Mawbima News

By Lasantha Pethiyagoda –

Lasantha Pethiyagoda

Passing an age of decimation of civil liberties and individual freedom, carried out in the name of fighting manufactured enemies of selection, any civic selection will have shackled citizens to an interconnected police and safety state, unprecedented in modern Sri Lankan political history just before the preceding regime.

In a tyrannic serfdom, the freedom of the wild ass is no freedom at all, as the popular dictum exclaims, whilst the search for unbridled power and limitless terms of office, symbolised these in explicit kind.

Contemporary tyrannies are deceptive. In the age of technology, it has to do with the need to hide its true nature from the eyes of those on whose assistance and indifference its maintenance depends. Effective tyrannies excel at hiding reality from public view, turning the truth on its head and criminalising its manifest victims.

The greatest purveyor of corruption, vice and violence in the country have to surely have had state patronage not merely to survive but thrive. Its varied mechanisms, as properly as getting the major exponent of the deadly arrogance that has poisoned the atmosphere for so extended and having been whitewashed from the discourse should constitute the most significant threat to civil society.

If not for its timely finish in January it would have installed a far deeper malady within the Sri Lankan spirit than had hitherto been seasoned. No significant social issue &#8211 wealth inequality, underworld violence, racial and religious disharmony- could be resolved whilst the state remained an entity that continues year in year out, spending much more cash on military “defence” and grandiose projects than on applications of social upliftment &#8211 a most specific recipe for a spiritual death of the nation. It ought to be incandescently apparent that no one particular who has any concern for the integrity and life of Sri Lanka could have ignored that status quo.

This is the overarching point that drives our existing debates about injustice and militarism even by way of right now. The debasement of the national psyche, the callousness toward continuous targeted killing and violence, the belief that the state has not only the correct but the duty to bring violence anyplace in the land that it wants: that is what lay at the heart of Sri Lanka&#8217s embrace of endless militancy. A rotted national soul does certainly allow leaders to wage endless wars of attrition, but endless violence also rots the national soul. At times this seems to be an inescapable, self-perpetuating cycle of degeneration and degradation.

Sri Lanka’s elite despised the subjugated, poor, malnourished and weak. They felt unequal and wanted a discriminatory technique that lacked any sense of frequent decency. They have been pretentious and cowardly they encouraged religious bigotry with out morality or compassion. They helped the authorities to criminalise independence and freedom abuse ladies and kids revel in vulgar exhibitionism of wealth and opulence, largely in undesirable taste.

For Sri Lankans to endure what lies ahead they will have to harness the human imagination. It is this imagination that makes possible transcendence from darkness to light. In order to nourish and sustain this imagination, the people require to form a basis for widespread grounds.

These will be the forces that they will have in spot of the freedom they lack. The oppressed would be the first, since they know their fate, to admit that on a rational level such a notion may appear absurd, but they also know that it is only by way of the imagination that they or their future generation will survive.

The collective consciousness of ordinary citizens is the most potent power that can turn the tide towards a saner atmosphere.

How this is inspired and sequestered by accountable forces, from within or without in the a variety of factions, will establish what follows in the decades to come.

The effective elite had been specifically interested in moulding their younger generation into becoming a chosen individuals. They wanted their offspring to be folks who esteem energy and strength with awe even though despising and getting contemptuous of financial, physical and social weakness in their serfs.

This young generation will be incapable of becoming outraged with indignation of a society in which the powerful, influential and rich would invariably have had their way whilst the marginalized majority poor and powerless masses were denied even their impotently ineffectual say a new generation habituated into perceiving intolerance as the moral-ethical regular and raw violence as the only solution to all issues or variations future generations only focused on ‘getting ahead’ and incapable of resisting the unrelenting tide of injustice.

Operating against this endogenous imperialism is the privilege and the burden of all who deem themselves bound by allegiances and loyalties which are broader and deeper than the superficial nationalist humbug of racist bigots headed by some militant saffron clad traitors, and which go beyond our nation&#8217s self-defined ambitions and positions. We should speak for the weak, for the voiceless, for victims of our nation and for these the ruling elite fictitiously referred to as the enemy.

For centuries, minorities and the marginalised had small handle over their destinies. Forces of bigotry and violence kept them subjugated by the majority aristocrats. Suffering, for the oppressed, was tangible. Death was a continual companion.

For a state whose leaders had historically been guided, in most instances by nobler dictates and motivations, like the ten leadership qualities (dasa raja dhamma), and the general populace&#8217s belief that all blessed things, like timely rains, fair climate and bountiful harvests, and general effectively-becoming and prosperity of the populace comply with when rulers reign justly and righteously (devo vassathu kalena, raja bhavathu dhammiko), our contemporary history leaves a lot to be desired, for numerous good and clear causes.

“Despite what we say or do, at the end of the day we are all like crabs dancing in a boiling pot of water,” stated President Maithripala Sirisena as he added that it is his experiences during the previous two months as the President that created him recognize the true nature of politics.

“I have had the opportunity to meet the Indian Prime Minister, the British PM and the Queen of England. Those meetings created me recognize that there are a lot of challenges that Sri Lanka has to face and we can not do it alone,” he mentioned addressing a meeting organized for the SLFP electoral organizers earlier this week (17.03.2015) in Colombo.

The President, in a very powerful and emotional speech criticized particular aggressive and racist statements made by some SLFP MPs in public rallies and to the media as he described them as ‘primitive statements’ and warned them to stop Sri Lanka from being pushed into yet another war.

“It was PM Bandaranaike that showed us that it’s impossible to establish a government only via Sinhala Buddhist votes. In this country, the Sinhala, Tamil and Muslim communities all have to come with each other – without such unity this country can not be taken forward, there will be no future for this country, please comprehend that,” he mentioned.

The President addressed specific factions of the SLFP who have started openly challenging and criticizing him and said, “You all have created various statements about me but none commended the deferral of the OISL report which was achieved following my election. I can say for sure the deferral of the report was granted due to my election as the President. If that report had been tabled in March, it is the extremely men and women you campaign for and hold in high regard that would fall into difficulty&#8230”

President Sirisena went on to state that because it was upon the invitation of the former SLFP Chairman and the celebration members that he assumed duties as the SLFP chairman, he must be allowed to fulfill his duties.

“This is not a position that a single can come into by force or coercion. Throughout the previous two months I have brought about democracy into the celebration and simply because of that, many are freely making statements and for the first time, has began difficult the Chairman of the celebration. Although I observe the freedom of speech as a positive improvement I also urge you all to enable me to continue my perform,” he mentioned.

Meanwhile, speaking of the upcoming elections, the President said the SLFP need to cast aside primitive slogans that stir racial hatred and sideline particular communities and adopt a slogan that fits the celebration and ensures the well becoming of the country and its individuals.

Watch the full speech

By Emil van der Poorten –

Emil van der Poorten

I produced a specific effort to attend the Sri Lanka Navy (SLN) vs Kandy Sports Club (KSC) game for a range of causes, chief of which was to see whether or not there had been a alter in what has grow to be a war rather than a rugby encounter and I use the word “war” literally rather than metaphorically!

The early indications had been that, as that American master of the malapropism said, so several years ago, it was “déjà vu all over once again.”

The stage appeared set when, in spite of being 1 of a relatively couple of current paid-up members of the KSC, I was not permitted access even up to the club gates (on the public road that goes past them!) to drop off my companion who has a critical heart condition that precludes walking any distance. The police manning the entry point told me that my car was NOT among those permitted access to the location adjacent to the club. I am beginning to wonder no matter whether I am now regarded as a “security risk” in some circles, a status now even the late-unlamented Rajapaksa Regime did not accord me (not to my expertise anyway!)

Anyway, having dropped off my partner some considerable distance from the Club, on the promise that she would stroll additional slowly to the club premises, I parked about two miles away and walked back to the grounds. If nothing at all else, even if not by decision, that provided a “constitutional” that I may well not otherwise have had that afternoon!

Coming events seemed to cast their (prior) shadows when I observed scores of SLN personnel along the road, armed with assault rifles. Also, while I do not know regardless of whether the SLN had bought, actually, thousands of tickets for their personnel, at this match as they have accomplished in the previous, a part of the “parking problem” was the quantity of buses bearing SLN licence- and private-plates parked along the roads serving the Nittawela grounds of the KSC. In case there is any doubt on that score, no Kandy supporters use charter buses to get to the grounds of the Club they support, the vast majority merely trudge up the hill!

When I arrived in the Members’ seating location of the pavilion, I discovered that my partner had succeeded in persuading a couple of non-members to give up their seats to a couple of septuagenarians who had paid an annual membership charge for the privilege of watching a handful of rugby matches every single year. I was also somewhat bemused to see, seated in a single of the better seats in that very enclosure a lady who was, until relatively recently a member of a single of the “ruling Kandyan families” that is reported to be in the process of participating in a dynastic coming-collectively. It does look that ANY association with the “right” folks, no matter how short-term, brings with it particular privileges not available to those who go the orthodox route of paying their dues!

Anyway, the rugby game itself was closely contested and the SLN eked out a 1-point win which proved to be a Pyrrhic victory since, it wasn’t enough to give them the championship the complicated rules of which saw the KSC as the 2015 Champions. One particular of the bright spots of the afternoon was the absence, compared to matches past, of violent or hazardous play and a referee who did not seem to be “under orders” of any kind!

Once the stage was set up for the distribution of the awards and trophy, with the usual bellowing by an announcer who believed in the superiority of volume more than clarity, we had been treated to yet another dose of déjà vu.

At this point, rather than more than-use the word “bizarre” I’d like to replace it with the a lot more appropriate “sinister” for what follows.

Not even during the playing days of the Rajapaksa Crown Princes on the SLN team had we observed the kind of armed presence on public access roads around the Nittawela grounds that we saw on March 15th. Now, we had a sailor in uniform, armed with an assault rifle on the stage exactly where the presentation was to be created! This was certainly an additional “first” for The Debacle of Asia in the matter of an occasion celebrating a national sports championship. There had been sufficient cameras flashing and video becoming shot to prove this beyond the semblance of a doubt. And given the presence of Very Extremely Senior SLN personnel all through this bizarre sequence of events, there can be small doubt that all of it had their seal of approval, not to mention that of the Sri Lanka Rugby Football Union and the Kandy Sports Club’s notoriously supine “leaders.”

You want a bit of icing on this distinct cake? The trophy that was presented was courtesy of Dialog, the Telco, and doing so, front and centre, actually, was no significantly less that Hans Wijesuriya, the man beneath whose watch, this very publication, Colombo Telegraph (CT) and many other websites, had been blocked, stopping each and every Sri Lankan’s proper to details. I would suggest that this gentleman’s time could have been much more appropriately spent in explaining to the Criminal Investigation Division of this nation the certain democratic practice he was applying by presiding over the blocking of such as CT rather than becoming the cynosure of all eyes at a national sporting occasion!

On the other hand, I suppose that this could be regarded as straightforward proof, if such proof is needed, that it pays handsomely to act in assistance of a violent and corrupt government with no risk whatsoever of any so-known as subsequent “reformers” making sure that the law and order they claimed to champion is applied against those who prevented the citizens of this nation from enjoying their elementary democratic rights.

And for the seal of (current) government approval, if one had been necessary, you had the lately-minted President of the United National Celebration who is also the economic Godfather of the KSC as everybody knows, as an active participant in all of this, with customary smile and bonhomie!

Does any person need to have the irony of all this pointed out to them? Or is it simply yet an additional instance of what several of us preserve pointing out: that the current lot, claiming to rescue us from the most corrupt and violent regime this nation has ever knowledgeable, are no far better than those they replaced? Is this simply farce, Sri Lankan style, or a Greek Tragedy getting played out on an Asian stage?

By Ranil Senanayake –

Ranil Senanayake

Throughout the world, the owning or holding of and that belongs to yet another sovereign nation, termed “territories held” have recently been largely returned. The Panama Canal was returned to Panama in January 2000, Hong Kong was returned to China by the United Kingdom in 1997, and Portugal returned Macau Island to China in 1999. The notable worldwide exception has been the US base in Cuba. This history is interesting, as it will certainly have a bearing on the historical events that we are attempting to set in motion.

In 1903 right after the turbulent period following the wars of independence, President Theodore Roosevelt signed an agreement with Cuba’s new government, leasing Guantanamo bay for two,000 gold coins per year. History notes that the agreement was forced on the new Cuban government to give the U.S. navy permission to occupy the bay. As Cuba attained much more independence and the Platt Amendment was annulled a new lease was negotiated between the Roosevelt administration and a Cuban government that integrated Fulgencio Batista as one of 3 signatories. When the Revolution triumphed in 1959, the new Cuban government requested that Guantánamo be returned to Cuba. Instead of returning it, the U.S. banned its soldiers stationed at the bay from entering Cuban territory. Right after this the Guantánamo base became a constant source of friction between the two nations. Ever because, Cuba’s contact for the return of the location that the United States occupies is based on the principle of sovereignty,”

Sovereignty implies supreme energy or authority. When utilised as national sovereignty the authority of a state to govern itself or yet another state. Typically, it is granted to foreign diplomatic missions and regional laws are not implemented on these lands as seen in the case of Julian Assange, sheltering from the British police, in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London. The query that should concern us is: Will giving outright ownership of our land to non-diplomatic entities, dilute our authority to enforce the laws of the land inside such lands? It is in this context that the agreements entered to by our Government and foreign Firms ought to be looked at. A deal as crucial as this ought to not have be left to a few bureaucrats, politicians and businessmen to choose, it must have been put prior to the men and women. Who will define the limits of our sovereignty over the new landfill? These drooling more than the possibility of producing a rapid buck must slow down and think.

If we are getting threatened with all sorts of economic repercussions at this early stage of the partnership, what sorts of pressures will the future have to deal with? If we do not see the writing on the wall, as seen from the existing reactions, which do not take into account the wellness and well getting of the natives (us) as essential at all and focus only the enterprise side of the equation, is the price to us not obvious?

Let us examine at arguments for continuing with the project. The China Communications Building Organization (CCCC) may sue us, yes they might, but the knife cuts each ways. If they have transgressed the laws of the land and/or if we can establish damage to our environment as a consequence of their actions, they could be sued back as harm wrought to Sri Lanka by a private entity.

A fear has been expressed that “There is hardly anything that strong nations do not do to safeguard their interests, financial or otherwise”. If this worry comes accurate, what need to be thought of the men and women that placed this nation in such a precarious position? They will be related to those who facilitated the loss of our independence in 1815. Considering that then, it was safeguards of the financial interests of yet another nation that was paramount, till we achieved independence. Are we fearful that the pattern be could be repeated?

Once this nation was proudly non-aligned. We have been friendly with everyone. We believed in equanimity so a lot that when China was unfairly excluded from the international economic order for their political beliefs, we stepped out of line and presented to barter for our mutual wants. Out of that came the popular Rice-Rubber pact. Can we not act in the defense of our resources, our overall health and properly getting, our capacity for wealth creation, independent of partiality not topic to global political groupings?

In the light of the current state of confusion it would be very very good for the legal profession to test what the law says about ‘Sovereignty’. A judicial definition will facilitate the existing discussion on the Port City.