Category Archives: plural society

September 8, 2015 · 2:32 am

USA-Lanka, 2007, ONE: Steven Mann’s Press Engagement in Colombo, March 2007

Item entitled “Sri Lanka: Development and Domestic Prosperity,” dated 9 March 2009 and centering upon Steven Mann, Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary for South and Central Asian Affairs, with the title “Sri Lanka: Development and Domestic Prosperity“

 images Pic from cyplive.com

Ambassador Mann: Thanks very much. It is always a great pleasure for me to come back to Sri Lanka, a country of which I have the warmest memories from my time here, and from the years spent in diplomatic practice with Sri Lanka. And I am here in these days at the kind invitation of Ambassador Blake for two purposes.

First, to attend a conference that the Department of State has held in Colombo for our entry-level personnel. This is an important thing for us. We have brought together roughly fifty of our most junior personnel, our beginning diplomatic professionals from the entire South and Central Asia Bureau from as far away as Kazakhstan. So they have come from all our posts in Central and South Asia for two days of professional development, and we have been very pleased to bring them to Sri Lanka, and we are very thankful for the hospitality and support that the Government of Sri Lanka has given us.

And my second purpose in coming here, of course, is to meet with the President and other leaders to discuss the important issues that we have on our agenda. And we believe that we have in these months an important opportunity that stands before Sri Lanka. And it is the hope of the United States that the leaders of Sri Lanka will seize the chance to reach a consensus agreement on power-sharing that meets the legitimate aspirations of all the country’s people. As long as there still is no such agreement, we see that it is too easy for those who would continue armed conflict to rally others to their cause. And it would also help greatly reduce the human rights violations and the humanitarian challenges that Sri Lanka faces. Continue reading →

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September 2, 2015 · 4:42 am

The Challenge of Unity and Diversity in Sri Lanka Today

Asanga Welikala, courtesy of LSE web site and institution = http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/southasia/2015/09/01/sri-lanka-and-its-democratic-revolution-the-constitutional-challenge-of-unity-and-diversity/ where the is slightly different

asanga-300x216The results of Sri Lanka’s parliamentary election on 17 August can be seen as an endorsement of recent reforms to limit the powers of the executive presidency and strengthen democratic governance. But Asanga Welikala stresses that the political difficulties ahead must not be underestimated, particularly the challenge of finding a constitutional settlement that addresses ethnic and religious pluralism while maintaining the unitary character of the Sri Lankan state.

Sri Lanka concluded its most peaceful and orderly parliamentary election in living memory on 17 August, demonstrating how even a modest de-politicisation of state institutions, together with a political leadership that broadly respects the rule of law and civic freedoms, can significantly improve the quality of democracy almost overnight. The election result, which returned the government headed by President Maithripala Sirisena and Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe, can be seen as an endorsement of the constitutional reforms enacted in April to significantly prune the powers of the executive presidency and strengthen democratic governance; and a mandate for further reforms to consolidate these and to address minority aspirations to devolution. Even though several other measures of the government’s 100-day programme were not successfully enacted, this can be welcomed as an important re-validation of the democratic revolution at the presidential election in January, which deposed the corrupt and autocratic Rajapaksa regime.

Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe

 

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September 2, 2015 · 4:25 am

Reforming Sri Lanka’s Political Order: Challenges

Asanga Welikala, courtesy of CONSTITUTIONNET, where the title is “Sri Lanka after the Elections: Challenges and Opportunities for Further Reform”

asanga -Gettyphoto credit: AFP, Getty Images

On 17th August 2015 Sri Lankans elected a new Parliament with a mandate for a series of far-reaching constitutional reforms, which if implemented successfully, could extensively change the institutional form of the Sri Lankan state. In the presidential election of 8th January 2015, the sitting President Mahinda Rajapaksa had suffered a shock defeat by the common opposition candidate, Maithripala Sirisena. The common opposition had fought that election with the promise of abolishing or substantially reducing the powers of the executive presidency and re-establishing an institutional framework for de-politicisation and good governance. The reforms that focused on limiting presidential powers and establishing the Constitutional Council along with various independent commissions were enacted in April by the Nineteenth Amendment to the Constitution, a democratic milestone, even though it fell short of a complete abolition of the executive presidency. By returning the minority government headed by President Sirisena and Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe (which had served since January) as the largest party in the legislature in the parliamentary election, the electorate endorsed the Nineteenth Amendment and mandated the reform proposals outlined in the United National Front for Good Governance (UNFGG) manifesto. Sri Lanka’s constitutional reform process therefore looks set to continue for the foreseeable future. This raises a number of substantive and process challenges that are well illustrated by the two major constitutional restructurings undertaken by the last Parliament in the first and last six months of its life. Continue reading →

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September 2, 2015 · 3:57 am

Wickramasinghe and Ladduwahetty on Major Events in Sri Lanka

I. Nira Wickramasinghe: “It’s No Revolution …. more a revolt within the ruling classes, courtesy of the Indian Express, 23 August 2015

When Sri Lanka’s parliamentary election results were announced on August 18, there were few celebrations on the streets of Colombo. Many Sri Lankan citizens had voted for the incumbents simply for want of something better. On August 17, when they cast their votes to elect MPs, they had a clear choice: A return to the iron grip of former President Mahinda Rajapaksa, or a mandate to continue and consolidate the changes set in motion in January 2015.

SIRISENA + MR  RANIL - Sri Lankan Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe in Colombo on August 13, 2015 -- AFP

A sizeable number of citizens (45.7 per cent) opted to continue the partial changes brought about by President Maithripala Sirisena and Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe’s minority United National Party (UNP) government. The UNP-led coalition, the United National Front for Good Governance (UNFGG) won 106 seats. If this was a victory for change and a verdict that stymied Rajapaksa’s hopes of staging a Vladimir Putin-style comeback, it is not as resounding a victory as the UNP needed. Still, a UNP-led government — with Sirisena’s Sri Lanka Freedom Party as its coalition partner — with Wickremesinghe as PM was sworn in. Continue reading →

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September 1, 2015 · 2:59 pm

Eastminster: The Parliamentary Democracies of Indian and Ceylon in their Infancy

ASANGA mugAsanga Welikala, courtesy of South Asian History and Culture, 2015, vol.  6/5 where one finds Welikala’s review of A Political Legacy of the British Empire: Power and the Parliamentary System in Post-Colonial India and Sri Lanka, by Harshan Kumarasingham, New York and London, I.B. Tauris, 2013, 297 pp., (hardback), ISBN 978-1-78076-228-9. [Special lower priced South Asia edition (2014) available from Viva Books: http://vivagroupindia.com/frmBookDetail.aspx?BookId=10884&Status=N%5D 

The comparative study of India and Sri Lanka – the only two uninterrupted post-colonial democracies in South Asia – makes for promising investigations in any branch of the social sciences including comparative constitutional law and politics. The convergences and the divergences in the two countries’ constitutional forms and traditions, the character of their democracies, their trajectories of post-colonial nation-building, the nature of the state, the contrasting ways in which they have responded to the challenges and opportunities of constitutional modernity, and for lawyers especially, the functioning of the two common law Supreme Courts, yield insights that are relevant far beyond South Asia. From the point of view at independence from the British Empire, the one is an improbable success as a secular, pluralistic federation and constitutional democracy; the other was the most promising prospect among the decolonising states which nonetheless deteriorated into conflict, authoritarianism and ethnocracy. The Indian republic rejected the monarchical forms of the British inheritance early, while ardently embracing its liberal democratic substance, whereas Sri Lanka, much later, repudiated both.

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September 1, 2015 · 4:41 am

Human Tide besieges Europe

simon JenkinsSimon Jenkins, in The Guardian, where the title is “Refugees: this is the human tide the west doesn’t want”

The global crisis engendered by people fleeing war seems unstoppable. But open borders carry an unacceptable political price for national governments Who now cries, “Give me your tired, your poor, / Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, / The wretched refuse of your teeming shore”? We stand appalled as boatloads of refugees wash up on the beaches of the northern Mediterranean. Men, women and children scramble up rocks and plead: “Is this Europe?” We arrest the traffickers, yet aid their task with rescue and shelter for their clients. We know this only adds to the flow, but in truth we have no clue what else to do.

Human tide 33  Syrians force their way through border fences to enter Turkish territory illegally on 14 June. ‘Is it nemesis for Europe’s history of economic supremacism? It is even stoppable?’ Photograph: Bulent Kilic/AFP/Getty

This week the UN declared 2014 the worst year since records began for refugees: 55 million people worldwide were driven from their homes by force. Of those on the move, 40,000 have reached Italy through Libya this year and 30,000 have reached Greece. Continue reading →

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August 31, 2015 · 7:19 am

Venkatachalapathy reviews Romila Thapar’s The Past Before Us

ARV A. R. Venkatachalapathy, courtesy of South Asian History and Culture  2015, Vol.6/4, pp. 510-12…. reviewing  The Past Before Us: Historical Traditions of Early India, By Romila Thapar. Harvard University Press. Cambridge, Mass. 2013. pp. xvii+758. Maps, tables, bibliography, index.

Marx, following Orientalists of his times, famously declared that India had no history. No history, in the orientalist discourse, meant that not only was there no history writing but there was no history to be written about. Since the time of the nationalist movement Indian historians have been grappling with this question and making various claims. The present Chairman of the Indian Council of Historical Research (ICHR) appointed by the Hindu nationalist BJP government has now declared that the Ramayana and Mahabharata are historical texts!

4703433393_968c5058f2Romila Thapar, arguably India’s greatest living historian, has pursued both historical and historiographical concerns in her long and productive career spanning more than half a century. Over the years she has tackled the question of the existence or otherwise of historical consciousness in early Indian society. Her popular radio broadcast on this subject, delivered as the Vallabhbhai Patel lectures in 1972, continue to be in print (Past and Prejudice). In these lectures Thapar not only interrogated Orientalist notions of Indian society but also made an epistemological distinction between ‘the past’ and ‘history’. Many long essays on the subject have appeared since, and the present volume, with the alluring and suggestive title of The Past Before Us sums up a lifetime’s work on the nature of historical knowledge in what can be termed pre-Islamic (a term she of course eschews) India. This book is unlikely to be surpassed in the near future, and will hopefully trigger further work. Continue reading →

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August 30, 2015 · 9:55 am

Al-Jazeera features Panel Discussion on Human Rights Issues in Sri Lanka

Take the time to listen and absorb, critically of course, the four-person panel discussion anchored by MM Bilal and Omar Baddar on You-Tube at  http://stream.aljazeera.com/story/201508242233-0024967 — under  the rubric “Finding peace in post-war Sri Lanka; What’s being done to achieve reconciliation after war?”

Malika_Bilal Malika Bilal of Northwestern University & The Stream omar-baddar--www.allthepeople.net Omar Baddar

Six years have passed since Sri Lankan forces ended their 26-year war with separatist Tamil Tigers. But is the nation any closer to achieving reconciliation and justice for victims of conflict? Rights groups say the country’s lack of accountability in addressing wartime abuses has led to a post-conflict environment where violations are still happening. Join the conversation at 19:30 GMT.

On this episode of The Stream, we speak with:

NIMMI G -spp.ceu.edu* Nimmi Gowrinathan @nimmideviarchy
Professor, City College, NY…. deviarchy.com
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August 28, 2015 · 1:10 am

Sangakkara’s Ecumenical Farewell at the Oval … in contrast with Mahinda Rajapaksa’s Shortcomings

Do take time off to watch and listen to this meaningful moment at the P Sara Stadium or Colombo Oval where Sri Lanka’s first Test Match had been played in the 1980s. It was serendipitous that the other cricket team surrounding Sangakkara’s farewell moment was from India. Sri Lanka had been peopled way back in the first millennium BC (if not earlier) by migrants from the Indian subcontinent. Its foundational culture was of varied Indian origins and its principal religions are rooted in the Indian dispensation …. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ydj1ayv5hhQ …. AND … https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ydj1ayv5hhQ

Sanga farewell AFP Pic from AFP Sanga family Yehali, Kumari, Kumar & Kshema Sangakkara, with the young ones –Pic from AFP Continue reading →

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August 21, 2015 · 8:00 am

Key Issues in the North-South Divide in Lanka: Then …. and NOW

Chandre-Dharma-wardanaChandre Dharmawardana, an unmodified version of an article that appeaered in The Island, 20 August 2015, with the title “‘Self-determination’ or ‘mutual-interdependence’? TNA Victory in North and UNF Victory in South

The people of Sri Lanka have spoken, both on Jan. 08, and now on August 17. The North has backed the TNA while the South has supported the UNF and the UPFA with a simple  majority to the UNF. The country has apparently returned to the politics of the 1960s, with the Ilankai Tamil Arasu Kadchi (ITAK) holding the balance of power.

However, if the TNA lends a constructive hand, there is now a prospect of a governing party and a strong Opposition unlike during the previous decade. Furthermore, given the TNA leadership’s ‘war crimes’ campaign against the leaders of the previous government, a better understanding should exist between the new UNF and the TNA. In fact, if the UPFA had come back to power, Jaffna and Colombo would have been on a collision course.2b-Chelva hustings Chelva campaigning in the north
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