Reconciliation called ‘Godot’ and Mullivaikkal Week

2018-05

The first public consultation by the Members of the “Office on Missing Persons” was held in Mannar a week ago, 01 year and 09 months after the law was passed in Parliament. The mood of the participants, the affected mothers, fathers, family members and civil society representatives weren’t in line with the placards that read “Welcome OMP” in Tamil, held outside, for the media.  
Though there wasn’t much hype over the event, especially in Sinhala mainstream media, the coverage nevertheless said, there was scepticism, frustration, disagreements on powers of the OMP and much grumbling about how far the OMP would actually go with its investigations.
There was one simple demand though from the participants. A demand for a fundamental difference in how the OMP would approach the festering issue they are mandated with.
Participants were quite clear about it, although the ITAK leaders of the TNA in Parliament meekly gave into the Yahapalanaya leaders in bringing the OMP Act for missing persons.  
These mothers, fathers and family members said, their sons and daughters didn’t just go missing. They disappeared after they were handed over or taken over by some State authority.
The message was clear from day one of the OMP meeting with affected families in Mannar.
With much resentment about the setting up of the OMP without any consultations with the affected persons, they wanted the OMP and by default, the Yahapalana Government to at least accept, their family members were not just ‘missing’ but were “victims of enforced disappearances” at the hands of the State. It meant in no uncertain terms, “If the Government is not even willing to accept their family members were victims of enforced disappearances by the State, what purpose would it serve for them to come before the OMP?” Obviously, if they were persons who had just gone missing, then there is no necessity for the Government to have a special Act passed in Parliament and have an OMP at taxpayers’ expense.

"Why the South needs to re-visit the bloody massacres during the JVP insurgency to learn a lesson or two on reconciliation"

If the “yahapalanaya” Government believes and the ITAK leadership agrees they were about persons gone “missing”, these people should have been asked to lodge complaints with the closest Police Station for the normal investigation process to take place, instead of an OMP looking into them. The bottom line is, if the Government is not prepared to accept the issue is about “enforced disappearances”, then the OMP is another fraud played out on these people.
It is not simply on legal jargon these affected families in Vanni are arguing on. Yet, they firmly believe it is the responsibility of any duly elected Government, to accept there were enforced disappearances of citizens of this country during the last phase of the war and after the war was, militarily concluded.  
That, in fact, is the conflict. These affected families know how their beloved sons, daughters and family members disappeared, but this Government, as the previous Rajapaksa regime did, does not want to accept the responsibility of State security forces in disappearances. That leads to many things that are obvious. Reconciliation remains just rhetoric in Sri Lankan politics, reduced to promises in public statements made by Southern political leaders and to mostly irrelevant livelihood projects for North and East, funded by donor agencies and their Western Governments.  
No difference to the previous Rajapaksa Government, the present “yahapalana” Government restricts their response to North and East and that too without consultations with war-affected people and without considering what their priorities are.
They want the world to accept what they do as “reconciliation” is just right.  
One major reason for reconciliation to remain in the ‘clouds’ is the political impotence of Sinhala leaders in facing up to the challenge of taking up post-war issues.  
Their Sinhala racist bias is in avoiding any dialogue with the Sinhala South, on what the war-affected people keep demanding as their legitimate due. What is therefore termed as Reconciliation in the Sinhala South is what Southern Sinhala extremism would not question.
But “reconciliation” depends solely on the acceptance and the ability of the Sinhala South to dialogue issues in the war-torn North and East.  
The Southern Sinhala ability to accept the conclusion of the post-war human issues are far more serious and complex than what the South experienced during the JVP led massacres and the State repression.

"Scepticism, frustration, disagreements on powers of the OMP and much grumbling about how far the OMP would actually go

Accept, their family members were not just ‘missing’ but were “victims of enforced disappearances” at the hands of the State."

Army camps established in the South and the district military Coordinating officers appointed to co-ordinate security (Lt. Colonel Gotabhaya Rajapaksa was Co-ordinating Officer Matale) were withdrawn a few months after the JVP terror campaign was brutally crushed.  
All who were detained with and without proper legal proceedings were released without prosecutions. Detention centres that were run by the military in most parts of the South were dismantled within a very short period. Schools that were occupied by the military were handed over to educational authorities with equal speed. The military was immediately removed from all civil activities and from security operations in the South.
Most, unfortunately, there was no serious and consistent campaign demanding the 60,000 disappearances that Mahinda Rajapaksa spoke about in his Human Rights campaign should be investigated into.
The Mothers’ Front that Mahinda Rajapaksa along with Mangala Samaraweera brought on stage led by Dr. Manorani Saravanamuttu was swallowed up by then Opposition SLFP and thus folded up without much impact. In 1995 under President Chandrika Kumaratunge’s Presidency, the Manouri Muttettuwegama Commission could count only around 24,000 disappearances from representations made to it.
Regrouping of the JVP was also accepted and allowed.  
Nobody asked the “new JVP leaders” where they hid their weapons and ammunition. No one asked for investigations into hundreds of killings attributed to the JVP and demanded arrests of suspected JVP cadres.
Neither the Police nor the military intelligence visited their homes regularly and tracked their daily life. They had all the freedom to get involved in political activities.
True enough, there were no investigations into “excesses by security forces and the police” as it was after the 1971 JVP insurrection when the Kataragama Manamperi arrest, torture, rape and murder was investigated and the military officers responsible were prosecuted. After 1987 to ‘90 bloody massacres were over, both the affected Sinhala families and the Sinhala State had reconciled to leave them behind and get along. So much so, no one ever bothers to ask if the proscription slapped on the JVP during the 1983 July Tamil pogrom was ever lifted.  
North-East is certainly treated differently after a much bloodier end to the war. Security forces camps that were established during the last stages of the war and after still remain with permanent structures.  

"One major reason for reconciliation to remain in the ‘clouds’ is the political impotence of Sinhala leaders in facing up to the challenge of taking up post-war issues."

Regions occupied by security forces have not been given back to their legitimate owners. The intelligence and surveillance networks still operate. The military has carved out profitable areas of economic life in North-East, for their own businesses.
And they remain decision makers in Northern and Eastern daily life purely on the strength of Sinhala Buddhist politics.  
Without any serious discourse on these issues in the South, Reconciliation remains like the proverbial Godot that never comes.
This reluctance in Southern politics is what radicalises agitations in the Vanni and the North.  It is this reluctance to accept responsibility for the disappeared and the dead that mobilises affected people to commemorate the dead. It is this reluctance in the South to accept war atrocities that have driven the Tamil people to demand investigations.”  
It is also this Sinhala Buddhist politics that compel the Vanni and North to say the OMP will not deliver results and it would not, unless the Southern Sinhala leaders turn South instead of North, to give reconciliation the lead it deserves.
It is the stubborn and sectarian reluctance in Sinhala South that decides the radicalising of the North-East in the absence of effective reconciliation.  The South needs to re-visit the bloody massacres during the JVP insurgency to learn a lesson or two on Reconciliation- to accept Mulllivaikkal week as the Tamil version of the “Il Maha Viru” commemorations and de-militarising as that is what took place during post-1987-90 repression in the Sinhala South.  
That certainly would be the path for reconciliation and confidence building to begin a new way forward with a shared destiny.  
Maybe, I am asking exactly the opposite of what the Sinhala extremism and the Sinhala political leaders want to live with. I wish I could be wrong on that. 

Human bones found in Mannar excavation site

17May 2018

Human bones have been found in an excavation site on Wednesday in Mannar after work began to erect a new entrance way in the town. 

The bones were first discovered within sand that had been excavated from the site and sold on to local residents earlier this year. 

One resident, who discovered bones he suspected of being human origin, informed the police on March 26 of the finding. Officers visited his home and excavation work at the site was suspended pending further investigation. 

On Tuesday this week, a Mannar judge, police officers and forensic specialists visited the site and embarked on preliminary excavations of the site, revealing many more bones believed to be of human origin. 

Related Articles: 

29 October 2016 : Human skeleton found in Kilinochchi

04 April 2016 : Abandoned Mannar well to be investigated for possible skeletons

01 July 2014 : Skeletal remains of LTTE cadres reportedly unearthed in North

29 April 2014 : Mannar mass grave skeletons moved to Anuradhapura

27 February 2014 : 9 skeletons uncovered in Mullaitivu

10 February 2014 : 3 more skeletons unearthed in Mannar mass grave

27 January 2014 : More skeletons found, total rises to 53 - Uthayan

SIR JOHN KOTALAWALA’S LAST WILL VIOLATED TO INTENSIFY PROJECT TO PRIVATIZE EDUCATION – BIMAL RATHNAYAKA

16/05/2018

“The John Kotelawala National Defence University Bill to be presented in Parliament is far more dangerous than the White Paper on education that was brought before the country in 1981 to destroy free education. This is the gravest bill presented in the 21st century to privatize education. The bill gives provisions to privatize state universities and to establish private universities spending public money and there has not been given any room for dialogue. Hence we, as the JVP and the Socialist Students’ Union (SSU) emphasize that all organizations that represent free education that includes mass organizations, students’ movement, medical unions, university students’ parents’ associations and the whole Nation should rally to defeat this sinister move,” says the National Organizer of the JVP Parliamentarian Bimal Rathnayaka.

The Member of the Central Committee of the JVP Dr Nalinda Jayatissa and the National Organizer of the Socialist Students’ Union Rangana Devapriya were also present at the press conference held at the head office of the JVP at Pelawatta.

Speaking further Mr Rathnayaka said, “The whole Nation has joined to agitate against SAITM that was maintained to create substandard doctors and in a bid to privatize education in the country. The government, in November last year, promised to abolish SAITM. In such an environment all those who were in the struggle against SAITM accepted on humanitarian grounds that students who were studying in SAITM should not be penalized. Accordingly, it was agreed to get SAITM students who had necessary qualifications stipulated by the Medical Council to study in state universities temporarily. A committee too was appointed for the process. While this committee is carrying on its activities the government has resorted to illicit moves and has brought this bill.

Sir John Kotalawala Defence University was set up under the Sir John Kotelawala Defence University Act No 68 of 1981. according to his last will, Sir John Kotelawala wanted his properties to be used for the benefit of security forces to pursue higher education and training. However, the government is trying to bring in a new bill to intensify privatization of education. The new bill will violate the provisions of the University Act of 1978 so that public funds could be utilized. It will enable foreign and local educational institutes to enter into agreements with the John Kotelawala Defence University and send their students for university education. It will also enable private tuition institutes also to do so. There will be no need for a student to get through the GCE Advanced AL and secure a high Z Score to get a degree from such institutes. Anyone can get a substandard degree from such ‘degree shops’ if they have money. It is a situation that exists in countries such as India and the USA where the degree has no standard.

We saw how the likes of Maithripala Sirisena, Ranil Wickremesinghe and Lakshman Kiriella shed crocodile tears for SAITM students. They said they would not allow any injustice to those students. Now, these rulers are making use of SAITM students to set up private universities in a different model.

For this, the security forces are deployed and an institute that comes under rules and regulations affecting security forces is to be established and the bill gives provision to destroy education in the country in a manner that has never happened in this country before.

To go before the Supreme Court against this bill it has to be presented in Parliament and the Leader of the House should read its preamble. However, last Friday the copies of the bill were kept on MP’s table so that we lose the opportunity to go to Court.

Now, we hear that the government wants to withdraw the bill in the face of protests by Anti-SAITM People’s Wall, students’ movements and other organizations. What this government has done is to violate the last will of Sir John Kotalawala and use it to privatize education. Normally, in a civilized society, the last will of a person is respected and valued. This government is not concerned about such values but has come down to the low level of defrauding a person’s last will.

The university enforced by the bill would be established under the Ministry of Defense. Until now, Kotalawala Faculty was for the higher education affairs of the security forces. However, for the first time in the world children of civilians are to be educated in an institute established under a defence ministry. This is why ‘education shops’ are to be established violating Sir John Kotalawala’s last will. This institute will be under military rule in addition to the rules and regulations that cover civil organizations. The institute will also have the ability to evade University Act 16 of 1978 so that they can have their own way of admission, examinations results and awarding degrees. As such, even those without qualifications could be admitted and anyone can get degrees, postgraduate degrees and diplomas etc.

In our country, there are various institutes established to examine professionalism of doctors, engineers, lawyers etc. A good example is the Sri Lanka Medical Council that decides the standard of doctors and their education in our country. Those who come back with a foreign medical degree, as well as, students who complete the medical degree in this county have to fulfil determinants of the SLMC. However, according to this bill, Kotalawala academy doesn’t come under any such standard as it is given special privileges. However, universities under the UGC would not get such opportunities. If this Bill is implemented people’s money could be used for private enterprises. Also, the bill would be utilized to establish militarized universities. A defense university should present degrees relevant to the defense. However, Kotalawala academy would have a large number of students studying various private courses and a large amount of funds would be used on behalf of them which students in state universities would not get.

On the other hand the government, through this bill, attempt to deploy security forces to privatize education. It is the government that has to directly confront struggles to protect free education and against SAITM. However, if this bill is implemented there is the possibility of directly deploying security forces against such struggles. For, in such instances, students’ opposition would be directly against security forces. What the government knavishly attempts is to deploy security forces for its project of privatization of state universities, the attempt the government has failed so far. Hence, the JVP would rally people’s forces in order to defeat this sinister move of the government. We call upon the masses to rally to defeat the destructive bill. The forces such as university teachers’ organizations, students’ movements, parents associations and all other forces should come together to defeat this draconian bill. We could assure all that the JVP and the Socialist Students’ Union (SSU) would be in the forefront of the struggle.”

-Lanka Truth

The Insistence of Memory in Sri Lanka

The survivors wait less patiently. They demand the truth about their missing loved ones. They defy the prohibitions on mourning their dead and construct makeshift memorials out of the wreckage of their cemeteries.

by Kate Cronin-Furman-May 17, 2018
Courtesy: Los Angeles Review of Books

( May 17, 2018, Boston, Sri Lanka Guardian) By the time I got there, the bones were gone. But eight years out from the end of the Sri Lankan Civil War, everything else was still there, carpeting the beach where the final battle was fought. Suitcases half-buried in sand, battered metal cookware, orphaned TV remotes, photo albums disfigured by water damage, and the yards and yards of fabric, shredded and lying in viscera-like loops on the ground.

The Insistence of Memory in Sri Lanka.docx by Thavam on Scribd

Unfortunately, Learned Academics Like Dayan Are Pushing The Country Down The Precipice In The Name Of Sinhala-Buddhist Nationalism!

By Veluppillai Thangavelu –MAY 16, 2018

Veluppillai Thangavelu

Dayan Jayatilleka (DJ) suffers from chronic anti-Tamil and federal phobia for no valid reasons. As the flag bearer of Sinhala-Buddhist racism and majoritarian, there is no surprise he is opposed to any form of power sharing. The allegation that the LTTE killed the greatest number of educated Tamil political personalities is old stuff. He is parroting such allegations for decades. He is simply shedding crocodile tears for the dead and not the living. The fact of the matter is war crimes committed by both the armed forces and LTTE should be investigated. That is exactly what Resolution 30/1 is demanding. However, in the eyes of the Tamil people, Prabhakaran is a war hero and continues to be venerated and celebrated cutting across party affiliation.

The irony is Dayan Jayatilleka has no tears or compassion for the thousands who perished when SLAF planes dropped cluster bombs indiscriminately. Even hospitals were not spared and Gotabhaya yelled that hospitals are legitimate military targets! He got the UN officials and NGOs out of the way to avoid eyewitnesses to the war. The Army for its part shelled the area knowing well there are hundreds and thousands of civilians in shelters!

Has DJ conveniently forgotten the fact that Rajiv Gandhi escaped death narrowly when sailor Vijitha Rohana Wijemuni attacked him with a rifle butt in 1987? This individual who has donned the robes of an Astrologer was in the news recently when he predicted the death of President Sirisena before January 26, 2018.

Prabhakaran was no Hitler since he never advocated the racial superiority of Tamils over Sinhalese. He stood for equality between the Sinhalese and Tamils. It is Mahinda Rajapaksa who eminently fits the personality of Hitler when he claimed:” I am a Sinhalese and this land belongs to the Sinhalese and Tamils should listen to what I say as a Sinhalese” in Kilinochchi in 2014.

As much as Prabhakaran by no means a Hitler so are Tamils are not Germans. When the victorious allied armies rolled into Berlin they were greeted with bouquets and flowers by the German people. But sadly there were no flowers or garlands for the Sinhalese armed forces, the so-called liberators according to DJ. Wherever the Sinhala army advanced the Tamil people fled to LTTE controlled area for safety. There is not a single occasion in which the Tamil people went over to the Army controlled area.

Nine years after the war the Tamils of Northeast hate the Sinhalese army who are still occupying large chunks of private land that belongs to the people. As I write the frustrated villagers sailed back to the island after tired of waiting. They attached white flags to the front of the dozens of fishing boats that were lined up and made their way towards the island. Wary of a heavy-handed military response, the white flags signalled the peacefulness of their demonstration.

The Iranativu island is located 6 Nautical Miles west of Nachchikuda and is made up of two islets, Iranativu North and Iranativu South covering an area of just 5.93 Sq.Kms. It comes under Poonakary Divisional Secretariat in Kilinochchi district. People from Iranativu were displaced in 1992 and settled down in Nachchikuda due to the military offensive. They have been living in Mulankavil for the past 26 years without any livelihood support and without any hope for the future. After the end of the war and following the resettlement from IDP camps in 2010, the residents made several attempts to move back to their own lands. On May 1, 2017, the residents of Iranativu began a peaceful protest calling for their lands to be released. Whilst permitting the villagers to stay, the Sri Lankan navy remains on the island, fuelling uncertainty about the residents right to live in their own lands. Thankfully, the Secretary to the Ministry of Resettlement who visited the island has agreed to release the lands and then help resettlement.

According to Presidential Secretariat, sources the armed forces continue to occupy 13,013.06 acres of land belonging to Tamil civilians. The highest occupation is in the Jaffna district where a total of 4,599 acres is under occupation by the Army. In Valikamam North out of a total of 6381.5 acres, only 2,475.6 (46.21%) acres have been released. The figures for Kilinochchi district is 1,515 acres, Mullaitivu district 1,150 acres, Vavuniya district 1,872 acres and Mannar district 2,391 acres. These figures are hotly contested by civil societies involved in resettlement.

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A look at British politics: Should Sri Lanka revert to First Past the Post system?

Thursday, 17 May 2018

In 2011, Nick Clegg the leader of the Liberal Democrats pushed for a British referendum to change the Westminster-style First Past the Post (FPTP) system. The Conservative Party opposed this move. The Labour Party wanted to move the system away from FPTP although sections of MPs within the Labour Party opposed it making the Labour Party divided as a result. Labour vote base is in the cities while the Conservative vote base comes from outside the city areas of UK.

A similar comparison can be made to Sri Lanka. The UNP similar to the Labour Party draws its support from the cities while the SLFP like the Conservatives, draws its support from the rural areas. The UNP and the Labour party are similar in the sense they draw urban votes and both of them are no fans of the FPTP system. Labour have not been able to change the British system away from the FPTP but the UNP under President J.R. Jayawardene managed to change it after the UNP victory at the 1977 polls. Why are parties like the Labour Party and the United National Party against the FPTP system? Let us look at Sri Lanka’s experience.


Sri Lanka’s experience with First Past the Post system

After the 1977 general elections, the UNP changed the First Past the Post (FPTP) system to the Proportional Representation (PR) system. The UNP won a 5/6th majority in Parliament. Many to this day call the 1977 win a landslide victory for the UNP. But was it a landslide victory? The UNP in 1977 only won 50.9% (barely past the 50%) in 1977 but ended up with 83.3% of the seats. It wasn’t a landslide victory by votes. It was just a landslide victory according to the FPTP system. If the 1977 elections were held under the current PR system, the UNP would have barely scraped past the 113 seats needed. But why would J.R. Jayawardene change a system which gave him 83% of the seats for only 50.9% of the votes?

A look at the 1970 general elections gives the answer. In the 1970 general elections, the UNP got over 50,000 votes more than the SLFP but the UNP only won 17 seats while the SLFP won 91 seats. Same as in the Indian general elections of 2014 (under the FPTP system), when Narendra Modi led BJP won with only 31.3%. This is the main problem with the FPTP system. Someone who gets less votes than his opponent can still win. In India, around 70% of the Indian population did not vote for the BJP but the BJP won comfortably. Can we call this democracy?


First Past the Post has its benefits

Firstly, FPTP gives a no-nonsense, stable government with a comfortable majority in most cases. As we experienced in Sri Lanka before our Constitution was changed. People would vote for either the UNP or SLFP led coalition and each will have a comfortable majority. This led to a stable government for the next five years where the party can implement its policies in the country. Compare this to the PR system in which Sri Lanka had seven general elections; five out of seven times, there was a hung parliament where no party got a majority of the seats in Parliament. Only in the general elections in 1989 and 2010 were majorities won.

Secondly, the Member of Parliament is closer to his/her constituency. As each constituency is guaranteed a member of parliament as someone has to win. Under PR, certain constituencies in Sri Lanka do not have an elected MP currently in Sri Lanka.

Lastly, the FPTP system keeps out extreme and fringe parties. In the 2015 British general elections, the far right party UKIP of Nigel Farage got nearly four million votes which is over 12% of the British votes but only got one seat out of 650 seats. If Britain had a PR system, the UKIP would have ended up with over 10% of the seats and could well have been in the kingmaker seat influencing British policy with their extreme far right views.


Flaws in the First Past the Post system

We spoke about extremists not being able to win many seats as an advantage. This is a positive aspect, however, this system also makes certain parties with good agendas get fewer seats like the Liberal Democrats and the Green Party at the 2015 British general elections. The Liberal Democrats led got nearly 8% of the votes but ended with only 1.2% of the seats in Parliament, that is just eight seats out of 650 seats in the British House of Commons. The Green Party received a similar treatment where the Green Party got over a million votes but just one seat. But the less democratic point is in relation to the Conservatives, led by David Cameron, which won the elections. The Conservatives won just 36.8% of the votes. The uncomfortable truth is a party which did not get the votes of around two thirds of the population won the elections. The FPTP offers stability but at what cost?

The First Past the Post system also does not help parties representing the smaller sections of the political divide. For example, the vast majority of Sri Lankan votes come from rural areas. So urban voters in Sri Lanka can be categorised as a minority in the urban rural divide. The FPTP does not favour urban voters as the rural community decides the elections which explains why the urban voters backed Labour Party and the UNP do not favour the FPTP.

To elect an MP under the FPTP system, the party has to poll the most number of votes in that particular electorate. With the majority of constituencies in the rural areas, the swing towards the winner is decided in the nonurban areas. Just as in the United States which has a FPTP for its electoral college system. The party that polls highest for a state in America wins all electoral college votes. States such as New York or California which have the financial decision makers are always Democratic. It is just a few swing states such as Ohio which determine the election results. In Sri Lanka’s political long term interest, this kind of a system would not be recommended.

There is less of diversity as all the political views are in a two-party system. There is no third way as either one of the two mainstream dominant parties win comfortably even when they get less than one-third of the votes. Parties representing diverse values are left out. The people are stuck between, in many cases slightly different mainstream ideas of two parties which have been taking turns for decades. There is little change.

Over time as it happened in Britain, people tend to just vote for the two mainstream parties because their votes for a third or fourth party does not matter. The four million votes (12%) of the British votes for the UKIP only got the UKIP one seat out of 650 seats. Those four million voters will lose faith in the system and may not even bother to vote in future elections. When people lose faith in elections, it is not a good sign for democracy and can make people want to express their voices in more undemocratic ways.


The British referendum of 2011: Would voters prefer a First Past the Post system?

Many British people refer to the 2011 referendum which rejected a change to the FPTP system as proof that the people like this system. Observers around the world also use it to say that people love the FPTP system.

There are three points to be noted very carefully here about the 2011 UK referendum. One, only 42% of the people turned out to vote at the referendum as electoral systems and the complexity of how it works are more academic and as a whole the layman has little knowledge or understanding about the FPTP or the PR system.

Two, the question at the referendum was “At present the UK uses the FPTP to elect MPs to the House of Commons. Should the Alternative vote (AV) system be used instead?” It was more of a question about whether the UK wants a system of AV rather than about a vote on FPTP. Alternative vote is different to the Proportional Representation system. Alternative Vote is about bringing in preferential votes so candidates in a constituency who do not get 50% of the first preference votes have to get a number of second or third preference votes to win. AV is more of a modification of the FPTP rather than a complete change to a PR system. So the 2011 British referendum is not exactly a vote for the first past the post system. The referendum was not even about a vote on FPTP vs. PR. That can explain why the Labour Party was divided on the referendum.

Lastly, the Liberal Democrats, a third force in British politics fully backed a change. The Conservatives fully campaigned against change. But Labour, though largely supportive of change, had many MPs being against change. Therefore it was more of a divided Labour Party half-heartedly backing change. So with just the Liberal Democrats campaigning for change with  the Conservatives against it and Labour divided, it was a tall task as party supporters tend to vote along party lines.


Should we go back to the First Past the Post system?

The FPTP system does offer stability and offers a much better relationship between the Member of Parliament and his/her constituency. It also keeps away the fringe parties out of the system. But it has its flaws. The FPTP system does allow a party with less than one-third of the votes to be in power. We are talking about a government that did not get the votes of more than two-thirds of the country. It does not help the minority views to be represented in Parliament. There is less diversity of parties with different ideas being able to influence the Government for the better as the FPTP system keeps a two-party system intact. As the two largest parties win comfortably, even with less than one-third of the votes at times, neither of the parties need the support of the smaller parties. Even if the smaller parties get some seats through the FPTP system which is very unfriendly to smaller parties, they cannot influence a government by being in a kingmaker position.

The FPTP system usually gets decided by the rural community. Whichever way they vote swings the results. The United States has a system for the presidential elections as I explained above, through something similar to the FPTP. A few swing states like Ohio decide who wins. And look where the 2016 US Presidential elections took America.

Democracy development or development democracy?

2018-05-18

Somewhere in the middle of the last century, Marxist scholars, disillusioned by the sanguine hopes they had placed on the public, began writing negatively of the working class. This grim assessment of the proletariat and the peasantry was the basis for some of the monumental works of post-Nazi Germany social theory: Richard Hofstadter’s thesis that the masses were anti-intellectual, C. Wright Mill’s thesis that they were bureaucratic, and, perhaps the most grim and important of them all, Hannah Arendt’s thesis that they were unwitting supporters of totalitarianism. To argue that these writers and their books formed the bedrock of how the West continues to look at the working class, not just in their part of the world, but also our part of the world, would be an understatement. If there was no Hitler, no Mussolini, plainly put, there would have been no Hannah Arendt and no Origins of Totalitarianism. But to suggest that these theories work out well for the peasantry and the proletariat for this part of the world is, I think, rather self-deluding.   

• "The East, particularly in countries like Sri Lanka, has years and decades of colonialism and exploitation at the hands of the West

• We have been cheated again and again by a specific class of politicians"

My friend Michael Patrick O’Leary once quipped that “the road to hell is paved with false analogies”, paraphrasing that saying about it being paved with good intentions. This is true of the way we view demagogues in the East on the basis of how they are viewed in the West. Sri Lanka is no exception to this; time after time, we have been told, explicitly of course, that demagoguery is the last refuge of the scoundrel, much like nationalism and patriotism, and that the demagogue frequently resorts to false promises so as to bring in more votes. This one way transfer, as I’d like to call it, belittles the people who have been promised various things and promotes the vested interests that tend to gather around the demagogue after s/he wins an election. Given this, what’s wrong with considering those voters as the covert supporters of totalitarianism they were touted as by Arendt et al?   
Simply this: the East, particularly in countries like Sri Lanka, has years and decades of colonialism and exploitation at the hands of the West which the West does not have. In the West demagoguery is negative, so negative that even when it does occur (as in the case of Trump’s America) or almost occurs (as in the case of Le Pen’s France), the checks and balances offsetting the externalities of that kind of demagoguery prove to be useful. But that’s because these countries have enough and more of what we had, and what we don’t: resources. If we’re desperate for totalitarians, if we seem to be covert sympathisers of dictators, and if we appear to be “sleeping with the fishes” (to borrow another phrase) by voting against our own interests in the form of neo-fascist leaders, it’s not because we don’t know the meaning of democracy, or totalitarianism, or leadership, but rather because we’re tired of leaders who privilege the ideological over the economic. We want democracy, we want ethic harmony, but we also want food on the table. And for an awful lot of people in this side of the planet, getting that food on that table is pretty hard.   

Cheated by politicians

So if we the people are not “We, the People” of the American Constitution, it’s simply because we have been cheated again and again by a specific class of politicians who dither on the issues they promise to resolve once they come to power. We saw this in 1978 and we saw this in 1994 and we are seeing this now. The reason why we did not see this in 2005 was because the leader elected then, democratically, remained the only leader who did well on the one issue he promised to resolve. But as time went by, the war proved to be too much of an asset, a national treasure in fact, to bandy about for the sake of self-perpetuation. There needed to be another set of issues, mainly economic, which the Rajapaksa administration could show as being resolved by them. A bubble economy of consumption came up after 2010 owing to their need to show the people that we were more of a nation of development democracy than one of democracy development. The mandate in 2010 was for that sort of polity. The sort that was doomed to burst some day.  That’s another story though.   
What is often forgotten is that the fear of the masses the West has sustained was largely an offshoot, not of the complicity of ordinary Germans in the Third Reich, but of the culture of distrust the intellectual centre created when it came to the relationship between the State and its subjects. Western liberal democracy was hardly liberal or democratic in the early days. It was the joint outcome of years and decades and centuries of sustained exploitation of slaves and the working class. John Locke’s contentions about liberalism are at odds with his view of the sanctity of property because liberalism, which privileged the individual, needed at the same time a strong, authoritarian State. The State oversaw the exploitation of those subjects who continue to be erased out of the liberal narratives which are spawned by the successors of Locke and Mills and Bentham today. When liberalism was nonexistent in the early days of conflicts over land, the State needed a higher figure in the form of an unseen deity (Hobbes’s Leviathan). When Europe underwent the Reformation and turned towards rationalism, property became the new God, and the object of the State was to counter any act against the ownership of land.   

What Good Governance lacked

But private property has been, throughout much of history, the source of the West’s exploitation of colonies and slaves. It has also, ironically, been the source of those liberal narratives I have alluded to. Land is simultaneously a harbinger of totalitarianism (for the masses) and of democracy (for the elite). Arendt’s suspicions of the general public, the people, were the suspicions of the Founding Fathers of the United States too. In that sense, the post-Nazi Germany universe merely compounded this culture of suspicion and distrust, creeping into the many organisations created (ostensibly) to preserve world peace or export democracy. The West has, given this, always preferred the individual to the collective, and it has historically believed in at least nominal democracy development over development democracy in our part of the world because it believes that what works for them will somehow work for us. That is not the case, and the West, even after Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq, has obviously not corrected this vicious misconception.   

• "A bubble economy of consumption came up after 2010

• Western liberal democracy was hardly liberal or democratic in the early days

• Sri Lanka’s polity, come 2020, will thus be in shambles"

Sri Lanka’s polity, come 2020, will thus be in shambles. Development democracy and democracy development are and have always been ill-fitted for each other here. Those who hedged their bets on the new administration after 2015, tragically, thought that the masses could be swayed on the basis of its allegiance to the tenets of good governance and sanhindiyawa. But the problem with this project was that you cannot focus on good governance without a strong bulwark. Mahinda Rajapaksa and his cohorts committed the opposite mistake: they delivered the goods, but failed to secure those goods for the longer term, and that by cracking down on dissent at every step of the way. Once these goods were taken over by their successors, of the yahapalana administration, they were doomed to rot, because for them to flourish, they needed to be preserved by a strong, at times even authoritarian centre.
This authoritarian centre is precisely what is lacking in the new government, and it is the demand for that centre which compelled the majority, even those who had supported Maithripala Sirisena previously, to oust him from power at the grassroots level last February. The demand in 2015 had been for change: unyielding, unconditional. That demand continues, but now it is for a reversal: a 360-turnaround to the authoritarian, centrist, anti-peripheral development democracy of 2014 and before.  

JR’s Presidency and MR’s Monarchy in Sri Lanka

The executive presidency of Mahinda Rajapaksa is far more complex than what was designed by President J.R. Jayewardene. The executive presidency introduced in 1978 was the result of a unique turn of events that occurred in 1977.

by Sarath De Alwis-May 15, 2018

( May 15, 2018, Colombo, Sri Lanka Guardian) History repeats, because we don’t listen the first time. Those who wanted genuine change, now pin their hopes on the 20th Amendment which would abolish the Executive Presidency and restore parliamentary rule.

The Mahinda Rajapaksa presidency in the years 2010-2015 is remarkable for its successes and excesses. If he planned to perpetuate his rule, he did so for a good reason.

Kingship is an ancient office. Mahinda’s second term was a modern ‘kingship’. That explains the vociferous opposition to the proposed abolition of the executive presidency. When the powerful Executive President ended a war and became the unifier of the land and redeemer of his tribe, he became the anointed ruler of the tribe.

The abolition of the executive presidency will not impugn the unitary form of the Republic. That is balderdash by a segment of the Opposition that is itching for a strong man to rescue the land from democratic chaos and restore the discipline of the despot.

The executive presidency of Mahinda Rajapaksa is far more complex than what was designed by President J.R. Jayewardene.
The executive presidency introduced in 1978 was the result of a unique turn of events that occurred in 1977.

The UNP received more than 50 percent of the total vote in the entire island. Under the first-past-the-post electoral system that existed in 1977, this translated into the UNP getting 5/6 of seats in Parliament. The massive mandate turned the septuagenarian JRJ into a philosopher king.

With philosophic detachment he outlined his vision. He told an interviewer, “I think you must trim your sails to your own country’s needs and resources and forget about philosophies and theories”

Fortified by this unprecedented mandate, President JRJ decided that the country needed a ‘strong and stable executive not subject to the whims and fancies of an elected legislature’. He wanted an authoritative institution ‘not afraid to take ‘correct but unpopular measures’.

The Presidency of J.R. Jayewardene ended quietly in considerable confusion. His friend, classmate and political adversary, Dr. Colvin R de Silva wrote a brilliantly incisive pamphlet, ‘The UNP Government and the Crisis of the Nation ‘summing up the times of the first executive presidency.

“To drift as we are doing under this government, offering no alternative to a state at war with a section of the people, is to drift to disaster. That is not the way to prevent what has to be prevented; namely the division of this country into two separate states which cannot survive except as client states of big powers. The UNP government has put our independence in peril. And so also, and no less, have the Tigers!”

Readers should forgive me for the extensive quote. We owe history some degree of honesty. As Kafka told us in the business of writing, let us not bend. Let us not water it down. Let us not try to make the illogical logical. Let us not edit our souls. We should follow our obsessions mercilessly.

In the case of Mahinda Rajapaksa, the dice fell differently. He won the Presidency by a whisker a quarter century later in 2005. He beat the Tigers in 2009. He became the unifier of the land.

Following the military triumph, the Executive Presidency of Mahinda Rajapaksa quietly acquired the prototypical character of a ‘Kingship’.

Authoritarian rule is not pure coercion. It is not only state machinery. The apparatus of coercion can coopt religious leaders to manipulate the flock to desired goals and targets. Domination of minds from within was the singular achievement of Mahinda Rajapaksa.

Constitutional amendments are adopted or rejected not on their relative merits. Partisan interests have guided our constitutional evolution. If some group feels that the proposed outcome is a zero-sum game, the intended outcome was of little relevance.

Traditional institutions are conditioned to resist change to existing arrangements that function to their advantage. Traditional elites make it their business to stunt the growth and the spread of democracy.

The Buddhist clergy is such a traditional institution. They constitute a traditional elite. They are profoundly hierarchical in orientation. To them, democracy is peripheral.

With the executive presidency, we created an agency that was superior to the elected Parliament. It was a manipulative authority concentrated in the hands of a single person.

Under the first executive presidency, life of Parliament was extended by a decidedly flawed referendum. It was pure and simple slaughter of democracy.

Historian Isaac Deutscher described the murders of German Socialist pioneers Rosa Luxembourg and Karl Liebknecht in 1919 as the last triumph of Kaiser Wilhelm’s Hohenzollern Germany and the first triumph of Hitler’s Nazi Germany.

The Referendum held under the Executive Presidency of JRJ was the last triumph of the UNP that won independence for Ceylon. It was the first triumph of the autocracy of Mahinda Rajapaksa that ended the civil war in Sri Lanka.

When you trample on freedom, you leave footprints for successors. Relative morality is the name of the game.

The parallel is cited for one reason only. The study of history compels us to confront chaos while retaining our faith in its order and meaning.

The successful conclusion of the war made Mahinda Rajapaksa something more than an Executive President. He became the unifier of the motherland, redeemer of the Dhammadveepa – the land of the righteous. The three principal sects of Sangha fraternity have bestowed on Mahinda Rajapaksa exotic titles usually associated with our ancient kings: Vishva Kirti Sri Sinhaladhisvara, Sri Vira Vikrama Lankadhisvara, Sri Lanka Rajavamsa Vibhushana Dharmadvipa Cakravarti.”

This should not surprise us. The clergy as it is constituted today is an institution that operates on the principle of inequality and a top down flow of power and authority.

The memory of kings has a tenacious hold on the Sinhala Buddhist Sangha fraternity. That hold is less spiritual and more political.

Political institutions cannot be fashioned independent of the customs and practices of a society.

Today, the proposed abolition of the executive presidency has provoked a high-pitched opposition from an influential section of the Maha Sangha. The pro-Rajapaksa clerical troopers are versatile practitioners of the art of intimidatory persuasion. They proceed on the theory that he who shouts loudest is heard most.

They are most comfortable with a coercive disciplinary state that guarantees their tenure as shepherds of the flock. Past glories constitute their principal platform. Confronting enemies of the nation is their primary occupation.

They are pronounced partisans of the Mahinda Rajapaksa-led opposition. It is therefore obvious that they not only wish to preserve the powerful executive presidency but would like a Mahinda Rajapaksa proxy to reoccupy it. There is logic behind the move. The military victory over the separatists has had a seismic impact on the executive presidency.

Mahinda was indeed a ‘King’ to his followers. He still is. He will remain on this perch or pedestal as long as that section of the Buddhist clergy succeeds in sustaining the Sinhala Supremacist sentiment.

Mahinda defeated separatism and unified the country. He is the modern hero king. There is indeed some popular basis to this notion. That said, it is clear that in Ven Medagoda Abayatissa thero, spearheading the opposition to the abolition of the executive presidency, he has an an image maker of great promise. He is able to present the sales pitch as scripture and doctrine.

Monarchist sentiment was never completely extinguished in Sri Lanka. The Kandyan Convention was an instrument that enabled the monastic orders of Kandy to continue state sponsored rituals. The Monastic elite accepted the British King. As an eminent social anthropologist recently pointed out, among our traditional Buddhist clergy, “embers of monarchist fantasy lie beneath, ready to be ignited at the slightest opportunity.”

Post war triumphalism anointed the Executive Presidency with a sanctity associated normally with ancient Kings in our folklore.

The Rajapaksa regime found that a restoration of a new indigenous order – part feudal, part oligarchic, replete with a religio-magical legitimization, would be politically more rewarding than reaching out to genuine reconciliation.
So, we are back in a drift, just as comrade Colvin pointed out in the eighties.

The drive to glorify a vanished past, was a thinly disguised political project that constructed a paternalistic kingship associated with the executive presidency. Parallel to the process of making a ‘ Maharajano’ was the idea that the Sinhala people are the true citizens of the land and others are guests who must not demand more than their due.

This trend had other negative consequences. The culture of impunity became firmly entrenched. Dissent was construed anti national. Ethnic supremacy of the modern kingship had a price: Our freedom.

John’s Advisor Felix Rodrigo In Hot Water Over Attempt To Siphon Off ‘Tourism Money’ To Brother’s Company

MAY 17, 2018

The Prime Minister’s office has commenced a special investigation into Felix Rodrigo, a Senior Advisor to Tourism Development And Christian Affairs Minister John Amaratunga, over an alleged attempt to pay over Rs. 6 million to a company owned by his brother for an event hosted by the Ministry.

The event “The Royal Wedding Ceremony of Sri Lanka” (RWCS 2017) in which 100 Chinese couples got married in Sri Lanka was partly initiated by the Sri Lanka Tourism Promotional Bureau (SLTPB), in December, last year. At a press conference held in this regard, Udaya Nanayakkara, the then Chairman of the SLTPB, said the Sri Lankan government did not have to pay “a single cent” to organize the event as private partners would take care of the expenses.

Felix Rodrigo

Soon after the event however, Nanayakkara had received a directive on Rodrigo’s recommendation to pay Rs. 6 million to a private company for “handling” the event. Upon inquiry, Nanayakkara had found that the company was owned by a brother of Rodrigo who was instrumental in the sending the directive.

Sources from the Prime Minister’s Office said Nanayakkara, at that point, had flatly refused to pay the money as he thought it was ‘suspicious’. Nanayakkara had also stated the SLTPB was not in a position to pay a private company over the event as he publicly stated that the ‘government money’ would not be used.

Nanayakkara had told his staff that he did not even know about Rodrigo’s company until he saw the Ministry’s directive.

“Interestingly, just weeks after this refusal, Nanayakkara was summarily sacked from his job by the Minister,” a source close to the former SLTPB Chairman said, adding that Nanayakkara had complained to the Prime Minister’s Office over this ‘strange bill’ and his sudden dismissal.

A spokesman from the Prime Minister’s Office as Nanayakkara had refused to pay the bill, the money had not been paid to the company owned by Rodrigo’s brother. Therefore, the matter has not been sent to the Bribery Commission but we understand that it is clearly a suspicious attempt. Therefore, the Prime Minister’s Office will inquire into the conduct of the officer,” a spokesman from the Prime Minister’s office said.

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