By Gagani Weerakoon Courtesy  Ceylon Today

President Maithripala Sirisena was the Chief Guest at an event, marking the 74th Birth Anniversary of the Ven. Maduluwawe Sobhitha Thera, organized by the All-Island Youth Abstinence Organization at the Sri Lanka Foundation Institute on 21 June.

Individuals who have contributed significantly to the effort to eradicate the narcotics menace in the country were especially felicitated at the event. They included the Ven. Kuppiyawatte Bodhananda Thera, Inspector General of Police Pujith Jayasundara and Mrs. Chandra Hemachandra, who received awards from the President in recognition of their efforts. A book titled Amadyapa Hada – which basically elaborates on the vision and mission of the All-Island Youth Abstinence Organization for the next three years was presented to the President.
The Maha Sangha, including Most Venerable Ittepane Dhammalankara Maha Nayaka Thera, former President Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga, Ministers Ravi Karunanayake, Arjuna Ranatunga and former Minister Athauda Seneviratne graced the occasion.
All’s not well twixt

Maithri-CBK

However, what grabbed the attention of all those who were at the event was that President Sirisena and former President Kumaratunga, who happened to be at his right hand throughout the 2015 presidential election and until not too long ago, were seen to be even avoiding eye contact with each other.
President Kumaratunga, at the end of the event, observed with some remorse that considering the enormity of the services rendered by the late Ven. Sobhitha, the gathering was a small one.

One might then ask whether all is not well!

Not only are the signs of camaraderie thawing between CBK and the President but one discerns a distancing away from the President by members of the civil society movement that was responsible for bringing the Yahapalanaya Government to power.
Recently, a group of 17 civil society activists [who backed President Sirisena at the 2015 January Presidential Election] held a closed-door meeting with President Sirisena and Prime Minister Wickremesinghe on 17 June, where the latter agreed to resolve issues which hinder the smooth and fast progress of investigations into large scale corruption, fraud and bribery allegations.
Though the focus of this meeting was to discuss Central Bank Governor Mahendran’s issue, one civil society representative at the meeting said former Minister Sajin Vaas Gunewardena is being given special protection in prison which is a highly questionable factor.
As he went ahead in this accusatory vein, President Sirisena lost his cool because it was clear to everyone present that the accuser was pointing his finger indirectly at the President.

The President immediately contacted IGP Pujith Jayasundara, who happened to have no clear idea about the allegation but did mention that arrangements had been made during his predecessor’s time to provide the former MP with MSD services.
Later, President Sirisena had confided in his close friends that he felt the civil society movement was now acting in a biased manner. According to well-informed sources, a faction of the civil society movement is to break away as a majority of those who were on the same platform are now aligning with the UNP against President Sirisena.

Mahendran issue tightens

Central Bank Governor Arjuna Mahendran informed the Monetary Board that he would not be seeking re-appointment as Governor of the Central Bank when his term finishes on 30 June. At the Monetary Board meeting, Mahendran said he would not seek re-appointment until the Committee on Public Enterprises (COPE) makes known its final opinion on issues related to the issuance of Treasury Bonds in the years 2015 and 2016, the Central Bank said in a statement.

On the other hand, Mahendran is pushing for the appointment of P. Samarasiri as Acting Governor, well informed sources claimed.
Those who were opposing the reappointment of Mahendran are up in arms once again against Samarasiri also, as they allege that he is also involved in the controversial bond issue in addition to not revealing details of the issues to COPE.
Samarasiri was appointed as a Deputy Governor of the Central Bank, with effect from 1 June 2014, by the Monetary Board, with the concurrence of the President and Minister of Finance.

He has functioned as an Assistant Governor in the Central Bank over the past six and a half years, and while holding such post, he has also functioned as Secretary to the Monetary Board of the Central Bank.
He also serves as Chairman of the Sri Lanka Accounting and Auditing Standards Monitoring Board and as the Vice- Chairman of the Institute of Bankers of Sri Lanka.

UNP APP irks SLFP

The UNP turns 70 this September, and its leadership, which is looking at innovative ways to reach out to young voters, who could impact the long-term sustainability of the Party, launched the mobile application ‘UNP App’ that allows users to obtain electronic membership from the party for a sum of
Rs 20.

“I say to the youth, come join us and take the party forward. Our time is soon coming to an end, learn from our experience and take it forward from there,” UNP Leader Premier Wickremesinghe said at the launch.
As the UNP launched its e-membership drive, the Prime Minister recalled that former President J. R. Jayewardene had them selling membership cards at Rs 1 a card, from house to house, but today their app would have reached the people before the party cadres reach their homes.

The app launch coincided with former President Premadasa’s birthday and the Prime Minister explained that they would roll out similar new programmes until late President J.R. Jayewardene’s birth anniversary on 17 September.
This new development suggests that the UNP has begun sharpening its tools for a future election and has moved SLFP Parliamentarians to urge President Sirisena to launch the Party’s campaign as well.
“With the UNP apparently launching its pre-election membership drive early, in the wake of a few inter-Party hiccups with the SLFP, that also is seen as a sign that all’s not well between the unity partners.
Before long, President Sirisena could be cornered into a position in which he will be compelled to take a drastic decision,” political analysts say.

Tit for tat

With SLFP Ministers on the warpath against the UNP for defending Mahendran, the UNP now threatens those trying to lampoon their Prime Minister with ‘consequences’.
They are in other words indirectly accusing the President of bringing in a speaker who attacked PM Wickremesinghe and a few others.
Earlier, the Lakshman Kadirgamar Institute is said to have turned down an application for use of its auditorium for a function.
Maithripala Sirisena was mentioned as the Chief Guest at this conference, that was organized by an official at the Presidential Secretariat. The Kadirgamar Institute, after receiving the approval, forwarded it to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, under which the institute comes.

However, Minister of Foreign Affairs, Mangala Samaraweera, refused to grant permission after he read the list of speakers.
The reason was that on the list was the name of
Dr. Dayan Jayatilleke. However, Mangala was not aware that this conference was being organized by the Presidential Secretariat. When Maithri was informed that Mangala had refused permission, the former gave instructions for the conference to be held at another venue. Thereafter, the BMICH was chosen to hold the conference.
At the conference, Jayatillaka launched a scathing attack on PM Wickremesinghe, Minister Samaraweera and former President Kumaratunga.

COPE head in dilemma

Leader of the House, Minister Lakshman Kiriella, and Chief Opposition Whip JVP Leader Anura Kumara Dissanayake locked horns in Parliament, towards the latter part of the week, over COPE investigations into the Central Bank Treasury Bonds controversy.
A heated argument occurred between them when MP Dissanayake wrapped up his speech during the debate on the Right to Information Bill.

Kiriella, making a clarification on Dissanayake’s revelation on COPE findings, on Public Relations Officers and Advisors to the Minister, said during the period 2005-2015 there had been 190 such people appointed to the ministry by his predecessors.
“The investigations are not being held into the actions of the previous government. The COPE is probing current affairs but not the earlier issues. It should follow the sequence,” he said.

Commenting further he said, “You now talk about matters before the COPE in Parliament and at media conferences. Is this correct? Then COPE decisions could be invalid. You said COPE Chairman Sunil Handunnetti called a press conference on Arjuna Mahendran”.
MP Dissanayake pointed out that the said press conference was held long before Handunnetti’s appointment to the COPE. He added the press conference was held after the lapse of one week after the controversial Treasury Bonds deal.
“If you are going to Chair a Committee with preconceived opinions, will it be fair? It is up to you to do it the way you want, I am just giving you an opinion,” Kiriella continued. At this point, Dissanayake, fuming at Kiriella said, “If you want to sit at the COPE and hear the cases, do so. If you want to appoint one of your members as the COPE Chairman, do it. If somebody is saying that Handunneti is unfit to hold the COPE Chairmanship because of that press conference he held a long time ago, we are ready to step down from that position. We don’t need to hang on to any position by force”.

“You came up with an opinion. What do you propose in this regard, if not the resignation of the COPE Chairman?” asked Dissanayake.
According to inside information, the Auditor General’s report on the Bond issue will be placed before COPE on 29 June.
It is also expected that members will discuss and decide whether Handunnetti should continue as COPE Chairman.
Intelligence warns
Meanwhile, by midweek, several alarming intelligence reports were handed over to President Sirisena.

According to information available, the reports included details about recent anti-government demonstrations in various core areas in the country on the VAT issue.
The reports have suggested the situation should not be taken lightly and have indicated the involvement of certain individuals and institutions in these hartals.
President Sirisena then ordered relevant authorities to expedite legal action against these individuals who are already being accused of various wrongdoings.

By Shaahidah Riza Courtesy Ceylon Today

Joint Opposition and United Peoples’ Freedom Alliance (UPFA) Leader MP Dinesh Gunawardena shares his thoughts on the RTI, Audit Bill, BREXIT and Provincial Councils….
He feels the government will not be able to handle the economic repercussions of the United Kingdom voting to leave the European Union (EU) adding that ‘by supporting their conservative friends abroad the government had neglected securing the interests of Sri Lanka. In an interview with Ceylon Today he stressed that the government should hold discussions with the Opposition, in order to put in place safeguards to sustain the Sri Lankan economy in the wake of the UK exiting the EU.
Excerpts:

? Is the Joint Opposition pleased with the Right to Information Act?
A. We expressed our views regarding the shortcomings and there is a process that was agreed to be followed at a Parliamentary Committee meeting in relation to views expressed by us about regulations and amendments to be made in the Act such as the amendment we have proposed to Article 5 which was suppressing all forms of information of a particular nature in relation to the economy etc. We are pressing for an amendment that Parliament should be vested with power to call for any document of the nature defined in the proposed amendment and to which the government side agreed. We are looking forward to the government keeping its word on this. There are also some clauses relating to punitive action against the publication of certain types of information which we deemed to be suppressive in nature and hence objected to them.

? Has the government got the infrastructure, the monetary resources and the human resources to implement the RTI?
A. I guess so. The contents of the Bill refer to the fact that it will take a few months to be effectively implemented. That itself shows that the government will need a lot of planning and resources to move on with the RTI.

? What are your views with regard to the delay in the Draft Audit Bill?
A. The Audit Bill has not seen the colour of day. Parliament was promised this more than a year ago but it has not yet been presented. Thus, when it gets delayed in this manner, the general opinion formed in our minds is that in the context of various failures in government’s management of the economy there are dubious reasons for the delay.

?Taking the Constitution as a whole, has the Joint Opposition made its own recommendations for reform?
A. We have clearly stated our positions and our members sit in the Constitutional Committee and other subcommittees. Of course, the government must be having something that’s already drafted which it knows we will not agree to. Everything has to be placed on the table for discussion and our stance has been clear on all matters relating to our sovereignty, unitary State, supremacy of Parliament, national planning, our national anthem etc. The government is not clear on its stance relating to the Executive Presidency, electoral reform and Provincial Councils.

?Should the PCs have more power?
A. We have made some proposals. Instead of more power, the PCs should be fully overhauled. We have called for more powers to be given to local authorities to enable them to serve the public better and conserve public finances which would finally go to local authorities.

?The UK voted at the EU referendum last week. The polls revealed that the majority of the public wanted to leave the European Union. How will this impact Sri Lanka? Can the government handle the possible repercussions of the UK leaving the EU?
A. The government failed the people by backing the wrong horse instead of considering the welfare of the country, just to help out its conservative friends. But the issue is a bit more serious. It’s not an issue that emerged overnight. This has been building up for years in Britain. A proper study should have been made before rushing their ministers at State expense to England and canvass for one party with no thought of the possible repercussions. The basic thing is the government failed to understand the opinions of the British people, which indicated that the British people wanted to come out of the EU. Why did they want that? The government should have looked into this. They chose to leave the EU because the British people were losing, suffering and facing economic hardship. This is one of the key issues on which the people have voted the British Prime Minister and his team out.Obviously this will lead to various repercussions in trade agreements with and investments in Sri Lanka. It should not be considered an affair only for the government. The whole country will face this problem, therefore, the government should have a clear dialogue with the Opposition on these matters.

?This would impact on GSP plus, would it not?
A. The GSP factor is not going to figure much and in fact Sri Lanka should be able to expand its trade but it cannot happen overnight. The British Pound is collapsing and it will have its effects in the banking and financial sectors. So it is not an isolated problem but will lead to a whole lot of issues.

?The JO comprises many members from the Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP). It was said at an SLFP media briefing that a large number of SLFP members of the JO would pledge their allegiance to President Maithripala Sirisena. Do you foresee this risk?
A. The SLFP MPs have been seated in the Opposition, opposing President Sirisena’s and Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe’s Government’s budget proposals and questioning the course the government has chosen. So our members are of one mind and they are very clear and true to the mandate which was given to them, and not on the mandate given to the United National Party (UNP).

?There has been a promise of infrastructure development but the recent floods showed that Sri Lanka has a long way to go. Has the country got the monetary resources to mitigate this problem in the long run?
A. Financial resources seem to be the biggest problem because the government is mismanaging fiscal issues. This is a major problem which the country is facing. In addition to that the government is accepting very difficult terms of the IMF and not giving priority to the issues that would help the country’s economy. So obviously, with regard to flood victims, the government is unable to pay the Rs 10,000 promised to them. Secondly, with regard to the Salawa armoury explosion the government is still unable to pay victims the Rs 50,000 they promised and are completely unable to manage the situation. Even a few days ago there were a few explosions. This was not reported in the media. They have forgotten these people. The Army has not been able to restore total safety in the area.

?The government seems to be having a plan to transfer armouries from populated areas to unpopulated areas. Is that correct?
A. The government says so but has not yet begun the transfer. I am sorry to say that the government makes many statements but does nothing.

?There has been much controversy about Central Bank Governor Arjuna Mahendran’s term not being extended this year. Are you pleased with it?
A. The JO has taken a positive stand on this issue and we have over the past year revealed market, under his watch, which have impacted very negatively on the Central Bank system and the economy. We officially wrote to the President last month asking that the Governor be not reappointed and to probe further into the scams.
?Many members of the Joint Opposition have come out with several accusations against him. They have been in and out of the Financial Crimes Investigation Division (FCID), the Bribery Commission and the PRECIFAC. The investigations are still continuing but none has been brought to book. What is your opinion?
A. The Joint Opposition has very clearly taken the stand from the very beginning that the FCID has no legal authority. There is a laid down law enacted in the country, which has to be followed. If the established law is followed then false allegations cannot be maintained. They are trying to tarnish the image of political opponents.

?Do you think the government is maintaining a non-aligned policy? In recent months we have seen the government accommodating China with regard to Port City and other projects. What is your view?
A. I think we should discuss the foreign policy of the government separately. It does not have any consistency on foreign policy. But economic projects which had been stalled for one year have been resuscitated by awarding them to the same countries and the same companies. This shows that the government had been in error for one year, which has been negative for the country. We are in a serious economic crisis. So the government should understand the suffering of the people and the impact on the economy.

lanka C news

Daily Mirror

The Government not only needs to remove the Central Bank Governor Arujuna Mahendran from his post but also should claim damages from him and the company owned by his son-in-law, the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP) said today.

JVP Leader and Chief Opposition Whip Anura Kumara Dissanayake told a media briefing that the government should recover the extra funds earned by Mr. Mahendran’s son-in-law from the fraudulent purchase of bonds.

Mr Dissanayake said the interest rate of the final phase of the March 2015 bond issue jumped to 14.6 percent whereas the interest rate of the initial phase was 12 per cent. In his address to the nation on August 2016, President Maithirpala said he had told Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe that Mr. Mahendran should be asked to resign as otherwise it will tarnish the PM’s image.

This clearly shows that the President is fully aware that something fishy had taken place,” he said. Mr. Dissanayake said the government could not pass the buck on the parliamentary Committee on Public Enterprises (COPE) as it had been appointed to carry out the specific task of monitoring public institutions and not to penalize anyone.

It is the President and the Prime Minister who should act now,” he said. (Yohan Perera) –

See more at: http://www.dailymirror.lk/111652/Govt-must-claim-damages-from-Mahendran-s-son-in-law-JVP#sthash.fpN9WUkE.dpuf

මහින්දට හොද ආත්ම ශක්තියක් තියෙනවා

පසුගිය රජය ලබාගත් ණය පිළිබඳ දැන්වීම් ප්‍රචාරය කිරීම සඳහා රජය වැය කරන අති විශාල මුදල ඉතිරි කර ගැනීමෙන් ජනතාවට යම් සහනයක් ලබාදිය හැකි බව හිටපු ජනාධිපති මහින්ද රාජපක්ෂ මහතා පවසයි.

Adaderana

President Maithripala Sirisena has also committed a wrong by allowing Arjuna Mahendran to continue in the position of Central Bank governor for such a long period despite knowing that he is a fraud, claims JVP leader Anura Kumara Dissanayake.

The Governor’s term of service should not be extended because he is a fraud” and afterwards those frauds should be investigated, the defrauded money returned and he should be punished for his crimes, he said addressing a press conference today (28).

Dissanayake said that when allegations were leveled against former Minister Bandula Gunawardena, he had vowed to cut his stomach if they were proven and in the same manner former President Mahinda Rajapaksa had vowed to cut his throat. In a few months Arjuna Mahendran could come and say he will stab his heart with a knife,” he said.

– See more at: http://www.adaderana.lk/news/35850/president-committed-wrong-by-keeping-mahendran-as-cb-governor-jvp#sthash.khm2OplL.dpuf

By Dr Kamal Wickremasinghe Courtesy The Island

The British vote in favour of leaving the European Union (EU) -Brexit-has been called by some commentators as the biggest uprising against the people who have run the UK since the Peasants Revolt of 1381. Fortunately for the ruling elite, Brexit did not replicate the killings of the King’s Treasurer and the Archbishop of Canterbury involved in the previous revolt.

Brexit clearly marks the beginning of the unravelling of the post-1945 world order imposed by the United States and its allies. More importantly, it signals the failure of post-colonial machinations designed to dilute nationalism in Europe and elsewhere in the world.

The sky has failed to fall down following Brexit as the globalist scare campaign predicted. And in any case, as the wide gulf between the vote of bankers in the financial City of London and that of the East Midlands-the most deprived area in the UK-showed, the people could not care less about any financial fallout from their principled decision. The elite’s revenge of a ten percent decline of the pound sterling lasted a mere 24 hours before they got back into money making through the pursuit of speculative currency trading. None of the other calamitous forecasts for Britain eventuated.

Brexit is a significant world event: it is the first blow of a popular revolution against globalism of the financial sharks, the political class, and corporate media manipulators. Their relentless campaign of globalisation has hit a snag. Significantly, the snag has its roots among the very people who were being lied to that they were the beneficiaries of the immense wealth transfer (from the poor to the rich) that globalisation represents; it is simply a loud and clear announcement by the common people of Britain that they would reject the economic and moral values system designed by the global elite wrapped up in the ‘engineering’ of societies like the crusty octogenarian globalist George Soros-to suit their vested interests.

The British decision to leave the EU shows that the elite had clearly underestimated the value ordinary people attach to their rich and complex national histories over civic identities manufactured by those seeking global exploitation. The British people have chosen to put their national identity and sovereignty above a set of meaningless indicators of GDP performance designed by vested interests.

As noted by a disappointed Barack Obama the day after Brexit- remarkably at the Global Entrepreneurship Summit held at Stanford University-“the vote speaks to the ongoing changes and challenges that are raised by globalisation”; Obama is clearly worried because a similar movement is brewing in the US as the shocking and overwhelming victory of Donald Trump as Republican Party presidential candidate is pointing to.

From the perspective of the EU, Brexit which marks the first exit of a member state is easily the greatest disaster to befall the bloc in its 59-year history. The president of the European Parliament, the German politician Martin Schulz appeared so jolted by the event that he promised to urgently look into the ways of preventing “a chain reaction”, with demands for plebiscites growing in France, Denmark and the Netherlands.

A victory against all odds

The British peoples’ victory was achieved against odds: the opinion polls (an important deceptive weapon in the globalists’ armoury) never predicted a Brexit win; The EU cheer leader mob kept bombarding the people with false information designed to make them doubt their own perception and sanity: they were told repeatedly that leaving the EU would lead to implosion of their world as they knew, would herald economic catastrophe, and would make them “nothing” outside the EU. Predictably, the Remain campaign was led by bankers, economists, company bosses, politicians representing vested interests, church leaders, and hired sports people and celebrities: faded ‘stars’ like the footballer David Beckham, and rockers Bob Geldof and Bono tweeted in favour of the Remain campaign.

An example of a striking demonstration of the insensitivity of the wealthy elite to the real issues facing the ordinary people-and misjudgement of the mood of the people-was their warning that the housing market would collapse upon Britain leaving the EU: little did the money bags realise that a collapse of the speculative housing bubble was exactly what the poor Britishers were waiting for lower rents and lower house prices wanted! Other campaigns of fears that banks and financial firms in the City of London would be stripped of their lucrative EU “passports” that allow them to sell services to the rest of the EU were the least of the concerns of the poor; the suggestion was ludicrous anyway, in view of the obvious “unity” of this particular cabal parasitising the people across national boundaries.

Voters also took precautions to ensure that their votes did not go waste; showing signs of a decline of trust in government systems in general, the Brexit campaign urged people not to use the pencils provided in polling stations to mark their vote, and to use their own pens. They also advised volunteers to photograph the loading of ballot papers into vans, to trail ballot boxes to the count, watch them being unloaded and to covertly watch election officials.

The move initiated by the Scottish National Party (SNP) and UK Independence Party (UKIP) was based on their suspicions that the 2014 Scottish referendum was rigged in favour of the ‘No’ campaign. A YouGov poll revealed that half of all voters believed there was a plot to rig the vote, while a third believed the domestic intelligence agency MI5 was involved in rubbing out the crosses on their ballot papers before they were counted.

Conspiracy theory or not, the world seems to be learning from experience!

There is panic in the sky scrapers

Clearly the Brexit result sent shock waves through the elite establishment including the western corporate media. They appeared to have been offended by so many people choosing to ‘disobey’ the orders of the media and their political leaders, signifying a total rebuke of the normal tactics used by cultural elites to crush popular uprisings. They found the failure of techniques such as the branding of independent-minded voters conspiracy theorists, racists, bigots, and uninformed a worrisome development.

Defence and foreign affairs ‘experts’ reacted with dismay to the shock of the Brexit vote, warning it would lead to a more fragmented West and make the world a less secure place. They declared, in unison and without proper reasoning, that the successful exit vote was a victory for Russia. They threatened that Britain’s exit would distract the country’s image as a reliable security player and possibly diminish Washington’s “pivot” to Asia, with global consequences.

The Brexit win also appeared to pull all ‘retired’ globalists out of the woodwork: Tony Blair, the epitome of globalism revealed that Brexit made him “sad for his country, for Europe, for the world”. He warned of “very big consequences” and hit out at the Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn for his refusal to toe the line with an energetic Remain campaign.

Blair’s former spin doctor Alastair Campbell also had his two pennies worth by noting that the UK is now entering “uncharted territory”. The former Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Bildt (a noted globalist busybody who was refused Sri Lankan visa to visit Pirapakaran in his lair in May (2009) called the results “beyond comprehension”.

Other ambitious and elite-compliant British Labour Party politicians tabled a motion of no confidence in Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership. Strangely, Corbyn has been held responsible for the exit preference of Labour voters.

The aftermath

The exit of Britain from the EU does not take effect for at least another two years. The rules for exit contained in Article 50 of the Treaty of Lisbon on European Union give two years to negotiate a withdrawal agreement. Article 50 does not set out a formal process for activating exit negotiations other than formal notification of the intension to withdraw, starting a two-year clock running. The terms of exit will be negotiated between Britain and the 27 remaining EU members, each having a veto over the conditions.

The British Conservative Party politicians including those who supported Brexit-like the Justice Secretary Michael Gove representing the elite establishment-appear to be seeking to delay the start of negotiations with the EU as long as possible David Cameron’s timing of his resignation is also evident of this strategy to delay the termination of the EU connection. They are likely to seek the ‘best of both worlds’ by way of continued unfettered access to the single market, without subscribing to the EU charter on free movement of people.

The preference of the leaders of the Brexit campaign however, is to start negotiating with the EU immediately: UKIP leader Nigel Farage and Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn have called on the government to invoke Article 50 “now” due to the urgent need to redress cuts and economic dislocation.The EU establishment deeply unhappy about the exit are also demanding that Britain activate Article 50 “as soon as possible” in order to end uncertainty.

The UK will have to negotiate at least two major exit agreements: a treaty to wind down British contributions to the EU budget and settle the status of the 1.2 million Britons living in the EU and 3 million EU citizens in the U K. The timing of the negotiation process is unclear at this stage.

Will Great Britain become Little England?

The other complexity of Brexit emanates from the stark divisions between the strongly pro-EU Scotland and Northern Ireland, and pro-Brexit England and Wales. Scotland’s First Minister Nicola Sturgeon had prepared Scotland for this eventuality by declaring that demand for a second independence referendum would be “unstoppable” if faced with leaving the EU against its will.

The Brexit development also fulfils “significant and material” change in circumstances proviso laid out in the SNP manifest to for another ballot for Scottish independence. Statements have already been made by the SNP calling for a break away from the Union.

The Northern Irish situation becomes more complex due to its sharing a land border with the Republic of Ireland which is for Brexit. Northern Ireland also receives considerable financial support from the EU in the form of so-called ‘peace money’ to fund projects aimed at supporting the region’s peace process. Some have speculated a physical border and passport control checks could be erected between the two, or to draw boundary around British mainland Britain, shutting off Northern Ireland from the rest of the UK. Irish nationalist leaders there called for a poll on leaving the UK and re-uniting with Ireland.

The long awaited Scottish independence and a reunification of Ireland will remove the last vestiges of the empire, resolving some of the long standing grievances about the evils of colonialism. England will then be able to re- join the world community as a member entitled to equal treatment like the rest.

A weakened EU would be a welcome change for the developing world

The developing world would naturally rejoice at the prospect of Brexit marking the ultimate dissolution of the EU. The motives behind forming the EU, by transforming the original European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC) formed in 1951 to keep Germany under check and to trigger the Cold War, was always suspicious.

The EU was established under its current name in 1993 following the Maastricht Treaty. Britain made its first attempt to join the Common Market in 1963 but was vetoed by the French President Charles de Gaulle. Today, the EU has grown into a super nation with its own flag and an anthem (that comes from Ludwig Van Beethoven’s the Ninth Symphony). European leaders will mark the 60th anniversary of the signing of the Treaty of Rome, the EU’s founding document, probably with less champagne flowing due to the latest developments.

A large part of the motives behind forming the EU was to counter the rise of China by forming a negotiating framework of a ‘single market’ that would be making collective decisions. But uniting the ‘white race’, by bringing together hitherto discriminated against Slavic peoples, was one of the undeclared objectives. This particular underlying feature of the EU was effectively kept under wraps by displaying an enthusiastic support for human rights enforcement in Africa and other less developed regions of the world. The objective of the global Zionist movement, keen to minimise anti-Israeli sentiment at the UN, by reducing independence of countries to determine foreign policy probably overrode all other objectives.

Under the cloak of being primarily a trade bloc, the EU was preoccupied with bringing the foreign policy positions of its member countries under one common umbrella. The aim was realised with the creation of the post of ‘The High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy’ as the chief co-ordinator and representative of the Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP), occupied by the former NATO chief Javier Solana for ten years. The Clinton administration gleefully announced that Solana was the “fulfilment of Henry Kissinger’s desire to have a phone number to talk to in Europe”. The current occupant of the position is a 33=-year-old Italian politician named Federica Mogherini, Italy’s Minister for Foreign Affairs for eight months in2014.

The CFSP is the agreed foreign policy of the European Union (EU) for security and defence diplomacy and for implementing peacekeeping missions. Decisions require unanimity among member states in the Council of the European Union. This requirement clearly conflicted with the British desire to have independent relations with the world. The relationship between the EU forces and NATO is described as “separable, but not separate”. Proposals for closer defence integration between the EU and NATO, prepared by Federica Mogherini were due to be sent to national governments on the day of the Brexit referendum. That is likely to be put on hold for now.

Brexit exposes the fatal flaw in the globalist ideology that tries to convince ordinary people that the vagaries of the economy would be all that matter in their lives. Brexit shows that people think about such things as their nation and culture, political sovereignty, and national pride. Elites sneering at such concerns deeply embedded inhuman nature would do well to recognise that the wider world has little time for the cold worlds of Davos, Bilderberg, and Strasbourg, inhabited by cold-blooded men in their identical suits. Threats of economic turbulence do not always frighten people into submission. They seem to value freedom more than the strength of the pound.

And that’s why globalisation will fail.

Shenali D Waduge

The UNHRC head has released his report. It is now the ONLY official document that has been tabled in the UNHRC. This is following the unofficial & purposely leaked report Panel of Expert report commissioned for the personal review of the United Nations Secretary General only and the UNHRC investigation namely the OISL. The Panel of Expert was used as the foundation for the resolutions against Sri Lanka totally ignoring questions of illegality while both reports inspite of requests have shied from tabling them at the UN General Assembly or the UN Security Council. The golden question now that the UNHRC head has tabled the report is not whether judges should be local or international but whether there is a prima facie case for judicial proceedings against a UN Member state. This is where the UNHRC now finds itself cornered.

The questions are simple

1. DOES THE UNHRC HAVE A PRIMA FACIE CASE AGAINST A SOVEREIGN NATION FOR COMMITTING WAR CRIMES? For the UNHRC to accuse a State of committing war crimes and call for a war crimes tribunal is a serious allegation which must have sound evidence and proof even to make the allegation. Does the UNHRC have such proof of war crimes committed by a State? The question is not what type of tribunal to hold or whether the judges are black or white, foreign or local… the question is does the UNHRC have a prima facie case in the first place to warrant judicial procedure?

2. The UNHRC report is the ONLY OFFICIAL report to be tabled in the UN claiming that a country has committed war crimes. This is a serious allegation to make against a sovereign nation and the seriousness is such that to accuse a country of committing war crimes the UNHRC must have hard evidence and proof. Sp far they can’t even prove the 40,000 dead and are trying they best to distance themselves from the allegation. UNHRC cannot produce a countable number of isolated cases for which if found guilty individual soldiers who have misbehaved can be charged in a military court. The Panel of Expert report was virtually an illegal basis for charges against a state. Sri Lanka’s LLRC did not find the state had committed any war crimes. The OISL however claims so but does it really have a case? The UNHRC cannot plan to carry out a war crimes investigation and look for investigation for war crimes. This is unheard of and creating a precedent which fellow UN General Member nations should oppose. UN General Assembly Members should also be wondering why the UNHRC and the UNSG has been shy to table their reports at the UNGA or the UNSC if they seriously believe war crimes have been committed.

3. NATIONAL ENGAGEMENT/CONSULTATION BEFORE JUDICIAL MECHANISMS. Yes the Government of Sri Lanka co-sponsored the resolution however, there is an operative paragraph 3 of that resolution which explicitly says that before the GOSL initiates and truth seeking mechanism which includes judicial mechanism the government must ENGAGE – in other words there has to be a broad National Engagement of CONSULTATIONS. Where is the National Consultation when the OISL report has not even been translated to Sinhala and Tamil and made available to the general public. How many in Sri Lanka can read and understand the English language leave aside the language in the OISL report to comprehend the gravitiy and seriousness of the report. We seriously wonder whether even the government has even read every word of the report before co-sponsoring it and we at times wonder how many of the Western countries supporting the OISL report have themselves read, understood and wondered whether there are any war crimes prima facie case? http://www.ohchr.org/EN/HRBodies/HRC/RegularSessions/Session30/Documents/A_HRC_30_CRP_2.docx

4. In view of the seriousness in NOT making available the translation of the OISL report to Sinhala and Tamil Dr. Gunadasa Amarasekera a well respected public figure has come forward to file a fundamental rights case against the GOSL accusing it of violating his personal rights to be able to read and understand what is inside the OISL report. His petition is also a public interest petition for it echoes the views and thoughts of close to 99% of the non-English conversant population. The case will soon be taken up in court and until such time there should be no decision taken on Sri Lanka by the UNHRC whatsoever.

5. The members of the UNHRC cannot be party to the duplicitous actions of the UNHRC by attempting to create a precedence that would become relevant to other UN Member states when shoddy reports without prima facie evidence are allowed to create hybrid courts and slap a non-aligned nation with war crimes charges when Sri Lanka was defending its nation and its people against an internationally banned terrorist outfit who refused to lay down arms and refused to give up terror inspite of countless negotiations, ceasefires, peace talks even with foreign third party involvements.

6. National Consolation requires

• GOSL translates the OISL report in both Sinhala & Tamil language and make it available through all modes of state communication to the citizens of Sri Lanka.
• Public opinion must be sought thereafter from locals – individuals, associations, organizations.
• Expert opinions must be sought from friendly nations – China, Pakistan, Cuba, Venezuela, Thailand (India cannot be included as India is responsible for creating armed militancy in Sri Lanka, while western nations where LTTE fronts are home to and have not investigated them inspite of the UNSC Resolution 1373 cannot profess to be impartial)

Has the GOSL honoured the UNHRC resolutions operative paragraph 3?

Where is the national engagement? Where is the national consultations? To have a national consultation the GOSL must first translate the report to Sinhala and Tamil language and make it available to the public of Sri Lanka.

Decisions of the country is decided not by a handful of English speaking people only!!! The UNHRC and the UN system always preaching about common consensus and transparency surely must realize this faux pas.

Therefore, the question that needs to be asked is whether the UNHRC does have a prima facie case against a sovereign state to accuse it of war crimes. Individual isolated cases of soldier misbehaviour does not warrant war crimes charges against an entire state and to hold a war tribunal for such. It is not a question of whether the judges should be white, black or brown or whether the court should be hybrid or any other but the UNHRC must first answer whether it has a case for war crimes at all and whether it has evidence to prove so (by evidence UNHRC cannot pull out LTTE terrorist related/associated sources)

• Does UNHRC have a prima facie case against a sovereign nation?
• Did Sri Lankan Government follow commitment to operative paragraph 3 regarding national consultation? No, because even the OISL report has not been translated into Sinhala and Tamil
• If so all proceedings must be kept on hold until the initial requirements and criteria’s are done.

The nations of the world should not allow the UN to get away with such irregularities and illegalities. Countries must intervene before allowing UNHRC to commit precedents by fooling government of Sri Lanka officials into acceptance.

Shenali D Waduge

https://www.lankaweb.com/news/items/2016/06/27/the-patriotic-national-movement-writes-to-icj-to-delay-unhrc-hearing/

http://www.foreignpolicyjournal.com/author/dharshan-weerasekera/

Dr. Wasantha Bandara Secretary Patriotic National Movement (PNM)  Nawala, Sri Lanka

26^th June 2016

Hon. Ronny Abraham
President of the International Court of Justice
International Court of Justice
Peace Palace, Carnegieplein 2
2517 KJ, The Hague,
The Netherlands

Dear Sir,

We are an Organization of Sri Lankans dedicated to protecting the sovereignty and territorial integrity of our country.  Dr. Gunadasa Amarasekara, the well-known Sri Lankan novelist and commentator on national issues, is the President of this Organization.  He has filed a fundamental rights application in the Supreme Court of Sri Lanka, which has implications to discussions of Sri Lanka that are about to take place at the 32^nd Session of the United Nations Human Rights Council.

We fear that decisions regarding Sri Lanka, in particular with respect to initiating special prosecutorial and/or judicial mechanisms to pursue war crimes allegations made in a report of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, will be made at the said 32^nd Session, and are writing to request you to take whatever actions may be necessary to prevent such decisions being made until the concerns raised by Dr. Amarasekara have had the necessary hearing.

The facts are briefly as follows.  In March-2014, the UNHRC adopted resolution A/HRC/25/L.1 which authorized a comprehensive investigation inter alia into war crimes allegedly committed during the last phase of the war, to be carried out by the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights.

On 16^th September 2015, the OHCHR released the final report of the said investigation (OISL report) to the public.  It concluded that the State (as opposed to individual soldiers) committed war crimes, and recommended that special prosecutorial and/or judicial mechanisms be set up to try certain of Sri Lanka’s war time leaders, both civilian and military, who were in overall charge of the war, to whom the said crimes could ultimately be attributed.

On 29^th September 2015, the United States tabled resolution A/HRC/30/L.29 co-sponsored by Sri Lanka, at the 30^th Session of the UNHRC, and the said resolution was adopted without a vote.  Since then, the GOSL has taken various steps to implement the recommendations made in the OISL report, one of which is to establish special prosecutorial and/or judicial mechanisms, to try suspects for war crimes, pursuant to the recommendations of the said report.

An update on the GOSL’s progress in implementing the recommendations of resolution A/HRC/30/L.29, including establishing the said prosecutorial and/or judicial mechanisms, is scheduled to be presented on 29^th June 2016 at the 32^nd Session of the UNHRC.

Dr. Amarasekara’s grievance, highlighted in his application, is as follows.  So far, the OISL report has not been officially translated into either the Sinhala or Tamil languages.  (Of the population of Sri Lanka, 70% are Sinhala, whose mother tongue is the Sinhala language; 20% are Tamil, whose mother tongue is Tamil, and 10% are Muslim, who speak both Sinhala and Tamil.  English, generally speaking, is familiar to only about 10% of the population.)

We must tell you that we along with many Sri Lankans consider that this country’s war-time leaders acted in the service of the country including its national defence.  If decisions are made at the UNHRC with respect to prosecutorial and/or judicial mechanisms to try some of the said leaders for purported war crimes, the majority of people in this country will not have been able to read the OISL report in their mother tongue, in order to assess whether the charges in question warrant being pursued any further.

It is not in dispute that a Government conducting military operations including combating terrorism must operate within the bounds set by domestic as well as international law, in particular international humanitarian law and international human rights law, as applicable.

Our point, however, is that where allegations of wrong-doing are leveled against a State, they must be prima facie credible, before the State can be expected to pursue them further.

We have two concerns:  first, the OISL report, even at a cursory glance, contains a multitude of lies, obfuscations, and other problems that make it difficult to accept the related allegations at face value; second, in any event, since there is no official Sinhala or Tamil translation of the OISL report, the majority of the people of this country are unable to read the report for themselves, to assess the related allegations for themselves.

With respect to the aforesaid problems with the OISL report, we shall be happy to send you detailed information, but just to give you an idea of the magnitude of said problems, we cite just one example.  The greater part of the photographic and video evidence cited in the OISL report, particularly in support of charges relating to deliberate killings, is from the British TV Station, Channel 4.  Therefore, the integrity of the said ‘evidence’ is crucial to assess the credibility of the related allegations.

The following is a review that appeared in the London Sunday Times, of a Channel 4 video (Killing Fields), which video is one of the main sources of Channel 4 material cited in the OISL report:

The Channel has accumulated a large collection of samizdat amateur footage from mobile phones and video cameras—mostly un-attributed and uncorroborated.  It mixes that footage with comment from unnamed sources with distorted voices and shadowed faces.  And human rights lawyers.  It was brutal.  It was shocking, but it wasn’t journalism.  Not a second of this has been shot by Channel 4:  none of the eye-witness accounts come from journalists.”  (A. A. Gill, ‘Judged,’ London Sunday Times, 30-6-2011.)

Our point for now is this:  it is on evidence such as the above that the OISL has tried to make a case for war crimes against Sri Lanka, and it is on those allegations that the UNHRC is about to take further actions against this country with respect to the said purported crimes.

More important, Operative Paragraph 3 of resolution A/HRC/30/L.29 makes explicit reference to a commitment by the GOSL to engage in ‘broad national consultations’ before initiating ‘processes of truth-seeking, justice, reparations,’ (which must necessarily include special prosecutorial and/or judicial mechanisms to pursue war crimes allegations) pursuant to the recommendations of the said report.

We take as self-evident that it is impossible to have ‘broad national consultations’ if more than 90% of the people of the country haven’t been able to read and understand the key document whose allegations are to be pursued by some of the mechanisms that are to be devised after the said ‘consultations.’

Therefore, we reiterate that if the GOSL agrees on 29^th June or thereafter to take further measures towards establishing the said prosecutorial and/or judicial mechanisms, it will be doing so in express violation of the very terms of resolution A/HRC/30/L.29.

It is in the above situation that Dr. Amarasekara has filed his fundamental rights application, asking as relief that the GOSL be ordered to produce official Sinhala and Tamil translations of the OISL report and make them available to the general public.  He has filed the said application in the public interest.  The said application will be taken up for hearing after the 29^th June,

As indicated earlier, we fear that, in the meantime, the GOSL will have made certain additional commitments with respect to the aforesaid prosecutorial and/or judicial mechanisms, which will cause irremediable harm to the people of this country, harm that can be avoided if Sinhala and Tamil translations of the OISL report were available, and decisions concerning the said mechanisms were reached after the ‘broad national consultations’ mentioned in resolution A/HRC/30/L.29 itself.

The International Court of Justice is the judicial arm of the United Nations Organization, and the Statute of the Court is an integral part of the United Nations Charter.  We are aware that the jurisdiction of the Court is limited to hearing complaints by countries, and to requests for advisory opinions by the UN itself, but we cannot imagine that, where the UN is about to commit a gross injustice, and the Court is made aware of it, the Court will look away.

It is our hope that Inherent Jurisdiction, which is the prerogative of every Court, (and one must presume is the prerogative of the highest court in the entire world) will operate in this instance, and allow the ICJ to take appropriate action.

Under the circumstances, we are writing to you to request that you take whatever steps may be necessary to prevent irremediable harm from coming to the people of Sri Lanka by actions of the UNHRC, for which the United Nations Organization must bare ultimate legal responsibility.  We shall be happy to testify in writing or in person with regard to any of the matters discussed in this letter, at any venue suggested by you.

Thank You,

Respectfully,

Dr. Wasantha Bandara, Secretary, PNM

Copies to:

1. Ban Ki Moon, Secretary General of the UN
2. Zeid Al Hussein, United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights
3. Mogens Lykketoft, President of the Unite Nations General Assembly
4. Chiu Kyonglim, President of the UNHRC
5. Maitripala Sirisena, President of Sri Lanka

Fundamental Rights Application filed against GOSL by Dr. Gunadasa Amarasekera for failure to translate OISL report in Sinhala & Tamil language

By Charles.S.Perera

Yo appaduṭṭhassa narassa dussati

Suddhassa posassa ananganassa

Tam eva bālaṃpaccheti pāpaṃ

Sukhumo rajo paṭivātaṃ va khitto  (125 Dhammapada)

Like fine dust thrown against the wind, evil falls back upon that fool who offends an inoffensive, pure, and guiltless man.

If Sri Lanka government seeks the applause of  USA and the west Sri Lanka can be sure to remain undeveloped and dependent on USA and the west. That is what had been the foreign policy of the USA and the West. We saw how USA Ambassador Robert O’Blake, UK and French Foreign Secretaries,  Hillary Clinton reacted to progressive development plans, and Sri Lanka’s economic development under Mahinda Rajapakse.

Maithripala Sirisena and Ranil Wickramasinghe are already caught in the tangled political  net of  USA and  the West, Ravi Karunanayake  the Finance Minister will never be able to produce a people friendly budget to ease the economic burden of the people with a rising high cost of living.  Mangala Samaraweera as much as Ranil Wickramasinghe have been adopted the lapdogs of USA and the West.

USA presented its  resolution against Sri Lanka in Geneva before Sirisena-Ranil government was formed , to make governing difficult for the former President Mahinda Rajapakse.  Every Sri Lankan who suffered under terrorism for 30 odd years knows that the military operations against terrorism were a necessary evil, to bring peace and security to Sri Lank and its people. USA too new that terrorism cannot be handled with velvet gloved hands, and a war against terrorism has to be fought with utmost severity  even  at risk to civilian lives.

USA and its allies used the NATO forces against their terrorists outside their own countries thus without risk to their own people, and caring very little for the loss of civilian lives  in those countries they selected to devastate with bombs and canon fire. Later on they turned  their guns and bombed countries to remove lawful governments, killing thousands of civilians. USA tortured captured civilians both in Abu Grahib prisons  and Guanano Bay Camps.

But why are UN and great Human rights activists Silent?  Why is there no resolution presented at UN Human Rights Council in Geneva against USA and its allies for violation of Human Rights and war crimes ?

No one thought of passing a resolution in the UN Human Rights Council against the USA and its allies  calling for accountability and for war crimes. Therefore the countries which voted the USA ‘s resolution against Sri Lanka for the violation of human rights and war crimes in the elimination of terrorists in Sri Lanka are guilty of the murders and atrocities committed by the Tamil terrorists  against the people of Sri Lanka.

Therefore, Sri Lanka in the elimination of terrorists had not committed any war crime. Any civilian deaths in that necessary war against terrorism, was collateral. However, those unfortunate civilian deaths saved thousands of civilian deaths  if the terrorism was allowed to continue without military intervention. Hence,  no one-USA or the West has the right to come forward now to call for accountability or accuse the Armed Forces of Sri Lanka for war crimes.

We may as well ask the USA and its allies to pass any resolution against Sri Lanka and that Sri Lanka will not accept those resolutions valid as long as USA, which has violated human rights, committed war crimes,  and did not respect the sovereignty of  States like Pakistan to trespass into it by force to murder a residents of that country, is called to account and answer for the  crimes it has committed against nations.

If not Sri Lanka should leave the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva, which has  accepted a resolution against Sri Lanka which rightfully eliminated terrorism, by USA which is a country guilty of human right violations and war crimes and therefore USA has no right what so ever to  accuse Sri Lanka for similar crimes, and pass any resolution against it.

It was stupid that Mangala Samaraweera’s over-enthusiasm on being the Foreign Minister of Sirisena-Ranil-Chndrika government that he embraced  the USA anti Sri Lanka resolution as if it was a  God’s  gift. Not stopping at that Ranil Wickramsinghe sponsored the resolution against his own country.

Can we call these men  Ranil Wickramasinghe , Mangala Samaraweera and Maithripala Sirisena-who did not speak out against sponsoring the USA Resolution against Sri Lanka patriot  of Sri Lanka ?

USA and the West treating this Yahapalanaya Government of Sirisena and Ranil  submissive and acts with an unquestioning obedience has not even withdrawn the anti Sri Lanka resolution which they were using as a  means to change Rajapakse Regime” of Sri Lanka.

The State Department of USA on the advice of its Assistant Secretary of South Asia Robert Blake who was a friend of Sri Lanka Terrorist Prabhakaran and Tamil Selvam, and  sympathiser of the Sri Lank terrorists, took punitive action against the President of Sri Lanka Mahinda Rajapakse for going ahead with the  military operations to eliminate  terrorism against the advise of the State Department of USA.

Why should the world accept USA as a global policeman, acting as if it has the right to decide on the internal policies of any Sovereign State in the world?

USA has never t acted in the interest of any developing country.  USA takes action against countries in its own interest. This can be stopped only by the UNO with a proper leadership- with the Secretary General of UNO being a politically neutral person who cannot be manipulated by USA.  Ban ki Moon  cannot unfortunately be accepted as an independent Secretary General of the UNO . He acts in the interest  of USA and the West.

If  President Mahinda Rajapkse had listened to USA at the the time, and instead of military operations against terrorism had rounds after  rounds of peace negotiations with the terrorists, there would still  be  terrorism in Sri Lanka,  and our people would have continued to be murdered and massacred in thousands. 

If the American State Department would look at this  probability with intelligence they will undoubtedly realise  that the number of deaths of civilians in the actual elimination of terrorists( which it says 40 000, going by the Darusman Report) in May, 2009,would be comparatively insignificant.

The people of Sri Lanka are therefore grateful that the President Mahinda Rajapksa did not listen to the USA  State Department and instead carried on with the military operations until the complete elimination of terrorism.

Hence the former President Mahinda Rajapaks, his government and his  Armed Forces   are guiltless of the accusations made against them by USA in its infamous  resolution  passed  at the UNHRCouncil in Genevca.

America true to its regime change mania in the developing countries, saw a politically strategic danger in the excessive closeness of China with Sri Lanka of Mahinda Rajapakse. America knowing the strategic importance of Sri Lanka to control the south and checkmate any developments that would be a danger to its assumed leadership in the south seas, was planning to take  measures to  change  President Mahinda Rajapakse goverment in  Sri Lanka.

They began by encouraging  their  Local Agents Ranil Wickramasinghe, and Chandrika Kumaratunga to create an uprising  of people against the Government in line with the Arab summer that ousted the Presidents of Egypt and Tunisia.

Ranil and his UNP tried their best to make issues with the murder of the editor of Sunday leader Lasantha Wickramaratne,  and  using the funeral of a Tamil member of UNP assassinated by the LTTE, and again on army shooting at the manifestation in Rathupusellawa,  and with the shooting of the strikers manifesting in the industrial zone, but none of these attempts of the UNP leader were successful to raise the people  against the President Mahinda Rajapkse.

The President Mahinda Rajapakse is so popular amoung the people that they would not rise  against him and his government. The people were willing to suffer the burden of a rising cost of living rather than change the government of Mahinda Rajapakse for that.

Finally American State Department unable to find a means  to oust the government of Mahinda Rajapakse, arranged for Ranil Wickramasinghe the leader of the UNP a scholarship in the Massachuset University of Technology  to follow a course on How to Change Governments.” It was then that the USA State Department, and the  CIA may have worked out a  plan along with Ranil Wickramasinghe .

The plan was to accuse  the President Mahinda Rajapakse , his family and all those connected to him as having misappropriated State funds for their  personal use. They saw that it will go down well with the people as Sri Lanka was receiving millions of dollars for various projects of development undertaken by President Mahinda Rajapakse’s Government, and one can be made to suspect that there may be some truth  that some of  the money  from the billions the government is receiving may have found their way into the  pockets of those in power.

It was no secret that the Ministers Ravi Karunanayake, and Karu Jayasuriya and others in the UNP Government of Ranil Wickramasinghe of 2002, and even the President Chandrika Kumaratunga are known to have made financial gains when Sri Lanka was  getting comparatively less money from the sale of Sathosa by Ravi Karunanayake, illegl transfer of state land for private Golf Course – Waters Edge by Chandrika , and signing a cotract with Agrekko Ltd for a financial deal without Treasury or cabinet approval by Karu Jayasuriya.

Even G.G.Ponnambalam was accused of taking commissions on a agriculture Tracks deal.

The people may therefore  begin to doubt, they-USA regime change group , CID and Ranil had argued,  that there may be some truth about the hue and cry raised against Mahanda Rajapakse and the Ministers of his Government to have misappropriated  from the vast sums of money pouring into the country.

That was how the accusations of  bribery and corruption and stealing of  state funds for personal use , having foreign Bank Accounts and money laundering etc.,against the Rajapaksa family     and Directors, of various Companies that thrived under President Rajapakse, came about.

There may have been some who made money during the Presidency of Mahinda Rajapakse, but certainly not the President Mahinda Rajapakse and his family. Mahinda Rajapakse could not have carried out the Mahinda Chintanaya if he was syphoning off funds for his personal use.

Mahinda Rajapakse would surely not have resorted to misappropriating state funds as he knew that he would be at the centre of an inquiry by any future  government of an opposition party coming into power.  Further more Mahinda Rajapakse would not have stooped to any corrupt activity as he would have liked to have a clean name as an incorrupt and an honest leader, as he was trusted, loved and dear to his people.

However that scandal raised by UNP and the JVP worked to a certain extent to change the attitude of the people against President Mahinda Rajapakse, but a greater number of intelligent people knew that if state funds were misappropriated in large sums the Sri Lanka would not have seen such extensive  development to the country,  which was fighting a costly war against the terrorists, and at the same time developing the country as it had never been developed before.

During the Presidency of Mahinda Rajapakse the whole of Sri Lanka was a huge construction sight”. There was work being carried out everywhere, in the south, north, west and east of Sri Lanka. Highways were being built , bridges were being opened, hospitals, school, power houses, harbours, and airports were being built. There was work and development in progress according to the billions of funds pouring in from China, Japan,IMF, etc.

This false accusation of corruption against Mahinda Rajapakse and his family had gone to such an extent that even  some media thought to be respectable try to maintain their respectability by not  completely denying such false rumours of corruption,  but keeping the doubt open sort  of  in case ?”…….

The Island of 8 June,2016 in its Editorial Vili Lajja” says:

The Rajapaksa government was castigated—and rightly so—for wasting public funds to maintain the ostentatious lifestyles of its politicians and their backers. Those at the levers of power changed last year but one sees no difference between the previous regime and its successor anent spending sprees; they are tweedledum and tweedledee in that respect. The government has demonstrated once again that it does not hesitate to act out of expediency rather than principle to safeguard its political interests.”

How can the Island compare this government of Sirisena-Ranil which has done absolutely nothing since 8^th January, 2015, but dragged the country backward, compare it to Rajapakse Government, which  contributed positively to Sri Lanka from 2005 to 8 January,2015.

The Island  adds,   for wasting public funds to maintain the ostentatious lifestyles of its politicians and their backers”

Their lifestyles may have changed but they also helped the country to develop allowing the  people to have a better standard of living. Ostensible life style was also the result of a higher standard of living.

The media cannot deny, that the people lived well under the Presidency of Mahinda Rajapakse. It was a time when the government needed more money to spend both for the war against Tamil terrorists and develop the country. Yet the people were not neglected.  The Private sector too developed allowing their employees to have a better wage. The  government employees were also well paid and the university graduates were provided employment.

It is therefore wrong to try to please the gallery by saying that some of he money may have been siphoned off by the Rajapakse family to live an ostensible life style. It is a lie and scandalising the name that should remain respected, honoured and written in gold , for had it not been for Mahinda Rajapakse, we do not know for how long the people of Sri Lanka would have suffered  under control and fear of terrorism. 

There is no Yes and But”, because  that is a fact. Those who deserve respected should  be respected, is inculcated into us as Buddhists. 

We cannot expect such refinement from Tamils and Muslims, one worshiping mythical Gods, and the other a God non- existent, who are late comers to Sri Lanka trying to take over the whole place, like the proverbial camel allowed to shove its head into the tent.

Dilrook Kannangara

Depopulation and genocide of people in Diego Garcia islands is one of the most foul acts of war crimes in modern world. It is a continuing shame on humanity. In 1966 the British government depopulated the islands to lease out the island to the US government for a military base.

A diplomatic Cable signed by DA Greenhill, dated August 24, 1966 states: “Unfortunately along with the birds go some few Tarzans or Man Fridays whose origins are obscure, and who are hopefully being wished on to Mauritius etc. When this has been done I agree we must be very tough and a submission is being done accordingly.”

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Diplomatic_Cable_signed_by_D.A._Greenhill,_dated_August_24,_1966.jpg

This clearly shows the callous disregard of human value. Unfortunately this continues to this day as the two countries prevent natives from returning to their nation.

However, they don’t miss a chance to find fault with other nations over war crimes and even non-existent war crimes. The islands are used continuously to commit horrendous crimes on women and children in Afghanistan and Iraq. The world must rally around displaced people since 1966 and demand they are given their islands.

Occupation of these islands must end soon and they must be handed back to the people.

Janaki Chandraratna Courtesy The Island

June 27, 2016, 7:52 pm

The Brexit referendum is a historic event for both the UK and the rest of the world. Britain voted to exit from the European Union (EU), with a vote of 52% to 48%, after 43 years of membership since 1973.

The Exit camp listed 20 good reasons for Britain to leave the EU. The main reason was to regain the lost sovereignty and independence of the country. Britons perceive this as a historic decision as they managed to regain right to decide and control the country’s future. The sheer numbers of uncontrolled migration due to the free movement laws within the EU, and the inability to select ‘skilled’ and ‘desired’ workers/migrants were significant concerns to Britons. According to the Migration Observatory at the University of Oxford, the net migration to Britain from the EU was 184,000 a year and in 2014 around 3 million people (5% of the British population) living in the UK were citizens of the Union. The uncontrolled migration to the UK and the EU’s open border policies had a detrimental impact on public safety of the country, as there was no mechanism to isolate ‘undesirables’, entering Britain. It is reported that British jails have held 10,000 foreign prisoners in recent times. The exposure to potential terrorist attacks was also significant as demonstrated in the Paris strikes in 2015.

Apart from sovereignty, independence and border security issues, the impact of European migration on health services, housing, schools and employment was highlighted in the campaign. The net contribution of (8.5 billion pounds in 2015) for the maintenance of the Brussels EU Parliament, the interference of the European Court of Justice on British legal decisions, the potential entry of Turkey to EU, depressed economic growth of EU, restrictions on business with the EU ‘single market’ concept, are some of the other issues that loomed high in the British referendum.

The British experience with the EU is no doubt, has parallels to the Sri Lankan current political situation. We are faced with several unprecedented and unknown changes to the integrity of our country as a sovereign state. The proposed ECTA agreement, constitutional changes, reconciliation with minor ethnic groups, the progressive dismantlement of our defence and judicial systems are some of the issues plaguing the country in present times. We, however, are in a worse situation than Britain, as these changes are being undertaken covertly without sufficient exposure to parliamentary debate. The public is least informed because of the surreptitious gags on the media and name and shame games played by parliamentary leaders on journalists. The Prime Minister and the President too, appear to have disparate views on some of the main strategies and outcomes. This uncertainty has created a speculative environment with distrust and enmity. Britain has a clean slate when it comes to party politics. No party, in Britain, would like to deceive the electorate by unsubstantiated claims and commitments. A prime lesson we need to take from the British experience is the transparency of the political process and the need to respect the majority view on matters of national significance.

David Cameron’s resignation as the Prime Minister, which he need not have done, displays his integrity as a world leader. Although the referendum is not binding on him personally, he respected the majority decision to leave the EU even-though he was convinced in the antithesis. He saw the need to resign from his position as the Prime Minister, so that a person championing the cause can take charge of the country. He did not opt to do deals with EU countries to reverse the decision or bribe his parliamentary colleagues with perks, to disregard the referendum to strengthen his position as the party leader and Prime Minister.

Also, in voting to leave the Union, Britons did put the country before their pockets. They were fully aware of the negative impact on the economy, at least in the short term, but they valued independence, as they were convinced of the fact that a reclaim of lost independence would be a near impossibility by peaceful means than propping up a dented economy.

Sri Lankans are hopeful that there would be a referendum on constitutional changes and this is an opportunity for Sri Lankans, to put the country first, before personal benefits or local party politics. The vote will be on our existence as a sovereign nation as an undivided country. The British referendum was also on, a single issue to remain or exit from the EU, and was based on a conscience vote. Tory or Labor party politics did not persuade Britons. The result of the referendum was not a party victory. The Sri Lankan referendum should also be based on a conscience vote for a single issue. Party persuasions should not be a consideration. Our MPs also should have a conscience vote, when they vote in parliament on issues of national significance such as the Constitution. In having a conscience vote, they would not have to consider selling the country for fear of losing the perks they currently enjoy.

It is with despair that I note the contrast here. Britain has been a leader of democracy for many more years than Sri Lanka. Sri Lanka, too, has experienced democracy for 68 years and it is fair to say that we are fully aware of the democratic principles. Yet, we have destroyed almost each and every one of them in recent times. Firstly, there was a question on the validity of the electoral rolls and the unprecedented voter turnouts in the northern districts at the Jan. 08, 2015 presidential polls. Later, there were leaked allegations of deals with minor parties, conspiracies hatched in foreign countries, appointment of defeated candidates to ministerial positions, appointment of key government officers contradicting state regulations, by-passing the legal system in pursuit of politically motivated arrests and many more incidents which are not characteristic of Sri Lanka a decade or two ago. This type of inexcusable activity is unheard in British or any other democratic regime in the Western World. The British referendum was transparent, allowed sufficient time for public debate and had no allegations of rigging. This, indeed, is a feature we need to emulate when it comes to the conduct of elections and referendum.

Janaki Chandraratna

John Pilger Courtesy John Pilger.com

The majority vote by Britons to leave the European Union was an act of raw democracy. Millions of ordinary people refused to be bullied, intimidated and dismissed with open contempt by their presumed betters in the major parties, the leaders of the business and banking oligarchy and the media.

This was, in great part, a vote by those angered and demoralised by the sheer arrogance of the apologists for the “remain” campaign and the dismemberment of a socially just civil life in Britain. The last bastion of the historic reforms of 1945, the National Health Service, has been so subverted by Tory and Labour-supported privateers it is fighting for its life.

A forewarning came when the Treasurer, George Osborne, the embodiment of both Britain’s ancient regime and the banking mafia in Europe, threatened to cut £30 billion from public services if people voted the wrong way; it was blackmail on a shocking scale.

Immigration was exploited in the campaign with consummate cynicism, not only by populist politicians from the lunar right, but by Labour politicians drawing on their own venerable tradition of promoting and nurturing racism, a symptom of corruption not at the bottom but at the top. The reason millions of refugees have fled the Middle East – irst Iraq, now Syria – are the invasions and imperial mayhem of Britain, the United States, France, the European Union and Nato. Before that, there was the wilful destruction of Yugoslavia. Before that, there was the theft of Palestine and the imposition of Israel.

The pith helmets may have long gone, but the blood has never dried. A nineteenth century contempt for countries and peoples, depending on their degree of colonial usefulness, remains a centrepiece of modern “globalisation”, with its perverse socialism for the rich and capitalism for the poor: its freedom for capital and denial of freedom to labour; its perfidious politicians and politicised civil servants.

All this has now come home to Europe, enriching the likes of Tony Blair and impoverishing and disempowering millions. On 23 June, the British said no more.

The most effective propagandists of the “European ideal” have not been the far right, but an insufferably patrician class for whom metropolitan London is the United Kingdom. Its leading members see themselves as liberal, enlightened, cultivated tribunes of the 21st century zeitgeist, even “cool”. What they really are is a bourgeoisie with insatiable consumerist tastes and ancient instincts of their own superiority. In their house paper, the Guardian, they have gloated, day after day, at those who would even consider the EU profoundly undemocratic, a source of social injustice and a virulent extremism known as “neoliberalism”.

The aim of this extremism is to install a permanent, capitalist theocracy that ensures a two-thirds society, with the majority divided and indebted, managed by a corporate class, and a permanent working poor. In Britain today, 63 per cent of poor children grow up in families where one member is working. For them, the trap has closed. More than 600,000 residents of Britain’s second city, Greater Manchester, are, reports a study, “experiencing the effects of extreme poverty” and 1.6 million are slipping into penury.

Little of this social catastrophe is acknowledged in the bourgeois controlled media, notably the Oxbridge dominated BBC. During the referendum campaign, almost no insightful analysis was allowed to intrude upon the clichéd hysteria about “leaving Europe”, as if Britain was about to be towed in hostile currents somewhere north of Iceland.

On the morning after the vote, a BBC radio reporter welcomed politicians to his studio as old chums. “Well,” he said to “Lord” Peter Mandelson, the disgraced architect of Blairism, “why do these people want it so badly?” The “these people” are the majority of Britons.

The wealthy war criminal Tony Blair remains a hero of the Mandelson “European” class, though few will say so these days. The Guardian once described Blair as “mystical” and has been true to his “project” of rapacious war.  The day after the vote, the columnist Martin Kettle offered a Brechtian solution to the misuse of democracy by the masses. “Now surely we can agree referendums are bad for Britain”, said the headline over his full-page piece. The “we” was unexplained but understood – just as “these people” is understood. “The referendum has conferred less legitimacy on politics, not more,” wrote Kettle. ” … the verdict on referendums should be a ruthless one. Never again.”

The kind of ruthlessness Kettle longs for is found in Greece, a country now airbrushed. There, they had a referendum and the result was ignored.  Like the Labour Party in Britain, the leaders of the Syriza government in Athens are the products of an affluent, highly privileged, educated middle class, groomed in the fakery and political treachery of post-modernism. The Greek people courageously used the referendum to demand their government sought “better terms” with a venal status quo in Brussels that was crushing the life out of their country. They were betrayed, as the British would have been betrayed.

On Friday, the Labour Party leader, Jeremy Corbyn, was asked by the BBC if he would pay tribute to the departed Cameron, his comrade in the “remain” campaign. Corbyn fulsomely praised Cameron’s “dignity” and noted his backing for gay marriage and his apology to the Irish families of the dead of Bloody Sunday. He said nothing about Cameron’s divisiveness, his brutal austerity policies, his lies about “protecting” the Health Service. Neither did he remind people of the war mongering of the Cameron government: the dispatch of British special forces to Libya and British bomb aimers to Saudi Arabia and, above all, the beckoning of world war three.

In the week of the referendum vote, no British politician and, to my knowledge, no journalist referred to Vladimir Putin’s speech in St. Petersburg commemorating the seventy-fifth anniversary of Nazi Germany’s invasion of the Soviet Union on 22 June, 1941. The Soviet victory – at a cost of 27 million Soviet lives and the majority of all German forces – won the Second World War.

Putin likened the current frenzied build up of Nato troops and war material on Russia’s western borders to the Third Reich’s Operation Barbarossa. Nato’s exercises in Poland were the biggest since the Nazi invasion; Operation Anaconda had simulated an attack on Russia, presumably with nuclear weapons. On the eve of the referendum, the quisling secretary-general of Nato, Jens Stoltenberg, warned Britons they would be endangering “peace and security” if they voted to leave the EU. The millions who ignored him and Cameron, Osborne, Corbyn, Obama and the man who runs the Bank of England may, just may, have struck a blow for real peace and democracy in Europe.

Follow John Pilger on twitter @johnpilger and on Facebook

By NewsGram NewsDesk2

In a recently posted article on the official blog of François Gautier, he mentions the names of 50 people who according to him can be explained as enemies of Hindus or in some way have hurt the religious sentiments of Hindus. He compiled this lists by considering the points one needs to brood over. Gautier says that he created this list without any hatred or malice and the list is yet to complete.

Here is the list of 50 Biggest Enemies of Hindus” according to Gautier and the points which he has made to justify his argument:

• Thomas Babington, 1st Baron Macaulay – He played a significant role in introducing English and western concepts to education in India. This was worthy as no one can deny that English gives India an edge in dealing with other countries to penetrate into the era of globalization. Yet, Macaulay had very little regard for Hindu culture and education including all the books written in Sanskrit which actually contains all the historical information. Rather, the worthless abridgement used at preparatory schools in England is considered more valuable than books written in Sanskrit language. Today, much of India’s intellectuals and Media stand as a proof of the success of Macaulay as they look down on their own culture and analyse India through the western prism.

• Indian National Congress – Only a few people know that the Indian National Congress was founded on 28 December 1885 by a Britisher, A.O.Hume. Its objectives were to allow all those who work for the national (read British) good to meet each other personally, to discuss and decide of the political operations to start during the year”. And certainly, till the end of the 19th century, the Congress, who regarded British rule in India as a divine dispensation”, was pleased with criticising moderately the Government, while endorsing its loyalty to the Crown and its faith in liberalism” and the British innate sense of justice”!!! The real nationalist leaders like Sri Aurobindo and Tilak, were put aside by the ‘Moderate Congress’.

• Jawaharlal Nehru – A French historian Alain Danielou writes, Nehru was the perfect replica of a certain type of Englishman.” Several times he used the expression ‘continental people’, with an amused and sarcastic manner, to designate French or Italians. He reviled non-anglicised Indians and had a very shallow and partial knowledge of India. His ideal, the romantic socialism of 19th century Britain, was totally unfit to India, as the conditions of India were totally different from 19th century Europe. Nehru has been promoted by Congress as an icon, which nobody has yet dared to touch, but as History will show more and more, Nehru had done tremendous harm to India by initiating movements and patterns, which not only did vast damage in their times, but continue to survive and weigh down the Indian nation, long after their uselessness has been realized.

• Babur – Jawaharlal Nehru wrote about Babur mentioning him as the destroyer of the Ram mosque in Ayodhya. The truth is that Babur indulged in unnecessary massacres and demolished thousands of temples showcasing himself as a ferocious Mughal emperor. His ultimate goal was probably the destruction and the enslaving of the Hindus. It is sad to see that Indian History books have no comments on such incidents.

• Sonia Gandhi – It is true that Sonia brought discipline, order and consistency into the Congress party. But the amount of unrestrained power, that she, a non-Indian, a simple elected MP, like hundreds of others, possessed when the Congress was in power for ten years, should frighten us: a word, indeed a glance of her was sufficient to trigger action by her entourage, using any means – bearing in mind the case of P. Chidambaram when he would have allowed Narendra Modi to be killed by a Israt Jahan, a known terrorist. Thus, the instruments of power had never been so perverted in India. The CBI allegedly suppressed all orders against Quattrochi and even allowed him to get away with billions of rupees which he had stolen from India. Yet, without blinking an eyelid, and with the Indian Media turning a blind eye, it went ruthlessly after Narendra Modi, the then Chief Minister of the most efficiently run state, the most corruption free.

• The Pope – Christianity, unfortunately, is still clinging in the belief of a single true God, Jesus Christ, in spite of the feeble attempts at Ecumenism” of the Church. It would be all right if the Church was playing by the rules of the free market, where there is a certain amount of fairness -you see what advantages my religion is bringing you, compare it with your own and then feel free to choose”. But, sadly, the missionaries are using indirect and persuasive means to convert the poorest of the poor Hindus in India – offering free medical treatment, free schooling, interest-free loans, even going as far as organizing fake miracles” prayer meetings, as it is regularly done by American Preacher Benny Hinn. This is practiced in India, but they dare not do it in China, where freedom of religion is curtailed and any missionary caught persuading is kicked out. Would Hindus dare convert Christians in France, for instance? The confounding fact is that there is not a single Hindu temple in France, as their construction has not been allowed and there is even a minister in charge of hunting down sects” (meaning what is not Christian-oriented).

• Rahul Gandhi – No doubt Rahul Gandhi is a decent, well-meaning man, though totally ignorant of India’s culture and spirituality. But his ignorance becomes problematic as times. Bearing in mind the case of Wikileaks cables, where Rahul Gandhi tells the American ambassador that Hindu terrorism was more dangerous than Islamic terrorism- The bigger threat may be the growth of radicalized Hindu groups, which create religious tensions and political confrontations with the Muslim community”. It looks like Rahul and his mother were trying to make an example of Colonel Purohit & Sadhvi Pragya to gratify their Muslim electorate by issuing direct orders to get a confession out of him and Sadhvi Pragya at any cost, even torture.

• The Communist Party of India- Very few people know that the communists refused to collaborate against the Nazis during the 2d World War, because Russia was then allied with Germany. Their attitude during the war with China in 1962 was also very uncertain. Most Marxists in India are anti-Hindu as a principle (Marx was against religion) and their intellectuals are expert at criticising Hindus. At a time when Marxism is deceased all over the world, including in Cuba and China, India is the last haven of communism. Though communists have certain sincerity (they generally are not corrupt and live a simple life, contrary to many Indian politicians) but they contribute very little to India’s growth, with their constant strikes and demands. Naxalism which is a great threat to this country is also a sprout of communism.

• Priyanka Gandhi- We all can assume that in case Sonia Gandhi leaves India or something happens to her, Priyanka – and not Rahul – will be the natural choice of the Congress to take up the wheels. Would Priyanka bring a change in Congress? Unlikely. She will think like a Christian and a westerner, not like an Indian and adopt Nehru’s misplaced socialist and popular idea’s, which have landed India in corruption and red tape. Also, her husband Robert Vadra, a man who multiplied his wealth by 600 in five years, is an albatross around her neck.

• Barkha Dutt – Married twice to a Kashmiri Muslim, from a young journalist, Barkha turned into a Hindu basher – you just have to listen to the Radia tapes to understand that. The power that came with NDTV, as it grew into the most sophisticated TV news channel, and her proximity to the Congress party, also influenced her mind. There are also accusations of corruption against her and her boss Prannoy Roy.

• Kancha Ilaiah– His Hatred for Hindus can be seen in his immensely controversial book, `Why I am not a Hindu’, Kancha Ilaiah, is a converted Christian, who hates Hindus, particularly Brahmins, whom he accuses of all the possible evils. He recently gave a statement on vegetarianism calling it as anti-nationalism, For me, my nation starts with eating beef. Unfortunately, we gave up eating beef and our brains are not growing now. There is no enough protein,” Probably he doesn’t know that many westerners are now switching to vegetarianism.

• Aamir Khan – Aamir Khan’s TV program on social issues, Satyamev Jayate, even raised his status to an activist for human rights. His comment on ‘Intolerance’ that his (Hindu) wife wanted to leave India, alienated him from many of his supporters. His anti-Hindu gurus film, like PK, also created a lot of hostility.

• Shah Rukh Khan – As Aamir Khan, Shah Rukh is also married to a Hindu, but raises his kids as Muslims, and whenever it suits him, plays the minority card (Pakistan invited him many times to settle there). In fact, playing a little anti-Hindu card pleases their Muslim fans and does no harm to their image, as Hindus anyway never retaliate.

• Amartya Sen – He got the Nobel Prize, teaches in Oxford and is highly respected in the West but only few know that Amartya Sen rode his fame on the back of his false theories about poverty in India and in the West. Despite of that the Congress Government gave him the Nalanda University project for which he did nothing.

• Rajdeep Sardesai – Rajdeep is not an honest journalist – witness the incident when he sat on a sting interview that showed the Congress paying bribes to BJP MLA’s to defect. He was also seen in his true light in New York, where he portrayed himself as a victim of a hard-line Hindu, whereas the video replays showed that in fact he was the aggressor. No doubt, Rajdeep is a personal enemy of Narendra Modi and has never veiled his dislike for the BJP.

• Angana Chatterjee -Angana Chatterjee is a Hindu herself and started in an association named after India’s avatar, a great defender of Hindus, Sri Aurobindo. You need to know that she is married to Richard Shapiro who is Director and Associate Professor of the Grad. Anthropology Program at CIIS, also a very anti-Hindu body. In fact, Shapiro was barred from entering India in 2010. Angana and Richard are great defenders of the Kashmiri Muslims and attend every International Kashmir Freedom Conference (IKFC), which only gives the Muslim point of view and ignores the 450,000 Kashmiri Hindus who have become refugees in their own country.

• Teesta Setalvad -Teesta is a Hindu herself, who like Barkha Dutt, is married to a Muslim, Javed Anand. Javed Anand is General Secretary of Muslims for Secular Democracy, a virulent anti-Hindu organization. Using her organization Teesta Setalvad’s name has come to symbolize everything that is wrong with NGO activism in India. She has used any means to go after Hindus, particularly their leaders and specially Mr Narenda Modi. Unfortunately, Teesta has been repeatedly exposed for having indulged in unethical acts and has cases pending against her in courts for perjury. She has taken the courts for a ride with her perjury and her acts of influencing witnesses. She has misused the lack of education and poverty of victims to file false affidavits to further her own agenda.

• Aurangzeb – Aurangzeb harmed not only Hindus, but also to his own family: he beheaded his brother Dara Shikoh, who was the rightful heir to the throne, poisoned his own father, and imprisoned his son. Aurangzeb (1658-1707) did not just build an isolated mosque on a destroyed temple, he ordered all the temples to be destroyed, among them the Kashi Vishvanath, Krishna’s birth temple in Mathura, the rebuilt Somnath temple on the coast of Gujurat, the Vishnu temple replaced with the Alamgir mosque now overlooking Benares and the Treta-ka-Thakur temple in Ayodhya. … His evil reign might end only after Shivaji Maharaj, a true Hindu hero brought him to his knees. Yet Shivaji is treated as a nobody in Indian History books and Aurangzeb like a harsh but just emperor.

• John Dayal – The most virulent and articulate Christian anti-Hindu, John and many other Indian Christian leaders and bishops, is not only practicing a Christianity which had its place 50 years ago in Europe (but is no more today, as Western Christianity is evolving), but are also re-embracing the old colonial missionary concept that Christ is the only ‘true’ God and that all ‘heathens’ Hindus have to be converted.

• Irfan Habib – Irfan Habib has been side-lined by the Modi Government. He and Romila Thapar ruled supreme for nearly 40 years in devising Indian school curriculum. Together they have falsified Indian History with total impunity and went after the Hindus full steam. Irfan Habib continued the legacy of his father, Mohamed Habiib, to rewrite the Chapter of Muslim invasions in India. Habib father and son’s books are based on four theories: 1) that the records (written by the Muslims themselves) of slaughters of Hindus, the enslaving of their women and children and razing of temples were mere exaggerations by court poets and zealous chroniclers to please their rulers”. 2) That they were indeed atrocities, but mainly committed by Turks, the savage riders from the Steppe. 3) That the destruction of the temples took place because Hindus stored their gold and jewels inside them and therefore Muslim armies plundered these. 4) That the conversion of millions of Hindus to Islam was not forced, but what happened was there was a shift of opinion in the population, who on its own free will chose the Shariat against the Hindu law (Smriti), as they were all oppressed by the bad Brahmins”…!!!

• Ramachandra Guha – Outlook magazine’s favourite columnist, who likes Rahul Gandhi, recently said that Hindu fundamentalism is more threatening than Islamic terrorism”. Guha has written a number of books targeting Hindus and their spiritual leaders. Unfortunately, as many of these leftist intellectuals, he is fairly popular in the West and often quoted by western correspondents based in India.

• Romila Thapar – The most well-known Indian historian, who has links with all Indologists in the world, universities & India centers, is a Hindu. As Rajiv Malhotra writes: Hindu spiritual experiences are devalued by Romila Thapar, as pathological. She resorts to a quasi-scholarly speculation of racial hatred as existing in entire Indian traditions, demonizing the ‘other’, a technique to justify holding such people in contempt and even attacking them’.  This is exactly the same thesis that is being spread today by Maoist insurgents working among remote tribes in central India, namely, that demons mentioned in Hinduism are actually references to tribal people. Today even, most of the intellectuals, journalists and many of India’s elite have been influenced by that school of thinking and regularly ape its theories.

• N Ram & the Hindu newspaper – Long time editor of the newspaper the Hindu, who should be renamed the Anti-Hindu”. The magazine of the Hindu, Frontline, although well written, as the Hindu, perpetuates a dead ideology. Unfortunately the Hindu is still read by many in India, including westerners in the South of India.

• Sagarika Ghose & CNN IBN -Rajdeep Sardesai’s wife shares her beliefs and hatred for the Hindus. It’s a tragedy that CNN IBN is sympathetic to anybody who is anti-Hindu. CNN, a renowned western television, choose to partner someone who is against the majority community of their country.

• Mamata Banerjee – It is said that Mamata Banerjee is a Kali worshipper and does regular pujas when she is alone in her house. But the thrust of getting votes can transform anyone. She thus panders to Muslim community, turning a blind eye to the atrocities committed on the Hindus by the Bangladeshis refugees, who are given ration cards so that they can vote for Mamata. Also, she chose to say ‘Allah O Akbar’ when she just got re-elected despite of knowing the fact that Hindus are becoming minorities in certain districts of WB, Assam or UP. That is a tragedy and something should be done.

• Akbaruddin Owaisi– Proof that India is a democracy lies in the fact that people like Owaisi and his brother can not only rant against the Hindus and preach near secession, but also get elected. There has to be some limits to preaching hatred and separatism.

• Geelani & other Kashmiri separatists – It is confounding to see that the Indian Government allow these separatists to openly visit the Pakistani embassy in Delhi or travel to Pakistan. No country tolerates that kind of open separatism, be it France with Corsica, or even England with the faraway Falkland Islands, which geographically belong to Argentina. Also, one cannot forget that the Muslims rushed out of the Valley of Kashmir 500.000 Hindus who had lived there for generations.

• Zakir Naik – Zakir Naik tried to hurt religious sentiments of Hindus by denigrating Shri Ganesh; that too, during the Ganesh Festival. He gave Hindus a challenge, through the medium of ‘Facebook’ and ‘You-tube’, to prove that Shri Ganapati is a Deity. He also made an anti-Hindu statement that ‘If your God is unable to recognise his own son, how will he know that I am in danger’. By making such comments Naik has hurt religious sentiments of billions of Hindus. It has also created rage among members of Shiv Sena, BJP and various pro-Hindu organisations, Ganeshotsava Mandals and devout Hindus. Naik also went after Sri Sri Ravi Shankar in the famous debate.

• Christophe Jaffrelot – This most famous French Indologist, paid by the French Government, is most responsible for the bad image of the BJP in France. He wrote many offensive books on ‘Hindu fundamentalism’. He is feted by the Press corps and gets all kind of laudatory reviews when he comes to Indian to release the English translations of his books. So much for secularism in India_ Jaffrelot, Sanjay Subramanyam (who teaches in the prestigious College de France), and others in France – keep harping on India’s problems – castes, poverty, so called-Hindu fundamentalism, etc. I know for a fact that in France, it has an influence on the top bureaucrats and the politicians, as every time something important happens in India – elections, catastrophes, riots, etc, their slanted opinions are hunted by newspapers radios and televisions.

• NGO’s – NGO’s in India are most of the time anti-Hindus. 70% of them work on woman empowerment”, or uplifting” the villagers in tribal areas, which is good, but should be done in a neutral manner with friendliness to the Indian Government. It is nowadays fashionable in India to always highlight the downtrodden condition of Indian women and their underprivileged place in Indian society. But no country in the world has granted such an important place to women in its spirituality and social ethos. And even today, behind all appearances – arranged marriages, submission to men, preference of male children in some rural areas (but girls are loved in India like nowhere in the world) – it can be safely said that very often, from the poorest to the richest classes, women control –even if behind the scenes – a lot of the family affairs: the education of their children (men in India are often mama’s boys”), monetary concerns, and husbands often refer to them for important decisions. Countries such as France or the United States, who are often preaching India on women’s rights” never had a woman as their top leader, whereas India had Indira Gandhi ruling with an iron hand for nearly twenty years; and proportionately they have less MP’s than India, which is considering earmarking 33% of seats in Parliament for women, a revolution in human history! But this obsession of NGO’s with women and village empowerment (usually they take one village and make it like a showcase, for the benefit of visiting donors from abroad) has completely eclipsed the burning issue that would require NGO’s attention with the tremendous amount of funds they attract from abroad: afforestation, as there are hardly any forest worth the name left today in India.

• Karunanidhi – Karunanidhi and before him his mentor, Anna, exploited to the hilt he Dravidian theory. According to this theory, which was actually devised in the 18th and 19th century by British linguists and archaeologists, who had a vested interest to prove the supremacy of their culture over the one of the subcontinent, the first inhabitants of India were good-natured, peaceful, dark-skinned shepherds, called the Dravidians. Then, around 1500 B.C., India is said to have been invaded by tribes called the Aryans : white-skinned, nomadic people, who originated somewhere in Ural, or the Caucasus. To the Aryans, are attributed Sanskrit, the Vedic – or Hindu religion, India’s greatest spiritual texts, the Vedas, as well as a host of subsequent writings, the Upanishads, the Mahabharata, the Ramanaya, etc… And thus English missionaries and later, American preachers, were able to convert tribes and low caste Hindus by telling them : ” you, the aborigines, the tribals, the Harijans, were there in India before the Aryans; you are the original inhabitants of India, and you should discard Hinduism, the religion of these arrogant Aryans and embrace, Christianity, the true religion”. Karunanidhi also exploits this theory and he and Anna have made life for Tamil Brahmins so miserable that many left Tamil Nadu for Delhi or even the US.

• Wendy Doniger – This American Hindu hater, supposedly, a historian, says that Rama thinks that sex is putting him in political danger (keeping his allegedly unchaste wife will make the people revolt), but in fact he has it backward: Politics is driving Rama to make a sexual and religious mistake; public concerns make him banish the wife he loves. Rama banishes Sita as Dasharatha has banished Rama. Significantly, the moment when Rama kicks Sita out for the second time comes directly after a long passage in which Rama makes love to Sita passionately, drinking wine with her, for many days on end; the banishment comes as a direct reaction against the sensual indulgence. Her latest book, ‘’The Hindus: An Alternative History’ was written with an intent to mock Hinduism.

• Akbar – Akbar is one of the goody-goodies in Indian History books, like Ashoka because he was a Buddhist, that Marxist historians like to glorify. No doubt, Akbar was one of the better Mughal emperors, but few people know that when he captured Chittor on February 25, 1568, he ordered that the thirty thousand civil population be butchered, including women and children who has taken shelter in the fort. Destruction of temples also took place on mass scale in Akbar’s reign and it is even said that he ordered that a mountain be made of the tufts of the Brahmins’ hairs.

• Michael Witzel – He is a Professor of Sanskrit at Harvard, who recently when he tried to prevent the removal of references to India, Hinduism in the curriculum followed by schools in California which parents of Indian origin found to be inadequate, inaccurate or just outright insensitive. Known for aggressively pushing theories forged by Left historians of the Romila Thapar genre that have been long discredited through scientific means, including DNA studies, this ‘linguist’ is known for promoting himself as a ‘historian’ in academic circles. His proximity to Left historians in India is no secret. On one occasion, he even said, Hindus in the US are lost or abandoned people.”

• Amnesty International – Amnesty International, which has a large number of Pakistanis in its staff, has always been hostile to Hindus. I remember showing an exhibition on Kashmir in London at the prestigious Commonwealth Club. The south Asia Amnesty in charge, refused to come and see it – although the Club was just a stone throw away from Amnesty’s London office. What did the Kashmiri Hindus do that Amnesty considers them untouchable? And how come that the Muslims of the Valley who chased them by terror and made them flee their ancestral lands and homes are not condemned by Amnesty? It triggers a lot of questions about Amnesty’s impartiality.

• Prannoy Roy (CEO of NDTV) – No doubt, Prannoy Roy created one of the best TV channels in India, in term of content and professional quality, but from the beginning, NDTV’s slant was anti-Hindu. Why? Did you know that Prannoy is married to Radhika Roy, who is the sister of Brinda Karat, one of the leading lights of the communist party of India (CPI(M))? The sad thing is that many BJP leaders always run to NDTV, to be crucified by Barkha Dutt, Pranno’s second in command today.

• Chidambaram – There are many questions asked today about the role of P Chidambaram when he was in power during the ten years of the Congress. As Finance Minister, he went after Hindus by clamping down on Hindu institutions that had the 100% yoga tax rebate; as Home minister, his role is even more dubious: he had cleared an affidavit in 2009 which described college student Ishrat Jahan as a Lashkar-e-Taiba terrorist involved in a plot to assassinate then Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi. About a month later, a second affidavit was filed in court in which all references to Ishrat’s alleged terror links were missing.

• Sitaram Yechury– Yechury is an intelligent man and a brilliant speaker but he went full steam against Mr Modi’s declaration of June 21 as International Yoga, which was supported by the UN General Assembly and which should not cause any problem, as yoga is a universal technique that is practiced all over the world, by millions of Christians. Oh, but the hitch is that Yoga is a Hindu invention – hence Mr Yechury’s hostility, who famously said: under this BJP government’s aggressive global campaigns, India appears to be seeking a global positioning not on the basis of its internal strength, economic or otherwise, but on the basis of such ‘accomplishments’ as having the UN General Assembly declare International Yoga Day on June 21”.The fact that a senior communist leader in India fails to see the potential to leverage the acceptance and spread of Yoga across the world as a means to further India’s global influence and power is a testament to the monumental intellectual bankruptcy inflicting the communists in India.

• Mother Teresa – Mother Teresa is still the fallacy for India. No doubt, she did saintly work. But was caring for the dying and orphaned children her only goal? The truth is that she stood for the most orthodox Christian conservatism. There is no doubt that Mother Teresa also had a goal to convert Hindus to Christianity, the only true religion in her eyes.

• Karan Thapar– Karan Thapar, who owns ITV, which unfortunately produces shows for BBC, is one of the most famous faces of journalism in India. Karan Thapar’s father was General Pran Nath Thapar COAS during 1962 war, and his aunt is Romila Thapar. Does that explain why Karan, though a decent man, is known for his anti-Hindu bias? Once he invited me on a program about the painter M.F. Husain, who as you know has depicted Hindus’ most revered Gods fornicating or even sodomizing each other. I had brought on the show photocopies of these paintings, a solid evidence of Husain’s hatred of Hinduism, but Karan refused that I showed them on camera. So much for ITV’s journalistic impartiality.

• Javed Akhtar- Though Javed Akhtar came out recently against those who opposed saying ‘Bharat Mata Ki jai’, he is also known as a Hindu baiter. I remember him going full steam against Sri Sri Ravi Shankar and Hindu gurus in an Indian Today symposium a few years ago. Akhtar also repeatedly equated the Gujarat 2002 anti-Muslim riots to the Jewish holocaust. As one of his detractors said: it is impossible to believe that Akhtar isn’t aware of the horrors at Auschwitz or Sobibor to compare them with rioting in Gujarat.”

• Shabana Azmi – Akhtar’s second wife, Shabana Azmi is a fine actress. Nevertheless she is also a Hindu baiter. When she was invited to the international film festival of Deauville in France, I read the numerous interviews where she kept harping about Hindu fundamentalists”, and repeatedly lambasted the Right Wing” BJP Government and accused them of turning a blind eye” to the attacks towards India’s minorities, while portraying herself as a courageous social activist fighting for freedom of expression. She also only spoke en passant” about Muslim fundamentalism. Again the old trick to either equate Muslim and Hindu fundamentalism, or even in the case of Azmi, Rahul Gandhi and others, to say that Hindu fundamentalism is more dangerous than the Islamic one.

• Aakar Patel – Aakar Patel, a subtle but redoubtable Hindu hater, is sadly the head of Amnesty International India (one can see there the perversion of Amnesty, to name a Muslim as its head in a country inhabited by 80% Hindus). Akar indeed always rants against Narendra Modi and the Hindu majority, saying: one must be neutral.” But we dissent against our own country, because dissent is patriotic”. However he adds: Anyone opposing us (Amnesty International?, is morally deficient and a repugnant human being”. Aakar Patel’s hatred for the majority community is not veiled. He wrote, Most extremists in India are not Muslims, they are Hindu Maoists”.

• Arundhati Roy – Cousin of Prannoy Roy, she was married to Gerard Da Cunha first and then to filmmaker Pradip Krishen. Apart from her first book the ‘God of Small things’, Arundhati never wrote again anything of value. She is most happy in the company of maoists, naxalites Tamil Elam and Kashmiri separatists. Roy famously said, Kashmir has never been an integral part of India and the Indian Government is at war with Maoists to aid the MNCs”. She also says that Modi is promoting Brahmanism. After the intolerance” debate, she returned her National award for screenplay.

• Father Cedric Prakash –This Indian Christian priest has been most active in betraying his own country in the US, amongst Congress parliamentary committees. In June 2002, he testified before the US Commission for International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) in Washington, so about the lack of religious freedom in India. His is a clear case of an Indian citizen asking an alien nation intervene in India’s domestic affairs. Fr. Prakash has been a vocal critic of Narendra Modi, often in collaboration with John Dayal and Teesta Setalvad.

• Martha Nussbaum– Her pronouncement: perpetrators of violence are not Muslims but Hindus”, is proof enough of Nussbaum’s hatred. Her interest in India started while working for Amartya Sen, with whom she shared an intimate relationship, a fact she herself bragged about. Before the 2014 Parliament elections, Amartya Sen had said that he wouldn’t like Modi to be the PM of India. Martha does not have any qualification or training in archaeology, Sanskrit, geology,or metallurgy, yet writes with authority about the dating of the Vedas.

• Hillary Clinton -Hillary Clinton has no great love for India and often leans towards Pakistan (her vice chairman of the 2016 election campaign is Huma Mahmood Abedin, of Pakistani origin). Maybe the numerous infidelities of her husband Bill, made her into a hard and cynical woman, but if she becomes President of the US, she will be no friend of India and Hindus. Her attitude towards Islam and Muslim fundamentalism is also ambiguous and she is probably closer to Obama’s views, than any other presidential candidate. You can expect continuing support, financial and in armaments to Pakistan if she is elected.

• Medha Patkar– another NGO, who very selectively targets only Hindus. Her Narmada dam agitation had one target only – Narendra Modi. Yet the dam has proved to be the biggest factor to Gujarat’s prosperity, bringing electricity, water, prosperity to all, Hindus as well as Muslims. Medha was also involved in many movements that blocked Mr Modi’s visas in the UK and the US and that tried to stop him from becoming Prime Minister.

• The Mahatma Gandhi ? I put it with a question mark, as I consider him as a great soul indeed. But there are many who point out that he never seemed to have realised the great danger that Nazism represented for humanity. Calling Hitler my beloved brother”, a man who murdered 6 million Jews in cold-blood just to prove the purity of his own race, is more than just innocence, it borders on criminal credulity. And did not Gandhi also advise the Jews to let themselves be butchered?…His not condemning Muslims during the Khilafat movement when thousands of Hindus were butchered by Indian Muslims, or his indulgence of Jinnah, going as far as proposing to make him the Prime Minister of India, have not always earned him Hindu goodwill.

• Gandhi’s love of the Harijans, as he called them, was certainly very touching and sprang from the highest motivations, but once more Gandhi took the European element in the decrying of the caste system, sowing the seeds of future disorders and of a caste war in India, of which we see the effects only today.

• Hindus Themselves – Hindus, it must be said, are their own biggest enemies. They must be some of the most selfish and individualistic people in the world: rich Hindus never help their poorer brothers and sisters – that’s’ why the Mother Teresa’s and Sonia Gandhis are able to flourish in India. A Hindu abroad never acknowledges another Hindu, but pretends he or she does not exist. You can insult Hindus and their Gods and Goddesses as much as you want and nothing will happen to you. A billion Hindus have not raised a finger about the 450.000 Kashmiri Pandits who became refugees in their own country after they were chased out by terror from the Valley of Kashmir in the 90’s. Hindus today don’t give a damn whether their children know about the Ramayana, the Mahabharata or the Bhagavad Gita, where every truth that needs to be known about life, after life, karma, dharma and soul is taught. Modern Hindu children do not go to temples, pray or know what a puja is. Hindus do not care to have colleges where Hindu values are imparted, like the Muslims have (Aligarh university for instance) The only one ever, the Benares Hindu University, should not be called ‘Hindu’, as nothing Hindu is taught there anymore.

Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj, who along with a few hundred men, stood his ground against the most powerful emperor of his times, has practically no place in Indian History books and is often described as a petty chieftain or even a plunderer. So is Maharana Pratap, the ONLY Rajput who fought against the Mughals and actually defeated Akbar in Haldighati.

Hindus who tend to merge and melt wherever they live – and in the process, lose some their identities and togetherness. And finally the most deadly and vicious intellectuals that we have reviewed above, are Hindus most of them. They are the ones that should be targeted, in a non-violent but firm manner.

-Compiled by a staff-writer at the Newsgram. The article was originally published on the official blog of Francois Gautier

by Nirmala Kannangara Courtesy The Sunday Leader

Cash-strapped Sri Lanka Cricket (SLC) is once again in the midst of much controversy, not least in the matter of the exorbitant expenditure on a fund-raising event in London which is alleged to have been a total flop.

Amongst the allegations levelled against SLC is that the Cricket Board could not even cover their expenses on the fund-raising dinner in London, the cancellation of the much needed indoor nets and the swimming pool projects at the R. Premadasa, Pallekele and Dambulla stadiums and the deplorable state of affairs due to abuse and misuse of administrative

These issues are highlighted in the best interests of the game of cricket and to safeguard SLC funds from further going down the drain unnecessarily and for the notice of the good governance administrators to act immediately on the unlawful manner the present administrators are handling SLC affairs and its finances from January this year.

The much hyped London fund-raising dinner is alleged to have become a total disaster where the Cricket Board is concerned although the administrators are tight-lipped and are now attempting to portray it as a successful event. According to highly reliable SLC sources who wished to remain anonymous, although the Cricket Board spent extravagantly in organising the London tamasha in order to raise funds for President Maithripala Sirisena’s Prevention of Kidney Disease Trust, the fund-raisers failed even to earn the amount they spent on the event. The fund-raising dinner was held in the Long Room at Lords Cricket Grounds in London on June 4. Although there was much expectation that the souvenirs SLC sent from Sri Lanka would be sold at the event, neither all these items nor all the dinner tickets were sold. Although SLC estimated a high turn-out at this gala dinner to raise funds running into millions of rupees, questions are now being raised as to how they could expect such an income when more than 50 tickets of the 125-150 tickets were given out as complimentary tickets.

If SLC claims that it was a successful event, we want Sumathipala to show us the accounts of how much they spent to host the dinner, how much they spent to take souvenirs for the occasion, how much they spent for executive committee member air tickets to go to London, how much they spent on their food and lodging, how much was spent for the Long Room reservation and for the food and drinks that was served, how much was spent on the event management company and how much of money they earned from the sale of tickets and souvenirs. Once Sumathipala is back in the country we expect him to give us the break-down of the above mentioned expenses and then how much they raised towards the worthy cause,” reliable SLC inside sources said. According to the sources who wished to remain anonymous, SLP head, Sumathipala is said to be planning to show them that he was able to raise a lot of funds for the Kidney Trust although in reality they could not even earn what they spent for the occasion.

Let him try to hoodwink us for the moment but once the government auditors start their investigations, the truth will come out. The estimated cost for the London event was 45,750 Sterling Pounds and it was estimated to raise Rs.35 million,” sources added.

Be that as it may, the discontinuation of work on the indoor cricket nets and swimming pool initiated during the 2015 interim committee period has now come under fire and is being claimed as an act of revenge against the interim committee members. A former national player, who did not wish to be named, accused the present administrators of stopping the much needed indoor cricket nets and swimming pool by giving lame excuses.

A swimming pool is one of the most needed recreation facilities at the R. Premadasa Stadium. It is the same with the indoor cricket nets not only for R. Premadasa Stadium but also for Pallekele and Dambulla stadiums as well. Since these projects were started during the 2015 interim committee period the present administrators stopped them. Although this was done to take revenge from the 2015 interim committee members it is really revenge taken from our cricketers as it is they who need these facilities for proper training and not the interim committee members,” the former Sri Lankan cricketer said. According to him, credit for these two valuable projects, although now at a standstill, should go to Sidath Wettimuni and his team. He added that the reason why this was abruptly stopped was because Sumathipala knows well that he cannot get the credit for it.

The reason given for this stoppage was that R. Premadasa stadium has not taken the necessary approvals from the Colombo Municipal Council (CMC) for these constructions. To date, the CMC has never given any approval for the construction of the R. Premadasa grounds nor any of its buildings therein. If Sumathipala thinks that he as a law abiding citizen who does not allow any illegal work to be carried out, let him demolish the R. Premadasa stadium as well as it does not have CMC approval. This is not SLC property but Sugathadasa Stadium property. If the CMC is not bothered why is Sumathipala so worried about it?” he added. Meanwhile when contacted, President 2015 Interim Committee, Sidath Wettimuni refuted allegations that the R. Premadasa Stadium projects had been initiated without obtaining the necessary approvals from local government bodies as claimed by the present administrators. He said R. Premadasa Stadium was the property of the Sugathadasa Stadium and the greenlight to go ahead with the project was obtained from the owner of the property.

We started this much needed project in mid-2015 and at the time the work was stopped, we had spent nearly Rs. 9 million for piling and the foundations laid and columns come up. The estimated cost for the entire project was around Rs.40 million and the budget was kept aside. We followed the procurement guidelines,” Wettimuni added.

Speaking further, Wettimuni said how earnestly they had started the project and that it was a crime to stop such a project which was a long-standing requirement.

When compared with other test playing countries, we are far behind in regard to facilities provided to players. Indoor cricket nets are required for our players to practise. During the recent rainy spells there were under 19 foreign teams in the country but they could not practise as there were no indoor nets. If the reason this work was suspended is because it was started during our interim committee period, then I consider it as a crime committed by the present administrators. We are doing these for our players and for the country and not for any personal gain,” Wettimuni said. According to Wettimuni, water training is an integral part in physical training and he added that had the swimming pool construction work not been stopped, the R. Premadasa swimming pool would have been completed by now.

We even started off the gymnasium and the physiotherapy unit but the present administrators could not stop these as it was too late for them to stall it because all the necessary machines and equipment had been bought by then,” he added.

Meanwhile accusations have been levelled at President SLC for suspending the services of individuals he considers to be not in support of the present administration.

Former Chief Engineer SLC Prasanna Jinaratne was allegedly suspended in an unlawful manner from his service by a letter dated May 31, 2016 although he had already tendered his resignation on May 16, 2016. According to Jinaratne although his letter of resignation had neither been accepted nor rejected by SLC, he has proof that he submitted his resignation.

It is my fundamental right to leave employment of my own accord or to serve the company. I was observing what was going on at SLC and tendered my resignation as I got a good offer from another organisation. Having handed over my resignation, I was called to CEO Ashley de Silva’s office on Tuesday, May 31 and was given a suspension letter to my utter surprise. The letter was signed by the CEO and stated that on a decision taken by the Executive Committee on May 28, my service had been suspended with immediate effect. Since I had already tendered my resignation more than two weeks prior, I asked why such a letter was being served to me to which the CEO did not have any answer. Hence accepting this letter I made a note in it stating that this letter had been accepted under protest as SLC cannot suspend my service as I have already tendered my resignation,” Jinaratne told The Sunday Leader.

Meanwhile Jinaratne has gone to Labour Courts against SLC administrators for not accepting his letter of resignation and for serving him a letter of suspension after two weeks.

As a result of this I am unable to start work at my new office and in wanting to get my name cleared I went to Labour Courts to get this address. Since Sumathipala cannot engage in any fraudulent work with me, he was not on good terms with me from the time he took over office in January. Sumathipala knows that I know what was going on at SLC and if justice is denied I am ready to spill the beans about all the frauds that are taking place at SLC,” Jinaratne alleged. Refuting allegations levelled against SLC, Sports Minister Dayasiri Jayasekera said that to his knowledge the London fund raiser was a success.

In front of me cricket bats worth 10,000 Sterling Pounds were sold and the entire Long Room was packed to capacity. Hence I cannot say that it was a failure. But get all the figures from Shammi Silva as he has to furnish the figures because he is SLC Treasurer,” the Minister said.

In regard to the allegations regarding the discontinuation of the indoor net and swimming pool projects and the unlawful service suspension of SLC Chief Engineer, Minister Jayasekera said that the decision to stop the swimming pool and indoor net projects was due to the lack of funds at SLC.

There is a Rs. 4.2 billion liability; how can SLC spend money on these projects which are not very important. Sidath Wettimuni had given these contracts to a person who had done a swimming pool and indoor nets for his son’s residence. He has not selected this person following procurement guidelines.

The service suspension of the former chief engineer was done under my instructions as he wanted to leave SLC and join another place when there was an on-going investigation against him. He had given many contracts without following tender procedure and SLC was conducting an investigation on him. Despite this he tendered his resignation which was not accepted. Hence we decided to suspend his services immediately,” Minister Jayasekera said.

All attempts to contact Secretary SLC Mohan de Silva failed as he did not answer our calls. When a text message was sent asking for a comment, De Silva responded to this reporter, ‘Sorry I have no time for you’.

http://www.thesundayleader.lk/2016/06/26/why-london-cricket-tamasha-was-a-big-flop/

Nava Thakuria

Guwahati: Expressing shocks at the mysterious death  of a lady scribe in Punjab, the Journalists’ Forum Assam (JFA) demands an authentic probe into the incident to find the culprits and book them under the law. Freelance scribe Anshita Bawa (22) died under a strange situation on 22 April 2016 when she went to meet her friends, but she did not reach them. Rather her body and the vehicle, she drove, were found floating in a canal at Bool locality of Sudhar areas.

A resident of Dugri Phase-I, the lady journalist  was initially thought of either facing a tragic  accident or committing suicide, but the postmortem report revealed that Anshita was subjected to severe injuries before her demise. The autopsy report stated that she suffered nearly nine injuries with a fatal one on her head. The local police then registered an FIR suspecting it was a case of murder.

Justice must be delivered to the parents, who had lost their only child,” said a statement  issued by the JFA adding that the journalist fraternity of the country should join the mission to punish the perpetrators.

India thus recorded the killing of  four journalists in the first half of 2016, where the first incident was reported from Uttar Pradesh (Tarun Mishra). The other victims include Indradev Yadav (also known as Akhilesh Pratap Singh) from Jharkhand and Rajdeo Ranjan from Bihar.

Last year the country lost five journalists to assailants.

වෛද්‍ය රුවන් එම් ජයතුංග 

ගන්ධබ්බයෙකු වූ මා

බොහෝ වේදනාවල් විඳ

ටයර් සෑයක් හරහා

විමුක්තිය ලැබුවෙක්මි

මවුබිම නැත්නම්

මරණය කියමින්

කුණු කයක් දරාගෙන

ඝනඳුරු මැදියම

අරුණලු දකින්නට

කල උත්සහය

මට කුණු කය අහිමි කලේය

නන්දා සහ සුනිල් විසින්

විප්ලවීය මායාවෙන් අවධි කල

බොහෝ ගන්ධබ්බයන් සමග

මමද පාවෙමින් සිටිමි

පහතින්  පෙනෙන

මායා ලෝකය දකිමි

අපට පන්තිකලවුන්

ඝනඳුරු මැදියම

අරුණලු පෙන්වූවන්

විරු ගීත වලින් මායම්කලවුන්

මෙරට සහ පිටරට සිට

ජීවිත විඳින අයුරු  දකින්නෙමු

උන් ගේ දරුවන්

ප්‍රවේසම් කරවමින්

අපව දං ගෙඩියට දෑක්කූ

බක තපස්සුන්

ඉඳ හිට අහස දෙස බලා

අපට විරිත්තති

මුන් ගේ බක තපස් බලමින්

නිදහසේ පාවෙමින්

සිටින්නෙමු

සිරුරු අහිමි

ගන්ධබ්බයන් වූ අප

වෛද්‍ය රුවන් එම් ජයතුංග 

වෛද්‍ය රුවන් එම් ජයතුංග

ඕමන්තේ : වව්නියාව  ඕමන්තේ ආරක්‍ෂක මුරපොළ කඩිගුලක් සේ කාර්‍යබහුලය​. රජයේ හමුදා සහ කොටි සංවිධානය අතර සමාදානය නිසා මිනිසුන් ඕමන්තේ හරහා යති. ලුතිනන් කර්නල් උපාලි ගීගනගේ මහතා සමග ඕමන්තේ මුරපොළ වෙත ගිය මම එහි කටයුතු නිරීක්‍ෂණය කලෙමි. කොටි පාළන ප්‍රදේශයේ සිට එන සහ එකී ප්‍රදේශ වෙත යන මිනිසුන් සහ වාහන සොල්දාදුවෝ පරික්‍ෂා කරති.

ඕමන්තේ මුරපොළ ඉදිරියේ තිබෙන්නේ යුද මුක්ත කලාපයයි. යුද මුක්ත කලාපයට ඔබ්බෙන් කොටින් ගේ සීමාව මම දකිමි. එතන ඔවුන් ගේ කඳවුරකි. අවි අතින් ගත් එල්.ටී.ටී.ඊ සාමාජිකයන් ඔබ මොබ යති. ඔවුනද වාහන සහ මගීන් පරීක්‍ෂා කරති. බදු එකතු කරති. යුද මුක්ත කලාපයේ කුඩා ටකරම් සෙවනක් යට පුටුවක හිඳගත් රතු කුරුසයේ සුදු තරුණයෙකි. මම ඔහු වෙත ගියෙමි.

රතු කුරුසයේ නිලධාරියා මාව සාදරයෙන් පිලි ගත්තේය​. ඔහු ඕලන්ද ජාතිකයෙකි. යුද්දය මොහොතකට අමතක කල අප වින්සන්ට් වැංගෝ ගැන කතා කලෙමු. තම රටවැසි සිත්තරා ගැන  රතු කුරුසයේ නිලධාරියා කතා කලේ අභිමානයෙනි. වැංගෝ ගැන කතා කිරීමෙන් අනතුරුව මම කෙලින්ම මාතෘකාවට බැස්සෙමි.

” සාමය දිගින් දිගටම පවතීවිද ? මම ඔහුගෙන් ඇසුවෙමි.

” අප මහන්සි වන්නේ දෙපාර්ශයම අතර ගැටුමකින් තොරව සමාදානය පවත්වා ගැනීමටයි ” ඔහු මධ්‍යස්ථ පිළිතුරක් දුන්නේය​.

” එහෙත් කොටි සංවිධානය දිගින් දිගටම සාම ගිවිසුම උල්ලංඝනය කරනවා. මේ අයුරින් ගියහොත් යළිත් යුද්ධයක් ඇතිවේද ? මම රතු කුරුස නිලධාරියා කලංකයක තැබුවෙමි. එහෙත් තම නිගමනයන් සඟවා අපක්‍ෂග්‍රාහී පිළිතුරු දීමට පුරුදු කරන ලද රතු කුරුස සංවිධානයේ නිලධාරියා සිනාසුනා මිස ඉලක්ක පිළිතුරක් නොදුන්නේය​. මම ඔහුට අතට අත දී ලුතිනන් කර්නල් උපාලි ගීගනගේ මහතා වෙත ගියෙමි.

මුහමාලේ : කර්නල් උදය පෙරේරා විසින් මාව මුහමාලේ අවසන් බංකර පෙළ වෙත ගෙන යනු ලැබීය​. අපට කිලෝ මීටර් භාගයක් පමණ දුරින් කොටි බංකර් පෙලක් දිස්වේ. අවි ගත් කොටින් සීරුවෙන් සිටිති. දෙපාර්ශවයම සිටින්නේ අවිනිශ්චිත තත්වයන් උඩය​. යළිත් යුද්දයක් ඇරඹෙන්නේ නම් මේ දෙපාර්ශවය එකිනෙකා සමග සටන් වදිනු ඇත​

2008 වසරේ අප්‍රේල් මාසයේදී කිලාලි මුහමාලේ යුදහමුදා ඉදිරි ආරක්‍ෂක වළල්ලට කොටින් විසින් හිටිහැටියේ කාලතුවක්කු හා මෝටාර් ප‍්‍රහාරයක් එල්ල කරන ලදි. මෙම ප්‍රහාරය  මෙහෙයවන ලද්දේ ‘දීපන්’ හා ‘මුහුන්දන්’ නම් වූ ජ්‍යෙෂ්ඨ එල්ටීටීඊ සාමාජිකයින් දෙදෙනා  විසිනි. මෙහිදී යුද හමුදාවේ 53 වන හා 55 වන සේනාංක වල සොල්දාදුවෝ ප්‍රති ප්‍රහාර එල්ල කලහ​. මේ ගැටුමෙන් එල්ටීටීඊ සාමාජිකයින්  150 සහ ශ්‍රී ලංකා යුද හමුදාවේ සොල්දාදුවන් 43 දෙනෙකු ජීවිතක්‍ෂයට පත් වූහ​. මිය ගිය සොල්දාදුවන් අතර එදා මා සමග  මුහමාලේදී සංවාදයේ යෙදුනු සොල්දාදුවන් කිහිප දෙනෙක් ද සිටින්නට ඇත​.

Shenali D Waduge

That A T Ariyaratne is being taken to court by a Dutch charity for misappropriation of funds is a serious matter and questions the integrity of this members role in the Constitutional Council. No person with a tarnished name or image can sit to decide on good governance. That the case is to be heard at the MOratuwa District Court to recover 100,000 euros given to Sarvodaya as tsunami relief is a matter the general public and in particular the government of Sri Lanka should not take lightly.

The misappropriation of funds is a global menace and one that is relevant to virtually all NGOs in Sri Lanka and overseas. They always use a catastrophe to cry some crocodile tears and generate funds and do a few cosmetic projects to relay across their websites and where the bulk of the money ends up is anyone’s guess.

Sarvodaya and A T Ariyaratne are being charged with appealing for funds across their website to build new houses for victims of the 2004 tsunami. As such 100,000 Euros were raised and transferred to the Sarvodaya Disaster Management Fund. Sarvodaya had informed that 100 new houses had been built on government land in Payagala. However the Dutch charity has learnt that this was not true. The Island article will run readers through the confusion that NGOs must be taking funding parties through with lies and lies and more lies.

The Dutch team that arrived and who had been searching the locations given by Sarvodaya for the houses they had built found to their dismay found out that the houses they came to had been built by someone else!

The long and short of the matter is that the Charity is now accusing Sarvodaya of defrauding funds and this is a serious offence in the light of other charges that have been made against Sarvodaya over the years not just misappropriation of funds. The case is to be heard on 28 June 2016.

In the past various MPs crossed over primarily to evade their misadventures being investigated…. and we seriously have to wonder whether the entry into the constitional council is another such example.

Be that as it may all those Clean people in government and promoting good governance will need to seriously explain to the public why A T Ariyaratne should remain in the Constitutional Council with a series of allegations brought against him which are now being taken to court as well even by foreign parties. The basis of anyone being in the constittutional council is that they must have an untarnished good image and name… there is a serious cloud of doubt now.

Readers are also advised to read. Dr. Susantha Goonetilake’s expose on Sarvodaya and NGOs which will help enlighten people about the crimes these crying hearts get upto….

Shenali D Waduge

http://www.island.lk/index.php?page_cat=article-details&page=article-details&code_title=147577 (below is full article)

A Charitable Foundation based in The Netherlands has filed a plaint in the Moratuwa District Court against Lanka Jathika Sarvodaya Shramadana Sangamaya Inc, the largest local NGO headed by Dr. A. T. Ariyaratne, to recover Euro 100,000 in donor funds channeled to build houses for the tsunami-affected, which had been allegedly defrauded.

The action has been filed by Lakshman Perera, the power of attorney on behalf of Lubberta Wilhelmina Julia Kattenbelt, president and Wilhelmus Hendrius Van Der Horst, secretary, respectively, who represent Stichting Tot Steun Aan De Reljntjes Dovenschool in Sri Lanka of The Netherlands.

The plaintiffs have complained that shortly after the December 26, 2004 tsunami, they appealed for funds from the international community through the Foundation’s website to build new houses for the victims of the disaster. As a result of this appeal, Euro 100,000 was raised.

These funds were transferred to the Sarvodaya Disaster Management Fund operated by the respondent, A. T. Ariyaratne on or around September 20, 2005 for the explicit purpose of building new houses for tsunami victims. The plaintiffs were thereafter informed that 100 new houses will be built by supplementing this donation with other donor funds on a land obtained from the government at Paiyagala.

On a query made on March 3, 2006, the respondent informed the plaintiffs that it was not possible to secure a government land, and on a suggestion by him that the houses be built on a land at Mullaitivu, mutual agreement was reached. The respondent was subsequently informed that an inspection team from The Netherlands will be arriving in Sri Lanka to assess the housing project at Mullaitivu.

On September 28, 2006, an email was received from the respondent that the proposed Mullaitivu project had run into a snag as the Tamil Rehabilitation Organization wanted all the funds transferred to its account. Noting that a similar project in Kilinochchi has also been halted, permission was sought for a meeting to seek permission to divert these funds to another project.

On agreeing to this proposal in January 2007, the respondent assured that work on the project would begin when a suitable land was found. Subsequent inquiries also evoked the response that a land was still being sought for this purpose. In 2009, the plaintiffs were informed that preparations were being made to build the houses in two lands identified in Paiyagala and Wadduwa.

Later, the plaintiffs were informed that the project has been completed with 36 and 14 houses built in the two respective areas. However, there was reluctance to accommodate an inspection team to visit the project for a first-hand observation.

When an inspection was insisted upon, a meeting was arranged between the respondent and a representative of the secretary of the Dutch organization, where it had been stated that 50 houses were built at Paiyagala and Wadduwa with the Euro 100,000 donated by the organization and handed over to tsunami-affected families.

On June 21, 2014, the representative had visited Paiyagala and Wadduwa in search of the housing project based on the road directions given by the respondent, but had been unable to locate it. After he had reported back, on fresh directions given, he had visited Hapagala in Wadduwa and was shown a housing project, which, it transpired, had been built using funds donated to the respondent by another organization.

Based on these findings, on or around July 5, 2014, the plaintiffs were made to understand that the respondent had defrauded their funds which were transferred to the Sarvodaya Disaster Management Fund on December 20, 2005.

Instead of allocating these funds for the intended purpose, the respondent had used the money for unjust enrichment, the plaint claimed, while seeking the recovery of 100,000 Euros together with accumulated interest.

The case is scheduled to be taken up for trial on June 28, 2016.

Contacted for comment, Sarvodaya leader, Dr. A. T. Ariyaratne dismissed the allegations saying that 100 houses were built for tsunami victims at Point Pedro and Paiyagala with the funds donated by the Dutch organization.

“In fact, we had to inject a little more funds to complete this project”, he said.

He said the government authorities also inspected this project many years ago and found everything in order. The donor funds were utilized for the purpose they were meant for and there was no issue as the job was done.

Asked about the allegations made, Ariyaratne asserted that this was the work of an individual who quit after working for 25 years at Sarvodaya Vishva Lekha press. “He is behind these accusations as he has an ax to grind with us”.

He said that he trusted this individual and took everything for granted and allowed him to run the press, but one day he examined the Ernest & Young audit report and discovered a discrepancy. “When this matter was raised with him, he just walked out of the office and I have not seen him physically to this day”.

Apart from this discrepancy, machinery in the press had been sold. I could have also taken him to court at that time, but didn’t do so, he pointed out. “We have done our duty and our hands are clean”.

Anybody can visit these areas and see for themselves the houses built and handed over to tsunami victims, Ariyaratne noted. “This individual has animosity towards us, but in the spirit of Sarvodaya, we don’t take revenge”.

Additional reading

NGO scams to run a parallel state with foreign aid

by H. L. D. Mahindapala

http://www.sundayobserver.lk/2007/02/18/fea08.asp

https://www.lankaweb.com/news/items07/090107-8.html

https://www.lankaweb.com/news/items/2015/05/28/questioning-the-integrity-of-nominees-to-the-constitutional-council/

Shenali D Waduge

Karmic retribution has come to Britain – it is called දිට්ට ධම්ම වේදනීය කර්මය, මේ ජීවිතේදීම පල දෙන කර්ම (Law of Cause & Effect Good deeds bring good results. Bad deeds bring bad results). Britain’s centuries of divide and rule has come home to roost. This time round it is Britain’s own who have risen against their own British rulers for the same policies they inflicted upon invaded nations which have been incorporated of late within Britain. This calls to mind histories injustices meted out by Britain through their divide and rule policies, plunder of lands, weakening and demonising the majority ethnic group, stripping the majority of their heritage and birth rights and forcibly flooding nations with immigrants with purposeful intent to change the demography of nations with proud civilizational heritage and get later arrivals to challenge the rights of the majority. Now the Brits themselves have said ‘enough is enough’, the Brits have said ‘we don’t want multiculturalism and bogus assimilation and reconciliation’ all of which the colonial mindset embedded local lackeys in former colonies wish to still continue. Let this be a lesson to all that we must return to fundamentals and put an end to the theatrics and nonsense that jobless liberal thinkers are promoting the world over.

Britain’s Crimes: 

By 1922, the British ruled more than 458 million people, and covered 13,012,000 square miles—almost a quarter of the Earth’s total land area.

The evil practices adopted by the Colonial British Administrations across all of the nation’s Britain illegally occupied continue to plague these nations.

1. Forced removal from homelands
2. Forced Colonization – global transportation of foreign labor with decolonized nations forced to be saddled with them
3. Forced assimilation (religious/ethnic/cultural)
4. Extermination Policies (genocide)
5. Education a conduit to create European surrogates
6. Compulsory (forced) Sterilizing
7. Killing livelihoods
8. Brute Policies – scorched earth policies
9. Weakening the majority and strengthening the minorities

• Scramble for Africa by the Anglo-Europeans following the Berlin Conference of 1844-5 artificial boundaries were drawn and Africa cut into pieces and divided amongst the whites with no care that tribes were divided, people were being divided, traditions were being divided, cultures were being divided, people were divided by language. All that the whites wanted to do was to loot Africa and take back home. They came to civilized lands and declared they arrived to ‘civilize’ them. In reality they came to Christianize and Plunder. War Lord ‘Kony’ was an Anglicized Christian by British colonialism.

• Forced removal of the Chagossians following a British-American agreement in 1966 to set a military base in Diego Garcia. Though in 2000, the High Court judged the eviction of Chagossians was illegal the British Government in 2004 used the Royal Prerogative to quash this decision, bypassing Parliament and the legal system. The law was enacted on election day to avoid media scrutiny. https://justiceinconflict.org/2014/05/15/an-enduring-shame-the-chagos-islanders-long-fight-for-justice/

• The British settled 144 prisoners in North America to become the 1^st white settlers. England cleaned out it’s prisons by sending criminals, drunks, prostitutes and diseased to settle in North America. Colonial North America became a penal colony through a system of indentured servitude. It is estimated that some 50,000 British convicts were sent to colonial America, representing perhaps one-quarter of all British emigrants during the 18th century Archaeological evidence proves that British settlers lived as cannibals – http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/10031678/British-settlers-in-Jamestown-resorted-to-cannibalism.html

• Cultural assimilation resulted in creating policies that would make natives denounce their heritage and adopt cultures that were not theirs. It was also known as ‘civilizing process’. Education became the primary method of acculturation process. Assimilation of children is genocide per UN definition but to date no single white Britisher has been prosecuted for genocidal crimes.
• 

• In 1788 Britain invaded ‘Australia’ to begin a 200 year campaign of genocide of the natives. British invaded the island of Tasmania in 1803 were around 6000 Aborigines lived. By 1818 there were 3000 white invaders, by 1824 the number had arisen to 13,000 by 1830 a total 23,500, 75% of whom were white convicts were settled in Tasmania. By 1818 the Aborigines were just 2000 and by 1830 there was hardly 400. The last 200 were transported to open prisons in 1840 and the last of them died in 1876. An example of British depopulation. For fun British ‘settlers’ decapitated Aboriginal babies by kicking their heads!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gPraCuuNQd8

• Boer Concentration Camps – tens of thousands of innocent people were put into camps so that Britain could control the South African populace. 10% of the entire Boer population died in these British camps. This figure included 22,000 children.
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• April 1919 Amritsar Massacre – British troops under orders of Brig. Reginold Dyer opened fire at unarmed peaceful protestors killing close to 1000. The British labelled Brig. Dyer a hero and raised £26,000 for the ‘man who saved India’

• 1943 – The Bengal Famine wherein 1-3million people died in a famine that could have been prevented but the British government chose not to. Winston Churchill was accused of intentionally killing Indians. http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,2031992,00.html
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• 1920 Iraq punished for asking their country back – British had formed nation of Iraq and installed puppet leaders. The Iraqi people were fed up and began revolting. Royal Air Force conducted night bombing on civilian targets, used chemical weapons, gassed groups and after victory the British used collective punishment against the tribes. Any tribe not following line would have its entire village annihilated. British ordered to exterminate every living thing within its walls from animals to rebels to children. British conducted random searches, a single weapon found meant entire area burnt to the ground, destroy crops, poisoned wells and livestock killed.

• Dividing to create future dissent – Cyril Radcliffe was notorious for killing more people with the pen than anyone else. He was tasked to draw the border between India and create a new nation Pakistan along religious lines. British knew it would create displacement and ethnic violence but that was the intent. 30million tried to escape one country to the other and led to unimaginable violence which continues to this day.

• No sooner slavery ended indentured labor began. Some 3.5million people from India were transported to the 178 countries that the British Empire ruled over barring just 22 countries. These Indians were plucked from their homes and exported to all corners of the world in most inhuman and cruel conditions. It was these same Tamils that fought alongside the British Army against India and no sooner indentured labor ended in the 1920s the Tamils began to ask for a separate Tamil Nadu state. http://nrnmind.blogspot.com/2016/02/britishcrimes-against-tamil-indentured.html

• An Act of Genocide, Colonialism and the Sterilization of Aboriginal Women was written by Karen Stote documenting 580 sterilizations of indigenous women in Canada that took place at federal hospitals between 1971 and 1974.

• slaughtering of vulnerable women and children of Biafra (Nigeria) between 1967 and 1970

• British detained almost the entire Kikuyu population in camps where thousands were beaten and abused (Mau Mau uprising)

• http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/worst-atrocities-british-empire-amritsar-boer-war-concentration-camp-mau-mau-a6821756.html

• Britain waged a biological warfare against the Red Indians by distributing small pox infected blankets to Red Indians.

• In 1917 British ‘gifted’ Palestine to British Zionists creating the conditions for chaos and conflict that continues to plague the ME region.

• In 19^th century Britain forcibly hooked 100million Chinese on opium grown by British in colonial occupied India (Opium Wars)

• British plunders ‘created’ India, Burma and Ceylon enslaving millions on tea crops and other labor

All post-independent colonies are carrying headaches manufactured by the British. European colonizers and their explorations resulted in occupied lands being declared unoccupied simply because no Christians/Catholics lived in them. That was the basis that these lands and territories were confiscated and a cruel and heartless set of policies inflicted with hatred and venom to virtually exterminate or bring these natives to their knees and idol worship the foreign rulers who landed. Britain together with all other colonial rulers showed no respect for sovereignty, cared too hoots for the history of those countries, and looked down with disdain at the cultures and traditions they practiced. Let all those gender activists today be reminded that these Eastern civilizations gave 1^st place to women before men with guns and brawns without brains took the helms to reverse the place that the women held. Today, these liberalists are carrying out a propaganda for women’s rights with no mention of this historical fact.

Britain and European invaders robbed, plundered and stole and built their nations by theft. They are developed nations today because they stole and robbed and for these tears and pain to men, women and child moral retributive forces have finally come to play.

The Christian West that carried out 3 Crusade Wars against Islam have invited the enemy to their door and then cry foul when they claim to want to practice their faith. People have forgotten that the European invaders mastered the art of playing one party against the other and funding both sides for profit. Likewise the Wahhabi faith is a British created one. The new Islamic cultures are all British created ones and Muslims are too naïve to realize this because their religions have taught them not to question their faith.

The same Britain that took away the history and traditions of the majority races in all the nations they colonized are today saying they want ‘Britain back’ the Brits want to remain ‘British’ devoid of the forced multiculturalism that had been pushed down by immigration policies. Perhaps the fears and anxieties of the Sinhala Buddhists will now be better understood. The lesson is that one cannot bring in cultures and force assimilation. There are some cultures that can never assimilate. They are by practice self-segregating as can be seen by their attitudes and dress.

If Britain now says that the identity of the Brits cannot be negotiated and compromised than the majority races in other countries have every right to say the same. Bogus EU and others have no right to be inflicting false identities upon us. Britain has mixed populations against the will of the majority, they have used their imperial powers to weaken and dilute the majorities and have encouraged the minorities to come to every majority sacred site and demand equal status when the same will not be even discussed in nations where they are the majority.

All these problems are as a result of a new group of experimentalists who have nothing else but to create far-fetched liberal notions and use nations and people as guinea pigs to try them out. Can they be given some unoccupied lands to take all like-minded thinkers and practice all the liberalism they want to among themselves only.

David Cameron, Obama, Sarkozy and Harper have been responsible for waves of catastrophes taking place across the world. They stand on podiums and deliver prepared speeches puking peace when behind the scenes they plot to kill innocent people in order to expand their empires and profits. These cruel sins have karmic justice and now the karma is coming to pay retribution.  http://presscore.ca/obama-sarkozy-cameron-and-harper-declared-war-criminals.html

Britain exited from the EU and the likely outcomes of other nations also wanting to leave EU will soon be seen. The world will again fall into turmoil but this time round the nations responsible for much of the catastrophes are now facing the tune.

Dedicated to David Cameron by our own singers https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q0TRpdvVrd4

Shenali D Waduge

British Crimes in Ceylon – https://reconciliationinitiatives.wordpress.com/2015/02/06/at-sri-lankas-independence-revisiting-the-crimes-and-communal-disharmony-created-by-the-british/

By Dr Upul Wijayawardhana Courtesy The Island

For once, a nation has stood for its pride and honour defying bullying pundits and politicians. It said enough is enough; the worm has turned; on June 23, United Kingdom voted to get out of the European Union, rather unexpectedly, dropping a bombshell on world markets. If as some ill-informed critics claim, it is the end of Great Britain and the beginning of a Little England, then why should markets around the globe worry? True, having once being the largest empire the world has ever seen, Britain is a shadow of what it oncewas but, still, it is a force to reckon with, being the fifth largest economy in the world and has always batted far beyond its’ size.

Like all empires, the British Empire also would have come to an end but the decline was hastened by a war it fought to end the Nazi terror. At the end of the Second World War, it was bankrupt but still went ahead with far reaching social changes like the introduction of the National Health Service which, in spite of the problems it faces at the moment, is the envy of the world. Belated American support, no doubt, helped end the war but UK, in the process, got indebted to USA and the final instalment of that debt was paid during Tony Blair’s time.

European Union

European integration was considered an antidote to the extreme nationalism which led to the devastation of the continent during the Second World War. With this in mind, the European Coal and Steel Community was formed in 1952, which was thought to be “a first step in the federation of Europe.” In 1957, Belgium, France, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands and West Germany signed the Treaty of Rome creating the European Economic Community (EEC). Britain tried to join the EEC in 1963 and 1967 but French President De Gaulle vetoed both times, perhaps forgetting the key role Britain played in liberating France from Nazi German occupation. After De Gaulle’s departure, Edward Heath was able to negotiate British entry to EEC in 1973, which was approved by the British voter in a referendum held in June 1975 during Harold Wilson’s premiership. The European Union was formed with the signing of the Maastricht treaty in November 1993 which gradually enlarged to 28 countries, a number of them being former Soviet Republics.

EURO

Germany and France were keen on a monetary union and as a prelude an Exchange Rate Mechanism was established, to which UK joined in October 1990. However, on 16 September 1992, the so-called ‘Black Wednesday’, UK was forced to withdraw due to pressure on the British Pound by currency speculators like George Soros. The Bank of England spent 6 billion Pounds to stabilize the currency and George Soros is supposed to have made a profit of one billion, earning him the title “the man who broke the Bank of England.

When the common currency, Euro, was finally launched in 1999, UK did not join in spite of grave warnings by all international financial institutions including IMF that UK will lose heavily by this move; well, they were all proved wrong and the UK economy thrived with the British Pound. Further, fortunately, Britain did not have to shoulder the bail-out created by the Euro quagmire of the union of disparate economies.

Political Union

The next stage of the union, for enthusiasts, was political, ultimately leading to a United States of Europe. Though this may be the logical conclusion, if true economic union is to be achieved, this was a step too far for the Brits. Thus, in the eyes of most EU members, UK has always been a reluctant partner.

Free movement of labour and threat of mass immigration

With the joining of East European countries like Poland in 2004 and vast numbers of their citizens exercising the right of free movement meant UK had a flood of immigrants. Partly due to bad handling by the central government, not providing support for local bodies to provide school places etc., it was natural that resentment grew. Most towns changed character, East-European mini-supermarkets cropping, not one but many, while local shops were closing due to the ripple-effect of the 2008 banking crisis.

EU was hell bent on expanding further. Turkey had been keen on entry for a long time and though the EU and British Government policy is to facilitate entry, there was increasing concern in the public minds because of Turkey’s shift from a secular state, which was the stated aim of the founder Kemal Ataturk, to an Islamic state under the present president.

Angela Merkel’s open invitation to refugees, though not all were genuine, made a bad situation even worse. Though she got plaudits from some quarters there was increasing hostility to immigrants in Germany. Quickly, she had to back-track and called it an EU problem!

Referendum

UK Independence Party, more right wing than the right-wing of the Conservative Party was demanding exit from EU and the Conservative Party was heavily divided, forcing Cameron to make the Referendum one of the pledges in the last election manifesto. Again, rather unexpectedly, he won and had no choice but to go for the referendum, which was not a necessity.

He led the ‘Remain’ campaign and fellow Conservatives Boris Johnson, former Mayor of London, and Michael Gove, Justice Secretary, led the ‘Brexit’ campaign. Both campaigns used fear as the main tactic; ‘Remain’ predicting economic disaster on exit and ‘Brexit’ predicting mass-migration if UK remained in EU.

Cameron’s supporters

IMF and all national and international financial institutions lined behind Cameron, more on speculation than facts; after all, they got it badly wrong about the Euro. In the Queen’s Birthday-honours list all who supported him got their due, in advance, but now it turns out to be rewards for failure!

He used the biggest gun, Obama, who went to the extent of saying that if UK decided to leave the EU, it cannot expect any favours and, for any trade deals, will have go to the back of the queue, not ‘line’ as an American would say raising speculation that the script was written by Downing Street. The very same Obama, the day after the referendum, said whatever relationship UK does not have, the special relationship with US will always be there. What hypocrisy!

Sri Lanka sent a contingent including the ‘great converter’ to covert SL ex-pats and wonder who footed the bill for a failed venture. Have we started meddling in UK affairs because UK is meddling (or allowed to meddle) in ours!

Result

Apparently, Cameron expected to win by 10 points. In fact, just after polls closed Nigel Farage, leader of UKIP, conceded that ‘Remain’ is likely to win but as results poured in, it showed the unexpected and unpredicted. Perhaps, pollsters got it wrong, again, because voters feared they would be branded racist had they stated they would vote to leave.The majority of Brits did not mind facing even an economic downturn to safeguard their sovereignty. That is the greatness of Great Britain!

The Pound may drop, FTSE may drop but they will recover; they have already done so. Britain will enhance the traditional ties with China and India. Professionals from Commonwealth countries will have easier access to the UK, hitherto blocked by unqualified migrants from EU. Britain still has leading inventors like James Dyson and on population basis has more inventors than any other country. British business will find new ties. Even if there is a slump, in the long term, it will at least be what it is today. Other than Germany, UK was the only other net contributor (total contribution minus rebates and grants) to the EU budget. Therefore, the big question is what will happen to the EU?

Adaderana

Sri Lanka’s Ambassador to the United States Prasad Kariyawasam says that the island now takes a lead in human rights issues and is following a path of not only on reconciliation but also human rights and humanitarian promotion both locally and internationally.

He stated that Sri Lanka has moved forward very well after 30 years of conflict. Within one year we have undone a lot. If you look at the set of achievements Sri Lanka has done, it’s monumental,” he said in an interview with CCTV America.

Giving an example, he said that Sri Lanka recently ratified the Convention against Enforced Disappearances, something which many Western countries including even the US have not done.

We are one of the very few countries in the world who has ratified all the core human rights conventions now.  So we have taken a paradigm shift with regard to that,” he said.  We take a lead in human rights issues now. We are on a path not only on reconciliation.

A path of human rights, a path of humanitarian promotion both locally and internationally.” Kariyawasam said that Sri Lanka has until next March to come up with its own achievement report to the UN Human Rights Council. We think we have done well. We have not missed a single step that we have promised in the resolution.”  With regard to the establishment of transitional justice mechanisms called for in the resolution, he said that Sri Lanka has already established the Missing Persons’ Office and that the government is currently working with the UN on the remaining mechanisms.

We have invited all the Special Rapporteurs of the UN involved in issues that are relevant to Sri Lanka to work with us. So there are already international experts working with Sri Lanka,” he said.   We have now finished the Missing Persons Office. We have to then look at the truth seeking mechanism, we’ll have to look at the justice mechanism. Those consultations are taking place under a task force for consultation comprising of civil society leaders.” In addition to that we have also commenced a web-based consultative process for the international community, anyone to give us ideas.

We will then go into that at some point, he said.  Responding to a question regarding an international mechanism, the Ambassador said that the Sri Lankan government is open to having a domestic investigative mechanism with international support. That is what we promised to the UN and that is what we are going to do.”

whether this international support” will include foreign judges, prosecutors and investigators he said: That will be decided once the consultative process is over. At the moment we are doing consultations as to what’s the best mechanism.”  However, he reiterated that it will be a domestic mechanism and not an international mechanism. A domestic mechanism strengthened by the participation of international experts.” He rejected allegations that the process has currently been stalled.

Asked whether people responsible for committing human rights violations will be brought to justice, he said that it is the intention of the government because it will have truth seeking mechanisms first and it will give room to assess how to craft the justice mechanism in a manner that anyone accused of wrong doing has to face justice.     – See more at: http://www.adaderana.lk/news/35811/-sri-lanka-has-not-missed-a-single-step-promised-in-un-resolution-envoy#sthash.5Jg6209r.dpuf

Sri Lanka Embassy in Washington doesn’t seem to have done much research before attending the session at the June 14 ‘briefing’ organized by the Congressional Caucus for Ethnic and Religious Freedom in Sri Lanka”. If the Sri Lanka diplomatic mission knew what transpired at the inaugural session of the’Caucus’ on 13 November 2013 at Capitol Hill, and the credentials of those who initiated the Caucus, Ambassador Prasad Kariyawasam would have given Sri Lanka’s interpretations – not Rajapaksa’s or Sirisena’s – but Sri Lanka’s stand and position on national issues to negate the machination of eelamists within the US Tamil Diaspora who have roped willing US Congressmen.US Congressman Bill Johnson addressing Congressional Caucus for Ethnic & Religious Freedom in Sri Lanka session June 14. Attendees TNA parliamentarian M.A. Sumanthiran and Ambassador Kariyawasam

Very seldom Sri Lanka’s foreign ministry gets the opportunity to present ‘Sri Lanka’s position’ in contrast to what the ‘eelam propagandists’ and onetime acolytes of LTTE leader Prabhakaran dispense to foreign policy officials of the West.
Quoting the Sri Lanka Mission media release “Along with Tamil National Alliance Member of Parliament M.A. Sumanthiran, Ambassador Kariyawasam was a guest panelist at the June 14 briefing organized by the Congressional Caucus for Ethnic and Religious Freedom in Sri Lanka”. The event was moderated by Sadhanand Dhume of the American Enterprise Institute, a Washington-based think tank”.

Mr. Dhume was a co-sponsor of the inaugural session of the Caucus in November 2013.

The media note further said “Delivering remarks at a panel discussion on ongoing constitutional reforms in Sri Lanka at the United States Capitol Hill Congress building, Ambassador Prasad Kariyawasam said the task at hand is to agree on a constitution that is acceptable to the majority of every community in Sri Lanka, and this requires great compromises. Observing that thirty years of suffering due to the conflict cannot be undone in one year, he appealed for patience and tenacity of all well-wishers of Sri Lanka, and calling to support the expansion of the leverage of moderates to take forward the reconciliation process, which now includes a constitutional reforms process”.

Inauguration of the Congressional Caucus on 13 November 2013 (L to R) Dr.Nimmi Gowrinathan, Lisa Curtis, Ambassador Ashley Wills, Sadanan Dhume and Congressman Danny Davis (at lectern)The formation of the Congressional Caucus for Ethnic and Religious Freedom in Sri Lanka was one of the maneuvers of pro-eelam activists in the United States to strengthen the global diplomatic movement to achieve self-rule or self determination in the north-east region of Sri Lanka since the military defeat of the Tamil Tigers whose agenda was identically the same.

Had the Sri Lanka Mission in Washington been vigilant of eelam activities in the United States, in the past and at present, Sri Lanka’s diplomatic representatives who attended the ‘briefing’ organized by the Caucus would have given their own ‘briefing’ to the US Congressmen who were present to erase the misconceptions the eelam lobby has been engaged with before and since the defeat of the LTTE.
This is about Sri Lanka’s image – not Rajapaksas’ or Sirisena’s.

Congressional Caucus was created in November 2013 to address Ethnic and Religious Freedom in Sri Lanka, and objective of the Caucus was to bring the attention of the American public, lawmakers and interest groups to the Tamils in Sri Lanka and their plight. The Caucus was initiated by Republican Congressmen Bill Johnson and Democratic Congressman Danny Davis. Congressmen Johnson and Davis in a 13 November 2013 media note said, Given the magnitude of horrors Sri Lankans bore witness to, and how the most egregious alleged violators of international law remain unpunished, accountability for the guilty is essential for helping those who have suffered to heal, and the country’s diverse population reconcile.”

Another participant at the inaugural session was, possibly not very well known to the authorities in Sri Lanka at that time, was Nimmi Gowrinathan, an activist of Tamil issues from the time the Tamil Tigers were running ‘affairs’ in the North and East of Sri Lanka. In fact, she was the ‘brain’ behind this Caucus and the supplier of documents and data about the situation in Sri Lanka and the ‘plight of the Tamils’ in the north-east of this South Asian nation.

Democratic Congressman Danny Davis who toured the Tiger-held Vanni region in 2005, discovered later with hard evidence – which he did not deny- that he was totally funded for his tour by a front organization of the Tamil Tigers in the United States, was of course the one who gave the Congressional stamp to the Caucus.

With these and other data retrieved by the Asian Tribune during the time the Caucus was inaugurated, it was not impossible to declare that behind this Congressional Caucus was the ‘specter of Tamil Eelam’.

Before delving on the profiles of the individuals who were associated in this ‘Eelam Project’, the project the LTTE leader Velupillai Prabhaharan could not achieve through his armed struggle, there were number of issues brought up by the participants at the November 2013 inaugural session which will interest the Sri Lanka Mission in Washington. These are the very issues that are being circulated in the portals of the US Congress, the State Department and the UN offices in New York and Geneva.

Sri Lanka diplomatic mission in Washington should have known for what purpose the ‘Caucus’ was inaugurated in 2013, what was its message, who were associated with this eelam project in the name of finding redress to the Tamil people in Sri Lanka and the credentials of these individuals before attending the just concluded ‘briefing session’ to present Sri Lanka in a cogent manner before touching on ‘constitutional matters’.

US Congressman Johnson, who attended the June 14 ‘briefing’ session said at the inaugural session in 2013 that he had seen shocking” videos from the final stages of war, and it was important to ensure that all those responsible for war crimes and human rights violations are held accountable. He was referring to the British Channel Four ‘No Fire Zone’ documentary which the then Sri Lanka government of Rajapaksa dismissed. Had the representatives of the Sri Lanka diplomatic mission in Washington were aware of what Johnson said in 2013 Sri Lanka’s position could have been presented during the ‘briefing’ before coming to constitutional affairs.

Congressman Davis said in the November 2013 inaugural session of the Caucus that when he visited Sri Lanka, there were essentially two governments side-by-side, with two Supreme Courts and two separate justice systems. He further said that he now has a better understanding of the struggle, and believes the Caucus will provide an opportunity for more Members of Congress to be engaged in promoting justice and peace in Sri Lanka.

Was Ambassador Kariyawasam who attended the ‘briefing’ of the Caucus on June 14 aware how Dr. Gowrinathan – in November 2013 – focused on the alarming level of militarization in the North-East, in particular the impact it has on Tamil women. She said that the militarization is a calculated institutionalized practice and pervasive ideology which has the ability to deepen the impact of repressive policies”, and that militarization in the North-East has an active impact on politics and social interactions as a form of state repression.”

Was this issue addressed by the Sri Lanka Mission?

Danny Davis

United States Congressman Danny Davis’ trip to Sri Lanka from March 30 to April 5, 2005, spending most of his time in the regions of the Vanni and Kilinochchi Districts, controlled by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, was in fact funded by the Liberation Tigers, it was revealed by federal authorities, according toChicago Tribune.

According to the Chicago Tribune report Davis had believed that the trip was paid for by the Tamil federation, which in accordance with congressional ethics rules sent to him a written statement of travel expenses, more than US $7,000 each for Davis and his aide, Daniel Cantrell. Congressman Danny Davis said he knew that the group was “associated” with the Tamil Tigers but did not realize that the trip’s costs were covered with the funds controlled by the (Sri Lanka) rebel group.

Davis’ seven day trip to Sri Lanka’s Tamil Tiger territory came under scrutiny following the arrests of 11 supporters of the Tamil Tigers in New York on charges of participating in a broad conspiracy to support the terrorist group through money laundering, arms procurement and bribery of U.S. officials, the Chicago Tribune reports.

When former LTTE operatives headed by Visuvanathan Rudrakumaran held a conference in the US on behalf of the self-proclaimed Transnational Government of Tamil Eelam (TGTE) where Rudrakumaran announced the declaration of the ‘Tamil Eelam Freedom Charter, Nimmi Gowrinathan was one of the prominent participants.

The Sri Lanka Embassy, Washington media note on the ‘briefing’ of the Congressional Caucus for Ethnic and Religious Freedom in Sri Lanka in which Ambassador Prasad Kariyawasam participated as a panelist said:

“The Ambassador provided an overview of the measures taken by Sri Lanka to promote its two-pronged policy of reconciliation and development since the January 2015 election of the current government and reiterated in detail, measures taken by the government to vindicate its commitment to these processes and explained the several challenges that militate against government efforts.

“MP Sumanthiran in his remarks, among other matters, acknowledged that people [in the North and East] can genuinely feel the change” in terms of greater freedom of movement, though more remained to be done to bring back normalcy to their lives. He expressed optimism about the constitution drafting process, which has the potential to bring an end to discord among communities.

“Representative Bill Johnson said that the election of the current government had offered a lot of hope and provided a significant opportunity for Sri Lanka. He observed that the most significant way the government could fulfill its promises was perhaps a new constitution, which recognizes the country’s diverse populations and ensures greater civil and political equality for all. He echoed the Ambassador’s sentiments that cooperation and compromise on all sides were required for success. Representative Danny Davis welcomed the ongoing dialogue in Sri Lanka and emphasized the importance of looking forward to tomorrow rather than looking back at yesterday”.

These are golden opportunities to combat ‘Tiger propaganda’: Presenting to Washington forums the disparities between the (72%) rural and (18%) urban Sri Lanka, and how all ethnic communities in rural have less or no upward social mobility and how privileged the three ethnic communities concentrated in urban sector.

The 70-page September 2015 World Bank Report would have been a handy document at Washington forums of this nature.

– Asian Tribune –

Dilrook Kannangara

Sri Lanka follows Britain in democracy, most laws, economic policy, governance and military tradition. Doing the right thing, Britain consulted its people whether to leave the EU or remain. Rulers didn’t force their own thinking down the throat of countrymen. In a decisive vote most voted to leave. Sri Lanka must take a leaf from British experience and hold a referendum on the proposed ETCA, bridge to India, Indo-Lanka Peace Accord and 13A.

‘Bloody Imposition’ of 13A and Indo-Lanka Peace Accord

In 1987, India imposed the Indo-Lanka Peace Accord and 13A in a dirty and invasive intervention. Indian-created LTTE was fighting against the troops in the country’s north while Indian navy boats invaded the south. The army was held captive by LTTE terrorists with Indian weapons and the local navy was subjugated. The Indo-Lanka Peace Accord and the dreaded 13A were imposed under these conditions. People protested but instigated by a bullying India, they were shot and killed. A brave navy officer attacked the Indian Prime Minister (who was killed just 4 years later by Tamils in India) which was the sum of all anger harboured by Sri Lankans. Violence erupted throughout the country. Most Sri Lankans never supported them. Although Tamils initially supported the Indo-Lanka Peace Accord and 13A, they soon fell out with them.

A referendum is needed to consult the people on the desirability of continuing with the Indo-Lanka Peace Accord and 13A.

ETCA and the Monkey Bridge to a Referendum

ETCA and the proposed monkey bridge must also be put to a referendum to decide. Let the people decide. These are highly dangerous moves pushed by Indian hegemony and Sri Lankans are always suspicious of India. ETCA and the proposed bridge or tunnel would facilitate the movement of a large number of Indians flooding the island nation threatening it. It cannot be allowed.

If India is world’s largest democracy as it (falsely) claims, it must allow Sri Lanka to proceed with a referendum. No sane Sri Lankan wants to be part of an economic deal with India.

Sri Lankan government must uphold its democratic credentials and call for a single referendum to decide on all these.

Chandre Dharmawardana, Canada

The Brixit vote once again demonstrates the well understood but rarely acknowledged fact that referenda do NOT constitute a valid instrument of democracy when it comes to resolving complex questions. Most countries end up deeply divided, as also happened in Canadian French Separatist referenda.  There was potential for great anguish and violence, but fortunately this was avoided due to the leadership of French-Canadian politicians like Pierre Trudeau and Jean Chretian who firmly backed unity. Their politics should be contrasted with the “state-terror” approach of the 1977-1983 period in Sri Lanka.

Many countries do not rely on a blunt instrument like a referendum, but require a 2/3 majority in a parliament for taking such major steps. A Referendum is  good for making decisions about some local project, e.g., where to put a school, or a traffic light. Only simple considerations are needed in evaluating such questions. But when big questions that defy professionals are asked from a divided nation, the referendum leaves them equally divided and much more alienated from one another than before the referendum.

The British participation in the Common Market was initiated during the time of Primer Edward Heath. The British-EU link was some 40 years old when David Cameron came on the scene. During that time the other partners and Britain had devoted major amounts of their energy and capital to accommodate Britain by the EU, and EU by Britain. Millions of jobs depended on this union. So, being able to just leave the union by a unilateral act is NOT democratic. Worse than that, such acts can trigger global instabilities, putting millions of innocent people out of jobs, and also stopping humanitarian aid to refugees running away from war-torn countries because the world economy itself begins to flounder. The cataclysmic Brixit has occurred just when the Western world is struggling with its own socio-economic problems arising from the impossible aspirations of some seven billion people inhabiting the Earth, aspiring to live like what they see on television.

Most people decide on how to cast their vote on a very limited “personal experience” view of the matter. Very few people can evaluate a 40-year political and economic process which even experts don’t understand. We go by our “gut reaction” even though we know the ‘shit’ in our gut. A fisherman may not be happy with his quota for fishing, because, say, the EU has ruled that cod stocks are dwindling, limiting cod fishing. Or they will grumble that the Spanish, defeated by Nelson are getting “more than their traditional share”! UK professionals who felt  that “immigrants” from the EU are lowering their status in society simply voted for Brixit!  It is such narrow reasons that guide individual voters.

The foolish, arrogant  politician that Cameron is, he never believed that his brinkmanship will backfire and lead to not only Britain splitting off from the EU, but also UK splitting off into independent Scotland and Ireland. The Union Jack itself will have to change into just the English flag, ending several centuries of union in the madness of an early-summer “one-night stand”. There was NO need what so ever to call for this referendum. But Cameron thought he could bully the Brixit members in his own party by engaging in brinkmanship. He should have asked how many referenda had been held in England since the Magna Carta?

One does not discard several centuries of “United Kingdom”, and 40 years of EU in one measurement of the public mood, especially on a very complex topic involving international collaboration that enables one to look after common resources like fish stock, air quality, control of insecticides and fertilizers, control of  coal-fired power plants, nuclear reactors etc. These are hard to do when requiring agreement from some three-dozen countries. But if they are already under an alliance (like the EU) all measures for the protection of the environment, as well as the consumer can be enforced and were enforced through the European parliament. Immigration, Crime and human rights can be better protected, (and this is exactly the argument why police powers etc. should not be devolved into provinces as proposed in 13A). All these good things as well as fiscal controls, health and quarantine controls,  had been  built into the European region over 40 years, and now, in one night, a mere 3% of voter majority could undo several centuries of “United” kingdom and 40 years of EU effort, because of people who don’t understand the implications of an over-crowded global village.

Politicians must give the people another chance to think and vote, just as a patient  takes several measurement of the blood pressure before s/he rushes for medication. Indeed, in the French Presidential elections, there is a “deuxiem tour” after the first round, to calm the electorate and select from  the first round lead  contestants.

The idea of independent nations which lived as they wished, doing what they wished, exploiting the environment, exercising their “self-determination”,  was valid in a world that had only 5 to 10 million people or less.  At that time messages or imperial commands taken along the silk route reached their destinations after many months or years. Even villages in a given country were relatively independent. In Ancient Lanka a village could have its own temple, tank and local citizenry living on local produce, having little contact with the outside world, except for the traveling mendicant or pilgrim parties. Today it is NOT VALID, with every part of the globe connected at the speed of electromagnetic waves.

The effect of Brixit was immediately felt in Japan, with its stock market tanking down.

The origin of the massive refugee problem was Cameron (and Nicolas Sarkozy) becoming even more militant than US, and proceeding to bomb Libya and Syria ostensible to “install democracy” there. They became inhabitable, and the mass exodus of refugees destabilized the whole European Union. The unintended consequences of triggering rapid change in complex systems can be very great. Modern mathematical theory shows how even a butterfly wing clap in Africa can affect the weather in Mongolia (Of course this is not exactly true, because many butterflies clap their wings and there is an averaging controlled by the central-limit theorem in Statistical phenomena. But we don’t have many Brixit-type referenda averaging out each other).

Considering the Sri Lankan context, the call for a referendum to eliminate 13 A or any thing like that is equally dangerous. Referenda should NEVER be used in evaluating complex democratic processes unless ALL stakeholders are consulted in the vote which should be a timed sequence of steps involving repeats. In a Tamil separatist referendum, it is not just the people in the North and the East who are relevant, but  the views of the Southerners  as they too have to live with it. But a referendum for unity will not be accepted by those who want a separatist conclusion. So nothing will be resolved, but more violence and distrust will be sowed.

Complex matters should NEVER be determined by a referendum. It should be by a 2/3 majority in parliament where the parliament should consult expert committees. If the referendum is to be used as the final tool, then  there should be at least three time-separated referenda, and  a suitably weighted run-up  decision has to be taken.

In scientific experiments we repeat the experiment many times and even then the answer is provisional. In politics one has to act on provisional results and so it is even more important to ensure that a one-night stand of a “David Cameron” does not produce a grotesque baby that burdens the rest of the world.

Chandre Dharmawardana, Canada

Sarath Wijesinghe former Ambassador to U A E and Europe

Shock Wave of Brixith Battering the Economy

World history has shown leaders taking the Nations to disasters or/and prosperity and rarely country as a unit takes such decisions democratically changing the destiny of the country forward or backward. United Kingdom has taken a bold but a decisive uncertain step to exit from the 28 member European Union reducing the membership to 27 and encouraging others to follow suit for the destruction or diluting the strength of the European Union, with the potential of 500 million on the doorstep for trade, economy and industries. This decision has given shock wave to many including the Prime minister of Britain who took another bold decision to resign leaving space to a successor to manage the Independent United Kingdom without the clutches and regulatory powers of the European Union. Many countries and leaders such as President Obama, many Western and EU members including the Prime Minister of Sri Lanka urged and canvassed UK to remain in the Union. United Kingdom joined 1985 as a reluctant member to and maintained prestigious identity as a great and traditional naval, economic and a world power. After setting up the EU as an economic union in 1951/8, United Kingdom patiently and carefully watched the developments of the Union with an open mind with differences of opinions and arguments by political and active groups continued till to date. The decision taken by the people for Britain is clear and firm with 46497537 votes in favour with 52% to 48% margin with the biggest blow to David Cameron forcing him to quit with pound falling, and wiping away $120 million overnight battering the British Economy and leaving a black hole in the economy industries and entire governance including trade and foreign policy.

Impact of Brixith on Asia and other Ramifications

London may no longer be the Global Capital and major power as a member of the UN Security Council and in the forefront of the world economic forums will depend on how successfully this world power will survive and succeed the challenges to go alone severing bonds of 40 years with the European Union bonded on regulations, Courts, Parliament, Commission and many other ways. Britain may prosper as an independent nation and as a historic traditional power controlling a major portion of the world with the naval power then. Even though the decisions taken by the British Population is sudden with a clear mandate  the transitional period may take long expecting to last over 2-3 years or more with re negotiations  and adjustments. Impact of this decision on the world economy, in Britain, EU, Asia and Sri Lanka will have a direct ramifications and ripple effects for good or worse depending on the circumstances and the environments on trade, economy and political trends. Sri Lanka was expecting GSP +, preferential trade, direct export, trade, tourism, movements of goods and services in a strong Europe with Britain. This sudden decision has definitely weakened UK and EU simultaneously with hopes for both to emerge victorious with hard work. Sri Lanka may be a casualty in the process. The period of transition may be long and impact is uncertain and long term. Unfortunately Sri Lanka has to watch patiently until the dust settles for few years. Relationship with European Union may not be pleasant as the EU itself will be in danger of losing membership of many member states who will follow suit changing the chemistry of the trade and commerce with the rest of the world. There is a possibility of breaking into pieces due to the large number of votes in Scotland  and Ireland with close affiliations with the EU with heavily funded projects attracting the good will of the residents who will be a decisive factor in future referendums contemplated by some politicians with strong views on uniting  with Europe. There was two years divorce proceedings taken place regarding access to European Union for a single market and greater cooperation decreed for separation by the referendum. Uncertainty to UK and EU runs length and breadth of the entire globe bonded with trade, industries and commerce. Sri Lanka can no longer depend on West, UK and Europe now as they themselves are in trouble. Like other world powers she will have to seek the help from mighty China by mending bridges and fences broken with no vision and strategy. It is time for Sri Lanka too to mend fences with Great China an emerging world power for survival. It is time for the UK to manage them without interfering in other parts of the world realising that it will no longer be the main partner of the world policeman.

EU REGULATIONS AND TRADE AGREEMENTS

European Union regulations have entangled with all the member countries on environment, developments, law and order, foreign policy, immigration and many areas with power to monitor local laws with the help of the statutory bodies such as Commission, Courts, and Parliament which are powerful and effective diluting the local laws courts and institutions supervised by the EU regulations. Boris Jonson the former Mayer was in the forefront in the Exit Campaign who will be a likely candidate to replace David Cameron who has resigned to be effective in October this year as leader of the world’s fifth largest economy.  despite requests and advice from Barak Obama, Chinese President, commonwealth Leaders, Meekel and many other to remain in the EU for a strong union, David Cameron acted alone promising a referendum in 2013 resulted on an explosive shock to all including Labour Leader Jeremy Corbin who is now accused of conducting a weak and ineffective campaign to remain in the European Union . Now both Tory and Labour are in trouble on the EU issue. Chinese President, Commonwealth Leaders, President Meekel and many world leaders wanted UK to remain in the Union. Sri Lankan President and Prime Minister spoke in favour remaining in the Union and sent envoys to UK for the yes campaign. E U regulations are many and complicated but organized and structured legally in a codified form with easily refereed to with legal structure with power to implement. Now all this will be replaced by Trade Agreements Understandings. Sri Lanka is contemplating ECTA and other agreements with other countries and the ramifications and ripple effect will lead to complications on the formation and applicability. It is time Sri Lanka to be cautious in the midst of controversy.

SAARC /EU – bilateral and multilateral Agreements

EU is the most developed regional organisation of 28 members with powerful economies and two world powers and economic giants with powerful bodies and statutory instruments for the implementation of the complex and developed mechanism. SAARC is more an economic cooperation than political due to complicated political differences among the member states of Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Pakistan, India, Nepal, Maldives Islands and Sri Lanka. Established in 1985 it has a slow progress mainly on economic cooperation, with number of multinational agreements and individual bilateral agreements among the member states individually with states. SAARC was looking forward to follow EU following the procedure, programs, concepts with a view to have a single currency and common policies as EU. This sudden and uncertain decision of the people of Britain has given a shock wave to SAARC seriously effecting and slowing down the development process.

IMPACT ON SRI LANKA AND WAY FORWARD

Impact of the episode is far wide and deep rooted for Sri Lanka. Trade between Sri Lanka and EU/UK is substantial and complicated. 28.8 Exports to EU amounts to 3 billion, with 56% total to USA and EU with 10% with UK of one billion.  9% of the total 1.8 million tourists are from UK. Individual  countries of EU and UK has convincingly invested and has plans to invest in Sri Lanka with the new found friendship as a gift for defeating Rajapaksa Regime” the  UK and David Cameron was against. Now EU, UK and Sri Lanka are all in trouble with the sudden down fall. UK and Europe is on a volcano of immigrants with uncontrolled and continuous flow from Sea and land with the help of the EU treaty and free movements rights. One of the main reasons for the downfall is the issue of immigrants the British was heavily against. UK was helping Sri Lanka on advice and guidance on human rights and good governance more than economic packages and Sri Lanka was compelled to seek assistance from China again. When UK is in trouble there is a ripple effect on Sri Lanka being a closely knot connections traditionally, economically and many other areas. 1.2 million British live outside Britain mainly on EU and the possibilities of breaking up of UK to three pieces will have adverse effects on Sri Lanka indirectly. There is two years grace period to renegotiate the break up and UK will not be settled for few years. Economically Strong UK is of help to Sri Lanka though politically powerful UK was not sympatric towards us. Professor Camball Harvy” of the Duke University said that this is a sell out has brought uncertainty and not a disaster and we genuinely hope so. It is time for Sri Lanka and the governance to act swiftly and in moderation with reconciliation with all the political parties and the organizations for a joint programme based on conscientious shedding the political differences for the development and prosperity of the country with the assistance of the intellectuals professionals and the people who currently undergoing hardship due to mismanagement of the governance and the economy to be taken to the correct path with s vision and a  strategy for the  nation.

Writer could be reached on sarath7@hotmail.co.uk

and Sri Lanka is a major trade partner and EU an export and import unions and inter dependable. Sri Lanka is a major beneficiary on trade with UK and EU. E U is the largest destination of expoerts being 36% entire export basket which includes clothing and other irtems of around ½ of the expors out of sri Lanka. It is the forth largest importer beng 2.5 billion mainly of garments from SL and 60% trade exports. EU fuds various projects and maintains a Desk to help and advice esport and helps sri lanka on SMEs and trade methods thre billon are exported to United Kingdom amoutnnting to 3 billion  28.8% and any uncetainalty and distabialiaty will affect the trade for few years until dust settels and stabilizes. There for it is inevitable for Sri Lamka to go through a difficult period and the membes of governance MUST divert attentionon reconcillatin among the politicians and political parties to emerge from the difficult period witha visio and a strategy of recovery, with innovative programms and new ideas for collective approach on economy,agritcultue,industrial developmens and international andeconmic relationswith the member countries nd the Internatinal rganisations

Courtesy BBC

The UK has voted to quit the European Union following a referendum on its membership. So how did the Leave campaign win?

1. Brexit economic warnings backfire

What started off as a trickle soon became a steady stream and ended up as a flood.

The public was bombarded with warnings about how they would be poorer if they voted to leave the EU but, in the end, weren’t convinced by what they were told and/or believed it was a price worth paying.

The CBI, the IMF, the OECD, the IFS – an alphabet soup of experts lined up to say economic growth would be hobbled, unemployment would go up, the pound would plummet and British business would be left in a no man’s land outside the EU.

The Bank of England raised the prospect of a recession while The Treasury said it would be forced to put income tax up and slash spending on the NHS, schools and defence.

If that wasn’t enough, President Obama suggested the UK would go to the “back of the queue” in terms of securing a trade deal with the US while top EU official Donald Tusk hinted at the end of Western political civilization.

Some on the Remain side accepted this was overkill and that so-called “Project Fear” had got a bit out of hand while the Leave campaign was quick to dismiss the naysayers as wealthy, unaccountable elites with their own vested interests talking down Britain.

But the fact the public discounted so readily the advice of experts points to something more than just a revolt against the establishment. It suggested far more people felt left behind and untouched by the economic benefits of five decades of EU involvement being trumpeted.

How will Brexit affect your finances?

2. £350m NHS claim gets traction

Image copyrightGETTY IMAGES

The assertion that leaving the EU would free up £350m a week extra to spend on the NHS is the kind of political slogan that campaigns dream of: striking, easy to understand and attractive to voters of different ages and political persuasions.

No surprise then that Vote Leave chose to splash it across the side of their battle bus.

The fact that the claim does not stand up to much scrutiny – the figure is calculated using sums which were disputed by the Treasury Select Committee and described as potentially misleading by the UK Statistics Authority – did not reduce its potency.

Remain campaigner Angela Eagle may have told her opponents to “get that lie off your bus” but polling suggests it gained traction and was the single most remembered figure from the campaign, with many people believing that money handed over to the EU to be a member should be spent in the UK instead.

In that sense, it served as a powerful illustration of how the UK could be better off outside the EU.

3. Farage makes immigration the defining issue

Image copyrightEPA

If they didn’t quite bet the farm on the issue of immigration, Leave played what they knew was their trump card often and they played it successfully.

The issue fed into wider questions of national and cultural identity, which suited Leave’s message – particularly to lower income voters.

The result suggested that concerns about levels of migration into the UK over the past 10 years, their impact on society, and what might happen in the next 20 years were more widely felt and ran even deeper than people had suspected.

Just as crucially, it suggested Leave’s central argument that the UK cannot control the number of people coming into the country while remaining in the EU really hit home.

Turkey was a key weapon in Leave’s armoury and, although claims that the UK would not be able to stop it entering the EU were firmly denied, there was enough uncertainty about this – a fact that the ongoing migrant crisis in Europe unquestionably fed into.

The language and imagery used by the Leave campaign came in for criticism and there were recurring tensions between the Conservative dominated official Leave movement, Nigel Farage’s UKIP roadshow and the separate Leave.EU group.

But their various messages resonated and segued with their central proposition that a vote to leave was a once in a generation chance to take control and assert national sovereignty.

4. Public stop listening to PM

Image copyrightPA

David Cameron may have won one leadership contest, one (or two if you include the 2010 coalition-forming one) general elections and two referendums in the past ten years but this was the moment his luck ran out.

By putting himself front and centre of the Remain campaign, and framing the decision as a question of trust, he staked his political future and personal reputation on the outcome.

Having put so much store on his ability to secure a fundamental change in the UK’s relationship with the EU, it was inevitable that the concessions he came back with following nine months of negotiations would be dismissed as a damp squib by Eurosceptics in his party.

But this summed up a deeper problem. Having constantly stated that he would “not rule anything out” if he didn’t get what he wanted, trying to enthuse the UK to stay in on the basis of reforms most believed were modest at best was always going to be a difficult sell.

Throughout the process, he found himself at odds with many Conservatives who have never quite reconciled themselves to his decision to go into coalition after the 2010 election and the compromises that brought.

Unsuited to winning over Labour supporters, the prime minister was not able to persuade enough floating voters to give him the benefit of the doubt.

It was his failure to get the outcome he wanted, coupled with his desire to try and unify the country after the bruising campaign, that prompted him to say he would stand down as PM by October.

5. Labour fail to connect with voters

Image copyrightPA

The Remain campaign always needed Labour voters to win the referendum and the fact that they did not play ball will be the subject of a long and acrimonious post-mortem within the opposition.

Not only did Labour – 90% of whose MPs backed staying in the EU – badly misjudge the mood of its supporters, when it realised something was wrong during the campaign, it was unable to do much about it.

Despite sending in big beasts such as Gordon Brown and Sadiq Khan to talk up the benefits of the EU, and hinting that further controls on immigration would be needed, it was unable to shift the impression of a growing schism between those running the party and its base.

Although Alan Johnson, the head of Labour In, has been singled out for criticism, it is likely that Jeremy Corbyn – who declined to share a platform with pro-EU politicians of other parties – will take most of the blame.

Critics have said his lukewarm support for the EU – which he summed up as 7 out of ten in one appearance – filtered through to the entire campaign and his emphasis on the need for a “social Europe” simply did not resonate with enough people.

6. Big beasts – Boris Johnson and Michael Gove

Image copyrightPA

We always knew a handful of cabinet ministers would support Brexit but it was Michael Gove and Boris Johnson’s declaration of support which really put rocket boosters under the campaign.

The justice secretary brought intellectual heft and strategic nous to the table while the former mayor of London, after a bout of soul-searching, brought star appeal and ability to appeal across the party divide.

The two men were deployed deftly, Boris Johnson cast in the role of foot soldier as he criss-crossed the country on the Vote Leave bus, pulling pints and brandishing cornish pasties in his wake.

Meanwhile, Mr Gove did much of the heavy lifting, helping to put together Leave’s post-Brexit manifesto as well as facing the public in TV referendum specials on Sky News and the BBC.

Then there was Nigel Farage, the face of Euroscepticism in the UK but also a potential loose cannon for the Conservative dominated official campaign? The UKIP leader, as is his forte, did his own thing and occasionally provoked controversy but also played a vital role on the ground in motivating his party’s supporters and numerous others to go to the polls.

7. Older voters flock to polls

Image copyrightPA

While experts will pore over the finer details of turnout over the coming days and weeks, the cry will inevitably go up that it was older voters which won it for Leave – particularly in the south, south-west, Midlands and the north east.

It is a matter of fact that the older you are, the more likely you are to make the effort to vote – 78% of those 65 or over voted in the 2015 election, compared with 43% of 18-24 year olds and 54% of 25-34 year olds.

Despite the last minute rush to register – which saw 2.6 million people sign up, many of them younger voters, between 15 May and the extended deadline of 9 June – the breakdown may not be radically different this time.

Factor in research suggesting that support for Brexit was significantly higher among those aged 55 and over than among younger age groups – three out of every five voters aged 65 or over said they wanted to leave – then you have the foundation for Friday’s result.

Of course, it is not as simple as that, with many younger voters will also have supported Brexit across England and Wales. But a big inter-generational divide in voting patterns is just one of the many talking points going forward.

8. Europe always slightly alien

Image copyrightAFP

The UK’s relationship with Europe has never been simple nor static.

It took the country years to join what was then the European Community and, even then, when it was last put to the vote in 1975 many backed it grudgingly or for narrow economic reasons.

Many of those have since changed their minds, with their earlier ambivalence turning into outright hostility. There have been decades of scepticism towards the EU among politicians and in large parts of the UK media.

The younger generation were generally seen as pro-EU but it remains to be seen – once the details of the voting is looked into – how the result broke down by age.

What appears clear from the campaign is that the vote to Leave was as much a statement about the country’s national identity, and all that involves, as it was about its economic and political future.

Courtesy The Island

* Shocked Supreme Court cancels Rs. 60 billion coal tender
* Credit ratings downgrade by Moody’s despite IMF programme
* Traders countrywide in open revolt against VAT
* World turned topsy-turvy by Brexit vote

June 25, 2016, 8:18 pm

In a landmark judgment delivered by the Supreme Court last Friday, the country’s highest court shot down a disputed coal tender with it being said in open court that the ‘conscience of the court was shocked’ by the conduct displayed by certain individuals involved in the process. The Norochcholai power plant requires 2.25 million tonnes of coal per annum and the practice is to award tenders for a three year’s supply – the biggest tender in the country worth over Rs. 60 billion. A dispute arose about a tender floated June 2014 to procure 6.75 million tonnes of coal with one of the bidders saying that the criteria had been changed after the bids had been opened. They went to the procurements Appeal Board which held that the criteria had indeed been changed after the bids had been opened and they recommended that the tender be cancelled and fresh bids called. (A detailed description of this dispute and accusations and counter accusations made appeared in The Sunday Island of Nov 7, 2015 and in the daily Island of 10 May 2016.)

However, instead of calling for fresh bids, a cabinet paper was presented in September 2015 by the Minister of Power and Renewable Energy recommending that cabinet award the contract to a certain party overriding the ruling of the Procurements Appeal Board. One of the bidders Messrs Nobel Resources of Singapore petitioned the Supreme Court saying that its rights had been infringed. The government of Sri Lanka argued that the petitioner had no standing (locus standi) to petition the Supreme Court because it was a Singapore based company which was not incorporated in Sri Lanka. The three member bench comprising Chief Justice K Sripavan, and Justices Priyasath Dep and Upali Abeyratne wanted the petitioner and the respondents to make written submissions as to whether the court can ignore wrongdoing by a public authority due to objections raised on the basis of the locus standi of the petitioner and if there is a misuse of public funds, whether the law requires the court to protect the public interest or to ignore all that on an argument of locus standi? It was after considering these two questions that the Supreme Court gave their landmark judgment last Friday.

Traditional UNP constituency turns militant

As this columnist has been saying all along, what will decide the fate of this government will not be politics but economics. The most significant event taking place at the moment in this regard are the waves of hartals spreading from town to town all over the country. Last week, hartals were held in the Gampaha town and in all towns in the Matara district. This started first only in individual towns. The Matara hartal was a new development where all towns in the district put down their shutters on the same day. This is an unprecedented protest movement that no one has ever seen before. Our generation has read about the 1953 hartal, but that was a protest movement launched by the public over the slashing of the rice subsidy. But what we are seeing now are hartals by the small and medium business community.

The VAT increase has obviously hit certain people harder than anyone expected. The drawing in of all retail and wholesale businesses grossing over Rs 33,000 a day has affected virtually every business in the towns. The finance minister’s explanation that it won’t be every business that makes over Rs. 33,000 a day that will have to pay the VAT but only those businesses that sell Rs. 33,000 worth of VAT liable goods per day that will have to pay the tax is little cause for relief. Certain items like rice, vegetables and pharmaceuticals are exempt from VAT. But most retail establishments in the towns will be selling both VAT exempt as well as VAT liable goods. The supermarkets may have detailed electronic billing systems which will enable differentiation of VAT liable and VAT exempt goods, but ordinary retail businesses don’t operate like that.

An ordinary grocery rarely gives the customer anything more than a hastily scribbled chit with the goods bought and the prices which is for the customer. Small retail businesses rarely retain records of what comes in and what goes out – everything is most often only in the owner’s head. Such business may end up paying VAT on VAT exempt goods as well, as very few of them have the ability to differentiate. Though all pharmaceuticals are exempt from VAT most pharmacies sell a range of non-medicinal products which are liable to VAT. Besides, the tax authorities are not known for their friendly approach either. The tax authorities raid business establishments the way the police raid kasippu joints. A pharmacy owner told this writer that when the tax authorities raided his establishment one day, all the employees had been told to empty their pockets onto the counter and once official who had sat on the cashiers chair had told the frightened manageress: “We’re going to nail your boss this time!”

That’s the way the tax authorities collect money from the small businessmen. The paperwork is no less daunting. A young man barely out of his teens started a small boutique in a town in Gampaha selling rice, curd, treacle and the like transported from the south. A couple of weeks after he commenced operations, he got a letter from the Inland Revenue Department asking him to declare his profits failing which the department will file action against him under such and such laws. The young man was frightened out of his wits. It will be a daunting task for small retailers to maintain separate accounts for VAT liable and VAT exempt goods in a manner that will satisfy the tax authorities. The government may have to move fast to defuse the situation building up in the towns.

The towns in most districts have been bastions of the UNP. It does not augur well for the UNP that this wave of hartals is taking place in their traditional constituency. This is not just a protest against the VAT. It is also a protest against the increase in vehicle prices making it that much more difficult for this class of small businessman to buy a vehicle. This class has been hit hard by the policies adopted by this government and it would be politically wise not to allow the situation to continue. All this while the local government elections are being postponed because of the anxieties of the Sirisena faction of the SLFP. But after this revolt in the towns, even the UNP will be having second thoughts about going in for an election. This is their traditional constituency that is in open revolt. How inclined would this small business class be to vote for this government after things have been made harder for them than it was before?

At least a part of the vehemence of the reaction is obviously due to the fact that that many of the protestors feel that they brought all this upon themselves by voting this government into power. This government has even more horrors in store for this particular class of people in the form of the capital gains tax which will seriously affect the provincial businessman class as they do quite a lot of buying and selling of property. The UNP should watch out lest this should result in a permanent change in the voting patterns. Before 1977, the left movement had a very significant presence in Colombo. This is why Bernard Soysa and Peiter Keunaman kept winning in the Colombo city electorates and why Kusala Abeywardene won the Borella electorate in 1970. But the government of 1970-77 caused a permanent shift in voting patterns with the left parties wiped out from the urban areas and the UNP establishing an overwhelming dominance in Colombo that has lasted to this day. The UNP should take care lest this process should be reversed.

It is not easy for the government to roll back the tax increases. It claims to have already exempted parts of the private medical care service from VAT when it comes to specialist consultations and medical tests and the like. Now if they are forced to abolish the VAT on the retail sector, the worries expressed by the credit ratings agencies about the IMF targets not being met will come true. Adding to the woes of the government, the Supreme Court has given leave to proceed in a fundamental rights case filed challenging the legality of the VAT increase because the government has not yet passed the sanctioning legislation. As of now it is being implemented administratively.

If the government keeps retreating on the VAT by issuing more and more exemptions, the IMF programme revenue targets will not be met and we may get shut out of the programme anyway. Then again, if the government tries to compensate for the retreat on VAT by increasing direct taxes such as income taxes and a new capital gains tax, once again they will be antagonising a community that has traditionally been UNP – talk of being in between a rock and a hard place!

Moody’s gives SL a negative outlook

This column has been closely following the unfolding economic situation in the country. In February the credit rating agency Moody’s gave Sri Lanka a B1 rating and a stable outlook categorisation. In doing so they explained that Sri Lanka had applied for an IMF loan and they expected the conditions in the IMF programme to restore financial stability to Sri Lanka. Thereafter Fitch ratings published their ratings for Sri Lanka, and gave Sri Lanka a negative outlook categorisation. They noted that even though Sri Lanka was to enter into a programme with the IMF, the foreign debts the government had taken on which were coming due before the end of this year would place an unbearable strain on foreign reserves. Standard and Poor’s was the last to publish their ratings for Sri Lanka and they too followed the lead set by Fitch.

Several weeks after that the IMF confirmed that they would be giving Sri Lanka a loan. Fitch and Moody’s responded immediately saying that they were not changing their rating because they were sceptical about the IMF’s programme for Sri Lanka given the ‘patchy’ implementation record of the government. Sometime laster, the IMF’s executive board approved the loan to Sri Lanka and the first tranche of 168 million USD came in. After all this happened, Moody’s which had been holding back, gave Sri Lanka a negative outlook categorisation. An experienced banker who wishes to remain anonymous told this writer that he had never heard of an instance where a country was given a negative outlook categorisation after entering into an IMF programme.

The reasons cited by Moody’s for giving SL an outlook negative categorisation, was firstly the expectation that the government’s debt burden will increase further. Following close upon this was the fear that the revenue collection measures of the government may not produce the expected income. Furthermore, Moody’s did not expect the IMF programme to go according to plan and they were convinced that the targets set by the IMF to reduce the Budget deficit would not be met. The government’s anti-Rajapaksa rhetoric has also done its part to earn this result. The yahapalana leaders’ oft-repeated claim that the Rajapaksas had concealed a mountain of liabilities running into billions and trillions has obviously frightened even the ratings agencies. Among hidden liabilities mentioned was 3.5 billion USD relating to Sri Lankan Airlines.

An industry expert told this writer that there was absolutely no way that the total liabilities of Sri:ankan Airlines even came close to 3.5 billion USD. However Moody’s has to go by the information available from Sri Lanka and when the Prime Minister of the country says that Srilankan Airlines has liabilities amounting to 3.5 billion USD, Moody’s has taken into account the serious situation where the liabilities of one state owned enterprise alone amount to 4% of the GDP! Moody’s has also observed that with economic growth expected to slow down, the persistent budget deficits would raise the government’s debt burden. In the circumstances they expected the government’s debt to GDP ratio to rise to 80% in a situation where the Central Bank report said that the debt to GDP ratio had risen from 71% at the end of 2014 to 76% by the end of 2015.

Moody’s has also warned that unsettled global economic conditions could further queer the pitch for Sri Lanka. Another very significant warning issued by the ratings agency is that foreign reserves only partially covers external debt due over the rest of the year and that funding from the IMF and other international agencies will not fully meet the needs of the country. They have also warned that foreign exchange reserves could fall further and balance of payment pressures would heighten. Furthermore Moody’s did not envisage any prospect of meeting the revenue collection targets set by the IMF. They are particularly concerned about the government’s constant wavering on the issue of taxes. They warned that if foreign reserves fell further and the markets became nervous, a further downgrade was possible.

The Moody’s negative outlook categorisation comes at a very inconvenient moment for the government just when they were trying to capitalise on the IMF programme and raise a huge syndicated loan. Now, that becomes that much more difficult and expensive with the negative outlook given by Moody’s.

Ranjan’s suggestion

It is very difficult for any intelligent individual to relate to a person like Ranjan Ramanayake. We have had other actors like Vijaya Kumaratunga, who also made it to the silver screen due to his good looks, but Vijaya had far greater depth than his kinsman Ranjan. In the early days before he entered politics, Vijaya had been like Ranjan, clad in tight-fitting T-shirts and sunglasses – there being little difference in appearance between the on-screen and off-screen Vijaya. But after he came into politics, Vijaya became a different person and he could convince even people like Colvin R. De Silva and Bernard Soysa to select him as the de facto leader of the left alliance which was in its incipient stages when he was assassinated. Ranjan never evolved and appears quite incapable of utilising the advantage of being a film star to do something constructive in politics. His antics since the yahapalana government came into power have been an embarrassment even to his own party. Though it is difficult to relate to an individual like Ramanayake, he has to be commended for being one of the few ministers who has not been using taxpayers money to led an ostentatious life. Though a showman by profession, he has not used public money to lead a showy life.

A very creditworthy suggestion made by Ranjan in a letter to the President and Prime Minister is to import identical vehicles for all ministers and MPs so that this race to outdo one another by ordering the most expensive and impressive looking limousine at taxpayers’ expense will cease. That is how it used to be in the old days. After the 1977 election, the newly elected MPs were all given the same red and white Mitsubishi jeep. A fleet of identical vehicles is much easier to maintain than a whole lot of different models. Ranjan’s suggestion was that the yahapalana government should follow the example of the newly elected Philippine president by getting down a fleet of reasonably priced vehicles for the use of people’s representatives. This is a suggestion that should be taken up if not by the present government, then by anyone who has any idea of forming a government in the future.

The people’s tolerance for the profligacy of people’s representatives has just about reached its limit. This writer feels that the present wave of hartals spreading from town to town countrywide was motivated at least in part by the sight of ministers getting supplementary estimates passed in parliament to buy super luxury vehicles for themselves while increasing the tax burden on the people. In fact in the anti-VAT demonstrations during the hartal in the Matara district, one of the shogans shouted by the shopkeepers was “Sepa wahana pasuwa ganna.” That ill-timed supplementary estimate and the flippant Marie Anotoinette like justifications trotted out by the ministers of this government have definitely touched a raw nerve among the public.

Politicians using taxpayers money for ostentatious transport not only makes for an ugly spectacle but also creates a mindset among people’s representatives that public money can be spent on living the high life. From there it is only one step forward to actually putting their hands into the till to enable them to live the same kind of life when they are no longer in politics.

Brexit: A new beginning for Britain

Britain has voted to exit the EU. Though the campaign to leave was clearly in the lead in the final weeks of the campaign, what gave the remain campaign a fillip at the eleventh hour was the murder of a pro-EU Labour Party MP Jo Cox by a man who is said to be a mentally deranged nationalist. This gave a nasty flavour to the leave campaign and precipitated a swing to the remain campaign. However when the results came in, the Brexit camp had won convincingly. The leaders of the two main political parties in Britain, the Conservatives and Labour have had their snouts rubbed on the ground as has Nick Clegg the leader of the third party the Social Democrats. Nigel Farage the leader of the UK Independence Party which has only one seat in parliament but which got over three million votes, is undoubtedly the man of the match.

The vote to leave does not mean that there will be an automatic divorce. The British government now has to start the process of leaving the EU which will take some time. But the concerns that motivated the British public to vote to leave Britain resonates well with the Sri Lankan public as well. Just as the British public wanted freedom from Brussels, our people seek freedom from certain foreign powers that dictate terms to our government. Just as the British public wants more control over their borders and immigration we too want to prevent our country being overrun by Indians under a comprehensive economic partnership style agreement which allows the movement of natural persons. To the British these were more important issues than the fears of an economic setback which was the main argument of all those who wanted to remain within the EU.

The economic argument may not have gained much traction because each Briton would have felt that if this marriage with the EU continued he would have been out of a job anyway due to uncontrolled immigration. People feared most for the futures of their children if these trends continued. The other parallel with Sri Lanka is of course that the Conservative Party, the Labour Party and the Social Democrats where all shown up to be quite out of sync with the mood of the British public. In Sri Lanka too the UNP, the Sirisena-controlled SLFP and the JVP are losing support while an opposition force that does not even have a name yet, is gaining ground. A silent revolution is sweeping the world.

Dr. Chula Rajapakse Lower Hutt New Zealand

Dear Editor,

British Prime Minister David Cameron’s ignominious exit from No 10 Downing Street,  leaving in it’s wake the possible disintegration not only of the EU but also of the U.K. with Scotland seeking to leave it to remain a part of EU, is poetic justice and just retribution for his Tamil Tiger inspired disgraceful antics at wrecking the Colombo CHOGM in 2013, and the benefits Sri Lanka  planned to reap from it.

He therefore follows a similar fate to that of David Milibank who earlier tried to wreck little Sri Lanka’s liberation from three decades of Tiger Terror. David Milibank was forced out of politics by his own younger brother Ed  who displaced him as leader of opposition and the leader of the  British Labour party.

What goes around comes around!

Dr. Chula Rajapakse

Lower Hutt

New Zealand