Sirisena – Alles Launch Shameless Misinformation Campaign To Drive A Wedge Between Ranil And Sajith Ahead Of Confidence Vote

DECEMBER 7, 2018

President Maithripala Sirisena and controversial businessman Tiran Alles have planted a fake news in the Mawbima and Ceylon Today newspapers, owned by Alles, saying UNP Leader Ranil Wickremesinghe has promised the post of Finance Minister and a deputy leader position in the party to Ravi Karunanayake.

The objectives of the fake news were to create a fresh division between Wickremesinghe and UNP Deputy Leader Sajith Premadasa and to frustrate the middle class with Wickremesinghe’s leadership. Sirisena contracted Alles to launch the misinformation campaign after his advisors informed Sirisena that the ousted Prime Minister is rapidly becoming popular among the middle-class voters.

This also comes ahead of the UNP’s plans to present a confidence motion to parliament in support of Wickremesinghe. The misinformation campaign is a desperate attempt by Sirisena to drive a wedge between Wickremesinghe and his Deputy Leader Premadasa, informed political sources said.

Sources close to Wickremesinghe confirmed Colombo Telegraph no such assurances have been given to any UNP Parliament on party positions and Cabinet positions. “At this point, everyone is focused on resolving the current political deadlock and forming a legitimate government in the country. No discussion has taken place with anyone over positions,” they added.

Sources close to Karunanayake also stated that no such discussion had taken place between the former Minister and the ousted Prime Minister. They categorically rejected reports to the effect that Wickremesinghe had given a letter to Karunanayake assuring the Finance Minister and party deputy leader portfolios.

Towards a school of radicals 

 2018-12-07

“Sri Lanka is witnessing a constitutional experiment that is fast turning out to be elitist and exclusionary. A popular mandate seems to be dwarfed by an unelected Regency.” (Sarath de Alwis, in 2015)
Somewhere in 2016, Thisuri Wanniarachchi wrote an article criticising, among other things, the culture of Big Matches and school fraternities in Sri Lanka. She seemed to believe that these were symptomatic of; a) social and intellectual backwardness, since for her they seemed to indicate that past pupils believed school was the farthest they can get in life; b) misogyny, with regard to the segregation between boys’ and girls’ schools; and c) homophobia, since students from boys’ schools revel in flaunting themselves as “drag queens” at cycle parades. If ever an award is presented for articles that attracted the most hype in a given year, Thisuri’s article will get top honours for 2016. People wrote about it, people wrote against it, some supported her stance, and many others (including myself) wrote it off as set of rants and raves and sweeping, crass generalisations. Still, in hindsight, I believe it was valid.  

A close friend of mine, who calls himself a “child of 1956,” once lamented that most of our schools, especially those demarcated as “privileged” and “popular,” tend to de-radicalise those who enter them. For the record, this person was a past student of one of these popular schools, though he had cut off virtually all contact with it after he left. He argued (cogently, I should think), that an education system over which we spend more time spawning its own sense of self-worth, in the form of those notions of what is “popular” and “elite” and what is not, can only lead to the intensification of the rifts and deficits that have assailed our society for so long.  
My friend got the point Thisuri didn’t (or almost got): at present, our education system, particularly when it comes to our schools, are (as she put it correctly) socially malnourished. But this is not ONLY because they reflect misogyny and homophobia and what not, even though these are problems that are relevant and pressing. Rather, it is because they don’t teach us enough to look beyond the four walls within which we are sheltered; in short, that they don’t teach us to open up our minds. 
No, this is not about whether our schools (can) breed original thinkers. There’s no denying that they do. But thinkers who go as far as to question the very institutions of power that nurture them: these are, I feel, sorely lacking today.  

I’m not suggesting that we do not have radicals; rather, the radicalism they spout tends to be undone by ideological obfuscations. Just look at the “radicals” who made the headlines with their links with a State-owned corporation that is alleged to have doled money to them in return for their “radicalism” (I am talking about those Yahalapanist propagandists, by the way). Just look at the protestors who were there, ostensibly out of a love for democracy, but in fact out of a love for the person who had been ousted by the President. Given this, where are the REAL radicals?  

We live in a country where out of 10,162 national schools, only 867 have adequate facilities for science education. We live in a country where regions recording the highest income disparities, especially Moneragala, produce the highest number of arts graduates, many of whom, because of those prejudiced views of artistes we cherish dearly, end up on the road as picketers, protesters, and peddlers. Given that the system has been geared for the few, then, what should the role of the few be? In other words, how should we address the deficit between the 867 and the 10,162? It is a question that no amount of reforms and commissions has resolved. 
What makes it even worse is the fact that, for the most, the system runs on a fiction of equality in terms of teaching and exam material. A student in Kekirawa may get the same paper a student in Kurunduwatte does (dumbed down, so the defenders of the system tell us, to accommodate the Kekirawa student), but it will not compensate for the fact that the Kekirawa school does not have labs and adequate provisions to hold practical exams for potential science stream students. 
The counter-argument to this is that the standardisation of results (the Z-score) ensures that a student from Kekirawa has as much a chance as a student from Kurunduwatte to enter university. Again, however, even if the Kurunduwatte student gets 3As and still can’t enter, and a student from a less privileged background gets 2As and 1 B and does, this will not conceal the deeper structural rifts, in terms of qualified teachers, classroom facilities, and so on, between Kekirawa and Kurunduwatte.  

"Max Weber observed that in  every structure of domination, there is a mechanism through which power  relations are transformed to sanctified rights "

The most typical response I get from the entrenched (read, “privileged”) young is that there is no point in gearing the system to the advantage of the unprivileged, since the unprivileged are driven by a campaign of resentment and envy against them: “There’s no point talking about it, because at the end of the day they will always want to deny us the things we were born to, through no fault of our own.” 
Was this not the same perception that coloured the prejudices of those from Ranil Wickremesinghe’s Reid Avenue clique against the multitude, the same multitude over whom were imposed, in the aftermath of the UNP victory in 2015, a set of beliefs that (as Dayan Jayatilleka wrote) affronted their national identity? What else could explain the cabalistic, ineffable elitism of the crowd that rallied around Ranil and the UNP for no reason other than the fact that they belonged to a certain class: a class of first-class thieves and robbers, who perpetuated the myth that gentlemen don’t rob (as my friend the poet of Thimbirigasyaya put it, we are wont to call thugs with names like “Soththi Upali” and “Baddegana Sanjeewa,” but we are shy to refer to the former Central Bank Governor, even in jest or half-jest, as “Pamankada Arjuna”).  

The privileged, in other words, have been de-radicalised from an early age, and it is this problem, rather than the problem of misogyny and homophobia Thisuri wrote on, that has prevented elite schools from nurturing progressivism in their vicinity. This problem, however, is more complex than a simple/simplistic battle between the elite and the subaltern, and while I will say that such a battle exists and is being waged within our schools even now (“the many against the few”), it does not deserve the kind of generalisations commentators tend to paste over their tracts against it.  

The fact is that these institutions of privilege are no longer the preserve of the wealthy; rather, they are now the preserve of a multitude of milieus from the elite AND the subaltern, both affiliated to that cabalistic, ineffable culture of elitism. Ranil and his regency were hence not celebrated from this subset by the English-speaking crowd only: they were celebrated by the monolingual subaltern as well, many of whom probably couldn’t put five English words together. 
In other words, they were revelling in a kind of anti-radical elitism that superficially was based on membership of a clan not rooted in money or power, but was in actual fact rooted in a compradore, petty merchant class. The subaltern section of this young bourgeoisie (which included the rural petite bourgeoisie, i.e. those who hail from the scholarship milieu), in other words, were (mindlessly) celebrating the victory of a group of privileged, bewildered, and outmoded dinosaurs.  

"Out of 10,162 national schools, only 867 have adequate facilities for science education"

This “underclass,” thus relishing in their membership of that elitist hub, laid aside the reality of the social stratifications which had relegated them, from birth, to the lower orders. I find this to be less of a farce than a tragedy, and I’m sure Marx would agree. Some people are fond of comparing sections of the ethnic minorities calling for the return of Mahinda Rajapaksa to Jews calling for the triumph of the Third Reich. By that logic, the “Reid Avenue subalterns” allied with Ranil Wickremesinghe and his Colombo 7 clique can be compared to serfs celebrating the return of the Tsar. 
Max Weber, whom I never fail to go back to, observed that in every structure of domination, there is a mechanism through which power relations (which are material) are transformed to sanctified rights (which are symbolic). In feudal societies, Loïc Wacquant once observed, it was the church that facilitated this transformation; in modern societies, he surmised, it was the school.  

Wacquant made this point in his foreword to the seminal work of the role that schools play in perpetuating rifts in society, The State Nobility. It was written by another eminent sociologist, in my opinion one of the greatest from the second half of the preceding century, Pierre Bourdieu. Now I am not a social theorist by any stretch of the imagination, but I feel that what Bourdieu wrote can be applied to our schools as well; a fiction of equality, celebrated by educationists, thrives on a set of structural anomalies, all of which rest on the advantages gained by the 867 over the 10,162. We need to address that. And fast. For that though, we need radicals. Are they ready?     

Modern financial regulations have made “piercing the corporate veil” easier

 “Piercing the corporate veil” is mainly used as a tool to bring corporate actors’ behaviour into conformity with a particular statutory scheme

Friday, 7 December 2018 

Along with the evolution of the market economy a clear separation of the actors involved in a business firm, i.e. owners of the capital and those who specialise in employing the capital for production of goods and services become visible. Accordingly, the directors of a company function as the agents of the corporation and the managers execute the decisions taken by such directors.

Fiduciary duty of the Board of Directors (BoDs) towards shareholders has been a challenging task from the time companies came into existence. In the ‘Wealth of Nations’ Adam Smith states that directors of joint stock companies, being managers of other people’s money would be unlikely to manage it with the same “anxious vigilance “shown by the active partners in a smaller firm.

In today’s financial services industry also, the role played by BoDs in safeguarding their stakeholders has been problematic. Reports on failed finance companies and banks in Sri Lanka and elsewhere have revealed that poor performance and malpractices perpetrated by BoDs have caused such collapses. Siphoning off funds from financial institutions has been a key reason for a number of these failures.

There are instances where a board membership is considered an honour or a perk instead of a substantive job. According to the Companies Act of Sri Lanka, Directors are supposed to act in good faith in the best interest of the company and with care and diligence. Modern stringent regulatory regimes emphasise the pivotal role required to be played by the BoDs of financial institutions.

This article will focus on the laws applicable to deal with failures of BoDs of financial institutions to act with care and diligence. Although the current political situation has served to inhibit the country’s business sector, once “business as usual” is restored, legal frameworks discussed in this article will provide guidance for promoting the
sector’s stability through effective BODs. Separate legal entity
The concept of the separate legal personality of a company was introduced by the Soloman V Soloman & Co Ltd case. It introduced the notion of the “corporate veil” drawing a line between directors, promoters, shareholders on the one hand and the corporate body on the other.

However, with the evolution of company law and other laws related to the financial services industry, maintaining the corporate veil has become more challenging. When the public funds are at stake, there can be severe pressure to lift the corporate veil.
Piercing the corporate veil
“Piercing the corporate veil” is the term used to describe an action pursued against a company that ultimately reaches the personal liability of owners and shareholders. Since an artificial person is not capable of committing an illegal act, the corporate personality has to be removed to identify the persons who are really guilty.

This challenges the argument that a corporation exists independently of its owners and that the owners are normally not held accountable for the obligations of the corporation. Basically, the notion of “piercing the corporate veil” allows lifting of the curtain of a company’s legal personality. In some jurisdictions, this process is considered as “disregarding the corporate entity”. Courts have lifted the corporate veil to see the real state of affairs having considered the social consequences of offences.

In the United States v. Milwaukee Refrigerator Transit Company case, the court held that where the notion of a legal entity is used to defeat public conveniences, justify wrong, protect fraud or defend crime, the law will disregard the corporate entity and treat it as an association of persons.

In the Singer India Ltd. vs Chander Mohan Chadha case, the court highlighted that the concept of a corporate entity was evolved to encourage and promote trade and commerce but not to commit illegalities or to defraud the people. These judgments demonstrate that individual directors always need to take due reasonable care and deliver their duties in good faith.
Corporations have no souls
In the recent past, white – collar crime has shifted from individual perpetrators to corporates. Common law countries have considered imposing criminal liability on corporates whereas European jurisdictions have shown reluctance to do so. The economic and social role of the corporation has been one reason for such exemption.

The lack of “mens rea” i.e. the mental element for a corporate to commit a crime also became a justification to prevent corporate liability. In Sutton’s Hop case, Lord Coke denied the corporation’s liability because corporations have no souls. However, considering the increasing number of financial frauds by corporates it can be argued that having criminal liability will ensure sanction against offenders. This will also encourage more precaution and compliance with rules and regulations by companies.

It is noteworthy that the Serious Fraud Office of the UK did not charge any of the organisations involved in the LIBO/EURIBOR scandal. They charged only the individuals. Those employees argued that their actions were condoned and encouraged by their employers. The requirement to identify the “controlling mind “of a small company is relatively easy. However, it is difficult in the case of a large conglomerate. In such event, corporate criminal liability will ensure deterrence. It will also be helpful to increase trust in business entities. In the case of Sri Lanka, public trust in financial institutions is of paramount importance in maintaining systemic stability.
Too big to jail
According to the notion of “corporate criminal liability”, prosecutors can lodge charges against the corporation, its managers or both. One argument, as mentioned above, is that such actions will incentivise companies to have crime control policies.

However, along with emergence of large conglomerates in the financial services industry, a concern that such firms are “too big to jail” has arisen. In some jurisdictions prosecutors are reluctant to take action against large corporations as this creates an adverse impact on employees and other stakeholders.

An example is the massive job losses that occurred after the multinational accounting firm Arthur Anderson LLP was convicted for its role in the Enron Scandal. When there are such constraints in prosecuting corporates, more attention is paid to taking action against individual managers. Functioning always within the applicable legal frameworks would therefore, be the best defense for such individuals.

In Sri Lanka, laws applicable to financial services do not require the proof of any specific “mens rea” or culpable state of mind, nor do they make reference to any such mental element in imposing liability on corporations.

The Banking Act No 30 of 1988 states that licensed banks shall be liable for the contraventions or the failures to comply with any provision of the Act or the conditions imposed thereunder. Section 53 (1) of the Finance Business Act No 42 of 2011 also states any person shall be liable for the violation of the provisions of the Act.

The provisions of the section 51 of the Securities and Exchange Commission of Sri Lanka Act no. 36 of 1987 states that any person (means natural and legal person) who-contravenes any provision of the Act shall be guilty. According to the provisions of section 90 of the Regulation of Insurance Industry Act, inter alia, any company which carries on insurance business, or commences any insurance business, without being duly registered under the said Act shall be guilty for an offence punishable under this Act.
Personal criminal liability 
The above laws extend a criminal liability to directors and other key officials of a body corporate which commits an offence under the respective legislation. The provisions of Section 80 of the Banking Act state that any person who being a director, manager, officer or employee of a licensed commercial bank or licensed specialised bank fails to take all reasonable steps to secure compliance by the respective bank with the requirements of the said Act, to be guilty of an offence.

In terms of the provisions of section 53(2) of the Finance Business Act, Section 51(3) of the Securities Exchange Commission Act and Section 104 of the Regulation of Insurance Industry Act where an offence under the said Acts is committed by a body corporate, every person, who at the time of the commission of the offence was a director or an officer of the body corporate, shall be deemed to be guilty of that offence unless she/he proves that the offence was committed without his/her knowledge, or that she/he exercised all due diligence to avoid the commission of such offence.

Furthermore, the provisions of Section 20 of the Finance Business Act state where any finance company fails to repay a deposit or fails to pay interest thereon to a depositor, on demand, every director, manager or secretary of such company shall be guilty of an offence under this Act. For the first time these provisions have been invoked recently by a group of depositors against a BoD of a licensed finance company. According to the section 57(1) of the Finance Businesses Act using company funds by a director, manager or secretary to pay a fine imposed on them is also an offence.

Moreover, the provision of Section 189 of the Companies Act specifies that directors shall not act in a manner which is reckless or grossly negligent and shall exercise the degree of skill and care that may reasonably be expected of a person of his/her knowledge and experience. Section 219 of Companies Act speaks of the duty of directors on insolvency. If a director believes the company is unable to pay its debt, a meeting shall be called to consider the relevant actions.

This is important for financial institutions. If the entity is not solvent, BODs should take appropriate measures promptly before the regulator intervenes. It is, therefore, vital for the directors and other employees of companies to ensure all the boxes of compliance framework are ticked by them. When significant reputational risk exists for individuals if they act negligently, they may be compelled to take more proactive anti-fraud measures to counter economic crimes.

The USA Securities and Exchange Commission has successfully prosecuted cases against mutual fund directors who violated their fiduciary duties. Directors of the firms named Worthington Foods Inc, Immucor Inc and Cell Pathways Inc were found guilty of insider trading. Officers and Directors of Del Global Technologies Corp Inc were prosecuted as they caused the company to engage in improper revenue recognition.

If you are a director of a finance company or a bank, you will be held accountable in the event of failure to prove that all possible measures were taken to prevent the occurrence of financial frauds and other regulatory violations in the organisation. The advantage of this legal position is the prompting corporates to ensure strong internal controls, systemic monitoring and improved escalation of issues related to breach of laws to management.

The Federal Reserve has introduced a mechanism to require BoDs to ensure that management takes all the remedial measures for the category of concerns named “matters requiring attention”. In that manner, BoDs can be more effective in holding management accountable.

In terms of the above mentioned laws of Sri Lanka, the “state of mind” of a director or other official could become relevant to exclude personal criminal liability. In strict liability offences prosecutors are not required to look at the “mental element”. The law has provided ample guidance for the BODs to do the right thing.

Such legal obligations should not be treated as barriers to the growth and development of corporate entities. Instead, they should be seen as measures to create a conducive business environment which is essential to promote foreign and domestic investment.

Directors should not treat these laws as hindrances to their business innovations. As long as the decisions and functions are within the legal framework and directors act with responsibility and accountability to their stakeholders there is no need to fear the consequences of “ piercing the cooperate veil”.
Deferred Prosecution Agreement (DPA) 
This mechanism has become a common resolution in investigating corporate crime in the UK & USA. Under DPA, the government agrees to suspend and drop prosecution in exchange for the company paying a large fine and agreeing to government supervised reform actions. Such an arrangement may help corporations to undertake an independent reform processes to mitigate frauds and corruption.

Through recourse to DPAs regulators can make BoDs accountable for enhanced compliance frameworks. Individual directors and managers will be required to play a significant role in ensuring compliance with the enhanced obligations under DPAs.
Senior Managers Regime 
In order to improve culture and accountability in financial institutions, the Financial Conduct Authority of the UK has introduced a “Senior Managers Regime.” According to the latest rules, references must be sought by the Key Management Personnel (KMP) from all former employers for the previous six years before submitting for the regulatory references.

The Senior Managers Regime is an example for piercing the corporate veil to encourage individuals of financial institutions to take greater responsibility for their actions. This new regulatory framework has made it easier for both financial institutions and regulators to ensure accountability of BoDs and KMPs.

The Senior Managers Regime also highlights the fact that regulatory authorities are focusing on the actions of the individual senior manager as opposed to the overall actions of the firm. Market integrity cannot be achieved only by regulators. Financial institutions and employees should also be more responsible and accountable for their conduct. Regulators can raise the standard of conduct, governance and compliance.

Although there is no Senior Managers Regime in Sri Lanka, firms can improve genuine accountability by removing vague or bureaucratic structures which obscure transparency and blur the lines of accountability.

Following the wide range of regulatory reforms that were designed to reduce the likelihood and severity of another financial crisis, the role boards of financial institutions are required to play is more expensive and challenging. Among such regulatory frameworks guidelines on corporate governance are prominent.
Good corporate governance is crucial in averting financial crises 
Twenty-six years ago, Sir Adrian Cadbury, in the UK, introduced a voluntary corporate governance code. Boards can establish an important frontline defence by creating good governance mechanisms. Thirteen fundamental Corporate Governance Principles were introduced by the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision. Those principles deal with effective competence of the BoDs and their obligations.

Corporate governance emphasises the collective oversight and risk governance responsibilities of the Board. Bank BoDs are required to establish organisation risk appetite limits and ensure that an agreed risk strategy is implemented within a framework of effective controls. The manner and material of corporate decision making has significant bearing on the economic development agenda of a country. At the Board meeting the dissenting directors should get their concerns recorded. Such records would act as defences in the event of legal actions to prove that all reasonable steps were taken by the individual director to ensure that the relevant entity functions in conformity with the applicable legal frameworks.

All of the above mentioned international and domestic laws expect effective boards to develop a robust and coherent business strategy for the firm. When such a clear strategy is available aligning the risk band of the company with the same is not difficult.
Doing the bare minimum should never be acceptable
Risk management capabilities of the senior management will be of paramount importance in delivering effective outcomes. The BoD should also be able to take informed decisions always. BoD should, therefore, ensure the effective flow of management information. Clear communication of “what” and “how” is very important. Employees at all levels should have an understanding of the company’s business strategy. This should be a knowledge which goes beyond the vision and mission statements.

The BoDs should always be engaged, involved and aware. They should also be mindful of the obligations toward all the stakeholders of the company and to the country. Scrutinising management information in order to achieve the above objective is important.
Culture may not be measurable but it’s manageable
Establishing the governance systems is also a key responsibility of the BoD. This relates to the famous notion of the tone from the top. Ensuring the independence of risk management and internal audit functions should be a prime element of a policy based governance system. According to Andrew Bailey (2018), “Culture is not stopping bad things from happening. BoDs have a responsibility to encourage and incentivise good things as well.”

Even a free market economists like Milton Friedman has stated that in a free enterprise a corporate executive is an employee of the owners of the business. He has direct responsibility to his employers. That responsibility is to conduct the business in accordance with their desires, which generally will be to make as much money as possible while conforming to the basic rules of the society both those embodied in law and those embodied in ethical custom.
Conclusion
“Piercing the corporate veil” is mainly used as a tool to bring corporate actors’ behaviour into conformity with a particular statutory scheme. Ensuring the compliance with all applicable rules and regulations would, therefore, be the key to justify and defend the acts of BoDs.

Irrespective of the size of a company strong and effective boards are required for financial institutions to deliver their desired objective of contributing to the country’s economic growth. Senior Managers should also be fit and proper persons to implement the business strategy designed by board of directors.

Operating at arm’s length when handling transactions which have conflict of interests and observing corporate formalities always will help the BoDs to avoid “piercing the corporate veil.” Documenting all business decisions and proper handling of board minutes would also be important in proving the proper conduct of BoDs.

Behind the corporate curtain there are natural persons i.e. shareholders, directors, managers and other employees. Hence, directors and KMPs should ensure that when the corporate personality is uncovered or unveiled, they would not be held guilty of any wrongdoing.

In the context of recent legislative reforms and regulatory enforcement actions, it is important for the BoDs to understand their duties and obligations and the limits of legal safeguards. Directors should not ignore the red flags raised in the reports and opinions presented to them. Demanding additional information where necessary will enable the directors to take informed decisions. There is no single blueprint for avoiding personal liability of BoDs. However, adherence to well established best practices stipulated in relevant laws will help to reduce the likelihood of such a liability.

“The time to repair your roof is when the sun is shining,” French Central Bank Governor Francois Villeroy de Galhau.
[Nishadi Thennakoon, LLM (London), LLB (Hons) Colombo, MICA, Attorney-at-Law. The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the writer and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of any institution.]

The Proposed Kandy Garbage Project: What is the Hitch?

December 6, 2018, 12:00 pm 

Regrettably, because of an inordinate and inexcusable delay on the part of the Kandy Municipal Council (KMC), the much hyped Kandy garbage recycling project to be set up at Gohagoda has now been stalled for over two years. Is as usual in this country, ‘oiling the palm’ needed to catalyse things? It appears to be so as what had been approved by the KMC administration in May 2017 has apparently been thwarted by the new political dispensation!

The project is to be implemented with German aid amounting to USD 83 million utilizing ‘Combitech’ technology which involves processing of unsorted garbage into compost and energy. The project outputs are supposedly, compost, 10 MW of energy; and the waste energy is to be used to run three cold storage plants for fruits and vegetables.

Gohagoda Garbage heap

At present the daily garbage volume is about 125 tons, the management of which is a major task for the Council. The Project when established will process 50,000 metric tons of garbage per day over a period of five years including the fresh and heaped material. The great advantage of this technology is that unsorted garbage is to be used. This will mean a substantial saving of labour and transportation costs to the KMC in that usually conventional processing of garbage entails heavy costs for sorting out.

The delay in project implementation is essentially due to the KMC not releasing the required land despite the necessary approval being granted by the Attorney General. The letter of contract award to the local contractor, Recycle Energy, too had been made several months ago by the Presidential Secretariat following cabinet approval of the project proposal in February 2017. This delay has apparently also caused disappointment on the part of the German agency.

The President, himself, had taken personal interest in the project, as apart from other benefits, because of the targeted massive output of organic fertilizer. The District Secretary, Kandy should, as a matter of priority, jolt the KMC into action. Ideally an enquiry must also be conducted as to why the KMC is sitting on the land release when everything else is in place.

Concerned Kandyan

US scrambles to save funding for PA security forces

“Security coordination” between PA security forces and Israel play a primary role in suppressing resistance to the occupation.

 Najeh HashlamounAPA images

Maureen Clare Murphy Power Suits 6 December 2018

The Trump administration, which has slashed about half a billion dollars in aid to Palestinians this year, is scrambling to introduce a loophole into a new US law that will effectively outlaw all aid to the Palestinian Authority.

The US wants to protect funding of PA security forces which cooperate with Israel.

Aid to PA security forces amounted to $61 million this year alone, according to the Associated Press.

“Security coordination” between Israel and PA forces plays a primary role in suppressing Palestinian resistance to Israel’s military occupation.

Israel frequently arrests Palestinian activists after their release from Palestinian Authority detention.

The PA also passes information it obtains on Palestinian activists to Israeli interrogators who routinely use torture.

In 2015, the Obama administration warned that the forced “insolvency and collapse” of the PA would harm the interests of Israel and its settlers in the occupied West Bank.

Yet a bill signed into law by President Donald Trump in October may do just that if no changes are made before it goes into effect on 31 January.

The Anti-Terrorism Clarification Act of 2018 would disqualify the PA from receiving US aid “unless it agrees to pay court judgments of sometimes up to hundreds of millions of dollars on behalf of American victims of Palestinian attacks,” AP stated.

Legal experts told AP that “the easiest fix would be to have Congress amend the law to allow the president or secretary of state to waive the aid cut-off on national security grounds.”

“Morally bereft”

US officials appear less concerned about the harm that funding cuts will have on the lives of millions of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza and in the refugee camps of Syria, Lebanon and Jordan.

USAID, the State Department development agency, could close down all its operations in the West Bank and Gaza Strip next year due to the Trump administration cuts.

USAID has some 130 employees in the occupied territories – half of whom are to be dismissed by early next year.

The body provided more than $319 million in funding to projects in the West Bank and Gaza in 2016.

In addition to freezing more than $200 million in bilateral aid to the Palestinians, the Trump administration has cut $300 million in funding to UNRWA, the UN agency for Palestine refugees.

Humanitarian officials have warned of the particular harm funding cuts will have in Gaza, where 11 years of Israeli economic blockade and successive military assaults have degraded health, water and sanitation infrastructure and plunged its refugee-majority population into poverty and aid dependency.

“It’s folly, not to mention morally bereft, to imagine that you can experiment with the breaking point of two million people,” Tania Hary of the Israeli rights group Gisha told media.

The aid cuts are at once a punishment against the Palestinian leadership for protesting Trump’s declaration of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and an attempt to bludgeon Palestinians into submitting to the White House’s “peace” process and erase Palestinian refugees out of existence.

In 2016 the Obama administration and Israel signed the largest aid package in US history, giving Israel $38 billion in military assistance over 10 years. President Donald Trump signed a defense bill codifying that aid pledge into law.

Israel wary of aid cuts

Some in Israel’s military establishment are wary that Trump’s cuts in aid to Palestinians will threaten the status quo of managed crisis in Gaza.

A US diplomatic cable from early January published this week following a freedom of information requeststates that officials with COGAT, the bureaucratic arm of Israel’s military occupation, told US interlocutors that UNRWA funding cuts would worsen the “dire” economic situation in Gaza.

“Speaking off-the-record,” the US cable states, “our contact cited particular concern with any move to reduce UNRWA funding in Gaza.”

The cable paraphrases the COGAT representative as asserting that “the existence of UNRWA was a political poke in the eye to Israel.”

Nonetheless, according to the cable, COGAT continued to believe that UNRWA “provided valuable humanitarian relief in Gaza.”

Israel, as the occupying power, is obliged under international law to provide essential services for the millions of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza living under military occupation.

While its leaders publicly attack UNRWA and call for its dismantling, Israel remains content for third parties to alleviate it from its obligations by providing foreign aid.

Israeli press review: No compensation for Gaza doctor over family's killing

Meanwhile, Netanyahu is coordinating with Hungary over revisionist Holocaust museum

Some 1,300 Palestinians were killed during the 2008-2009 Gaza conflict (AFP)

Israel refuses to compensate Gaza doctor over family’s killing

Thursday 6 December 2018

An Israeli court ruled that the defence ministry did not owe anything to a Gaza doctor after three of his children were killed in their home by Israeli tank fire during an attack on the small blockaded enclave a decade ago, Kikar Shabbat reported.

Izz al-Din Abu al-Aish became one of the faces of Palestinian suffering during Israel’s 2008-9 assault on the besieged Gaza Strip, when three of his daughters and a niece were killed at the exact moment he was giving an interview to Israeli television on 16 January 2009.

Abu al-Aish’s voice had been sought out by Israeli media as he is a fluent Hebrew speaker, having previously worked as a physician at the Sheba Medical Center in central Israel.

In court, Abu al-Aish’s legal team argued that his kin had been unjustly targeted by tank fire, as they were situated in Jabaliya in northern Gaza, kilometres from any Israeli army presence on that day.

The court, however, deferred to testimony from the commander of the tank team that fired the fatal missiles, who said he gave the order because he thought figures spotted on the roof of the building were relaying information about Israeli troop movements to Hamas, the de facto ruling party in Gaza.

It later emerged that the people seen on the roof had only been members of the Abu al-Aish family.

In 2017, Israeli human rights group B’Tselem issued a report examining Israel’s routine avoidance in paying financial compensation to Palestinians harmed by Israeli forces in the occupied territory.

Netanyahu guiding Holocaust narrative rewrite for Hungarian museum

As a Hungarian Holocaust museum has come under fire for its attempt to frame the Nazi genocide in a way that some say minimises the role of Hungarian collaborators, support has come from an unexpected quarter, Israel Channel 10 reports: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Unnamed top Israeli officials told Channel 10 that emissaries of Netanyahu - who also serves as Israel’s foreign minister - were negotiating the museum’s contents with the government of far-right Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, which is funding the project.

Although Israeli diplomats have urged the museum not to whitewash the participation of Hungarian officials in the deaths of half a million Jews - then more than two-thirds of the country’s Jewish population - advisers to Netanyahu and Orban will meet on Thursday in Jerusalem to negotiate possible revisions to the museum’s content.

Scheduled to open in Budapest in 2019, the House of Fates is owned by a group led by a rabbi of Chabad, a far-right ultra-Orthodox Jewish movement. However, the museum was founded at Orban’s request by revisionist historian Maria Schmidt.

Last week, a local magazine published by Schmidt ran a photograph on its cover of the leader of the Hungarian Jewish community surrounded by currency notes - a dog-whistle to anti-Semites.

Netanyahu came under criticism in July for reaching a similar understanding with the government of Poland after it passed a law forbidding reference to Polish responsibility for the crimes of the Holocaust.

Rabbi council kept silent about serial sex offender colleague

A committee of leading Israeli rabbis formed to deal with allegations of sex crimes in religious communities chose not to go public with its decision to sanction one of their own, a convicted sex offender, in order to spare his family any public embarrassment, Channel 10 reports.

After receiving testimony of new accusations of sexual harassment, the Takana Forum ruled that Rabbi Moti Elon may not give religious instruction or advice, and that his workplace be fitted with cameras in order to document his activities.

According to a report in Maariv, Elon is said to have requested the forum’s approval to relocate to Ukraine, but this suggestion was reportedly quashed out of fear that Elon would prey on students in that country as well.

The new sanctions, leaked in a report by national broadcaster Kan, followed new allegations that Elon had abused his position as an educator by injecting sexual content into his conversations with a male student who had approached him for advice.

Elon was convicted in 2013 of indecent assault by force against a minor and sentenced to community service. Despite Elon’s serious infractions, the Takana Forum did not forbid him from returning to teaching, and in June 2017, Elon founded a new religious seminary.

Why Auschwitz survivor Esther Bejarano supports BDS

Esther Bejarano in 2015. Uwe ZucchiDPA

Adri Nieuwhof The Electronic Intifada 6 December 2018

Esther Bejarano learned to love music from her father Rudolf Loewy, a cantor in the Jewish community of the southwest German town of Saarlouis, where she was born in 1924.

That was lucky for her, because music literally saved her life.

Bejarano recently spoke to The Electronic Intifada at her home in Hamburg.

When she was 15, Bejarano’s parents sent her to a Zionist camp to prepare for emigration to Palestine. But in 1941, all the teachers and students were arrested by the SS and moved to a work camp near Berlin.

Bejarano was sent to Auschwitz, in German-occupied Poland, where the Nazis allowed her to play in the women’s orchestra as an alternative to the hard labor that quickly killed many.

Then she was was sent to Ravensbrück concentration camp in northern Germany. In April 1945 she escaped from a forced death march, and a few weeks later played music as allied troops liberating Germany from the Nazis burned an image of Hitler.

After the war, Bejarano emigrated to Palestine, but her aversion to Israel’s policies towards the Palestinians eventually led her to return to Germany.

She says she has been called an anti-Semite for speaking out against Israel’s inhumane treatment of Palestinians.

But Bejarano knows no fear and continues to raise her voice, calling Israel’s government “fascist” and saying she supports BDS – boycott, divestment and sanctions – if it helps challenge Israel’s persecution of Palestinians.

Even today, aged 94, Bejarano still regularly performs music, including with the German hip hop group Microphone Mafia.

Nazi persecution

It was after the Kristallnacht pogrom against Jews in November 1938 that Bejarano’s parents sent her to the Zionist training center to prepare to go to Palestine.

For some Jews it was an option to flee Nazi persecution, but the outbreak of the war blocked her emigration.

On 20 April 1943, Bejarano arrived at Auschwitz after a horrific five-day journey in a cattle car. She was assigned to gather large rocks, grueling and potentially lethal work.

Her talent for music opened the door to the first Women’s Orchestra of Auschwitz where she played the accordion.

Bejarano says that she had no idea how to play the instrument but she knew piano and considered the accordion keyboard to be the same – quickly learning it was a matter of life and death.

The orchestra had to play marches for the female prisoners as they went to and from their forced labor, and also as trains arrived bringing new victims of the Nazis to the camp.

As long as the camp commanders were satisfied, the orchestra’s members could avoid a certain death in the gas chambers.

When Bejarano was in Auschwitz, the International Red Cross searched for mischling prisoners. Because she had a Christian paternal grandmother, the Nazis considered Bejarano a mischling – a person of mixed Jewish-Aryan ancestry. Therefore she should not have been deported to an extermination camp, according to Nazi law.

Her friends convinced her to report to the Red Cross as a mischling because it offered a chance to get out of Auschwitz. If she survived, “you can tell people later what we’ve been through,” she recalls them saying.

Bejarano was accepted and transferred to Ravensbrück women’s concentration camp in September 1943.

Bejarano survived the hardships of Ravensbrück where she had do forced labor for German industrial giant Siemens.

Sadly, the mischling status offered no protection for her parents, Rudolf and Margarethe Loewy.

They were both shot by the Nazis in the woods of Kovno, Lithuania, in November 1941.

Not long ago, Bejarano learned that her sister Ruth was murdered in Auschwitz on 1 December 1942

“This is so fateful because I came to Auschwitz in April 1943 and if she had lived I would have met her there,” she says.

Emigration to Palestine

After liberation by American and Soviet troops in 1945, Bejarano went to Palestine where her sister Tosca – at the wish of their parents – had settled before the war.

Bejarano was part of a group that traveled by boat from Marseille to Palestine. “We wanted to develop the country together with the Palestinians,” she recalls. “In general, the Palestinians helped us. Not only us, but also the first Jews who came to the country.”

“We wanted to develop the land together. But it was different with David Ben-Gurion and Golda Meir,” she says, referring to Israel’s founding Zionist leaders. “They turned Zionism upside down and then the Zionists said ‘we are the ones who own the land.’ That was not our idea.”

Still, Bejarano spent 15 years in Israel, where she married Nissim Bejarano, a truck driver born in the country to a family that had come to Palestine from Bulgaria.

“My husband and I could not stand Israeli politics. It was a catastrophe,” she says. “Life was difficult because we did not agree with the terrible things that were done to the Palestinians.”

Israel “fought against them, threw the Palestinians out. They didn’t leave on their own, they were forced to leave. We just could not stand that.”

“I was a soldier in the war for independence against the British. I felt it was justified to fight,” she says. “I did not touch a gun. I gave many concerts.”

Her husband Nissim was a pacifist and after participating in two wars he couldn’t do it anymore, Bejarano adds. “He had seen what the Israelis had done to the Palestinians and he could not stand it.”

Refusing military service was also difficult. “He would have ended up in prison so we had no other choice than to leave,” Bejarano says.

“I had German citizenship and I spoke German,” she says, so they moved back to the country of her birth.

“It was very difficult because it was the country of the perpetrators.”

Protecting Israel’s “fascist government”

In Germany, Bejarano still had to grapple with the reality in Israel. She says many people in Germany oppose Israel’s policies but those who speak out are often accused of anti-Semitism.

“They also have called me an anti-Semite,” Bejarano says. “I always say I am against the inhuman policies towards the Palestinians, and against war. With war you cannot achieve peace. Then they frame me as an anti-Semite.”

In Germany it is almost impossible to criticize Israel for the simple reason that “they feel responsible for the Jews that were left and then founded this Jewish state,” Bejarano explains. “They protect them and see it as their duty to do so. When someone speaks against Israel then it is a big theater, they [pro-Israel groups] absolutely don’t want that.”

As a result, people who want to organize events in Germany about Israeli policies, such as confiscation and settlement of Palestinian land, face constant attempts to stop them.

“It is a scandal because the terrible policies of Israel need to be clarified,” says Bejarano.

“If our government – for once – would state, ‘We are friends of Israel but its policies must change because that is not the way to go,’ then nobody would try to block events,” she asserts.

“The only option is that you enlighten the people, and you say, ‘Listen, that is not how it is.’”

Referring to present-day Israeli leaders, such as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former defense minister Avigdor Lieberman, Bejarano says, “They are fascists. It is a fascist government. I have no other name for it.”

The space to debate BDS – boycott, divestment and sanctions – activism is very limited in Germany.

“Whether it [BDS] helps, that’s another issue. For many people here it is out of the question,” Bejarano observes. “But I say, if it helps to put anything in the way of the terrible [Israeli] policies, then I am for it. Because I have experienced what fascism is.”

Palestinian state

Bejarano adheres to the mainstream view that peace is achievable with a two-state solution.

“The only way to make peace possible is that a second [Palestinian] state emerges and that someday they have economic relationships with each other,” she says. “Then you can talk about friendship.”

When asked if this is possible with some 600,000 Israeli settlers residing in the occupied West Bank, she replies, “They have no business there. Nothing at all, and you know who these settlers are? These are Americans and Russians, Ukrainians. They were not born there. Absolutely not.”

She adds that the idea that the land “belongs to the Jews because they lived there 2,000 years ago is the biggest nonsense there can be.”

“There were so many Turks and Arabs who have always lived there. The Jews came later,” she states, insisting that all the settlers in the West Bank should leave.

Anti-Semitism was not invented by Hitler

Bejarano speaks an important truth that few dare say: “In Germany, and many other countries, one does not distinguish between Judaism and Zionism. They think Israel, Zionism and Judaism are all the same.”

“It’s all lumped together and that’s where anti-Semitism comes from,” she adds. “And the harshest thing is that the Germans now, to cleanse themselves so to speak, say the new anti-Semitism comes from the Muslims.”

That is how “they want to protect themselves from the new anti-Semitism, but anti-Semitism has existed since the Middle Ages,” Bejarano states. “Anti-Semitism was not invented by Hitler but by the Catholic Church.”

She says the phenomenon continues to exist among Germans, as it does in other countries.

Right to resist

“The situation in Gaza is really bad,” says Bejarano. “You have to see how the people live there and how the Israelis act against them.”

She is appalled that when young Palestinians protest near the boundary fence – as they have been doing regularly as part of the Great March of Return rallies since last March, “They are simply shot” by Israeli snipers.

“But in my opinion Palestinians have a right to oppose what the Israelis do to them. They have a right to do that,” she asserts. “Or should they just be killed by the Israelis?”

“They say ‘Hamas sent its rockets to Israel and they are responsible for the war,’” Bejarano states, recalling Israel’s excuses. “But who started it? Not the Palestinians. It’s the Israelis who sent all the Palestinians out of the country.”

Her message to young Palestinians is, “I want you to keep it up and I hope that you will soon have your own country. But I cannot do anything about it.”

She hopes Palestinians “try to come to terms with their lives and not become racist. Every human being is worth something. And you have to accept if someone does a good thing and you have to reject the bad things people do.”

“I wish the same for young Israelis. A lot of them left Israel because they have no way to live there,” she adds, referring to the high cost of housing and how many young Israelis don’t want to be conscripted into the army.

“They simply cannot live in Israel anymore. That is why so many have moved to Berlin.”