Category Archives: disparagement

November 25, 2018 · 4:59 am

Gridlock and Hocus-Pocus in Sri Lanka underwritten by Prejudice, Exclusion plus False News

Michael Roberts

This is an expanded version of anarticle sent earlier toColombo Telegraph and this expanded version will be sent to the print media in Sri Lanka as well as Col/Tel. It is test case: are the political lines associated with the present crissi so sharp that Editors shut out perspectives that question their political leanings?

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Suri  Amarakeerthi  

It is the fashion for Editors of prestigious newspapers and for authors themselves to impress their credentials when presenting articles in newspapers. When Amarakeerthi Liyanage wrote a Letter to the Ambassador for China and presented this text in The Island, he was “Professor Amarakeerthi Liyanage.” When a friend recommended Suri Ratnapala’s readings of the present constitutional conundrums in Sri Lanka to me, he stressed that Suri was “a much-respected Professor of Law.”

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November 23, 2018 · 7:12 am

Gargantuan Calamity Looming in Sri Lanka — As Foretold

V ictor Ivan, whose preferred title is  “The Present Crisis is likely to End Up in a Serious Disaster” …. itself his translation of his article in Sinhala

Of the Executive Presidents who had ruled the country prior to Maithripala Sirisena, J.R. Jayewardene and Mahinda Rajapaksha can be described as those who had mostly and increasingly exhibited the majesty and the prowess of the post. Both had adequate powers to do so.  In fact, J.R. Jayewardene boasted that the only thing he could not do is to make a man a woman, or vice versa. Dr. Colvin R de Silva,a most erudite expert on constitutional affairs ,once said that even if the President had lost his mental capacities, it would involve a lengthy process to remove him from office and as such we are compelled to be tolerant with a President who is not only unsuitable for the post but also has lost his mental capacities.

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November 16, 2018 · 4:53 am

Amunugama’s Chameleon Faces and Phrases

Sarath De Alwis, in Daily FT, 13 November 2018, where the chosen title is “Untruth is the crisis” …. with highlighting being the hand of The Editor, Thuppahi

Political language, said George Orwell, is designed to make lies sound truthful, murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind. 

Dr. Sarath Amunugama is the subject of this essay. In addition to his current incarnation of a politician, he is an erudite scholar, a socio anthropologist of repute. His incisive mind’ has few rivals in the parliament that stands dissolved.  I last met him on 30 November 2015 when he joined Professor Gananatha Obeysekera in celebrating the life and work of Dr. Stanley Thambiah in a panel discussion at the International Centre for Ethnic Studies.  Dr. Amunugama paid a touching tribute to the author who made the penetrative survey of political Buddhism published under the rhetorical title ‘Buddhism betrayed?’
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November 13, 2018 · 2:47 pm

Interpretative Argie-Bargie I: Samarasinghe vs Rajapakse

The political wrestling match in Sri Lanka beginning in late October has led to a host of articles arguing for and against the Sirisena-Rajapaksa intervention and the attempted deposition of Prime Minister Ranil Wickremasinghe (an issue that is still in limbo).  The list of essays in the public realm from legal experts as well as membe s of the intelligentsia is as tall as any coconut tree …. and both parties claim to be Mount Everest. Some of these essays have already been featured in Thuppahi and there are simply too many essaysin print and internet for anyone to read all. So, my samples are chance hits. HERE I have Sam Samarasinghe in one corner and Ruwan Rajapakse in another –not addressing each other as such, but serving as samples of the intellectual fisticuffs here-there-everywhere.

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November 8, 2018 · 10:27 am

Sri Lanka’s Political Story from 1948-2018 in a Slash-and-Burn Nutshell

Qadri Ismail, in Groundviews, 3 November 2018, where the title is “WHAT, to the minority, is democracy?” ….with emphasis insertedby the Editor, Thuppahi

Maithripala Sirisena violates the constitution, stands to destroy democracy itself. Liberals, overwhelmingly Sinhalese, are aggrieved, appalled, aghast.

As a minority, I laugh. Not the happy laughter of someone enjoying a good joke. But the bitter, mirthless cackle of someone forced to read this script many times before – like every full moon, when the temple speakers blare its bana and you can’t blot out the noise with sleep because the liquor stores are closed.

All postcolonial Sri Lankan heads of government, all of them Sinhalese, have consistently violated the constitution and/or “threatened” democracy – usually by practicing it – and/or oppressed minorities. One could deem it a job requirement.

Just a few months after independence, Don Stephen Senanayake denaturalized, then disenfranchised ‘Indian’ Tamil citizens, already alienated from this country by their naming. Constitutional? Probably not. Democratic? Absolutely – passed by a majority of Parliament. Continue reading →

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November 7, 2018 · 3:23 pm

Sinhalese War Poems and the Portuguese

Rohini Paranavitana … a reprint of an article from Jorge Flores (ed.) Re-exploring the links. History and Constructed History=ies between Portugal and Sri Lanka, Wiesbaden, Harassowitz Verlag , 2007, pp. 49-62.

Sri Lankan classical literature enriched with Buddhist thought did not promote any war or violence up to about the 16th century. Even though war is involved in these writings, the classical writers took the North Indian legendary war as a model. The European model of war was experienced in Sri Lanka only after the arrival of the Portuguese on the island. It was quite a new experience to the Sinhala king and his army to retaliate against Europeans as invaders. The Portuguese engaged in ruthless war with a nation which had a great poetic tradition that made use of this new experience to generate a new area of literary expression within the tradition, referred to as “war poems”.

 

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November 1, 2018 · 3:15 pm

Young Tamara Kunanayakam in Central Europe, 1970s-to-1980s

Michael Roberts

 With Tamara Kunanayakam what you see and hear is what you get: no subterfuges, straight-talking without frills or obscurantisms. Seeking to explore the events in Geneva from 2011 when she was our Permanent Representative there for a short spell, I met her in her rented home in Battaramulla in June 2016 in the convivial presence of her French husband and their dog Hombrito.[1]

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November 1, 2018 · 9:34 am

Illegal! Sirisena’s Coup Indefensible insists Welikala

Asanga Welikala, in Groundviews, 1 November 2018, where the title reads  “Nailing Canards: Why President Sirisena’s Actions Remain Illegal, Unconstitutional, And Illegitimate””

There have been intense public debates over the meaning and interpretation of the Constitution, and especially the far-reaching changes introduced by the Nineteenth Amendment in 2015, since the dramatic and ongoing attempt at an unconstitutional transfer power that began on the evening of Friday 26th October. Unfortunately, the discussion has been clouded by the attempts of those who are trying to uphold the approach taken by Maithripala Sirisena and Mahinda Rajapaksa, to present arguments that are – at best – simply wrong, without any valid legal basis, or based on a lack of understanding of the Constitution – or at worst – motivated by a deliberate desire to lie, dissimulate, distort, and misinform the public.

 

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October 31, 2018 · 3:45 am

Tamara Kunanayakam slams Western Intervention in Lanka’s Political Order…. and evokes Egyptian Comparisons

Tamara Kunanayakam: her Eliya Briefing: entitled “On the current political crisis in Sri Lanka” Colombo,  30 October 2018

I will express myself on the international aspects of the political crisis in which the country finds itself today and their far-reaching consequences for the country’s sovereignty and independence, which must be taken into account in all its dimensions if an appropriate response is to be formulated.  We are facing blatant external interference in a domestic political process, an act inadmissible to any sovereign state. A climate of insecurity is being created artificially by the defeated allies of the West whose objective may be to provoke a violent situation that will provide justification for external intervention to restore them to power, if necessary, by force.

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October 25, 2018 · 2:30 pm

Sri Lanka’s Withering History. Without a Hattotuwa or a Fukuyama!

Richard Simon, whose preferred title is “The End of History, Again” ……. —  A parody which is presented in this blog viz,……………………………………. http://notesfromceylon.blogspot.com/2018/10/the-end-of-history-again.html — a site which I encourage you to visit …. Note that I have inserted highlighting emphases to assist readers.

Hattotuwa  A Tiger Cub resembling Hattoyama?

A Tiger Lad going on duty -Pic by Shyam Tekwani circa 1989

Someone for whom I have great respect asked me to write my reaction to this essay by Sanjana Hatthotuwa in the Island. I do so somewhat unwillingly, since the kind of writing it represents is ordinarily of no interest to me. This is because I view, historical processes (including, inter alia, all social and political processes) as being beyond human control. It is true that humans, both individually and in groups, can grasp and sometimes make use of these processes to further their own ends, but in doing so they unavoidably change both the process and its results. And these changes and effects are not fully predictable by anyone. Hence my deep conviction that socio-political activism is at best ambiguous in its effects, and at worst downright dangerous.

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