri Lanka as soon as possible. (Thilanka Kanakarathna)

Sins of the past Govt cannot be forgotten- Anura Kumara

By Anuradha Herath-2018-02-07

Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP) Leader, Chief Opposition Whip and Member of Parliament Anura Kumara Dissanayake says, "Our strongest objections are against the present corrupt Government. The battle against the present administration's crimes, corruption and frauds should not permit the corrupt persons who were involved in previous frauds to come to power. We will not allow the previous corrupt administration to gain power, by criticising the misdemeanours of the present administration, as a means to power. We are attacking both factions at the same time."

Sins of the past Govt cannot be forgotten.docx by Thavam on Scribd

The new math or the same old matrix

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 Wednesday, 7 February 2018 

If members of parliament are O-Level-failed, it’s a failure of the legislature that reflects poorly on the struggling electorate as much as on state education. But when the chief executive demonstrates his grasp of the new math (“70=30”), it’s a triumph of the new society and the new historiography which eludes the rest of us plebes. Sorry to note, though, that even patricians adept at culling four decades of national history – or perhaps it was merely the UNP’s 40 years in power that the President cut out from his national day speech – are prone to hidebound traditionalism in the self-serving interest of survival.

However, let us not unfairly cast aspersions on a head of state who has managed to stage verbal spectacle after slip of tongue resulting in social media pyrotechnics. Because, even elected representatives of the people have a right to their opinions – informed or otherwise – unless these infringe on the people’s fundamental rights. Therefore, let us take the apex of national leadership at his face value and simply examine whether having his cake and eating it will help us all eat humble pie. Or just a shamefaced UNP, if we take the moves against its cronies as SLFP-driven punitive measures and not state-machinery at work… at LG-polls time, it’s harder to tell…

One thing we can heartily agree with our head of state on is that corruption is a no-no for a nation-state at our juncture of development, or emergence from our dark ages… and it must go. Or, as our worthy more pithily phrased it, albeit thanks to an adroit translation or an erudite subeditor: “Anticorruption is the new patriotism.” This certainly makes for a nicer sound-bite than “Patriotism is the new nationalism” (2009-15) or “Neo-liberalism is the new developmental-ism” (2001-4, 2015-). Of course, to judge by recent developments, the President means to have his cake and eat it, and make ‘premier members’ of his cabinet eat humble pie to boot. If recent ‘arresting developments’ are anything to go by, the highest of the high in the land like no other sincerely believe that judgment must begin in the household of the gods. The house next door – i.e., the home of one’s coalition partners – is good enough for starters.

There are those who might wonder if the indictment and arraignment of the principal accused in the bond scandal is an act, and if so whether the horse play can be maintained. For one thing among those interrogating the sudden activity of law enforcement with a hermeneutic of suspicion, the timing exudes an interesting aroma. Be that as it may, far be it from us to impugn the awful majesty of the law. Hail and hooray that at least a semblance of justice is being meted out, where previously a travesty – a two-act tragicomedy – prevailed. Might we hope that the imperatives being acted upon by HM the Mikado MS will prompt HE the Lord High Poo-bah RW that Something Must Be Done to cleanse the Augean Stables of sullied party coffers, crooked campaign financing praxis, and the Nelsonian-eye ethic which benefits one personally as much as in a partisan sense.

Conventional wisdom: the respective coalitions in government are stage-managing a show of ‘arrested developments’ in order to conduct convincing artificially contrived hostilities at the poll

Devil’s advocate: this time it seems the rift is real, and despite appearances something may happen following this spate of arrests

Ground reality: there is no evidence of a new political culture as long as culprits from present and previous regimes are at large – simply the old paradigm of protect those who will scratch your back… or stick a knife in-between your ribs…

I’m not holding my breath beyond the tenth of February. Because when the dust has settled on the biggest poll in some senses in our recent history, I’d like to see who’s still standing and who’s outstanding – if you know what I mean. Since a promise to arrest the alleged criminals still swanning about as large as life to this date is as good as any other undertaking by the name of manifesto, let’s not bring up the bodies quite yet once again. However patriotic (in the older sense of the word) our absconder may be, naïve and sentimental are not the honourable epithets we would attribute to the senior bureaucratic strongmen who won the war. If the bird doesn’t fly the coop at his impending arrest, at which the wolves are slavering, we’re all living in a gilded cage.

Some of us are still living in a fool’s paradise when a relatively junior police officer is arrested in a volatile case that has been under national scrutiny for so long… at the eleventh hour before a key poll! The noises made about consulting the upper echelons of the legal domain for advice on the arrests of other senior defence officials supposedly culpable in the killing of the errant editor may well be part of the managed spectacle. Forgive me for the sceptical spectacles. I’ll rejoice with the rest of you cynics when justice has finally been served – in the full knowledge that even dead men (of whom nothing but good must be spoken) were well and truly capable of playing political games for the highest stakes using their journalistic legerdemain for less than noble causes.

Speaking of which, many must be the venerable greybeards who nod sagely at a prime ministerial sentiment that his assistant leader of the party ‘must’ – or was that ‘may’ or ‘might’ – step down... or do well to – or whatever other gracious opinion was expressed with the utter disdain for treating a nation of voters as adults that the GOP has mastered for decades. Let me not even get started on the despicable ex-despot who would be tyrant and saviour for life, who (with no sense of guilt or shame) pokes the number-crunching sleeping bear from the sidelines with his sidewinder missiles – rattling sabre about how the sovereignty of the state is compromised by coalition politics. By the way, happy independence is compromised in no little measure by what happened down Hambantota way over the past several decades under the rule of men entirely lacking in a sense of macroeconomic proportion blinded by their bloody ambitions.

But we were discussing having your cake and eating it. The President in his address to the people of the nation deserves applause for pinpointing corruption as the single greatest impediment to the implementation of the national interest (in a matrix of the Growth, Development, Progress, we aspire to and certainly possess the potential for). However his call for safeguarding the traditional values and culture of our ancient civilization must give us who live in the twenty-first century pause. This is not merely a case of the shudders at what hidebound disaster may befall civil society and the liberty we thought we’d won with the defeat of ultra-nationalist secessionism or the hideousness of lap and pole dances to mark our freedom. The latter’s a matter of taste, and the former a case for the law courts anyway.

What really worries me is whether the marriage of national development with traditional values may not only stymie the GDP matrix, but introduce a new social and economic culture that’s a hybrid of Big Brother and Brave New World. Say the love child of Theresa May-economics on a mad March day and tribal African paternalism. Or a bastardised version of Mahinda Chinthana by any other name…

The acid tests are still ahead. Time will tell if there is sufficient political will to see the anticorruption drive which has recently got off to a new movement in fits and start move the machinery of state into higher gear. Or whether it was a fit, or false start, or the first but not last signs of a failing coalition running on fumes. Of course, all of it could be simply a non-starter…

The Acid Tests

(to be attempted by all LG candidates and their political party leaderships – no deposits will be refunded in case of sudden loss of face, faith, or fundamentals of governance at the hands of an irate polity)                               

A. Essays

“Time will tell if there is sufficient political will to see the anticorruption drive which has recently got off to a new movement in fits and start move the machinery of state into higher gear.” Critically engage. Willingly suspend disbelief. Come on, you can do it! 

B. Short Answers

I. Translate this: “For one thing among those interrogating the sudden activity of law enforcement with a hermeneutic of suspicion, the timing exudes an interesting aroma.” Is it synonymous with ‘it stinks’? And why are you so suspicious?

II. Interpret this: “Might we hope that the imperatives being acted upon by HM the Mikado MS will prompt HE the Lord High Poo-bah RW that something must be done to cleanse the Augean Stables of sullied party coffers, crooked campaign financing praxis, and the Nelsonian-eye ethic which benefits one personally as much as in a partisan sense.” Apply it – we mean you, Your Majesty and Your Excellency! 

C. Multiple Choice Questions  

1. Give us an example of the new math…

a. It takes 1 to tango, lap or pole dance, if and when you’re monarch of all you survey

b. 2 heads are better than 1, though neither is thinking clearly (it seems)

c. 30 is the new 70, because if you deduct the UNP’s terms, that’s what’s left over
2.Which of the following does not represent a traditional value?

a. A lap dance

b. A pole dance

c. A devil dance 
3.Would you consider any of these a truly ‘arresting development’?

a. AM in the a.m. of the polls

b. GR in the p.m. of the L.G. polls

c. MS slumping in the popularity polls
4. Fill In the Blanks

I. We’ve been independent for _____ (30/70) years. (Hint: it’s not 30.)

II. We’ll be dependent on (China/India)  _____ for the next _____ (30+70, 70-30, 30-70, 30x70) years.

III. GDP is key to _____ (Growth/Development/Progress/a second term).

IV. Defending traditional values keeps _____ (patriots/nationalists/presidents/all of the mentioned) happy.
5. Quote Completion

“(Anticorruption/Anticlimax/Antidisestablishmentarianism) is the new _____ (Patriotism/Nationalism/Pathetic Fallacy).”

One more thing

I look forward to more arresting developments. But I’ve waited so long that hope is now the thing with feathers – it’s flown. Since the roosters who ruled have flown the coop in the face of the farmers’ duplicity it looks like the small fry are going to buy the farm… translate/interpret that…   

A senior journalist, the writer is Editor-at-large of LMD. Not a traditionalist at all he still believes that what is worth defending nationally is worth dying for; but not in vain; and not if it is covered up.  

Seventy Years

"To belong to an island is to look outwards, understanding that the horizon is not simply a boundary between what is visible and what is invisible, what is known and unknown, but a challenge: to imagine, to yearn, to leave, to search, to return."

- Nicholas Laughlin in So Many Islands: Stories from the Caribbean, Mediterranean, Indian and Pacific Oceans

by Sanjana Hattotuwa-February 3, 2018, 12:00 pm 

It took many years from the time it was requested, for it to be installed. Large, heavy and with a rotary dial, our family’s first phone was placed in my parent’s room. Before that, my sister and I walked around two hundred meters to use the only phone in our neighbourhood. It was placed in a shop that half-heartedly sold other things, almost as an excuse to lure more people to use the phone. BBS in the 90s meant something very different to what the acronym is known for today, and I used to be a member. Later, I connected to the Internet over a modem at 28.8 kbps, using Netscape. I skipped tuition during my O/Ls to tinker with motherboards, and programme dBase III Plus. I assembled computers, and was amongst the first to try out Windows 95 when it was launched, with a pirated copy of course. There was little to no local content on the web at the time, and the web itself was new.

There was no social media, and there were no smartphones. Neither had been invented. Our family bought the Island newspaper. We could only watch two State owned TV stations, and the first private TV based UHF broadcasts, only possible to be viewed with the purchase of a new antenna, would be advertised around this time. Achchi still listened to ‘Muwanpalassa’ on AM radio. There were no FM stations, or private radio stations over any frequency. There was no broadband. I recall family visits to other homes, and reciprocally, many coming over to visit us. This occasional, an unplanned face to face interaction, was richly textured - the adults spoke at length, the children played or were utterly bored with each, and either way, didn’t dare interrupt.

This is a snapshot of the media and information landscape I grew up in, and until my first mobile phone in 2002, I inhabited. What I knew of contemporary Sri Lanka was mediated through this media. It’s all very different now. Already, the heady optimism around social media at the time of ‘Arab Spring’ has now given way to a new skepticism around whether with greater choice, comes a stronger democracy. It’s important though to locate the pace of progress of telecommunications in Sri Lanka as we reflect on seventy years of independence. In around a quarter of a century, we have gone from paper, frequency, brick and mortar based media to digital media. In any bus, while private radio blares through speakers, commuters remain glued to their screens. Our politics, as well as our appreciation of country, identity, and our place in the world, comes from a range of diverse voices, each one competing for authority, attention and peer recognition. When the Duke and Duchess of Gloucester came in 1948 to grant us independence, the televised coverage of their visit would never reach anyone in the then Ceylon for decades. Updates on Twitter on the visit of the Earl and Countess of Wessex, in 2018, generates responses in real time, many of them rightfully ridiculing the farcical genuflection of royalty we left behind in 1948. But what’s really changed?

How we see ourselves and our country are today inextricably entwined with the style, tone, substance and selection of media consumed personally, targeted individually, shared widely amongst friends, but not consumed beyond the like-minded. In our seventieth year of independence, we are, like so many countries, splintering as a society from within, our attention colonized by social media’s addictive power. Looking back, when growing up, mainstream media had this strange communal glue - all the subscribers of one newspaper, more or less thought of the world and country in the same way, allowing for disagreement to take place with the subscribers of another newspaper, face to face or through the ballot. Today we see our country differently, depending on what we have accounts on, who we choose to follow, which platforms we engage on, what media we see and for how long, what we decide to share and thereby validate amongst friends and how we choose to capture what we experience, with documenting through image now more important in many instances than savouring the place, person or experience. This is not a world my grandparents would remotely recognize.

But there is no point hand-wringing about a simpler or better past. Our media and information landscape is by way of technical architecture and original content, better than it was a quarter century ago, and a world apart from what it was just a few years ago. The democratization of media, the affordability of access and the rich engagement over many languages - Tamil, English, Sinhala, Sin-glish, emoticons, memes, stories, stickers - renders and reveals many countries, all jostling with each other for attention - sometimes violently clashing, and most other times, existing independent of each other to serve those who subscribe. What we so desperately lack today is not freedom from the British Empire, but independence from puny imaginations - an island-mentality that first and often only sees as a threat anything and anyone from outside, and anyone different from within. We drag down, including viciously over social media, those who dare to be something better than we can be, or are contrary to how we think everyone should be. Even in digital spheres, we remain pre-modern. We continuously blame on the British what we have ourselves failed to engineer, and ignore the growing danger of social media in a country where many cannot and do not question what they consume.

But this is all known, and I do not want to end with petty pessimism, a luxury of a few who can afford to be thus. The tryst of our own democratic destiny, Nehruvian or not, is inextricably entwined the media and information we consume. We are what we choose to engage with. I look at the hate and ignorance so evident all around us, and despair at how such a verdant island can be infected with such small-minded people. But every time I think this, I also recognize the value and potential of media today to open hearts and minds - to emancipate, to nourish and in our country, create active citizenship. To embrace as Nicholas Laughlin notes, the potential of being a country greater than we are, and what we think we can be.

Our independence isn’t at Galle Face. It is on this page, and if online, in every thumb or key-press. In choosing to engage, share, like, comment or forward, we promote a vision of our country in our own mould. That mould needs to be re-cast. We have independence from a colonizer, but we remain colonized in our outlook. That’s on us, not the British. We may today engage with seventy years of independence digitally, but do so with a socio-political mentality that pre-dates even 1948. Unless we can address this anachronism of self-perception and imagination, we will continue as a country to be cosmetically modern, but catastrophically colonized by our own demons.

University Of Peradeniya: Utopia Never Lost – A Reply

By P. Soma Palan – February 6, 2018

I refer to the Article titled “University Of Peradeniya: Utopia Never Lost” by R.P. Gunawardena (RPG) in Colombo Telegraph on 25th January. I unreservedly agree with him that the “1950s era is the best period” of this University. Yes, the 1950s is undoubtedly the halcyon era of the University. But this University in its original name, the University of Ceylon, which was the only one University in existence, was undoubtedly, an”Utopia” in its composite sense, then. But RPG’s view, that “the University of Peradeniya- Utopia Never Lost” cannot be accepted without qualifications. I agree by definition the word “Utopia” means an ideal, a perfect state. That is, where nature, academia and cultural and other associated element blend to form an Utopia. When you describe the University as an Utopia, it means it is an ideal, perfect state in all its composite elements. One cannot isolate one element only. That is, its salubrious clime, verdant landscape, its picturesque natural setting. The reference is to the University and not to its natural physical landscape. But then, a University is a composite whole, which gives it life and grandeur. Any transformation, primarily, in the student population, the quality of its Faculty members, recreational activities, and its traditions can either enhance or diminish the ideal/perfect state of the University. Therefore, it is questionable whether in its integrated whole, the University of Peradeniya, is a Utopia Never Lost. Barring its natural setting and beauty, the University, in my opinion, had undergone changes and it is a lost Utopia, not” Utopia never lost. R.P.G by the phrase “Utopia never lost” means, it still continues to exist. But the reality bellies this conclusion. The Utopian ideal has ‘lost’ itself, in all fronts, other than its physical landscape. The human factor and its activities have robbed its serenity, solemnity and aura.

I am fortunate to belong to the golden era of 1950s. I entered the University in 1959. All what is ‘lost’ can be known only by knowing what we had. The quality and high standard in every sector of its activities we had, during said period, have been lost, unless a conscious resurrection and redemption of its original ideal takes place. This gradual loss commenced from the year 1962, when the first batch of Swabasha educated students entered the University, in my final year. Progressively, the standards and quality deteriorated in all sectors of the University life. It is the harmonious blend of all other elements, reinforcing each other and with the beauty of its landscape, which gave the University its throbbing life and the Utopian atmosphere. Sans these associated elements, the University would be a mere lifeless geographical landscape and nothing more. The University of Peradeniya had lost its Utopian ideal in the following segments:

a) Utopia Lost- in Quality and standard of students

 

With the increase in the number of students entering the University, consequent to the Swabhasha medium , standards and quality of the students declined. In the 1950s English was the medium of instruction. Whatever said, an education in a foreign language as English, gave the students a sense of discipline and decorum, social refinements, unlike the native language. The students who entered the University in the 1950s, though through the English medium, were, however, drawn from all parts of the country and not confined to elite Colombo city Colleges only, but other outstation Colleges and the Maha Vidhalayas  in the rural areas as well. They were all well mannered, disciplined and with social values. This proves that, what gave them the cultured behavior and character was the English language. Being a foreign language, students strived to live up to the standards of that language, whereas, the native language gave laxity in the use of the language. Secondly, the undergraduates of that era, did not have any discriminatory notions of race and religion. It was never in their minds. All considered themselves as one brotherhood of the nation. Thirdly, they were not politically motivated. Their interest in political ideology was primarily of an academic nature, either Trotskyism or Marxism or capitalism. The students were not actively and vociferously in Political Party politics. Each Hall of Residence had its Student Committees on matters of student welfare. The University as a whole had the Students Council to represent students’ interests with University Administration. In stark contrast to these, the post 1950 era saw the emergence of active Political Party politics and Students Unions, with the patronage of the Political Parties of the country, becoming aggressively engaging in agitations, being part of the Inter University Students Federation. Undergraduates’ Protests, Strikes and demonstrations to further political Party ends, became the norm. During the ‘50s, there were hardly any strikes, protests within and without the University Campus. Student Leaders were of a superior caliber. The Student Council President during my time was none other than the present Government Minister, Sarath Amunugama, who typified the then, gentlemanly class. The University lost that class of undergraduates.  The University Campus is now painted with Red banners, posters, placards in every nook and corner and every majestic, flowering giant trees. These ugly and chaotic sights besmirched the Utopia, that was then, the Utopia was lost, and not the” Utopia, never lost”. That is how the serene and solemn atmosphere of the beautiful landscape lost its charm, by the human factor.

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