An Ambitious Step: A Petition seeking a General Election in Sri Lanka

News Item in  Daily News, 22 November 2018, …. http://www.dailynews.lk/2018/11/22/local/169168/signature-petition

Collection of one million signatures demanding a General Election immediately, organised by the business community commenced at the Fort Railway Station premises yesterday.The campaign calling for a general election mooted by the Business community was led by Chaminda Vidanagamage, the Secretary General of the Business Forum.

 An enthusiastic woman placing her signature in the petition – picture by Sarath Peiris

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An Ode in Memory of Ashley Halpe

Jean Arasanayagam: marking Prof. Halpe’s birth anniversary which fell on the 18th of November 2018

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Recalling our youthful days as students at the University of Peradeniya, sharing our interests in drama and theatre, music, painting and literature.

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A Gathering of Scholars in Felicitation of Eric Richards with a New Book iin January 2017

Flindersblog: “Historians pay tribute to Eric Richards”

A new book Emigrants and Historians (Wakefield Press) has been published in honour of Flinders historian Emeritus Professor Eric Richards. The book launch is part of an international symposium focusing on Australian-UK migration being hosted this week by the School of History and International Relations. This week’s First Eric Richards Symposium in British and Australasian History in fact follows the 2015 International Seminar in Honour of Professor Richards.

Presentations from the earlier seminar have been published in the new book, entitled Emigrants and Historians – Essays in Honour of Eric Richards (Wakefield Press), to be launched at the symposium at Flinders, Victoria Square today.

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The Epitome of Scholarship in British Migration History and Much More: Eric Richards’ Publications Galore

PUBLICATIONS  OF  ERIC  RICHARDS:  A LISTING up to November 2018 provided by Robert Fitzsimons of Flinders University

Publication forthcoming:

 * “Migration at Extremes”. Keynote address at the conference Colonial and Wartime Migration, 1815-1918, Amiens, France, 12-14 September, 2018.

*  “Migrants in Crisis in Nineteenth-Century Britain.” In The Oxford Handbook of Migration Crises, edited by Cecilia Manjvar, Marie Ruiz and Immanuel Ness. New York: Oxford University Press, 2019.

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Utter Constitutional darkness in Sri Lanka. A Sunday Times editorial falls prey

Darshanie Ratnawalli

+++ This article is in the line of interpretation within difficult terrain presented by Gerald Peiris in Thuppahi yesterday as well as Peiris’s earlier intervention on this front elsewhere. Early signs suggest that both Peiris and Ratnawalli may be censored by the Editors of the principal newspapers, but hopefully Colombo Telegraph will be more open to her submission. For the readers to get some sense of the  conflicting interpretations, I append a short list on both sides of the fence. A long list will demand a journey into the year 2019. Text highlighting is by the web editor.

The editorial of Sunday Times, arguably the most prestigious Sunday newspaper in Sri Lanka, stated on 11/11/2018 that “Article 33 (2) (c) which gives blanket powers to the President to dissolve Parliament at his wish” is a provision that “comes from the original 1978 Executive Presidency Constitution.” This is an error when you consider that in our present Constitution, every other provision under 33(2) – 33(2)(A), 33(2)(B), 33(2)(D), 33(2)(E), 33 (2)(F), 33(2)(G), and 33(2)(H) comes from the JR Constitution, while 33(2)(C) is the only provision that DOES NOT.

Such an error in such a reputed source shows in what darkness the public is fighting the battle to find the true Constitution of Sri Lanka. To give the proper context, the relevant paragraphs in the ST editorial must be quoted in full.

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Peiris Confronts Samarasinghe and Other Pundits

Gerald H Peiris

Having collaborated with Professor S. W. R. DE A. Samarasinhe (Sam) in several research projects, I have had the occasions to admire his extraordinary analytical skills and his clarity of thought. I also recollect that he was one of the earliest in the intellectual firmament of Sri Lanka who applied his expertise in ‘Banking and Public Finance’ to expose procedural irregularities in the infamous issue of ‘Central Bank Bonds’ early in the tenure of the Yahapalana regime, disregarding his own leanings vis-à-vis the party configuration of Sri Lanka. However, I have to say that his article titled ‘Implications of the Supreme Court Verdict’ (The Island of 15 November) is a rare instance of his departure from scholarly understanding and impartiality.

In the first place, what the Supreme Court (SC) issued on the 13th of November was not a ‘verdict’. As explained to me by two of Sri Lanka’s most respected lawyers about 45 years ago, an ‘Interim Injunction’ is no more than a postponement of a verdict. Despite Sam being aware of that, it is disappointing to see him in the political mob (which includes representatives and lackeys of  the global powers that contributed substantially towards the processes that installed the Yahapalana government) attempting to persuade the people that the Court issued a verdict against President Sirisena’s decision announced on 26 October to reformulate the Cabinet and, on 9 November, to dissolve the parliament which was prorogued at that time. Thus, what did happen was that, due perhaps to the legal intricacies concerning the presidential decision, the SC gave itself and the lawyers on both sides of the dispute 22 days until it could sit once again to arrive at a decision. Continue reading

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Self-Deprecatory Aussie Video of Sri Lankan Parliamentary Fracas

  ….. 
Ozzy Man Reviews: Sri Lankan Parliament Brawl

346,438 views

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In Praise of Traitors: Intimacy, Betrayal, and the Sri Lankan Tamil Community

Sharika Thiranagama, Chapter in Suspicion, Intimacyy and The Ethics of State-building, ed. by S. Thirangama and Tobias Kelly, , University of Pennsylvania Press, 2011.

 

ABSTRACT: In a 2006 Canadian Sri Lankan Tamil pamphlet called Thurohi (Traitor), the author tells his diasporic audience, “many of us fled and came to this country. Why? Our life’s duty is to survive. But what is our historical duty? To be traitors” (Jeeva 2006, 3; emphasis added).1 The war between the Sri Lankan state and the separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) drew in Sri Lanka’s three largest ethnic groups: The majority Sinhalese, the minority Sri Lankan Tamils, and Sri Lankan Muslims; the latter, while war-affected, were not active in the conflict. The primary battlefields and areas of LTTE control were northern and eastern Sri Lanka. In May 2009 the war came to a bloody close in a stand-off with the Sri Lankan Army and the death of LTTE leader Velupillai Prabhakaran and most senior leadership. This end came long after the writing of this chapter and is not its subject……. Continue reading

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The Maithri-Mahinda Coup Stymied?

Asanga Welikala, Groundviews, 14 November 2018, with the title as follows: The Coup de Grace on the Coup D’Etat?’

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The Electoral Foundations of Sri Lanka’s Welfare Achievements

 S W R de A Samarasinghe, courtesy of Colombo Telegraph, 16 November 2018, where the title is  Crisis of Governance: Equity and Welfare Implications” .… with the emphasis in red being Sam’s worl and that in other colours being the Editor, Thuppahi’s incusions

Sri Lanka’s current crisis of governance threatens to undermine the country’s democratic tradition of having periodic free and fair elections to choose a government under the provisions of the constitution. I highlight the term “provisions of the constitution” because elections that are held by rulers in an arbitrary manner in violation of the spirit if not the letter of the constitution to suit their own convenience are not democratic. From that perspective, both major political parties in Sri Lanka, UNP and the SLFP (now SLPP), have not been democratic on occasion in the past.

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