Myth of Self-Employment

2018-06-18 

Almost every time Sri Lanka’s massive rural unemployment problem is discussed, many tend to suggest self-employment as the best possible solution. Self-employment is also at the heart of the debate on predatory microfinance ravaging the rural economy. Liberal economists, government officials and NGO propagandists worry that the curtailment or abolition of microfinance would mean the end of self-employment programmes.   
Over the last few decades, microfinance and self-employment were promoted as the twin solution to the woes of rural folk and the urban poor. In fact, microfinance led self-employment as one central programme of neoliberal economic policies have become so ideologically entrenched that their devastating impacts are rarely questioned. Any effort to address or think through the problematic aspects of such self-employment schemes always results in discussions of “how can we do it better” and “why don’t beneficiaries work harder.”
This microfinance and self-employment combination is neither accidental in its emergence nor free of exploitative social and economic consequences. For that reason, microfinance and self-employment schemes should be abolished. However, there remains the challenge of finding credible alternatives for the generation of incomes and social welfare in the rural and urban arenas.  

Informal sector and finance

Historically, there was a major shift in global political economy in the 1970s. The social welfare state came under attack with the global capitalist economic downturn after the long western post-World War II economic boom in the 1950s and 1960s. In the Third World, a serious crisis emerged a few decades after decolonization characterized by continuing neo-colonial policies that increased national debt in tandem with the changing terms of trade. That crisis punctured hopes of the promise of postcolonial development by the 1970s, and brought to the fore major challenges with deprived populations in the rural regions and rapidly increasing numbers of urban poor.   
The conjuncture in the 1970s leading to the consolidation of neoliberalism, both as an ideology and as a set of state practices reshaped both economic thinking and policies. The emphasis on the individual responsibility for economic life as opposed to state supported social welfare services, and capitalist accumulation centred on finance capital as opposed to industrial capital, subsequently forged a new dynamic between labour and capital in the periphery. With the economic crisis in the countryside and the urban shanties, this sector of the economy was newly termed as the “informal”, and was eventually projected as the domain of self-employment and microfinance.   
Internationally, rather than seeing self-employment and microfinance as the last resort of an evidently failing capitalist system, both concepts were celebrated by donor agencies and their evangelists as mechanisms to “liberate” working people in the informal sector. Microfinance was in particular glorified, including with a Nobel Prize for Muhammad Yunus of Bangladesh, for masking the dangerous impact of the global capitalist crisis on the marginalized in underdeveloped countries. Self-employment became the catch phrase that would disguise the high levels of unemployment and underemployment. In the developing world, as in the case of Sri Lanka, the donor agencies and state policies reinforce microfinance and self-employment as the solution for the rural and urban poor.  

Predatory loans and entrepreneurship

In Sri Lanka, microfinance and self-employment have been promoted by the donor agencies with grants and loans, NGOs through subsidized schemes, and even state policy. However, it is in the war-torn districts that such programmes were promoted aggressively as the solution to post-war rural development. Over the last year in particular, the exploitative character of the predatory microfinance has become increasingly evident from peoples’ protests – the major protest last Thursday was by women’s groups mobilizing in the four Vanni districts in the North – as well as statements by top government officials.   
In this context, the rhetorical cloak for the defence of microfinance schemes continues to be the possibility of self-employment income generation. There is now ample evidence that even the finance companies registered with the Central Bank charge annualized interest rates on the order of 40% to 70% for their microfinance loans. The aggressive manner in which microfinance lending increased is evident from data (Central Bank Annual Report 2017), where non-bank finance companies loans increased from Rs. 42 billion in 2009 to Rs. 476 billion in 2017.   
The ridiculousness of the microfinance story today is the belief or claim in some quarters that rural women who raise loans from the registered finance companies and other microfinance institutions on the order of 40% to 220% interest rates can make returns on such capital above such tremendous exploitative interest rates and make a living. The charade continues with talk about making rural people into entrepreneurs through self-employment. And when such self-employed people fail, it is made to be their fault for being lazy, for not trying harder or not being innovative.   
In reality, self-employment has failed not just with predatory loans but even with subsidised loans, because only a fraction of people in any society, and that too with considerable social capital and support, can make it as entrepreneurs. That the success or failure of such self-employed production and attendant incomes depends on the tremendous fluctuations in the market are never considered. Rather the self-employed are expected to find affordable inputs, find the market for their produce and even bear the consequences of natural disasters.

• Historically, there was a major shift in global political economy in the 1970s

• In SL, microfinance and self-employment have been promoted by the donor agencies

• Self-employment failed not just with predatory loans but even with subsidised loans

Self-employment became the catch word for neoliberal policies as the state was pushed to abdicate its responsibility towards its citizens including to create decent work and employment. In perpetuating this myth of self-employed rural entrepreneurship it transferred the economic burden solely on to the rural households. Wealthy entrepreneurs can attempt and fail at many start-up companies, but they will not starve. The so-called rural entrepreneur on the other hand will be mired in a debt trap, her family malnourished and her children’s education disrupted. The cycle of poverty would cripple her.  

Economic burden and society

From high-level state officials down to village officials, from the international donors down to the local NGOs, lessons are rarely learnt about the failure of their “livelihood schemes” consisting of raising chickens, tailoring training, seaweed growing to the newest and latest self-employment idea. That production has always been collective and while community support in the rural arena is not considered, as the self-employment livelihood schemes tear apart communities. Individual are expected to fend for themselves. Public and social responsibility by the state and society for its citizens is conveniently forgotten.   
That is the power of neoliberal ideology, it has transferred the burden of economic life to the individual, or to the self as in the self-employed. As Margaret Thatcher famously said, “there is no such thing as society.” Are we going to accept that neoliberal rejection of society? Or are we going to find avenues to rebuild society? In my view, rebuilding society has to begin with the rejection of the flawed conception of self-employment, and the search for strengthening collective forms of production and economic life.   
As moves to restrict microfinance mount including with demands for write offs of predatory loans and interest rate caps, the disastrous programmes of self-employment should also be rejected. The role of social institutions such as co-operatives, farmers’ organizations and rural development societies become all the more important. Rural incomes have to be generated and increased, but that requires investment in collective forms of production. For example in the fishing villages for net production, auction halls and seafood processing centres, and the reconstruction of small tanks with support for livestock raising, fresh water fisheries and downstream agriculture. There is a wealth of ideas and experience for rural income regeneration from the communities themselves, but first we need to prick the bubble of self-employment.   

After the ‘abhaya’ row,Tamils can forget re-merger

by N Sathiya Moorthy-June 17, 2018, 12:00 pm 

It is anybody’s guess if the ‘abhaya row’ involving Muslim women teachers in the eastern Trincomallee’s Shanmuga College was motivated, or was only an expression of increasing Islamic traditions across the world. However, in the immediate Sri Lankan context, it has the potential to delay, if not deny, re-merger of the North and the East, which the nation’s ethnic Tamils (alone) had desired all along.

Even without inter-communal issues of the ‘abhaya row’ kind, for the Muslims of the island, starting with the East, re-merger was not among the favoured parts of a political solution to the ethnic issue. Independent of Tamils’ claims, which focuses only on new Sinhalese settlements in the East when none possibly existed until decades ago, they have nothing to say against the presence and dominance of the Muslim community in the present-day Eastern Province.

The Tamils form only a third of the Eastern Province population, where Muslims and Sinhalas together add up to two-thirds the numbers. If the Sinhalas too do not take kindly to the Muslims, after the 1990 LTTE killing of the Eastern Muslims and their equally crude attempts at ‘de-Islamization’ of the North, the Muslims of Sri Lanka have been pushed to fend for themselves, socially and politically – though thankfully not in any other Tamil or Sinhala way.

Trade, not sword

Islam came to Sri Lanka, not through the sword, as in many regions and nations across the world. Here, as in the south Indian State of Tamil Nadu, across the Palk Strait, Islam came through trade. If anything, Arab traders were sailing these parts long before Prophet Mohammed founded Islam. When the traders back home took to Islam, they brought it to these parts, too.

The ‘abhaya’ culture is thus a product of the new community-centric realisation of ‘Islamic isolation’ in the post-9/11 ‘New Global Order’. Such symbolism through attire and personal practices are visible to be point of making a political statement – whether intended or otherwise – in nations and regions where such practices were not prevalent through the past centuries. Blame it even on ‘Islamic consolidation’ or whatever, it is a reality that nations and regions have to learn to work with, not work around – and not certainly work against.

In the immediate Sri Lankan/Eastern context(s), the arrival of ‘abhaya’ had been noticed for a couple of decades now though no one wanted to acknowledge it. The last time it made news in a big way was in 2013. At the height of the BBS’ anti-Muslim riots centred on Aluthgama town in Kaluthara district, even elite multi-ethnic, multi-culture girls’ school in cosmopolitan Colombo, the national capital, were reported to have advised parents of their Muslim pupils for the latter to give up the ‘abhaya’ until things settled down – if only to ensure that their children were not targeted on the streets though not on the campus.

From saris to split-skirts

Time used to be when Tamils, especially Tamil women in multi-ethnic neighbourhoods as in capital Colombo, were forced to change over from their traditional saris to ‘split skirts’ and the like that the average Sinhala woman was seen attired in, on the streets. The Hindu woman among them also had to give up the ‘pottu’ or ‘sindhoor’ on their foreheads and also the bunch of fragrant flowers that they used to wear on their pleated hair.

All of it was to ensure that they are not isolated and targeted by Sinhala ‘nationalist’ goons on the streets and at work-place, more so after the diabolical ‘Pogrom-‘83’. Today, rather than sympathising and empathising with their Muslim counterparts, the ‘Hindu-Tamils’ or ‘Tamil-Hindus’ especially seem to be having a different take on the subject.

Today, Hindu hard-liners, among others, from the multi-community ‘minorities’ of ‘Tamil-speakers’, are believed to have opposed the use of ‘abhaya’ by some Muslim teachers in the Government-funded Shanmuga College (read: high/higher secondary school) in multi-ethnic Trincomallee, leading to avoidable tensions. While the Government is reported to have ordered an enquiry into the same, reports also have it that those Muslim teachers have sought transfer to other schools in the neighbourhood.

Segregation or what

Coming as it does in the midst of the Batti-Kandy anti-Muslim riots of recent weeks, such selective targeting of what should remain a revived religion-centric community practice has greater potential to harming the nation’s strained ethnic fabric even more in the post-war reconciliation period, which has already stretched itself too far. The fact however remains that what the Muslim community may call ‘defensive’ cultural practice is seen as ‘offensive’ political statement by others – as has been the case in the post-9/11 global village.

Efforts at self-segregation of the Muslim community in Sri Lanka, starting possibly with the East, commenced some time ago, but neither community leaders, nor the divided polity had time and inclination to address the real concerns and advise their people to avoid what all could be ‘provocative’ political statements, of which there are already enough and more in the country.

The irony is that any detailed report on the ‘abhaya’ episode was made available not by or in any mainline Sri Lankan ‘national’ newspaper but by The Hindu, based in neighbouring India. In a way, it may sound good but in other ways, no efforts also seem to have been initiated by the Government to address larger issues and flowing concerns of the kind. If the Muslim teachers’ request for posting in other schools (read: possibly ‘Muslim’ schools’) are to be granted, it could well mean official sanction for ‘ethnic segregation’.

Such ‘segregation’ may be different from the ‘ethnic purification’ of the kind the ‘Sinhala-Buddhist nationalists’ attempted against the Tamils, and the LTTE inflicted on the island’s Muslims. But shorn of violence, the socio-political effects of such segregation would be the same – and more so, over the medium and long terms. Grant it to hot-heads in individual camps to flag new concerns and issues with unfailing periodicity, you will have a Sri Lanka that would be fighting itself all over again, and unendingly so.

There is also a message in all this, for the Tamils too. Even as the TNA is supposedly talking to Muslim parties, especially the SLMC, to facilitate re-merger and other aspects of ethnic reconciliation between the two communities, a hardened Tamil/TNA position on the ‘abhaya issue’ could point to something worse from within. The next it could well be attempts to divide the tri-community ‘Tamil ethnicity’, by driving a religious wedge between the Hindus and Christians among them.

Unlike media predictions, the Tamils would not require any external help to divide themselves, in the name of religion, regions (North vs East), districts (Jaffna vs Rest) and castes and sub-castes. To date, the Tamil political leadership is not ready to address the issue of castes and sub-castes that had lost the most at Mullivaikkal. Yet, when it comes to quenching Jaffna’s thirst from water sources in neighbouring Killinochchi in the post-war political era, the Tamils are divided, the TNA is divided.

All these and more are there already in the Sinhala community, enshrined and entrenched. It was there too among the Tamils, the LTTE attempted to brush it all over, but they all have outlived the LTTE, instead. The late M H M Ashraff in the Muslim community and Soumiyamurthy Thondaman for the Upcountry Tamils, tried to do what the LTTE attempted but through gun, but their successor-generation has not taken it forward, but only backward.

Worse still, the limited discourse over the new Constitution too have not addressed issues of ‘Sri Lanka nationalism’, but only those of ‘Sinhala nationalism’ and ‘Tamil nationalism’. Even there, the Muslims have stayed away, only to complain among themselves, in village-level meetings that they were not consulted that the community’s concerns were not addressed. All this, when the new Constitution was supposed to address issues of national integration, alongside issues of power-mongering and power-sharing!

(The writer is Director, Chennai Chapter of Observer Research Foundation, the multi-disciplinary Indian public-policy think-tank, headquartered in New Delhi. email: sathiyam54@nsathiyamoorthy.com)

The Overzealous & Absurdly Unnecessary Security Arrangements For VIPs: An Open Letter To The Prime Minister

By Chandra Jayaratne –JUNE 17, 2018

Chandra Jayaratne

Mr. Prime Minister,

Are Security Planners of High Political Office Holders Unconcerned Of the Inconveniences Caused to the Public by their Overzealous Security Arrangements?

Is it being totally unconcerned of the inconveniences caused to citizens at public events?; Or is it the sheer arrogance of power and positions?; Or is it a need to massage the small minded ego needs?; Or is it to signal the reality of the uncaring nature of political high officeholders? ; That makes the security arrangements for the purported benefit of one person and his family, drive the rights, needs and expectations of the voting common citizens, to be ignored and be of no concern of the security planners? Even if the security planners have no such concerns and driving commitments, should not the political high office holders, voted in to office by the common citizens, be aware and conscious of consequential inconveniences to the public by the security arrangements; and be motivated to take affirmative leadership steps and to direct and mentor the security planners to take steps to minimize such inconveniences?

The internationally renowned conductor Maestro Jacopo Sipari di Pescasseroli, conducted the ‘Homage to Great Italian Opera’ with the “first instruments” of the Festival Internazionale di Mezza Estate and soprano Silvana Froli, sharing the stage with the National Unity Orchestra of Sri Lanka and reputed local artists the De Lanerolle Brothers on June 6 at Nelum Pokuna. The performance that evening was hailed by all in attendance as exceptional opportunity, matching the best international offerings in opera.

The only bad taste in the mouth that evening came from the overzealous and absurdly unnecessary security arrangements, which totally inconvenienced those attending the performance as invites of the Italian Embassy. The Embassy sponsorship of this unique event won the hosts many an accolade of the attendees.

The website on “Nelum Pokuna” records under its Q & A – “Parkin passilites”- “No issue, they have enough space for parking”.

The parking of vehicles by invitees that evening were prohibited in the parking bay outside the “Nelum Pokuna” entrance and also a long way down the road along the Ananda Coomaraswamy Mawatha. In addition, the large parking area, normally open on all occasions, right of the entrance gate, capable of parking hundreds of vehicles, was declared a no parking area by the security officials manning the entrance gate. In addition, the area near the entrance steps which is also generally open for parking on normal days was zoned off as no parking, along with the VIP Entrance Area. Thus parking by invitees was available only alongside the Nelum Pokuna boundary, with space in addition for very limited number vehicles in the area past the out gate. The road way from the in gate to the out gate, normally released for parking was also a prohibited area for parking. So visitors had only limited options for parking and even then it meant along walk to the Theatre, especially on an evening with predicted rain showers.

The mere reservation of the VIP entrance for the contingent of VIP vehicles to accompany the Chief Guest and his spouse, along the accompanying security vehicles would have more than adequately served the security needs of the attending VIP. This would have released all other areas unnecessarily made no parking areas for the common or garden invitees to park vehicles.

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Procurement guidelines target transparency

• National Procurement Commission wants updated guidelines before P’ment soon
• Urges stakeholders to complete process started by 19th Amendment in 2015 
• Fresh guidelines include series of transparency and accountability measures 
• Tender appeals to be broadened to all levels, technical auditing for tenders
• Value engineering processes for construction projects target 10% saving 
• Public to have access to full tender evaluation reports, bidders to get debrief three days after tender closes
• Commission to have powers to vet tender board appointments, appeals to AG for investigations 
• Open contracting so different ministries will have access to all State tenders 
• Lifecycle costing with green procurement and e-procurement enabled under new provisions 

By Uditha Jayasinghe   -Monday, 18 June 2018


In an effort to bring unprecedented transparency and accountability to the Government procurement system, the National Procurement Commission is pushing to have the newly gazetted guidelines before Parliament by August.

The Commission, which was formed after the 19th Amendment to the Constitution was passed in Parliament in 2015, has already sent the gazette published on 9 May and other documents to the President’s Secretariat and is awaiting them to be forwarded to the Prime Minister’s office, a top official said.

Once they reach the Prime Minister’s office they must be presented to Parliament by Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe in his capacity as National Policies and Economic Affairs Minister. The entire process would need to be completed before 9 August for the procurement guidelines to become law, commission members said. 

Commission members have already met the Speaker and President Secretary to underline the importance of completing this process before the deadline. 

The new guidelines have been upgraded from the previous regulations introduced 12 years ago and include several progressive measures including a framework agreement, new information systems and provisions for the Government to implement an electronic procurement system. 

The new guidelines also infuse value engineering processes as practised in developed countries that enable the Government to reduce cost overruns in crucial infrastructure projects.
Commission members estimate that value engineering could save the Government a minimum of 10% on all construction-related contracts. The guidelines also include technical auditing of tenders.

“The new guidelines also give powers to the National Procurement Commission to vet officials appointed to tender boards. If suppliers highlight conflict of interest on an appointment the Commission would also have the opportunity to raise this with other Government parties such as the Attorney General. Tender documents will also be shared so that other ministries and State departments can observe the tender process,” National Procurement Commission Chairman Nihal Wickramasuriya told reporters. 

To ensure high levels of transparency once the new procurement guidelines become law, bidders will be given a comprehensive debrief three days after a tender is closed. Aggrieved parties can present themselves before the procurement appeal board six days after a decision is made and if they are unsatisfied with the response can appeal to the Supreme Court. After the tender is awarded any member of the public can obtain the full tender evaluation committee report.

“In the case of serious allegations, the Commission can alert the Auditor General to conduct an investigation. Currently, the tender appeal board is only provided for Cabinet members but under these guidelines tender appeal boards will be established for all tenders at the Cabinet, ministerial, department, project and regional level,” Wickramasuriya added.

While the guidelines include provisions for an e-procurement system, the Commission conceded that it could take as much as 10 years for the entire system to become automated but expressed hope that some steps, such as publishing tender documents online, could be taken immediately. The Finance Ministry will be responsible for implementing an e-procurement platform. The guidelines include an open contracting data standard that will enable procurement data to be rearranged in different ways for a variety of analysis. Once the system is introduced it allows public and interested personnel or institutions to use the procurement data, reducing corruption.

The guidelines also introduce green procurement to decide lifecycle costing and different weightages to certain procurement so that sustainable goals can be achieved.

Waluka Teledrama and Yahapalana Political Drama in Sri Lanka

Waluka in the teledrama is the symbol of the innocent and conscientious people of this country.

by Laksiri Fernando-Jun 18, 2018

( June 18, 2018, Sydney, Sri Lanka Guardian) There are several Sinhala teledramas telecasted these days with passing political or social messages both constructive and humorous. If I may refer to two of them, still ongoing, ‘Ape Ardare’ (Our Love) and ‘Sanda Eliya’ (Moon Light) may standout prominently, exposing the dubious nature of politicians, their business connections and thuggery. Another positive aspect of some these teledramas is to challenge the ethnic and class/caste prejudices in our society. In ‘Ape Ardare,’ the daughter of the Jayawardena family, Senuri, finally appears to be a Tamil girl adopted twenty odd years back from a convent in Maravila. She is Sinhalese, but Tamil!

Most of these teledramas are love stories particularly for the young generations and all cannot be considered artistically valuable. None of them, so far I have seen, also can be considered completely political in the story or plot. This is important because we have enough actual political dramas in real life in this serendipity island.

Waluka Teledrama  

The ITN teledrama, Waluka, that I am referring to today is completely non-political and there is not even an indirect political message or comment in the episodes so far telecasted. By last Friday (15 June), 33 episodes have been telecasted. One may then I ask, why I am reviewing or commenting on these episodes without waiting for the whole drama to end. The reason is that, although Waluka is not at all a political teledrama, the story so far unravelled quite by accident reveals what has actually happened in the Yahapalana political drama.

Waluka is a superb teledrama created by Nishula Deepa Thambawita (Director) and Rihan Ravindra (Screenplay), produced by ARYAA, whatever it means. There is a good number of excellent actors/actresses among whom Janaka Premalal, Hasinika Karaliyadda, Deepani Silva, Srimal Wedisinghe, Chandika Nanayakkara and Kamal Deshapriya are prominent. There are several others of the same genre whose names I don’t know.

Even the relatively nouveau actors like Premila Surangi (Waluka) and Chamira Liyanage (Punchi Mahattaya), who play the two prominent roles have been excellent.

The Marriage Plot  

The story takes place in a remote village dominated still by ‘radalayas’ (landlords) probably towards the end of the colonial period. The dominant is the Wickremanayake Wallawwa in the village, with dwindling dignity and influence. Their major predicament is the absence of an able bodied son to carry forward their lineage and inheritance. The only son, Punchi Mahattaya, is a disabled young man. If he is somehow given to a fertile woman and a grandson is brought up eventually, the predicament might be avoided. That is the Wickremanayake plot.

By nature’s irony or perhaps as an indulgence of Wickremanayake Hamu, a village woman Amara has an able bodied son very much similar to Punchi Mahattaya in features in the name of Damayantha. He is a perfect scapegoat for the plot. The connection between the two families perhaps goes beyond the present generation. Damayantha’s father who is rather mentally retarded is also like Wickremanayake Hamu! He is considered a village idiot along with his elder brother.

While the roles of Wickremanayake Hamu and Damayantha’s father are excellently played by Janaka Permalal, Chamira Liyanage equally outstanding in his double acting for Punchi Mahattaya and Damayantha.

There is another Wallawwa in a distant village, the Seneviratnes, whose daughter is the innocent and conscientious Waluka. Her conventional cousin-suitor (avassa massina), Ranjith Aiya, is ready to marry her, but according to the horoscope it would spell a disaster to the Seneviratne’s. A cunning ‘Kapuwa’ (marriage broker) intervenes and proposes Waluka to apparent Punchi Mahattaya. Seneviratnes do not make much inquiries about the groom because of Waluka’s horrendous horoscope. Wickremanayakes don’t make much fuss about the dowry either, because of actual Punchi Mahattaya’s eternal infirmity. This is pleasing to the Seneviratnes, who are dead broke in economic terms. It is a ‘marriage of convenience,’ so to say.

The marriage takes place, handsome Damayantha appearing as Punchi Mahattaya. Waluka is pleased with Damayantha’s good looks. There is a beautiful marriage ceremony at brides place, and thereafter the couple comes home with pomp and ceremony in a decorated buggy cart.

Some Salient Features

It is on the very honeymoon night that the deception gets exposed. When Waluka takes a glass of milk to her husband’s bed, where they are supposed to sleep, it was not Damayantha but real Punchi Mahattaya who is there.

Punchi Mahattaya has a special character, irrespective of his disabilities, to have fun. He in fact has known the deception and the plot through the domestic servant, Piyasiri. He likes Waluka for her looks. Instead of love, he makes fun of Waluka in the wedding bed and shouts,

‘Hoo, Hoo, Rawatuna, Rawatuna. Oya, Rawatuna Manamali.’ (Ha, Ha, you got deceived. You are the deceived bride).

In overall, the teledrama is a critique of feudal values and behaviour, apart from the above plot. Most hilarious is the way, the not so wealthy Amara, Damayantha’s mother, tries to emulate the ‘Harmus’ (the feudals). Amara opposes Damayantha’s affair with Warsha because she is from a Karawa (fisher caste) family.

Amara’s husband and husband’s brother are different, really like idiotic menfolk in an impoverished village without education. Janaka Premalal and Srimal Wedisinghe entertain the viewers in several episodes of hilarious nature.

The story so far unravelled is also full of power ambitions to attain glory and wealth through intrigue and deception apart from the above marriage plot. The woman, Amara, plays a key role in these power ambitions, trying to use her son, Damayantha. Her ambition is to take hold of the Wickremanayake Wallawwa using her son. We still have to see how this power ambition would unravel in the future; now Wickremanayake Hamu is implicated in Warsha’s killing.

Wickremanayake’s thuggish servant, Batha, also has his ambitions to take over the Wallawwa, having implicated the boss in his shooting of Warsha, Damayantha’s fiancée.

Yahapalana Marriage!  

The above power struggles first led me to see Waluka through ‘political lenses,’ as they are very much similar to our political power-struggles. However, when I was going through the past episodes again, the marriage deception came to my mind as a perfect example of what has happened to the Yahapalana marriage.

Even at this stage, however, I must say that the authors of the teledrama perhaps never intended giving any political symbolism or interpretation to the story. The ‘misinterpretation,’ if you want to call it, is completely mine.

It was because of the impotence of the Wickremanayakes (read as Wickremasinghes) that Damayantha (read as Maithripala Sirisena) was brought into the Yahapalana marriage. In the teledrama, that was without much of his consent. But in the actual political drama, that was with his full and willing connivance. Then there was this role of Amara (guess who!) persuading Damayantha to play the role of Wickremanayake Punchi Mahattaya to deceive Waluka.

Waluka in the teledrama is the symbol of the innocent and conscientious people of this country. They are like the ‘Rawatuna Manamali’ (deceived bride) in the teledrama. In the teledrama, Waluka still tries to rehabilitate the disabled and the impotent Punchi Mahattaya. That is unfortunately her destiny. Damayantha is the same. For the second time, he appears on behalf of Punchi Mahattaya when Waluka’s parents come to verify the rumours. That was the last episode.

Damayantha like Sirisena has a wavering character as well. He even attempts to commit suicide, but gives up after listening to Punchi Mahattaya’s appeal to save him. Seneviratnes are of course fully implicated in the whole marriage coax. They tried to win by hoodwinking Wickremanayakes and deceiving Waluka against her wishes. They even expedited the marriage based on the horoscope. In the teledrama, Waluka and Warsha are the real victims of the ‘Wallaw’ intrigues, both of Wickremanayakes and Seneviratnes.

Apples and oranges

Sanjana Hattotuwa-June 16, 2018, 7:57 pm 

Departing US Ambassador Atul Keshap was in the news last week, associated with comments around Gotabaya Rajapaksa and his bid for Presidency. The substance of whatever this senior diplomat said is not what I am interested in, and in any case, has been unsurprisingly denied by those he met with. It is Gotabaya Rajapaksa as an idea, and Viyathmaga – his political project – as a platform. In recent weeks I have written about my own fears of the man, and the surveillance I was unknowingly subject to for years as a consequence of running afoul of the Rajapaksa regime. Many others have expressed similar sentiments in the media, and some with much greater insight into the man and his militant machinery. It is however his political project I am more interested in, independent of his individual identity and past.

Viyathmaga’s vision and mission, which I’ve read many times, is compelling. In spirit and tone, if not in substance and thrust, it is impossible to be opposed to it because it captures in essence the same vision for the country as the Sirisena manifesto did in late 2014. Respecting difference, the value of meritocracy and a democratic credo are all anchored to personal frames of action and spirituality - a slight (calculated) shift from the Sirisena manifesto embracing what animated people in 2015 and plugging it for 2020. It is necessarily silent on everything else, because populism is essentially that – a thin ideology, that in its projection of authenticity opportunistically embraces other cultures, ideas, processes and people in the pursuit of its own goals. Gotabaya Rajapaksa plays an old game, but with some new tricks.

In 2011, Prof. Andrew Wilson coined the term ‘political technologist’, capturing through an examination of Putin’s Russia how through the adroit manipulation of media, including social media, authoritarian power can be strengthened and sustained. The model of containment and control is an interesting one. The use of physical violence ranging from murder and torture to abduction and intimidation is strategic and almost mathematically methodical - aimed at a few, always with plausible deniability. At the same time, the regime gives the public through entertainment unfettered access to a plethora of competing, often confusing content to debate endlessly and be distracted by. The real concerns over governance and democracy are thus limited to a select few, either geographically contained or weakly linked, who cannot gain any real traction for their work amidst an enduring tsunami of likes and shares. Even if episodically able to attract attention, the sheer volume of misinformation and disinformation can very quickly, and relatively easily, drown out critical content.

China’s model – simplistically and often projected as blanket censorship of anything politically inconvenient – we know is anything but. A dissertation by Margaret Earling Roberts called this fascinating framework a mix of fear, friction and flooding. Fear, the most obvious, to control the production and spread of inconvenient truths. Friction, being processes by which through delays in loading times, challenges around access, the requirement to register, or see some unrelated content beforehand (think of all those annoying ads before a YouTube video starts to play, but for much longer and with no real option to skip) critical commentary isn’t censored – it’s just made harder to access. Genius stroke, because human nature is geared to consume the content of least resistance. Finally, flooding, which not unlike Putin’s Russia, gives the public what they want and like the most –entertainment.

Given the relations with Putin and Xi Jinping, and looking at the media output of the JO in general, it would not be unrealistic to think that the some of the advice around regaining power is linked to how technology can be leveraged to channel popular discontent to parochial ends. But while this is conjecture, the data around the JO campaigns and content on social media suggests they are leveraging – consciously or purely by coincidence – dynamics of what Spanish sociologist calls the ‘network society’. When I made a brief presentation of this to some senior policymakers and politicians late last year, anchored to a paper on technology and referenda, the response was revealing. A few minutes devoted to concern, surprise and praise for new thinking around older challenges. The rest of the discussion was around how the existing, ageing, unrepresentative, illiberal, corrupt, failing, frustrating and futile party political architecture could address the risks outlined around authoritarianism’s propensity to weaponise democratic affordances.

In other words, no one in the room got it. The campaigns of Gotabaya Rajapaksa and Namal Rajapaksa get it.

Suffice to say that it is possible to see through data in the public domain, how Viyathmaga and Namal Rajapaksa’s media output fare, in relation to what the government through its leaders or constituent political parties put out. By almost any yardstick, the engagement with content generated by the JO today across all social media is by order of magnitude consistently greater, wider and deeper than anything, anyone from government has produced at any time since 2015.

Quite frankly, the interesting study here is not so much how far ahead of government the JO is, but what the data suggests are strategic differences in the political vision and campaigns of Namal and his uncle. One, aiming to cultivate adulation, admiration and adoration for harvesting a decade or two hence. The other, networking with high net worth, influential individuals, framing, projecting and producing content with a more immediate, tangible political goal. The two networks are fluid and overlap, but also in demographics, reach and engagement, diverge. The real contest, as other political analysts have hinted at, is not so much what comes after yahapalanaya, but what comes after what will most likely replace it.

Always up-front with what I feel and think around those I like, I wrote a while ago to someone who spoke at one of Gotabaya’s events. Part of the response I received, quoted above, tells its own story. The Rajapaksas offer a vision that, ironically, appeals most now to those who voted in this government in 2015.Unmet promises fobbed off by those in power, indignity, insensitivity, enduring economic hardship, existentialist fears around faith, future and identity and more, from all parts of the country, have now metastasised into active, sustained and importantly, entirely organic engagement with criticism of government, framed by the JO, involving millions.

Counter-intuitively perhaps, the response isn’t technological in the main.

Those who feel marginalised, unheard, disappointed, disconnected and anxious need to see, hear and importantly feel they have a way to communicate their grievances. This requires regular, physical contact and consultation. Not Facebook updates about Vision 2025. Photos on social media soon after February 10 revealed that the SLPP had a booklet distributed amongst its elected officials across all the LG bodies around how to work towards 2020. I haven’t seen what is in it, but the intent is clear. It is unclear what if anything the government has by way of a similar, bottom-up, strategic, comprehensive and cohesive vision that connects it with the people.

Instead, we have those in government who can’t even grasp the disconnect, and worse, honestly believe it can be solved by what has been done before.

KAFKA IN HULFTSDORP

17 June, 2018

“Traitors in Black Coats Flocked Together,” was the caption of a news item that appeared on July 9, 2009 in the official website of the Ministry of Defence. The news story identified the five lawyers who represented the Sunday Leader newspaper at a July 9 hearing in a Mount Lavinia court as having “a history of appearing for and defending” LTTE guerrillas.

It carried pictures of three of those lawyers. In addition, the story did something that was remarkably original in our judicial history.

It announced that the ‘original Defence team’ of the defendant newspaper had voluntarily resigned from handling the case citing it was against their ethical and moral standing to oppose a national hero like the Secretary of Defence, who had ‘made Sri Lanka a free country.’

A news report on Thursday announced that the former Defence Secretary Gotabaya Rajapaksa had undertaken before the Court of Appeal to appear before FCID on June 25 to make a statement.
Franz Kafka haunts Hulftsdorp. Kafka was a literary giant who focused on shame and guilt. He was particularly incisive with the absence of shame and guilt in people wielding power and authority.

With a devastating eloquence, often almost uncanny and frightening, he painted despair, solitude and alienation in biting, abrupt lines. He condemned social orders and systems of administering justice which were moral neutral. He was archetypical inhabitant of the ‘surveillance state’.

The term ‘Kafkaesque’ is used even in this day, to describe the nightmarish legalese resorted to by judges and lawyers who alone can comprehend the logic of illogical situations that often unfold before courts.

The term “Kafkaesque” also describes court proceedings manipulated by a coercive state machine that compels citizens to navigate through procedures that are designed to frustrate those who dare to challenge authority.

Today, we are bewildered by Judges recusing themselves from hearing cases, putting off trials by months, releasing accused persons known to be domiciled abroad on bail to seek medical treatment in countries of their domicile and later issuing Interpol red notices to bring them back.

Back when he had filed defamation suit against The Sunday Leader over the newspaper’s publication of details of the controversial MiG-27 purchase in 2006, then Defence Secretary Gotabaya Rajapaksa did not wish to give evidence in person at the District Court, Mount Lavinia. Instead, the supremely powerful official in the Rajapaksa administration, wanted the case transferred to the District Court in Colombo so that he could give evidence from his desk in the Defence Ministry by video link. The Defence Ministry web site described the lawyers appearing for the Sunday Leader as traitors.

The same Gotabaya Rajapakse, patriot, dual citizen, intellectually inspired Presidential candidate and corporatist prophet in the digital age, seems comfortably cocooned in a happy state beyond the reach of the laws applicable to other citizens even nine years later, and out of power today.

That is the kind of land and people that Franz Kafka wrote about.

Franz Kafka is the genius who made an art form in describing the neuroses we develop by watching the slow grinding of what we call the ‘wheels of justice.’

Unhappy with and confounded by the way justice is dispensed today, this writer thought it best to share the experience of the peasant in Kafka’s novel – The Trial.

“A peasant arrives in search of justice. There is a doorkeeper on guard at the entrance to the halls of justice. He begs to be admitted. The doorkeeper says he cannot admit the man now. Come later he says.

The man, on reflection, asks if he will be allowed, then, to enter later. ‘It is possible,’ answers the doorkeeper, ‘but not at this moment.’

Since the door leading into the Law stands open as usual and the doorkeeper steps to one side, the man bends down to peer through the entrance.

When the doorkeeper sees that, he laughs and says: ‘If you are so strongly tempted, try to get in without my permission.

But remember that I am powerful. And I am only the lowest doorkeeper. From hall to hall keepers stand at every door, one more powerful than the other. Even the third of these has an aspect that even I cannot bear to look at.’

These are difficulties which the man from the country has not expected to encounter. He thinks that the law should be accessible to every man. He looks more closely at the doorkeeper in his furred robe, with his huge pointed nose and decides not to incur his wrath. He decides that he had better wait until he gets permission to enter.

The doorkeeper gives him a stool and lets him sit down at the side of the door. There he sits waiting for days and years. He makes many attempts to be allowed in and wearies the doorkeeper with his importunity.

The doorkeeper often engages him in brief conversation, asking him about his home and about other matters, but the questions are put quite impersonally, as great men put questions, and always conclude with the statement that the man cannot be allowed to enter yet. The man, who has equipped himself with many things for his journey, parts with all he has, however valuable, in the hope of bribing the doorkeeper.

The doorkeeper accepts it all, saying, however, as he takes each gift: ‘I take this only to keep you from feeling that you have left something undone.’ During all these long years the man watches the doorkeeper almost incessantly.

He forgets about the other doorkeepers, and this one seems to him the only barrier between himself and the Law. In the first years he curses his evil fate aloud; later, as he grows old, he only mutters to himself. He grows childish, and since in his prolonged watch he has learned to know even the fleas in the doorkeeper’s fur collar, he begs the very fleas to help him and to persuade the doorkeeper to change his mind.

Finally, his eyes grow dim and he does not know whether the world is really darkening around him or whether his eyes are only deceiving him. But in the darkness, he can now perceive a radiance that streams immortally from the door of the Law.

Now his life is ending. Before he dies, all that he has experienced during the whole time of his sojourn condenses in his mind into one question, which he has never yet put to the doorkeeper.

He beckons the doorkeeper since he can no longer raise his stiffening body. The doorkeeper must bend far down to hear him, for the difference in size between them has increased very much to the man’s disadvantage.

‘What do you want to know now?’ asks the doorkeeper, ‘you are insatiable.

‘Everyone strives to attain the Law,’ answers the man, ‘how does it come about, then, that in all these years no one has come seeking admittance but me?’

The doorkeeper perceives that the man is at the end of his strength and that his hearing is failing, so he bellows in his ear:

‘No one, but you could gain admittance through this door, since this door was intended only for you. I am now going to shut it.”
In this passage Kafka, poignantly and elegantly reenacts the absurd world of the law. It is a chaotic world in which the process overrides, supersedes and defeats the purpose.

Kafka’s world of the law is a bleak world. That is the world in which, we ordinary citizens have their uneasy dreams of justice are finally repudiated.

Courts are the bureaucratic embodiments of the law. While all are equal before the law, Kafka’s peasant becomes less equal before the door-keeper.

Let us go back in time. This is how Lal Wickremetunge, Lasantha’s brother and publisher of The Sunday Leader described the Kafkaesque court in Mount Lavinia.

“On the first date of hearing Gotabaya came to Mt Lavinia court accompanied by the Tri Forces Commanders and the then IGP in addition to several Government bigwigs. I represented the newspaper by myself. The streets leading to the court house, roof tops and the court premises were swarming with armed personnel. No lawyer practising in Mt Lavinia Court was allowed to bring their vehicles into the premises as was the practice. Security personnel dressed in suits carrying firearms sat around me. My lawyers withdrew from representing us whilst on their feet.”

Contemporary lessons from the Kafkaesque commentary: We have wasted three years negotiating with the ‘door keeper’ to enter the door. We are yet to learn that the damned door is meant for us. Let us not allow the doorkeeper to shut it on our face.

In his novel – ‘The Trial’ Kafka dives in to the chaos and absurdity of the process of the law with the supersonic precision of a MiG fighter plane. 

Gota‘s robbery to build parent’s memorial is not under public property Act -AG and Gota concur

(Lanka e News – 16.June.2018, 11.45PM)  The validity of the  existing restraining order of the court prohibiting  the arrest of former defense secretary Gotabaya Rajapakse who misappropriated a sum of Rs. 90 million to build a memorial museum in memory of  his dead parents during the nefarious decade was further extended by the appeal court on the 14 th.

The appeal court ordered that the B report which was produced by the FCID in the Colombo magistrate court based on charges filed under the Public Property Act shall not be linked to Gotabaya Rajapakse

After  the petition filed by Gotabaya praying for an order to preclude his arrest in connection with the above charges was examined on the 14 th by the panel of judges , Preethi Padman Surasena  (president)  and  Arjuna Obeysekera of the appeal court , the aforementioned order was delivered by the court .

When the petition was called up for hearing on the 14 th , the petitioner and the Attorney General agreed on several matters, and those were documented before the court.  

In accordance with those agreements the A.G.’s side informed court that no more B reports under the public property Act will be produced in the magistrate  court in relation  to Gotabaya  the  petitioner .

The appeal court after considering the submissions made ordered that the petitioner shall appear in the appeal court after notice is served on him by the magistrate court.

The appeal court while deciding to postpone the case until the 25 th also directed that Gotabaya shall appear before the FCID on the 25 th and record a statement .

It is doubtless having an AG’s department that gifts winning lottery tickets to the accused is going to be the greatest encouragement to all criminals across the Island to commit crimes freely and with impunity.  In addition , foreign criminals too are going to queue up to obtain Sri Lankan  citizenship.

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by     (2018-06-17 00:53:52)

IS POLITICS A CRIMINAL AND CORRUPT DRUG?

June 16, 2018, 12:00 pm 

Penicillin, antibiotics, suppressants, depressants anti-coagulants and other drugs are administered or consumed in prescribed quantities or dosages at the times prescribed. Politics consumes.

Switch on a radio or a TV for an update of what is happening around you and you would see that, sometimes around 90% of what is reported is political. We have a President, Prime Minister and a Parliament of 225 members and even they do not know how many factions they are divided into and, quite often, what sub-group of which faction they belong to. The adage "United we stand, divided we fall" is apparently being interpreted as "Divided we stand while the country is in free fall". It must however be admitted that there is magnanimous unity when their allowances, entitlements and perks are voted on – total and absolute unanimity and sometimes even the lack of a quorum hardly matters. The latest addition of ‘supplementary’ Deputy Ministers and Ministers of State is a classic example of "Scientific Sanhindiyawa" – a Buddhist is allocated Christian Affairs and a Muslim gets Hindu Affairs.

Growing up in the 50’s and 60’s we did have thugs and gangsters. Almost all of them were involved in ‘nefarious’ activities like kasippu, cannabis, opium and gambling. And the weapons were daggers, swords, hand-bomb (or "Duppi") and the occasional gun. Names like Dodampe Mudalali, Alfred Zoysa come to mind. Of course there were murders – the Ravine Murder Case, the Headless Corpse, Julius Sandarasagara (for which Alfred Zoysa and Kalu Albert were hanged), the Vicarage Murders and not forgetting the murder of Gotabaya. His family name was Kirambakanda and the case became known as the Pauline Croos Case. Of course there were gangsters and thugs, but I have never heard of any of them having political affiliations or backing. Even SWRD was not shot by gangsters or thugs.

When Sugathe was Minister of Nationalized Services & Sports in the Dudley Senanayake government, my mother used to accompany his wife on her occasional ‘shopping’ trips. With all the maturity of a 16/17 year old, I acted as bodyguard to the two ladies. The only ‘security’ he had at home was a half-dozing cop with a rifle. In 1971, with the news of the JVP attacking Police Stations in the south, I was visiting a friend at the Kotahena Police Station when they received the alert. In retrospect, it is laughable to see everyone running around looking for the key to unlock the chain running through the trigger-guards of a row of about seven or eight rifles.A disciplinarian would describe this as gross neglect, but in that day and age, people did not need to see guns to respect the law. Even in 1980 (or was it ’81) Railway Strikers running riot in Fort, the Police only used batons and wicker shields (kulla).

1971 could be a turning point of sorts. Depending on whom you ask, they would come out with descriptions like revolution, insurrection, insurgency, war of liberation and a whole lot more. Ceylon, as we were then known, was involved in the first and second World Wars, but I suppose this was the first time we actually saw shots fired in anger on our own soil after a very long time. Firearms and weaponry became an essential commodity – whether to protect the citizenry or the people in power did not matter. The 1977 Election resulted in an unprecedented situation with one Party winning over 5/6th of the Seats in Parliament and the previous ruling Party not being able to win enough seats to even earn the Seat of Leader of the Opposition. Ethnic militancy (or terror or revolt or whatever you prefer to call it) took root and burst on to the world stage in July 1983. This time around, the entire country received practical lessons on what terrorism was all about. Then came the 88/89 reincarnation of 1971. While the "Northerners" most often killed indiscriminately, the "Southerners" mostly picked and chose their victims. They even issued decrees on how and where the funerals of such victims be held. Since most of those targeted were politicians or their supporters, they demanded protection. The military was fighting a battle up North and could not afford a contingent to defend politicians. "Open Sesame" and a new paramilitary force is created – the "Kola Koti" or the Green Tigers. With a two-pronged civil war raging, arms and ammunition became accessible to those desiring protection. And the undesirables. Thus emerged the "Bodyguard Syndrome" – a person’s stature came to be recognized by the retinue of bodyguards they had around them – the official ‘Security Detail’ and the unofficial private army. And these ‘private armies’ also had their private lives – not in another world but in a netherworld and indulged in the business activities consistent with their lifestyles. Their businesses flourished.

It is not that their type of business activities did not exist before, but when the fund-raising activities of the "Northern" terrorists included lucrative narcotics trafficking, the business activities of these private armies virtually included narcotics in their "Articles of Association". Since they were protecting politicians, the politicians, in turn protected them from the long arm of the law. Both politicians and their private armies prospered, strengthening the bonds that brought them together. Politicians also cultivated friends among other businessmen carrying out generally acceptable business practices. Here again, the quid pro quo worked – politicians helped businessmen in their business activities and businessmen, in turn, helped politicians in their political activities. Well and good if it was all above board.

However today, we come across murders, kidnappings, robberies, rape and almost every other offense imaginableon an almost daily basis. Even Buddhist monks are apparently not safe in their temples. Depending on the profile of the victim or the perpetrator, the media will give coverage until interest fizzles out. I am not an expert on criminology, but I have lived in this country during the era when all the neighbours ran to treat a stray dog that had been hit by a passing car, to a period when we were forced to walk on the opposite of the road when a dead body was displayed, to today’s drive-by shootings, robberies, kidnap and rape. Arguably, politicians, and/or politics, and/or the sheer lack of political will has led to the current situation. Their actions within the hallowed Chambers are just facsimiles of what they are in the outside world.

There have been reports of a President dropping by helicopter to confront officials checking for what was reported to be narcotics. People smuggling to Australia was a lucrative business until the Australian Prime Minister met the President – boats no longer sailed. There were even reports of a letter being sent from the Prime Minister’s Office for the release of a container that apparently had some narcotics in it. Statements have been made in Parliament that the biggest drug lords were members of Parliament. Containers of sugar consigned to the CWE were detected to have contained narcotics. Even the former "Finance Minister" of the LTTE, who took on the mantle of leadership after Prabakharan was killed, has absolutely no charges filed against him.Murderers and rapists have received presidential pardons. Pardon is also bestowed before legal proceedings could commence. Drugs, rape, highway robbery, extortion, murder, bribery and even terrorism are all covered under the Penal Code, only to be swept under the carpet of political favours. Rule of Law has become dependent on the "Order Of The Day", which, in turn, is decided on the value of favours rendered!

Ambition and the pursuit of dreams is what human nature is all about. Man needs to strive to achieve and I admire the success stories of many entrepreneurs - Warren Beatty, Tata, Harry, or Gnanam. But then, a young guy from a village who plucks kurumba for his ‘hamus’, comes to Colombo, ‘interdicts’ a job at the CWE, declares that he knows where some birthmarks are and he becomes a Minister. How about getting your wife also on the National List? I personally know of people who could not afford a bicycle some time ago, while today, they are living in mansions and shuttle about in the lap of luxury. All they had to do was to change their profession to read as "Politician"! They all receive favours in the form of donations on the way up. Once there, it is their turn to return favours. In returning these favours, they don’t give a tinker’s cuss for their responsibility towards those who voted them into office.

The nelli, veralu, Nuwara Eliya pears, jamanarang we ate in those good old days are fast becoming extinct. It is not that the trees have died, it is just that something inside of us has collectively withered and died.

REGGIE PONNAMPALAM