Category Archives: governance

February 12, 2020 · 7:55 am

US Scheming Looms over India and Lanka

Shenali Waduge, in Lankaweb, 9 February 2020, where the title is “Balkanizing India: National Security dimensions for India & Sri Lanka”

Indo-Sri Lanka relations have never been what either country would have liked it to be. What both countries should realize is that small as Sri Lanka may be, India cannot afford to bully it or destabilize it as India would have liked. The terrain is now far different than when India could call the shots in 1980s. There are bigger and far more powerful players that even India needs to weather with caution. There are many faux pas that India will not like to admit to, but what India must realize is that if it is in Sri Lanka’s best interest to ensure India remains unbalkanized, it is to India’s best interest that Sri Lanka remains without elements that covertly propose to do what was done to the Soviet Union & the former Yugoslavia.

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February 10, 2020 · 2:35 am

Our Constitutional Language Mediums: Bombastic Lies from Gammanpila and Others

FactCheck at http://factcheck.lk/claim/udaya-gammanpila-10

Statement

[According to Article 7 of the constitution] Sri Lanka’s national anthem is “Sri Lanka Maatha“… if anything other than the words of “Sri Lanka Maatha” contained in the third schedule is considered to be the national anthem, it would be a violation of the constitution.

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February 7, 2020 · 8:38 am

Our Anthem FOR Hearts and Minds

Michael Roberts

The full-frontal challenges from Janaka Perera and Daya Hewapathirane[1] to my advocacy of the National Anthem being sung in Sinhala and Tamil are on different scales, the one moderate and the latter extremist/chauvinist. But they are not totally apart. Both indulge in cherry-picking examples from the world beyond Sri Lanka to bolster their prejudices. More significantly, the moderate claims of JP work insidiously to bolster the extremists like DH and, worse still, to alienate moderate Tamils (the extremist Tamils, in my assessment, are beyond conversion to amity or sanity).

 

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February 5, 2020 · 11:26 pm

For the Singing of the National Anthem in Sinhala Only: Two Adamant Voices

On the 21st January 2020 two personnel who are part of an “Email Collective” in which I am a member (mostly as a recipient) raised challenges by a comment within the Thuppahi route (Perera) and by an Email Note to the Collective (Hewapathirane) — arguing for the singing of the national anthem in Sinhala Only. Expecting the issue to arise on February 4th and overwhelmed with work on my two websites and other pursuits, I did not respond immediately. Janaka Perera is nothing if not persistent and has tapped me on the shoulder again.

Let me place their theses in the public domain first so that other voices can chip in. My answer will appear in a day or so as a separate entity.

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February 3, 2020 · 4:39 pm

Sri Lankan Airlines in Mercy Mission to Wuhan and Back

News Item Colombo Page, 1 February 2020: “Mercy flight to Wuhan:  SriLankan Airlines expresses gratitude to its courageous crew members and staff”

Feb 01, Colombo: Sri Lankan Airlines expresses its profound gratitude to its patriotic and loyal staff members who volunteered to operate Flight UL1423, the airline’s mission of mercy that brought back our students from Wuhan, China, on Saturday 1st February 2020.

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February 3, 2020 · 2:20 pm

Mattala Route for Mercy Flight from Wuhan for Lankan Students

News Item in Colombo Gazette, 1 February 2020 …. https://colombogazette.com/2020/02/01/flight-with-sri-lankan-students-from-wuhan-lands-at-mattala-airport/

The flight with Sri Lankan students repatriated from Wuhan landed at the Mattala Airport this morning and the students were transported to the Diyatalawa Army camp in a special bus, under tight security.

Following the direction of President Gotabaya Rajapaksa, the Ministry of Foreign Relations in coordination with the Embassy of Sri Lanka in Beijing, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of China and the Chinese Embassy in Sri Lanka, facilitated the return of the 33 Sri Lankan students and their family members to Sri Lanka from Wuhan.

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February 3, 2020 · 3:14 am

Stanley Jayaweera as Sturdy Administrator & Diplomat – A Vale from a Son

Rajeewa Jayaweera, in Sunday Island, 2 February 2020, where the title runs – “A bygone era diplomat of perspicacity. A third-year remembrance of my father”

‘If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with Kings—nor lose the common touch’ – Rudyard Kipling

My father, Stanley Robert Jayaweera (SJ), passed away on February 4, 2017, four months short of his 90th birthday. Over the last couple of years, I have penned several articles of his work, besides one in May 2017, of the different phases in our father-son relationship. This article would be the last. As memories begin to fade, they too need to be reposed.

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January 28, 2020 · 10:49 am

Jehan Perera evaluates New President’s Cautious Approach

Jehan Perera, in Island, 28 January 2020, where the title is “Adopt a problem solving approach for the north”

Contrary to expectations the government is treading a cautious path with regard to past commitments on controversial matters made by the previous government. This may be disappointing to its more nationalist supporters. They might have expected an immediate change of approach and rescinding of agreements they see as unfair or not in the national interest. In the run up to the presidential election campaign, the present government’s front line campaigners claimed that the MCC grant of USD 450 million by the US government that had just received cabinet approval would endanger the country’s national security. Members of the government and their nationalist supporters were emphatic in saying that the former government had betrayed the country. This effectively sank any prospect of election victory that the former government’s presidential candidate may have had.

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January 27, 2020 · 1:51 pm

Today’s Bureaucratic Subservience in Sri Lanka: The Tale of Its Emergence and Entrenchment

H. L. Seneviratne reviewing Your Obedient Servant: The Fate of the Bureaucrat in Sri Lanka by Suren Sumithraarachchi, Sarasavi Publishers 2019 …. Courtesy of Colombo Telegraph = https://www.colombotelegraph.com/index.php/book-review-politics-the-bureaucracy/

This book deals with the higher bureaucracy in Sri Lanka, and its focus is bureaucratic behavior. It is about local bureaucrats, not those of British origin — bureaucrats who historically inhabited the bureaucratic terrain with decreasing density as colonial rule waned. It considers loyalty to a set of rules, rather than to a person, the marker of ideal bureaucratic behavior, one that the vocabulary of sociology calls “rational-legal”.

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January 27, 2020 · 6:14 am

Gota’s Assets placed in the Present Political Context

H. L. D. Mahindapala, in Colombo Telegraph, January 2020, where the title is

Any critical assessment of President Gotabaya Rajapaksa must take into consideration the salient characteristics that make him stand out from the run-of-the-mill politicians who had occupied the peaks of power.

The first notable characteristic is that he is the first head of state to come from the Sri Lankan diaspora. Initially it was a disadvantage tangled in legalities of citizenship. Later it smoothened out and has been an invaluable asset to him. His existential experiences as an expat in America had widened his horizons and opened up new vistas in his thinking and strategizing. He has acted so far as a leader who had seen the future and is bent on taking the nation in that direction. It has all the signs of being influenced by the American efficiency in delivering goods and services. The new breed of intellectuals he had recruited to run his state indicates clearly that he is in a hurry to modernise the sluggish nation and usher it into the 21st century. His first-hand knowledge of an advanced nation would hasten him to mix tradition with modernity without deracinating the nation – a critical issue in modernising Afro-Asian countries.

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