H.L.D Mahindapala The following announcement is intended to clear all doubts and questions about the secret ballot held to elect a leader for the UNP: “ATTENTION PLEASE! “THIS IS AN ANNOUNCEMENT FOR ALL UNPers, WELL-WISHERS AND THE NATION. “LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, THE COUNTING OF THE NOT-SO-SECRET BALLOT TO ELECT OUR LEADER IS OVER. ALL WHAT [...]

H. L. D. Mahindapala The timing of the bombshell of the four Mahanayakes urging Ranil Wickremesinghe to quit the party leadership, was deadly. It couldn’t have come at a time worse than this when he is fighting for survival. It also comes at a time when Wickremesinghe has abandoned the Buddhist wing of the party [...]

H. L. D. Mahindapala  In this imperfect world it is incumbent upon us mortals to overlook peccadilloes, frailties, fallibilities and the DNA-stamped sins, karma and weaknesses running in our inherited blood, with a bit of ticking off if necessary. But one factor that cannot be overlooked is depravity, committed especially by those who profess to [...]

H. L. D. Mahindapala  One of the common strands that runs through the pompous pontifications of Izeth Hussain is the assumption that his statements consist of profundities of an intellectual maestro who could beat all his rivals, except, of course, the four unnamed “great diplomats of the world” who are supposed to be his only [...]

H. L. D. Mahindapala  There were only two winners at the CHOGM held in Perth: Queen Elizabeth and President Mahinda Rajapakse. Both got what they wanted. Queen wanted succession to pass on to a female, overturning the British tradition of passing it first to the male even if the females are senior and she won. [...]

H. L. D. Mahindapala  There are five major communities in Sri Lanka – 1. the Sinhalese, 2. the Tamils of the North; 3. the Tamils of the East who consider themselves to be distinct from the Northern Tamils in culture and caste (Mukkuvars as opposed to the Vellahlas); 4. the Indian Tamils of the central [...]

H. L. D. Mahindapala  In one of my earlier columns (September 3) I referred to “some deluded fanatics in the Muslim community” but took special care to add “not all”. Izeth Hussain (IH), a former Sri Lankan diplomat, has thought it fit challenge me on this and other aspects in my column. In his response [...]

H. L. D. Mahindapala  The Tamils who migrated from S. India and colonized the northern peninsula in the 12-13th centuries were ruled by three main home-grown regimes which dominated the Jaffna political culture: 1. the self-appointed kings; 2. the self-appointed upper-caste of Vellahlas who shot up in rank overnight from the lowest Sudras to the [...]

H. L. D. Mahindapala  Over and above all other factors there is only one single over-determining character that defines the culture of Jaffna in all its dimensions – and that is caste. Jaffna without caste does not exist. Nor is there a peninsular culture outside the rigid caste system. Focusing on the “caste character” embedded [...]

H. L. D. Mahindapala reporting from Geneva  At a side-event at the UN Human Rights Council held on September 11, 2011, Mohan Peiris, the former Attorney-General, lambasted the American Ambassadress, A. Donahue, when she threatened Sri Lanka with “growing pressure from the international community” if it does not demonstrate a willingness or ability to conduct [...]

H. L. D. Mahindapala Hopefully, the expected return of Robert O, Blake Jr, the US Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asian Affairs, to Sri Lanka should augur well this time because he is armed with the critical information in the Country Report on Terrorism, 2010, published by his own State Department. There [...]

H. L. D. Mahindapala  The greatest tragedy in the life of S. W. R. D. Bandaranaike is that his progeny had never stood up spiritedly – or even faintly — in defence of his path-breaking role of restoring in 1956 the lost Sinhala-Buddhist heritage to the people who, down the ages, had directed their innovative [...]

 H. L. D. Mahindapala Whenever Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga (CBK) opens her mouth it reminds me of her own characterization of the way Ranil Wickremesinghe (RW) talks. Tired of getting nowhere with RW in their numerous talks to arrive at a formula to solve the north-south conflict she said: “Ranil katha karanney katin nowei” (Ranil [...]

H. L. D. Mahindapala The most pragmatic solution to the Vadukoddai War waged relentlessly by the Tamil Tiger terrorists was prescribed by the London Times on August 10, 1995. (Please note the date). In a telling editorial it said: “The elimination of one man, Prabhakaran, could fashion a miraculous change in the island’s politics of [...]

H. L. D. Mahindapala  Radhika Coomaraswamy, the Under-Secretary General for Children in Armed Conflict, was caught red-handed once again engaged in anti-Sri Lankan activities. UN staff were shocked to find a daily press review issued from her office propagandizing the controversial footage of Channel 4 titled “Killing Fields of Sri Lanka”. In her daily press [...]

H. L. D. Mahindapala Wars are evil exercises that must be avoided at any cost. But history tells us that wars are also unavoidable. From time to time, wars occur to win over-ambitious goals going beyond established political and territorial borders or to eliminate or neutralize enemies that threaten national interests. This is the short [...]

H. L. D. Mahindapala  To: Julia.Gillard.M, Tony.Abbot.MP, Kevin.Rudd.MP, “Bishop, Julie (MP)” , Anthony.Byrne.MP, “Robb, Andrew (MP)” , “Dodd, John (Sen B. Brown)” , “Ferguson, Laurie (MP)” , john.alexander.MP, A.Albanese.MP, Don.Randall.MP, “Tudge, Alan (MP)”, senator.Evans, senator.brandis I thought of sending you the attached snippet from the London Times (please see below) to focus on one fact: if there [...]

H. L. D. Mahindapala The very brief intervention of the Defense Attaché to the US Embassy in Colombo, Lt. Col Lawrence Smith, at the seminar on terrorism in Colombo last week, attended by 40-nations, was a severe blow to the post-Vadukoddai War campaign launched to denigrate Sri Lanka in the eyes of the world. In [...]

H. L. D. Mahindapala The 118 members of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) that met in Bali last week would have gone home feeling that it is no longer the prestigious moral force that stood in the middle of two big power blocs competing for dominance at the height of the Cold War. When the two [...]

H. L. D. Mahindapala The Vadukoddai Resolution, which declared war on the democratically elected state and the nation as a whole, is “a crime against peace”. This principle was first enunciated and tested at the Nuremberg trials in convicting the fascist Nazis and later incorporated into the UN Charter. When peaceful alternatives were available to [...]

H. L. D. Mahindapala  The latest blow to the anti-Sri Lankan Tamil expatriate lobby came last night (May 12, 2009) when the European Parliament rejected a move made by the Socialist Greens to establish immediately an international justice mechanism to inquire into Sri Lankan affairs.  Without recommending any need for an international inquiry the EU [...]

H. L. D. Mahindapala  In appointing an Advisory Panel of Experts (APE) Ban Ki-Moon, the Secretary-General, has grabbed (literally and metaphorically) the tiger’s tail: he can’t let it go because he is under pressure from the Western and Tamil lobby (represented partly by the anti-Sri Lankan Ms. Radhika Coomaraswamy within his own Cabinet) nor can [...]

H. L. D. Mahindapala  In a finger-biting drama of forty minutes President Obama watched his elite SEALS execute his shoot-to-kill order, without giving Osama bin Laden – the number one enemy of America – a chance to hit back or face charges, whatever his crimes may be. It was a spectacular and vote-winning military operation [...]

H. L. D. Mahindapala Introduction: Laurie Ferguson is from the left-wing of the Australian Labour Party. He leans heavily towards the Tamil lobby. The following letter sent by H. L. D. Mahindapala after meeting him in Canberra is self-explanatory.. Dear Laurie, Thank you for the time you spent with us listening and arguing which was [...]

H. L. D. Mahindapala The report of a handful Christians demanding the release of the report of Ban Ki-Moon’s Advisory Panel of Experts (APE) – a political move led by Bishop Kumara Illangasinghe (BISKILL) — begins quite appropriately by saying that Jesus was killed “by the rulers of that time, with complicity of high priests [...]

H. L. D. Mahindapala  The chain of events that finally forced Ban Ki-Moon to get involved directly in the Sri Lankan conflict and appoint arbitrarily a three-man panel, without the authority of the UN, constitutes an intriguing saga in itself. Almost immediately after the war the West was maneuvering at the United Nations Human Rights [...]

By H. L. D. Mahindapala  The East-West alliance that is designed to shape the global agenda in the 21st century was defined by Robert O. Blake Jr, Assistant Secretary, Bureau of South and Central Asian Affairs in his testimony given before the House Foreign Affairs Committee on April 5, 2011. He said categorically that America [...]

 H. L. D. Mahindapala The crimes committed by the Caucasian West against humanity throughout their history, held together mainly by the common Christian ideology, demonstrate incontrovertibly that they do not have the moral right to dictate human rights commandments to the rest. Their engagements in innumerable wars of colonialism, racism, capitalism, communism, fascism, religion, [...]

H. L. D. Mahindapala  Alan Keenan claims to be a Senior Analyst and Sri Lanka Project Director with the International Crisis Group (ICG). This means that he is paid to be an analyst to do his homework on the relevant facts and figures to substantiate whatever case he presents on Sri Lanka. Since he presented [...]

H. L. D. Mahindapala  The American Ambassadress, Ms. Patricia Butenis, has come out fighting on behalf of the NGOs. This should be greeted with applause because her intervention, coming from the biggest power on earth, adds an extra dimension to the on-going local debate on NGOs — the most obscene four-letter word in the Sri [...]