Defiance, thy name is Maithri or what!

By N Sathiya Moorthy-September 30, 2018, 10:11 pm 

By telling the UN General Assembly "to allow Sri Lankan people to solve their problems on their own" and adding that "as an independent country we do not want any foreign power to exert influence on us", President Maithripala Sirisena may have let the cat among the global pigeons – or, is it a mixed metaphor, where the terms ‘cat’ and ‘pigeons’ are inter-changeable? If one were to recall the not-so-infrequent posting of the social media visual, the mouse may be chasing the cat all around the kitchen, for a change!

The question is whether the Cabinet of Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe and other coalition partners of the government got to hear and clear the President’s UNGA address. Or, did the coalition decision-makers at least had an inkling of what Sri Lanka’s presentation to the UNGA was all about, beyond what the President had told media editors days before leaving for New York?

Looking back, it would seem as if Sirisena did not possibly get to read – or, at least read beforehand – his UNGA speech in the first year of his presidency, 2015. In that session, he committed Sri Lanka to an independent probe of the kind that the ‘international community’ (read West) had sought into ‘accountability issues’ and ‘war crimes’ that predecessor Mahinda Rajapaksa would not yield. It was the kind of commitment that the West wanted and the Tamil Diaspora of all hues celebrated.

Back in Colombo then, Sirisena would go into trance of a kind, if not comatose, that he would say exactly the opposite thing that he had told the UNGA. It is another matter that his government would still go ahead with the US and the rest of the West in co-sponsoring the UNHRC resolution calling for a war-crimes probe, and also move with them and through them, requests for time-extension and mild modifications to the original resolution.

Full U-turn

Today, Sirisena has made a full U-turn. There was no reference whatsoever in his speech to war-crimes and accountability issues, or any investigation of any kind – internal or international, credible or not-so-credible. Between 2015 and 2018, not only has President Sirisena moved away from the nation’s commitment to the UNGA, by this one act, he has also moved away from his one commitment to the nation on the war-crimes probe – that there would be an all-Sri Lankan affair of the kind promised at the UNHRC.

The fact is that the President does not have to address the UNHRC, or even be present there. That job falls on the Foreign Ministry, if not the Foreign Minister himself. Going by official pictures of the President’s UNGA address this time, incumbent Foreign Minister, Tilak Marapana, was among those seated at the Sri Lanka Officials’ Desk, listening intently to the speech. Seated along Marapana were at least two other Ministers, namely, JHU’s Champika Ranawaka, and Upcountry Tamil representative, Mano Ganeshan, among others.

Whether the three Ministers shared the President’s views on the past commitments that the latter now declared Sri Lanka remains to be explained. Even more is the position of Prime Minister Wickremesinghe’s UNP partner on Sirisena’s declaration, which comes with consequences.

If nothing else, the UNP has been seen as a ‘liberal, democratic’ friend/front of the political West all along, nearer home and abroad.

Removing the goal-post

In his time, the international community came down heavily on President Rajapaksa for ‘constantly shifting the goal-post’ on the war-crimes probe. Maybe, their real concern at the time was China, but they had convinced themselves, or the Diaspora Tamils, had convinced the international interlocutors of the Sri Lankan State, to believe that the world was more concerned about ‘accountability issues’ and ‘war crimes probe’.

Today, at one stroke, or without playing any stroke at all, President Sirisena has removed the goal-post altogether from the arena. The thinking seems to have been that the world could complain about ‘shifting goal-post’ only if there was one.

It is anybody’s guess who cheated whom in the process, between Sri Lanka and the world, President Sirisena and the UNGA? Or, was the US and the rest of the West so naive’ and/or outright ignorant of Sri Lankan realities that they actually thought that an ‘international, independent war-crimes probe’ of whatever they had envisaged was possible?

Is it that the West knew all along that any probe into Sri Lankan ‘war crimes’ was not possible, after all, but they would be happy to go any extent to believe in the lies of a future leadership as long as it ensured that the Rajapaksas were out of the way? If the construct is true, there again, the Sirisena-Wickremesinghe duo have not removed China from Sri Lanka, as was desired, but have brought in more of China, and along with that more of other nations.

On the ‘investment front’, Chinese funding continues to be accepted it used to be under Rajapaksa. That also means that there is more Chinese involvement in Sri Lanka. On the same count, there is all tall talk of the present government encouraging investments from ‘friendly nations’ like India and the rest, but much of it remains promises in terms of the required clearances – again on the same lines as under the Rajapaksas.

Feeling cheated and worse

The US and the rest of the West must be feeling cheated on both fronts, namely, Chinese influence and alleged war crimes. The nation’s Tamil population should be feeling so even more. After all, it was on such hopes and expectations, though not bonded promises that they voted for Sirisena. They and the Muslims made his victory possible. The immediate and intermediary loser at the same time is not even the UNP underwriters of the Sirisena candidacy of the time. Instead, it may be the TNA leadership, which accepted the international community’s ‘commitments’ on the Sirisena candidacy and the UNP’s attestation of the same – or, was it the other way round – hook, line and sinker.

The TNA cannot escape taking stock of Sirisena’s address and the larger ‘Tamil position’ it claims to espouse every time a crisis of the kind occurs. Even the Sirisena address could not have come at a worse time for the TNA leadership, as the alliance had announced its conference in the first week of October, long ago.

Speeches apart, the Tamil audience at the TNA conclave would ask for more and expect more. The ill-advised demand for the TNA to give up the ‘Leader of the Opposition’ office being held by R Sampanthan can be one such expectation finding voice at the party conference. That may help the Rajapaksas’ SLPP-JO, which has been claiming the position in terms of the higher number of seats can show up in Parliament.

The elected TNA political administration in the Northern Province, headed by controversial former Supreme Court Judge, C V Wigneswaran, too, would not suffice. After all, the NPC is facing dissolution under the Constitution at the end of its five-year term, and fresh elections will be delayed.

If, at the end of it all, the Sirisena camp believes that his hardened stand on war-crimes probe will help him win over the Sinhala South and the armed forces, which are all supposed to be with the Rajapaksas, that, too, may not materialise. But then, it could well clear the decks for him to join hands with the Rajapaksas, if both desired, but then for more reasons than one, it need not also guarantee him a presidential ticket that promises to be a winner, this time too.

With Sirisena in the rival Rajapaksa camp, it can at best give an opportunity for the TNA to convince itself to back the UNP candidate in the presidential polls. Then again, it need not mean anything to the results, though both the TNA leadership and the UNP candidate, would be facing vociferous queries from the Tamil voters, and their Diaspora backers – drowning in the melee, Sirisena’s UNGA tall talk on the ‘reconciliation process’ gaining momentum under his care!

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

“Human Rights Is Latest Religion Of Western Nations” – Cardinal Malcolm Ranjith – A Comment

By P. Soma Palan –OCTOBER 2, 2018

P. Soma Palan

I refer to the above captioned news Report in the Daily Mirror of 24thSeptember, and two subsequent reports (a)“ Cardinal Clarifies” of 26thand (b) “ People shaped by Buddhist civilization do not violate Human Rights” of 28th September.

With due respect to the Rev. Cardinal, I wish to comment on the views expressed in these reports, as an independent and objective analyst, sifting the truths from the untruths. I am not a VIP or an intellectual opinion maker, but a humble citizen analyzing what is written, and presenting a correct view point, from my understanding of the subject matter.

Human Rights is the latest Religion

The Rev. Cardinal, by saying that Human Rights are the latest Religion, wittingly or unwittingly, belittling the universally declared concept of Human Rights. Human Rights, is a Secular Concept and not a religious doctrine. By saying it is a “new religion”, the Cardinal is being derisive of Human Rights. Human Rights are about Human beings, unlike Religion, which is about unknown and unknowable God. Religion cannot be a substitute for Human Rights. Human Rights and Religion are separate and different. However, there is a commonality of moral value, in both.

Rev. Cardinal has said that “if we practice religion properly, there is no need to talk about Human Rights”. In other words, what he is saying is that “Human Rights” are dispensable and superfluous, when religion prevails. Is this standpoint tenable? Human Rights encompass a collection of rights and not solely the right to life. Isn’t it preposterous to think that practicing of religion, properly, will bring about the multiple and various Human Rights to humanity?

The Cardinal, further states that “those who do not practice religion are the ones who crow over Human Rights.” On the contrary, I would say, those who seem pious and practice religion and crow about religion, as an external display, (for populist and political reasons) who are seen more in temples around the country and South Indian temples, are the great violators of Human Rights and Humanitarian Laws, and alleged to have committed “War Crimes”, amounting to genocide of unarmed civilian Tamils, and for abductions and killing people ,who disagreed with them, through the “ White Van” culture. Scuttling freedom of expression by silencing journalists to death and attacking Media Institutions. Thus there is a miss-match between Human Rights and Practice of Religion. Therefore, the notion that practicing religion properly, will have a humanizing and harmonizing influence on people and will serve Human Rights, and therefore render Human Rights redundant, sounds nonsensical.

Rev. Cardinal is reported to have said that, “although the Western Nations attempt to teach lessons on Human Rights to Sri Lanka, it had a multi religious society that had upheld Human Rights for centuries through their religious practices”. Isn’t this grandiloquent statement, hollow and contradictory, in the light atrocities committed by people, and sometimes with the complicity of the State, against racial and religious minorities from 1915 Muslim riots onwards, and 1958, 1983 communal riots against the Tamils, and recent riots against the Muslims in Aluthgama, Digana and violent attacks against evangelical Christian churches, a gross violation of Human Rights? To decry Western Nations giving Sri Lanka lessons in Human Rights, as we are religious puritans and beyond reproach of Human Rights violations, and to claim that we know our Human Rights more than them, is just rhetorical empty talk. But the Cardinal and the Church has no qualms about accepting a Western religion, Christianity, and its religious teachings, which is alien to our Buddhist/ Hindu Culture, but only averse to the Secular Human Rights values which are of Universal significance, although initiated by Western nations.

Rev. Cardinal argues that “ if people practice their religion properly”, Human Rights will be upheld, automatically. According to the Cardinal, in ancient and medieval times, people practiced their religion properly and hence there was no need for Human Rights. Is this view true? I would say no. In ancient and medieval times, in their ignorance, people suffered social practices, which would now constitute violations of Human Rights. Under the feudal Landlord System, there was serfdom, which was willingly accepted. The working people were mere chattel. The system of Rajakariya, compulsory labour, was a violation of Human Rights. People yielded to these social mal-practices as there was no awareness of the concept of Human Rights. There were no Institutional mechanisms to create awareness of Human Rights and their protection. Under the Despotic Monarchism, there were gruesome torture of wrong doers and barbaric executions of people by beheading and pounding their Heads in mortars. Under the colonial Rulers, particularly the Portuguese, there was forcible conversion of Buddhists and Hindus to Catholic religion. Violations of Human Rights were happening all the time. But there was no protests and articulation of Human Rights. The Politico-SocioEconomic Order of the day was taken for granted, as the norm. To say this apparent conflict-free harmony of the Social Order, was due to the practice of religion centuries ago, without any intervention of the Western Human Rights regime, is sheer intellectual dishonesty.

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Of ‘Cardinal’ sin, error, virtue, etcetera

Tuesday, 2 October 2018


Of late, the deep state has been the least of my worries. It has not kept me awake at night since the doldrums of the post 2015 revolution – fiasco though that has turned out to be. But it is deeper states of mind – to do with faith and philosophy – that concern me today. Also you, if you are (like Malcolm Cardinal Ranjith) a son of the soil and presumably have Sri Lanka’s best interests at heart. So much so – the human heart being what it is, full of deceit and a labyrinth of self and outer deception – that we (he or you and I) might deceive ourselves into believing that we mean what we say.


Cardinal sin

His Eminence has not been the darling of the liberal brigade. His stand – no pun intended – on homosexuality and abortion, among other matters close to the heart and mind – has not endeared him to the ‘new religionists’. His own understanding of those who see sexual orientation, practice and preference as human rights is to label their laissez-faire approach as a ‘religion’.

But laissez passer. To each his own, at least outside the confines of the cloistered and compromised confessional of contemporary (and dare I say it) historical Catholicism. I, too, am a man of little faith and less philosophy. And I know for a fact, after a jubilee of studying the Good Book – the same one His Grace might build his biblical praxis on – that human rights may have been codified by the like of Hammurabi. But (by God!) they find their modern origins in the prophetic voice of the likes of Amos among other Old Testament champions of the right to life, liberty under heaven, and the pursuit of godliness. That, however, is a matter for another forum – an ecclesiastical court that has little to do, if the Cardinal’s praxis is anything to go by – in the real world of those who would abuse nuns and choirboys with impunity; or defend the indefensible in more secular politically savvy courts of earthly kings.


Cardinal error

A more immediate concern for us all are the recent statements that the most powerful prelate in Sri Lankan Christendom has made with regard to two matters.

First, he says that in the West, human rights has become a new religion.

I refer to the media report of last week which asserted that “Archbishop Cardinal Malcolm Ranjith says that Western nations are attempting to teach lessons on human rights to a country like Sri Lanka which has been inclined towards religion for centuries.” While it is true that the US in particular and a panoply of European countries are utterly selective in overlooking their own abysmal track record in history written plain, one wonders in which centuries exactly Lanka has been the liberal paragon of the prelate’s fond imagining? The rape of indigenous people and their way of life by waves of subcontinental invaders? That splendidly civilised Reign of Terror known as the History of Sri Lankan Kings bar a few noble exemplars of the Buddha’s way of life? After Independence when we shed the blood of several lost generations of innocents and the martyrdom of our own natives in the name of an ethno-nationalist exceptionalism?

The media also reported His Grace as saying that the field of human rights has become the latest religion of the Western world. True, o king! In many cases, the myopia and meanness of the very lobbies whose mandate is to liberate people from millennia of blindness to the human condition beggars belief. There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamed of in the philosophies of those Western – and dare I essay it, Middle Eastern – religions that preach the social gospel but forget the rapine and plunder of the exploratory age; the ongoing indiscriminate terror visited on economic rivals in the name of American political evangelicalism and Euro-Brit complicity; and the hypocrisy of the lobbies as countenanced in INGOs that are democrats at home and tyrants abroad.

However, we would do better to reflect on both what militant Buddhism has done to a peaceful islander way of life and how Catholic sycophancy has once or twice propped up authoritarian antidemocratic regimes. To quote the charismatic Carpenter the Christ-touring Cardinal follows: “Let him who is without sin cast the first stone.” 

“There is no need to teach human rights to Sri Lanka where we have had religious inclination since centuries ago,” the Cardinal is also reported to have said. A sense of proportion is called for, perhaps, in examining where these religious inclinations and philosophical proclivities have led us as an island race that remains riven because of pseudo-religious inclinations and faux-political philosophies. Pogroms? Check. Ethnic cleansing? Alleged. Ethno-nationalist chauvinism? Get that T shirt.

However, I might agree with Archbishop Malcolm Cardinal Ranjith that “we should not be deceived by these tricks and should act wisely.” So be it, your eminence. The people you safeguard would do well to consider themselves warned against the false shepherds who devour the flock.

Then again, he says that “people who had been shaped by Buddhist civilisation do not violate human rights”. He adds that “a society which attempts to make human rights a religion could safeguard human rights effectively through Buddhist teaching”.

A master of making the obvious exceptional, His Grace says there are “threats posed on religions at present” and added that “Buddhism was the backbone of this country and it was a religion which had been followed by the people in this land for a long time.”

Not sensing that he might lose his Catholic audience and compromise our political masters’ customary reliance on the corresponding voter bloc, he added: “The rights of all people in this country are safeguarded when Buddhist culture is safeguarded. Anti-religious ideologies are being filtered into the society today. We have to put them aside and safeguard religions.”

Full metal jacket: “Since we have inherited a great culture over the years, there is no need to think about human rights in a special way. Religions are not followed in some countries. Human rights are safeguarded in our country much more than what is prescribed by the UN in Sri Lanka because of the Buddhist environment.”


Cardinal virtue

Now there is much truth in what His Lordship grinds out ex cathedra, so to speak. But his arguments hold true only in that ethereal place where imagination can conjure ghosts of a glory that has passed away from the earth and give to airy nothing a local habitation and a name. And by that I simply mean that if all the cardinal virtues he held dear were actually practised by the dearest people he holds dearer still, we’d all be able to take that cassock off and reach for the cup that cheers.

For the sake of balance, I’d like to reflect what some of his detractors save myself have essayed in response to the Cardinal’s “broadsides”. To wit:

•  That the clarity of his communication is a consummation to be desired: first, he says something that is at odds with the Catholic Church’s doctrine (e.g. his proclamation on the desirability of capital punishment); but then backtracks using equivocation and semiotics when the papal teaching contrary to his position (viz. the humility and humaneness of Francis I) goes public.
•  His mockery of the western liberal democrat’s secularism
•  An appeal to inchoate nationalism
•  A lionising of local values in the form of cheap one upmanship
•  Irony that his primary allegiance is not to the Sri Lankan state or the people of this democratic republic but a plutocratic conservative Western capital at the centre of the ongoing European imperial project

I would agree with Dylan Perera on all of these as well as His Grace’s deliberate use of populist rhetoric to amplify patriotic pride. But stop short of saying it is at odds with the universalist message of Christ. Sorry. There must be giving the devil his due for all manner of mendicants as much as the mendacious followed that Man among men.


Cardinal response

Not much of a doubt there will be sundry Defenders of the Faith who will spring to an apologia (plus, possibly, personal attacks against those who dare raise clenched fists at the hot seat or high chair) for their man of God. And I have no truck with them. I, too, bow the knee to a Higher Power and will look forward with fear and trembling to the Great White Throne Judgment. But even princes of the new world order to come must search their consciences diligently after having embraced the princes and potentates of this world for their own reasons and raisons d’etres.

For though I sense a deeply convoluted Hitch-22 in the anticlerical fulminations of the late great Christopher Hitchens, I’m beginning to see what he meant when he suggested in no uncertain terms that religion poisons everything. No doubt atheism is capable of equally great atrocities. But for simpleminded absurdities it’s hard to beat politically tainted pseudo-religious faux-political asininity.


Cardinal escape hatch

Now to me. For peccavi: I have sinned! A closer examination of self will reveal without a shadow of doubt the fallenness and the farness of the fall of those such as I who are honest to God. And mea culpa, mea maxima culpa; for I have no good to save me from myself but saving grace that saves me and any other who will have It. But you won’t find me on my knees in a compromised confessional where the most fundamental of human rights have been violated by not defenders, but desecrators of the faith.

A son of a small island (like His Grace) and a scion of a larger destiny (perhaps unlike His Eminence, mercy and peace be upon him), I would have a true separation of church and state, of faith and political philosophy. No doubt any religionist – even and especially the traders and truckers of that unbelief ‘neoliberalism’ – may critically engage the powers that be. But render unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s. And you know the rest.

So who will rid us of these troublesome priests? For town hall and market square are squalid enough places with the haggling and bargaining of princes and merchants without some well-meaning ill-intentioned or savvy Machiavelli sticking their toffee-nosed nonsense into the public discourse. Private words in a president’s ear are one thing. Perhaps it is now incumbent on the free media to refrain from giving the Cardinal’s “outbursts” the column inches they barely deserve.

(Journalist | Editor-at-large of LMD | Writer #SpeakingTruthToPower)

New PTA from 17 th September ; govt. proves it is not effeminate – new welcome enactment is no sport and play !

(Lanka e News -30.Sep.2018, 10.45PM) The infamous Prevention of Terrorism Act (PTA ) which was enacted during the period when the ethnic war began in 1979 , was replaced by a revised improved version when the parliament passed the modernized new Prevention of Terrorism enactment .This became law on the 17 th of September following the gazette notification .

The all important gazette notification can be read by clicking on the link at the end of the article.

This new most useful Act which conforms to international standards is based on local requirements, and is against terrorism while being designed to dispense justice .It is emphasized at the beginning of the Act this is a methodology introduced to ensure fair play and justice.

This Act is applicable to those engaged in terrorism within the country and outside . Under the new Act if serious harm is inflicted on places used by the public , the environment or the facilities provided by the government those crimes too are punishable under the Act if proved guilty .Hence this ACT is no sport and play. Even if damage is done to the registered websites , those offences also come under the new Act.

If harm is caused to the religious cultural heritage that too can be brought under the new Act. If any risk is engendered to the health of the public or a section thereof , that too can be brought under the new PTA . It is well for the doctors who staged unjust strikes in the past to take serious note of this. The GMOA doctors cannot continue to behave like GOMA (cow dung brained ) doctors .

Plundering or robbing of State assets including Intellectual property is interpreted specifically as an act of terrorism . The punishment ranges from fines not exceeding Rs. one million to life imprisonment .

Although suppressing or publishing matters identified as ‘secret information’ are within the purview of this new ACT, publishing of news by the registered electronic or print media in the best interests of the public in good faith to enthuse the public or classical publications are not offences under the new ACT.

The enforcement of all these laws belongs to the Police and not the forces.

Under the new PTA , the closest relative of those taken into custody should be informed of it within 24 hours , and the suspect should be produced before a magistrate within 48 hours. However the magistrate is not empowered to grant bail. Only the high court can grant bail.

The suspect can be held in remand custody without filing cases only for a period of six months. If this period is to be extended , only another six more months is permissible. Every two weeks , the suspect shall be produced before a magistrate.

Under this new Act , it is the duty of the IGP to maintain a centralized data base , and a register which will have a record of the following particulars:

Imprisonment

Detention

Remand custody

Granting of bail

When he/she was released

Filing of case

Passing verdict of guilt or

acquittal of the accused.

Meting out punishment.

These particulars must be made available to the Human Rights Commission at any time when requested.

No matter what , since the actions of the public if necessary can be brought under the prevention of terrorism laws relying on some angle (interpretation) of the ACT , and therefore it most decisively impacts on the daily lives of the people , it is most paramount the people of SL enlighten and educate themselves on this new law.

The new prevention of terrorism law and the complete gazette notification can be viewed by clicking on the link below

https://www.lankaenews.com/home/downloads/61/New-Counter_Terrorism-Act-English.pdf

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by     (2018-09-30 18:38:34)

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A STAUNCH MAHINDA RAJAPAKSA LOYALIST SPEAKS OF GOTABAYA’S ALUGOSUWA OF JAFFNA

K.T.Rajasingham is seen handing over a copy of the

Image: Alugosuwa with his mentor – File Photo ( Caption from the original article)

01/10/2018

A staunch supporter of former president Mahinda Rajapaksa has published an article which speaks about Presidential aspirant Gotabhaya Rajapaksa’s Alugosuwa in Jaffna.  Alugosuwa is  the Sinhala word for Hangman and  colloquial word for killer.

K.T. Rajasingham, the author and publisher of the article was  a member of the Sri Lanka government delegation to UNHRC in 2012.

The article fellows:

Gotabaya’s Alugosuwa of Jaffna paralysed with recurring blackouts

By K.T. Rajasingham.

Jaffna/Colombo, 20 August, (Asiantribune.com):

In word, it is no more than God’s retribution; it is punishment for the sins committed on the Tamil Lankans. Nothing more, nothing less.

Gotabaya’s hangman of Sri Lanka, or the Alugosuwa, as the Portuguese like to call their executioner, is paralysed, and is lying alone in Ward Number 17 of the Army Hospital in Colombo. He has experienced blackouts a couple of times.

Last week, during one such blackout, he collapsed in the bathroom, and suffered a serious head injury and admitted to the Army Hospital in Colombo. He was immediately shifted to the Asiri Medical Hospital, where doctors conducted an operation to check internal haemorrhage. He is still not out of woods, though he has since been brought back to the Army Hospital for follow up medical care, according to reliable sources.

The news right now is that the ‘Black sheep’ who had brought bad name to the Sri Lanka Army amongst the Tamils, desecrated a few dozen Hindu Temples, and involved in abduction, torture, and killing of several Tamils after the end of the armed conflict in April 2009, is bound to the wheelchair.

The former Army officer has been at the centre of several frauds and scandals. He was investigated under the Serious Acts of Fraud, Corruption and Abuse of Power, State Resources and Privileges (PRECIFAC). The probe body presented its report to President Maithripala Sirisena on Jan 2, 2018.

Major General Mahinda Hathurusinghe was the Commander, Security Forces, Jaffna, for four years, from 7 Jan 2010 to 7 Jan 2014. And in that capacity, he had unleashed a reign of terror. Yet surprisingly, four years after he was forced to relinquish the Jaffna post, on Jan 10, 2017 to be precise, the Sirisena government made him Adjutant General at the Army Headquarters.

People of Jaffna have publicly indicted the Major General. The occasion was the funeral of Chief Sanganayaka, Northern Province and Chief incumbent of the Jaffna Naga Vihare, Ven. Meegahajandure Gnnanarathana Thero, on Dec 23, 2017 at the Jaffna esplanade – Muttaweli. He passed away on Dec 19, 2017.

In his funeral oration, this writer – K.T. Rajasingham dubbed Major General Mahinda Hathurusinghe as one of the bad eggs within the armed forces who had contributed to the idea of subjugations of the Tamils. As Security Forces Commander of Jaffna, he had unleashed a reign of terror for four years. It was a common secret that he was responsible for breaking and destroying several Hindu temples in the Jaffna district, especially the temples in the Security Zone.

Rajasingham pointed out that the Major General was deeply involved in the scandal that had rocked Kankesanthurai Cement Corporation. The issue figured prominently in the probe carried out by PRECIFAC commission. The charge was that Mahinda Hathurusinghe had ripped and sold as scrap millions of dollars’ worth machineries in the factory. The probe body severely indicted him in its report. Surprisingly, the President has not order action against him as yet. Mum is the official word, in fact.

The President may not have taken action against the Major General Mahinda Hathurusinghe, but the turn of events show that God has not taken kindly to this Alugosuwa of Sri Lanka and has made him pay for his sin in this world.

Therefore, those who played with the lives of the Tamils – Beware of certain God’s Retribution – Righteousness Will Always Win.
– Asian Tribune –

How far is the Govt responsible for the current economic malady ?

2018-10-02

Sri Lanka has a strange colonial experience of being provided with free education, health care and subsidized rice even while the country remained a colony of Britain. During the ensuing decades since independence, the country’s new leaders pushed the envelope further,much less due to a coherent long term vision, but as a populist electoral ploy. As a result, generations that grew up immediately after the independence developed a unique outlook on the role of the government as feeding and clothing them and their ever expanding legions of children. During the 60s, Sri Lanka also had a fertility rate that could rival the Sub Saharan Africa’s present record. However, commodity bonanza of the post-Second World War did not last longer and the plight was made worse by the mishandling of the economy.

Demographic bulge exploded in two generations of insurgencies in the South, and a good deal of the remainder were sent to the Middle East to toil for the Arabs.   
However, neither successive governments, nor people did grasp the full extent of the country’s economic maladies. The root cause was all too visible, but addressing the problem was politically uncomfortable. Successive governments opted to short term remedies that could postpone the full impact of the economic meltdown, and passed it to its successor.   

Now we are back to square one as the Rupee has plummeted to its all-time low against the dollar. However, the impact is felt more than before for the government for the first time has chosen not to seek recourse in usual short term and inevitably futile measures to prop up the falling rupee. In 2011, then Mahinda Rajapaksa regime burnt US $ 4.2 billion of foreign reserves to defend the rupee. When dollar reserves ran out, the Rupee depreciated by 13% within a year. This government, which has previously justified the lease of Hambantota port on the debt service cost of the port loan and the injection of US $ 1.2 billion by the China Port Merchant, reportedly spent US $ 1.2 billion to defend the rupee in 2015. Notwithstanding the Central Bank intervention, the rupee depreciated by 9% in that year. The current government’s decision not to repeat the usual folly is much less due to its economic acumen, than due to the absence of dollar reserves. With about US $ 6 billion of debt service payments scheduled for the next year, the government is left with less than US $ 1.5 billion of foreign reserves.   

In that sense, the government’s resolve to opt to the unpalatable choice and to let the market decide the value of the rupee is salutary. The other option would still have the same outcome as per the rupee, only after the Central Bank exhausts several billions of dollars, and potentially creates conditions for a loan default. Also, the foreign exchange crisis is not uniquely Sri Lankan. Nor are its immediate causes domestic. From already crisis-ridden Latin American economies to otherwise sound Indian and Chinese economies, native currencies have depreciated against a stronger Dollar.  

However, three years is long enough time for the government to address the root causes of its balance of payment problem. That root cause is the lack of exports that brings in dollars. The government’s policymakers have kept repeating the virtues of an export- oriented economy. They are right in their economic conviction. But, there is a major difference between aspiring for things, and strategizing and implementing means to achieve those ends. In that sense, this government has seminally failed to implement its economic vision, only if it has one.   

There are two ways to interpret that failure. One is at the extreme end of liberal market economics, this government should be thinking that everything will be determined by the market forces. So that as the rupee depreciates further, exports become completive and hence, the export income increases. At the same time, imports become expensive, and curtailed by low local demand, hence the trade deficit gets plugged in. However, as the recent history of political economy would attest the economic theory has not taken a life of its own, much less so in the developing world, without calculated government interventions.  

Economic liberalism itself causes a good deal of physical and psychological displacement , social upheaval and short term pain

The second conjecture is that irrespective of what it thinks and what it wants to achieve, this government is ineffective, bereft of cohesion, and increasingly so, political capital. That turns the government into a mere passenger of the vehicle it was meant to steer. My guess is that the second is a better reflection of the government policy.  

Consider the following. While clamouring for an export- driven economy, this government undermined even the already secured foreign direct investment, be it the Colombo Port City or the proposed infrastructure development projects. Suspension of these projects was reflected in the lower economic growth numbers of the previous years. Policy uncertainty of the government has further discouraged investment since then.  

Second, it lacks the political capital and decisiveness to implement crucial economic policy reforms and development projects. Even though the government may enter into several Free Trade Agreements, we are still left with nothing to export. Its proposed economic zones, probably the most transformative one being in Hambantota, are trapped in a policy vacuum. You need a government with political will and assertiveness to acquire land and reform labour laws. Vacillating in these measures has only contributed to the current fiscal woes of the government.  

Third, despite its self- professed commitment to free market, which by extension should favour competency over nepotism, this government has acted not differently from its predecessors. Managing loss- making state- owned- enterprises, Srilankan Airlines being one of the biggest drain of public coffers, would have been done better under a nonpolitical board of directors, hired through an international recruitment process. Instead, the government has stuck to its cronies.  

So, effectively three years has been squandered, and it is unlikely that nothing much would happen in the remainder of the current term of the government.  
And fourth, there is another, unpalatable reality of the conditions that underpinned the success of economic liberalism, especially in the developing world:Economic liberalism is best served with political authoritarianism. That is the stubborn reality from Augusto Pinochet’s Chile to development dictatorships of East Asia, Malaysia, Singapore, and the present day China.  

There is logic to it. Economic liberalism itself causes a good deal of physical and psychological displacement , social upheaval and short term pain. Only a government that can ignore short term public grievances, and cohesive and single minded enough to forge ahead with its policy can prevail over a plethora of vested, and often competing social impulses. However, means and mode of political authoritarianism have also moderated over time, from Chiang Kai-shek’s white terror to a more subtle power centralized approaches of Dr. Mahathir Mohamed and Lee Kuan Yew.

The bottom line however, is in the developing world, the leaders have to choose between being a political liberal and an economic liberal. Trying to become both would lead to being neither.  

 This government’s desire to present itself as the one that restored democracy is in conflict with what is demanded from it to truly leapfrog the economy. For that, its apologists could even project the government’s spinelessness as virtuous. However, running a country is lot more than being sanctimonious. It entails dispassionate policy making and implementation. There however, this government is at fault for lacking it.   

Follow @RangaJayasuriya on Twitter  

The fate of the rupee Part II: Need for addressing issues at root

A choice involving a Devil’s alternative

 Monday, 1 October 2018

In the previous part, we looked at how the Sri Lanka rupee has been continuing its one way journey to depreciation ever since the country gained independence from Britain in 1948 (available at: http://www.ft.lk/columns/The-fate-of-the-rupee--Central-Bank-is-caught-with--Devil-s-Alternative-/4-663352 ). Accordingly, the rupee, which was exchanged for Rs 4.76 per US dollar in 1948, could not be maintained at that level even with the strictest set of import and exchange controls till 1977, and in a partially liberalised regime since then. Before 1977, while changing the value of the rupee through deliberate action from time to time, and relying on import and exchange controls to curtail the outflow of foreign currencies, a massive partial devaluation at 65% over the official rate was put in place, through a system officially called the Foreign Exchange Entitlement Certificate or FEEC system.

In a gradual adjustment to the rate, the rupee had been devalued by the Government by about 86% to Rs 8.83 per dollar by end-1976. By enforcing the FEEC requirement at 65%, the effective exchange rate that had been applicable to non-essential imports had been raised from this level to Rs 14.57 per dollar. In 1977, when Sri Lanka moved away from the previous fixed exchange rate system to a more flexible exchange rate system, the rupee value was set at Rs 15.56 per dollar, adding a depreciation of about 7% to the previous effective rate. Since then, year after year, the external value of the rupee fell in the market, since the country could not earn enough foreign exchange to meet the demand for foreign currencies by Sri Lanka’s citizens, businesses and the Government. The gap was filled by borrowing abroad, but it added a greater burden to the country since it had to borrow more to repay foreign loans when they matured and pay interest on such loans annually. Today, it was noted, that Sri Lanka was in a very critical situation, forcing it to make a choice involving high costs whatever the course of action it would take. Such a choice is called a ‘Devil’s Alternative’.

Foreign exchange crises in the past

Of course, this is not the first time Sri Lanka had to face such a critical foreign exchange crisis. There were many in the post-independence period. On all these occasions, Sri Lanka sought to come out of the crisis, mostly temporarily, by getting IMF support.

All events of Foreign Exchange crises have been settled through IMF support

After the JVP insurrection of 1988-9, the country’s official foreign reserves, mainly held by the Central Bank, had fallen from a peak of $ 522 million in 1984 to $ 291 million in 1989. The former was sufficient to finance 3 months of future imports; but in 1989, it could finance only a little more than a month’s imports. On this occasion, Sri Lanka was rescued by an Extended Credit Facility or ECF of SDR 336 million arranged in May 1991. Bur the rupee was allowed to depreciate from Rs 40 per dollar in 1990 to Rs 46 per dollar in 1992, marking a depreciation rate of some 15%. The next crisis came in 2000, when official foreign reserves fell to $ 1049, which was sufficient only for financing 2 months’ imports. A Stand By Arrangement or SBA of SDR 200 million was hastily arranged to overcome the crisis but the rupee had to be allowed to fall to a level of Rs 96.73 per dollar by end-2002.


The next crisis hit the country in 2008 at the tail end of the LTTE war, when the official foreign exchange reserves fell to $ 2560 million, sufficient for financing imports only for 2 months. IMF rescued once again, through a mega SBA of SDR 1654 million in July 2009.

In 2015, again the country went into a foreign exchange crisis, with a fall in foreign reserves and an increase in its foreign loan repayment commitments. Reserves fell to $ 6019 million, which was still sufficient to meet a declined level of 3 months’ imports. But the short-term foreign loan repayment commitments had increased to $ 4300 million, reducing the import capacity of the freely available reserves to slightly more than one month. The Government, sitting on the problem by looking for non-conventional remedies like getting funds from an anonymous Belgian benefactor, delayed any support program from IMF. When the situation became critical and the country could no longer continue with no action program, it went for a mega Extended Fund Facility or EFF of IMF, amounting to SDR 1070 million in June 2016. But by that time, the rupee had depreciated from Rs 131 per dollar at the end of 2014 to Rs 149.80 per dollar by end 2016. Thus, the current crisis has hit the country while it is on an IMF support program.

The present Government’s pledges for reforms 

Sri Lanka, in its letter of intent addressed to IMF under the signatures of the country’s then Finance Minister Ravi Karunanayake and Central Bank Governor Arjuna Mahendran, had pledged that the Government would undertake six pillars of economic reforms to support the goals relating to medium to long term economic growth to be facilitated by IMF’s EFF.

The reform program promised by the Government had covered measures to improve the Budget and its revenue mobilisation, enhance the management of public finances, undertake reform of the public sector enterprises, introduce a facilitating trade and investment program, and change the central bank’s monetary policy action from controlling money supply to directly attain a pre-planned inflation level.

But the most important reform the Government had pledged has been, in the words of IMF, the following: ‘A return to fiscal consolidation, targeting a reduction in the overall fiscal deficit to 3.5%of GDP by 2020, is the linchpin of the reform program. Rebuilding tax revenues through a comprehensive reform of both tax policy and administration will be key in this regard, supplemented by steps toward more effective control over expenditures and putting state enterprise operations on a more commercial footing’ (available at: https://www.imf.org/en/news/articles/2015/09/14/01/49/pr16262).

IMF support is a facilitator for the Government to take measures for sustained growth

One might wonder why, with such generous IMF support, Sri Lanka could not resolve its foreign exchange crisis permanently. This is because IMF support is a facility given to the Central Bank to temporarily fill the gap in the balance of payments.

It is expected to give a breathing space for the country to introduce growth-friendly economic reforms, to place the economy in a long-term economic growth trajectory. In fact, when seeking the IMF support, governments on their own pledge to implement a series of economy-wide economic reforms. However, when it came to implementing them, the commitment shown by past governments had mostly been partial.

Consequently, all past IMF support programs were mere financing facilities, with little or no impact on the country’s growth momentum. Hence, it is not the IMF support that should be blamed for the country’s failure. It is half-hearted initiatives of the past governments that should take full responsibility for its failure.

Unproductive deficit financing has been the root cause   

In term of the pledge given by the Government when it sought IMF support in mid-2016, it had planned to hit the root cause of the present currency crisis. That is, the profligate Government expenditure programs, which have done little to improve the country’s productivity to sustain economic growth in the past, have been the main perpetrator of the continued currency crisis.

This is intuitively understandable since the new incomes created by the Government, by running budget deficits of significant amounts year after year, have flown out of the country by way of persistently rising imports. In a small open economy, this is the worst option which any government would have gone for. Even John Exter, the architect of Sri Lanka’s Central Bank had warned of this policy option in his report submitted to the Government on the establishment of a Central Bank in Ceylon, known as the Exter Report.

But this warning had fallen on the deaf ears of all the Finance Ministers of post-independence Sri Lanka, except M D H Jayawardena, who held the position during 1954-6. It was only during his time, both in 1954 and 1955, that Sri Lanka had a surplus budget in all its history. In all other years, the Government budgets had been characterised by liberal expenditure programs, financed by a combination of borrowing and money-printing through the central bank. These profligate expenditure programs in turn led to increase the country’s public debt on the one hand and generate inflationary pressures, on the other. The final result has been the generation of balance of payments shortfalls on a continuous basis thereby putting pressure for the exchange rate to depreciate in the market.

No space for import controls

Now that the foreign exchange crisis has become acute and the country has been left with a dangerous ‘Devil’s Alternative’, desperate attempts have been made by the country’s political authorities to reduce the import flow as a matter of priority. However, Sri Lanka’s import structure has been heavily skewed toward the import of intermediate goods and investment goods, and not toward the consumption goods.

Intermediate goods, which account for about 55% of the total imports, are needed to provide inputs to production processes. Investment goods, accounting for about 23%, will supply capital goods to enhance the country’s production boundaries. Hence, attempts at curtailing them drastically will bring in the undesired repercussion of stunting future economic growth.

In such a situation, it is the consumption goods that amount to $ 4.5 billion or 22% have been the target for curtailment. There again, when essential food items and medicines are excluded, the consumer goods base that could be curtailed without immediate disastrous effects is reduced to about $ 1 to 1.5 billion. Since all these goods cannot be curtailed immediately, and it is not desirable to do so either, the Government may seek to brand them as inessential imports and curtail them by about $ 1 billion. But that would be an insignificant amount given the enormity of the problem being faced by the country today.

Attack on vehicle imports after the horse has bolted from the stable

In order to curtail the flow of vehicle imports to the country, the Central Bank earlier imposed a 100% margin requirement on all vehicle imports except those for commercial purposes (available at: https://www.cbsl.gov.lk/en/node/4093).

However, most of the private vehicles that come to Sri Lanka today are supported by duty-free licenses issued by the Ministry of Finance to Parliamentarians or public servants. The permits issued to both categories had a ready underground market price, ranging from Rs 2 million in the case of public servants, to Rs 3 million in the case of others. The Ministry of Finance had promoted the issue of permits by reducing the frequency from 10 years to 5 years in June 2018.

The result was the proliferation of the permits available for sale in the underground market, denying revenue to Government on the one hand, and leaking the benefit from the true public servants to others on the other. Hence, to support the Central Bank’s move to curtail the flow of private vehicle imports, the Ministry of Finance has last week suspended the use of permits, in the case of Parliamentarians for one year and public servants for 6 months.

But almost all Parliamentarians are reported to have availed themselves of this facility already, the suspension made by the Ministry appears to be non-binding on them. In the case of public servants too, the majority of them have already used their vehicles permits. It therefore appears that the door of the stable has been closed by the Ministry after the horse has already bolted.

Address the issue at the source and not at the end

These measures are therefore providing only a signalling effect to the market. They have tried to fix the issue at the end rather than at the beginning. The more appropriate measure would have been for the Government to go for thrift in the budget. Thrift involves a process of cutting wasteful and extravagant expenditure on one side and improving the revenue base on the other. In a previous article in this series, I had drawn the attention of the Minister of Finance in 2016 to the necessity for plugging leaks in the Government budget by presenting it symbolically in the form of ‘Thrift in the Budget Pot’. That symbol is reproduced again for the guidance of the present Minister of Finance.

Government should reinforce the Central Bank’s measures

The Central Bank alone cannot stabilise the external value of the rupee. For that, the Government should extend a helping hand to strengthen the Bank’s initiatives. That can be done by going for thrift at all levels of the Government. It is not too late for the Government to go for it now.

(W A Wijewardena, a former Deputy Governor of the Central Bank of Sri Lanka, can be reached at waw1949@gmail.com)        

Radhika Coomaraswamy Gets Her Brother Indrajit’s Previous Job At John Keells Holdings 

OCTOBER 1, 2018

In an interesting move, international human rights activist Radhika Coomaraswamy has been appointed a non-Executive Director of John Keells Holdings, one of largest blue-chip conglomerates in Sri Lanka.

Radhika Coomaraswamy is the sister of Central Bank Governor Indrajit Coomaraswamy, a man in the driving seat of the Sri Lankan economy.

Indrajit Coomaraswamy too held the same position before he became the Central Bank Governor. After his Central Bank appointment, however, Coomaraswamy stepped down from the JKH hob as his continuation as a non-Executive Director would amount to conflict of interest.

Radhika Coomaraswamy functioned as a member of the Constitutional Council for three years. Although her term came to an end recently, there were speculations that she would be re-appointed for another term. However, JKH appointment confirms that Coomaraswamy will not seek a fresh term as a member of the Constitutional Council.

Despite her seemingly unimpeachable stature as the former Under Secretary General of the United Nations and Special Representative for Children in Armed Conflict (2006-2012), Radhika Coomaraswamy does not possess an impeccable track record. She had been caught redhanded trying to suppress a report on human rights violations in order to get the Government go-ahead necessary to secure the plum UN post and thereafter lying about it.

Coomaraswamy stirred much controversy towards the end of her tenure as the Chairperson of Sri Lanka’s Human Rights Council over an unpublished report on human rights violations that were widely condemned. The said report was commissioned during the time she sat on the Council. The report, put together by T. Suntheralingam, a retired judge, who acted as the Special Rapporteur of an inquiry into high profile violations including the killing of five students in Trincomalee in January 2006.

That report was never made public by the Human Rights Commission or the then Government. It finally entered the public domain when Colombo Telegraph published it in January 2014.

The controversy over the report stemmed from Coomaraswamy’s statements to Colombo Telegraph at the time the Colombo telegraph published the report. She insisted in the first instance that the report had not been finalised. She said that neither she nor Dr Deepika Udagama (also a member of the Council) had seen a finalised report before they left the Council. She said “Neither she nor I can remember the contents and if it had been finalized we would surely have remembered.”

However, after we published the story quoting an investigator who insisted that the report had been finalised PRIOR to Dr Coomaraswamy’s departure to the UN, she changed her position, Coomaraswamy was forced to acknowledge that she was aware that the report had been finalised and that she had even received it and ordered it to be published. She said however that she didn’t have the time to read the report.

These circumstances indicate irresponsibility or incompetence or both on her part considering the enormity of the allegations and as importantly the seriousness of the findings. The report revealed the involvement of security forces in the said violations. Had the findings been published or been discussed it would have in the very least put pressure on the security forces to be more disciplined in the execution of operations against the LTTE, human rights activists who wish to remain anonymous say.

Strangely, Sri Lanka’s articulate human rights advocates as well as INGOs which profess a keen interest in rights issues never thought fit to question Coomaraswamy over this glaring act of negligence. As strange is the fact that this lobby did not take up the report when Colombo Telegraph finally published it in January 2014, giving rise to the view that they would sideline an important discussion and with it sweep aside notions of justice, truth and retribution rather than cause embarrassment to Coomaraswamy.

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