Category Archives: parliamentary elections

January 4, 2023 · 10:36 am

Ranil’s Moves to Resolve Ethnic Issues in Rapid-Action Measures

DBS Jeyaraj, in Daily Mirror, 24 December 2022, where the title runs thus: “President Ranil’s initiative to resolve Tamil national question” …. & a kind-of sub-heading read  “The All Party conference was a success of sorts with all participants agreeing on the need for a power-sharing solution”

The Tamil Progressive Alliance (TPA) leader and Colombo District MP, Mano Ganesan received a telephone call from Ranil Wickremesinghe on 19 July 2022

It was a day before the Presidential election where the MPs were scheduled to vote and elect a new executive President to fill the vacancy created by President Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s resignation. Ranil Wickremesinghe, who was the then Prime Minister and acting as the interim President, was a candidate for the Presidential election.

 

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January 2, 2023 · 4:55 pm

Crunchtime: Resolving Sri Lanka’s Political Dilemma

Chandre Dharmawardana, in The Island, 02 January 2023 where the preferred title runs thus: “Using SORTITION to prevent electing of same crooks to parliament”

The terrorism of the LTTE ended in May 2009, and most Sri Lankans looked forward to a dawn of peace, reconciliation and progress.  Even Poongkothai Chandrahasan, the granddaughter of SJV Chelvanayagam could state that ‘what touched me the most that day was that these were poor people with no agenda ~ wearing their feelings on their sleeves~. Every single person I spoke to said to me, “The war is over, we are so happy”. They were not celebrating the defeat of the Tamils. They were celebrating the fact that now there would be peace in Sri Lanka’ (The Island, 23rd August 2009, http://archive.island.lk/2009/08/23/news15.html).

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November 3, 2022 · 11:10 pm

Violent Attack on Imran Khan’s Party Rally

Item in Washington Post

Islamabad— Pakistan’s top opposition leader, Imran Khan, was shot in the foot Thursday during a protest march and was lightly injured, party officials said.

A gunman opened fire on the truck carrying the former prime minister and several other party officials taking part in a protest convoy. The attacked occurred near the eastern Pakistani city of Wazirabad, where hundreds of Khan’s supporters were marching with his convoy.

Former Pakistani prime minister Imran Khan addresses supporters at a rally in Lahore, Pakistan, on April 21. He was forced from office by a parliamentary vote of no confidence on April 10. (Mohsin Raza/Reuters)

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July 1, 2022 · 1:03 pm

Gerald Peiris’s POLITICAL CONFLICT IN SOUTH ASIA …. 2013

Details of this book  POLITICAL CONFLICT IN SOUTH ASIA, University of Peradeniya publication, 2013 …………. ISBN – 978-955-589-169-1………..Enquiries should be addressed to the publisher,  The Vice-Chancellor, University of Peradeniya, Peradeniya, Sri Lanka

Printed by Balin & Co. (Pvt.) Ltd.  61, D. S. Senanayake Street, Kandy, Sri Lanka +94 0817429050 ……………. Fax. +94 081 2222584 ………………………… Cover design: Dr. Manjula Peiri

Respectfully dedicated to the memory of Sir Nicholas Atygalle, Vice Chancellor of the University Ceylon (1955-66),  and my teachers: Karthigesu Kularatnam & George Thambyahpillay at Peradeniya, and Bertram Hughes Farmer at Cambridge

 

 

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June 20, 2022 · 2:06 pm

Galba’s Tales of Parliamentary Affairs from the Inside: “Wow”!

Hugh Karunanayake, … with the title and the highlighting being impositions by The Editor, Thuppahi

Nihal Seneviratne, the former Secretary General of Sri Lanka’s Parliament which he served with distinction and diligence for 33 years, has published his autobiographical memoir entitled “Memories of 33 years in Parliament”.  Written in a very readable, chatty style of prose, it is indeed a compendium of the highlights of the nation’s legislative workings over the past three decades. 

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June 14, 2022 · 12:40 pm

US Conspiratorial Hands Underdpinning the Political Turmoil in Sri Lanka?

Jonathan Manz, in an article circulated by “The Sri Lankan Study Circle” whose background & politics is not known to Thuppahi…. with the title they have imposed being “Pivot-to-Asai: America executes a Lightning coup to take control of a Strategic Island in the Indian Ocean” 

Bewildered, reeling and confused, Sri Lankans are just beginning to pick up the pieces of the jigsaw to decipher the events of Black-Monday, 09 May 22, when America, with its all-too-familiar ‘false-flag’ operations, executed a lightning Coup, to take control of the strategic Island in the Indian Ocean.

Taking control of the Island-Nation was critical to the Americans to implement their re-chartered game-plan for the Indian-Ocean region; this plan, they were compelled to develop following the unexpected defeat of their proxy mercenaries in Sri Lanka.

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May 22, 2022 · 1:00 pm

Australia’s “Whitey” Parliament of Yesteryear

Frances Mao, BBC News, Sydney 20 May 2022, where the title runs as “Australia election: Why is Australia’s parliament so white?”

 Some of Australia’s MPs, pictured here, fail to reflect the country’s diversity, critics say

Australia is one of the most multicultural nations in the world, but it’s a different story in the country’s politics, where 96% of federal lawmakers are white. With this year’s election, political parties did have a window to slightly improve this. But they chose not to in most cases, critics say.

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April 30, 2022 · 6:40 pm

Nationalisms in Ceylon: Origins, Stimulants and Ingredients

Michael Roberts, … reproducing Chapter III in Volume I of Documents of the Ceylon National Congress and Nationalist Politics in Ceylon, 1929-1950, Vol I, 1977, Department of National Archives, 1977 , pp. lxviii–lxxviii **

While the political activists of the first half of the twentieth century were drawn from both the national and the local elites, the political leadership (at significant island-wide levels) was largely composed of individuals who could be ranked among the national elite. As indicated earlier, the national elite was a small segment of the Ceylonese population. Its levels of wealth, power and status, its lifestyle, and its value-system marked it off from the rest of the population.

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February 16, 2022 · 12:30 pm

Chandrahasan broaches ‘Pragmatic Amendments’ in Sri Lanka’s Political Framework

Dr Nirmala Chandrahasan,  in The Island, 11 February 2022 , with this title “13th Amendment and Tamil polity: A pragmatic approach”  …… with highlighting imposed by The Editor, Thuppahi

There is much speculation in the Tamil political circles as to the usefulness or otherwise of the 13th Amendment to the Constitution and whether the Provincial Council system set up under its aegis gives a measure of power sharing or devolution of powers to the Tamil speaking provinces, or whether it is an ineffective institution which blocks out any greater devolution under the exercise of internal self- determination. This debate has been sparked by the decision of Tamil speaking parties including the TNA, to send a letter to the Prime Minister of India Narendra Modi, requesting him to use his good offices to induce the Government of Sri Lanka to implement the 13th Amendment fully, in the context that the 13th Amendment arose out of the provisions of the Indo -Sri Lanka Peace Accord of July 1987, to which treaty India and Sir Lanka are signatories.

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January 23, 2022 · 12:34 am

Sinhala Nationalism

Rajesh Venugopal, … presenting here the second chapter in his book Nationalism, Development  and the Ethnic Conflict in Sri Lanka, Cambridge University Press, 2018,…. 78-1-108-42879 8 hdback

Sinhala nationalism is the dominant form of political consciousness in contemporary Sri Lanka. As what might easily be characterised as an illiberal ‘ethnic’ nationalism of the east rather than the western ‘civic’ ideal[1], it is also widely identified as a serious challenge to the functioning of liberal democratic institutions, and to multi-ethnic coexistence. Sinhala nationalism features as a central element in the literature on contemporary Sri Lankan politics, and in particular, on the ethnic conflict. Understanding Sinhala nationalism is thus of critical significance and this imperative has inspired an extensive and sophisticated literature.

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