Category Archives: Presidential elections

November 9, 2016 · 2:33 pm

Sri Lanka’s Grim Prospects with Hilary Clinton as President: Looking at Potentialities in June 2016

Padraig Colman, writing in Ceylon Today 30 June 2016, with the title “President Hillary Clinton and Sri Lanka”

It is hard to imagine what a Donald Trump presidency might bode for Sri Lanka because Trump makes a virtue of avoiding fixed positions on foreign policy – and he lies. We might surmise that Hillary Clinton as president would probably be bad for Sri Lanka because we can examine her track record as Secretary of State at the time that GOSL (Government of Sri Lanka) was trying to defeat the LTTE (Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam.

clinton-in-gujarat see https://www.gg2.net/news/usa-news/US+firm+to+build+reactors+in+Gujarat+/2913

Clinton chaired the UN Security Council session on September 30 2009 when it adopted Resolution 1888, which dealt with conflict-related sexual violence. The official transcript of her address contained this: “We’ve seen rape used as a tactic of war before in Bosnia, Burma, Sri Lanka, and elsewhere. In too many countries and in too many cases, the perpetrators of this violence are not punished, and so this impunity encourages further attacks.” This is not an off-the-cuff remark – she was reading a prepared speech to a session of which she was the chair. Continue reading →

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September 28, 2016 · 4:22 pm

Moving to War: Critical Events that hardened Mahinda Rajapaksa’s Resolve in 2006

 Michael Roberts, courtesy of Colombo Telegraph, 27 September 2016, where the title is “From Hesitant Compromise to Resolve: Mahinda Rajapaksa in 2006”

 fig-2-keb-bus The carnage caused by the LTTE’s claymore mine attack on a civilian bus at Kebithigollewa was a major factor in hardening Prsident Rajapaksa’s resolve …keb-22-archives-dailynews-lk

Delineating the fault lines and events that generated the ethnic conflict between Tamils and Sinhalese Sri Lanka since 1948 will demand careful historical work that builds upon the many studies by a battery of scholars thus far — referring here to a whole line of intellectual work extending from Howard Wriggins through Robert Kearney, KM de Silva, SJ Tambiah and AJ Wilson to Nira Wickremasinghe. Historical causation is usually multi-factorial not singular. It is also marked by critical episodes and temporal moments. Each episode and/or phase is likely as not to be generated by several causes involving a multiplicity of factors. Continue reading →

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September 27, 2016 · 3:36 am

Smart Power International Machinations from the Hilary Clinton Camp

Diana Johnstone, for the Ron Paul Institute for Peace & Prosperity, 26 September 2016, where the title reads “The Hillary Clinton Presidency Has Already Begun As Lame Ducks Promote Her War“

If the British Empire was built on the playing fields of Eton, United States world hegemony gets its training in Hollywood studios and advertising agencies. Selling your product, or yourself, by looking sincere is a cultivated American art. Current top US leaders are expert practitioners.  In the space of a few days, Samantha Power, John Kerry, and Barack Obama all turned in war-winning performances. 

aapower-plusSamantha Power on extreme left  with Obama and .Susan Rice Continue reading →

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September 22, 2016 · 6:35 am

Discontent and Confrontational Violence in Sri Lanka, 1948-2009

Gerald Peiris, being Chapter 7 from his book Political Conflict in South Asia (2013, University of Peradeniya)  — a chapter based on his previous writings  [1]

 The survival of the principle of representative government based upon universal adult franchise since its introduction to the constitution more than eighty years ago while ‘Ceylon’ was still a colony of the British Empire is a feature often accorded prominence in scholarly discourses on the political history of Sri Lanka. Over the first three decades after independence (1948) the regularity of peaceful transfers of power from one regime to another, based upon the will of the people as expressed at national elections, was also widely acclaimed as a feature that made Sri Lanka unique among the emergent nation-states of the post-colonial era. The radiance of that achievement has, of course, dimmed considerably in the more recent past, due mainly to the violation of democratic norms in affairs of governance, and the intense rivalry that features the sub-national disputes which often find expression in confrontational violence.

1958-riots-22  Scenes in Colombo from 1958 riots after OEG led crackdown1958-getty

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July 2, 2016 · 4:05 am

The History of Sri Lanka’s Realistic Tilt towards China

Palitha Kohona_4Palitha Kohona, courtesy of Asian Tribune and the Sunday Times

The flurry of analytical pieces in the media and the political point scoring at China’s expense, suggests intense interest in the outcomes as Sri Lanka recalibrates its relationship with China following the uncertainties that accompanied the change of government in 2015. India’s views on the ongoing adjustment process is unknown at this stage. Western countries, especially the US, busy with their own immediate preoccupations, will probably not react adversely unless a dramatic change of direction results from the current finessing of Sri Lanka’s policies.

Generated by IJG JPEG Library

Sri Lanka’s drift towards China should not have been unexpected, both under the Mahinda Rajapaksa regime and now under the new leadership. In fact, it should not have come as a surprise.Reviewing  Continue reading →

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June 23, 2016 · 3:50 pm

Evaluating the Donald Trump Factor

colmans-column3Padraig Colman, in https://pcolman.wordpress.com/2016/06/23/can-it-happen-there-part-two/where the title is  “Can It Happen There? Part Two”.

In 1935, Sinclair Lewis published his dystopian satire It Can’t Happen Here! The novel imagines a charismatic leader winning the presidency and establishing a Fascist dictatorship in the US. Influential American journalist Josh Marshall wrote of Donald Trump: “His public appearances are like a fugue of impulse and aggression, overlapped with charisma and humour and a searching for the spirit of the crowd, a sometimes frantic, sometimes slow mix of neediness, divination and dominance.”

trump_it_cant_happen_here-620x412

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June 18, 2016 · 3:40 pm

A Critical American Rabbi, Michael Lerner, rips Trump Apart – at Muhammad Ali Funeral

MichaelLerner alchetron.com

Berkeley-based rabbi Michael Lerner spoke as a representative of the Jewish faith at Muhammad Ali’s memorial service in Louisville today, and delivered a fiery sermon calling for a litany of social change, including the ending of drone warfare, the ending of Israeli West Bank occupation, and literally dozens of other things—commanding multiple standing ovations.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eUXilmt192k&feature=youtu.be

 

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February 9, 2016 · 1:08 am

OHCHR: An UN Bureaucratic Arm that is USA’s Sword

TAMARATamara Kunanayakam, in The Island, 8 February 2016, where the title is “Sri Lanka, not Sri Lankans, the OHCHR agenda“

It should by now be obvious to any keen observer of events in Geneva and vacillations of Sri Lanka’s ruling class that the ‘human rights’ game being played out has little to do with the Sri Lankan people and everything to do with the island’s strategic location on the Indian Ocean as vital maritime link between a declining West and a rising East, with China at its centre, and strategic observation post, and with Washington’s fundamental commitment to maintaining a unipolar world in which it has no peer competitor. Sri Lankans matter only insofar as they constitute obstacles to that goal, or would-be collaborators, or opportune victims to be used and abused as and when strategy requires. Continue reading →

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October 7, 2015 · 1:19 pm

An Assessment of the Rajapaksa Regime in late 2009: Brickbats and Plaudits

Michael Roberts, presented originally in Groundviews on 17th December 2009, http://groundviews.org/2009/12/17/the-rajapakse-regime-brickbats-plaudits/ … where the comments were enlightening and well-informed –rather in contrast with the acerbic carping directed at my more recent articles in that venue [so that some selections will soon be reproduced below, while a new section  at the end adds a limited bibliography that extends to the present day]

This is a disjointed exercise that does not claim comprehensiveness. That is impossible in a short essay, the more so because I write without ethnographic exposure to the experiential subjectivities of either the Tamil people in Sri Lanka or the poor people from every community struggling with the cost of living.

MR king 1 -www.youtubecom Pic from http://www.youtubecom

Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapakse addresses to supporters as he attends an election rally in the Colombo suburb of Piliyandala on January 5, 2015. Gunmen shot and wounded three opposition activists who were preparing a stage for President Mahinda Rajapakse's chief rival on the final day of campaigning in Sri Lanka's election, police said. The men were hit in a drive-by shooting as they erected a podium for Maithripala Sirisena to address a rally in the southern town of Kahawatte, around 130 kilometres (80 miles) from the capital Colombo. AFP PHOTO / LAKRUWAN WANNIARACHCHI

AFP PHOTO / LAKRUWAN WANNIARACHCHI

Terrible Record: In a recent essay I have briefly annotated the government’s failure to prevent a series of killings and intimidations directed against media personnel and the widespread belief that elements in its sprawling establishment had a hand in many of these acts of injustice.[1]

In step with this record the Rajapaksa Regime has consolidated the long tradition of overcentralised decision-making and authoritarianism at the top that has been a feature of Sri Lanka’s so-called democratic institutions for many decades.[2] It is not surprising, therefore, that little or nothing has been done to initiate a genuine devolution of power in ways that would give the Tamil and Muslim peoples a goodly glass of political hope. All they have received so far is sweet words. Continue reading →

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October 7, 2015 · 2:05 am

Hambantota Port takes off?


Description: Inline image 2From Daily Mirror Item dec 2014

I. “Thoughts” – by Michael Roberts

This is actually from an old news item in the Daily Mirror in late 2014 –perhaps one that was buried in the course of election fever during the Presidential contest. There is an ironic twist here: the astrological wisdom that led His Lordship, Mahinda Rajapaksa, to call an early election stands in contrast with the unknown functionaries and Presidential diktat (guided in part by his cultivation of his own patch –a “wrong reason”) that saw one of the world’s unique inland harbours being built at Hambantota. Continue reading →

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