ධර්මන් වික‍්‍රමරත්න

තවත් අයවැයක් ඉදිරිපත් විය. එය 2002දී එජාප ආණ්ඩුව හදුන්වා දුන් යළි පුබුදුමු ශ්‍රී ලංකා වැඩසටහනේ නව සංස්කරණයකි. ජනතාව මුලාකරන සෙල්ලමකි. පෞද්ගලීකරණයට වැඩි බර තබමින් වෙළෙඳ පොළ මත ආර්ථිකය තීරණය කිරීමට ඉඩදී බලා සිටින අයවැයකි. අයවැයට නිශ්චිත දැක්මක් හෝ අරමුණක් නොමැත.

සේවක අර්ථසාධක සහ සේවක භාරකාර අරමුදල ජාවාරම්කාරයින්ට බිලිදෙන කොල්ලකෑමකි. ගොවීන්ගේ පොහොර සහනාධාරයට මහ දවල් පොකට් ගසා ඇත. රජයේ සේවකයින් 2016 ජනවාරි සිට බඳවා ගැනීමේදී දැන් ක්‍රියාත්මකවන රාජ්‍ය විශ්‍රාම වැටුප හබක්ය. පාසැල් දරු දැරියන්ගේ නිල ඇඳුමට අමුතු උප්පරවැට්ටියකි. පෞද්ගලික සරසවි හරහා අධ්‍යාපනය වෙළඳ භාණ්ඩයකි. කොන්ත්‍රාත් සේවක වහල් ක්‍රමය තවත් පුළුල්කර ඇත. කම්කරුවන්ට ගොවීන්ට, ධීවරයින්ට, ශිෂ්‍යයින්ට, කාන්තාවන්ට, තරුණයින්ට ඇතුළු කිසිවෙකුට අයවැයෙන් සැබෑ සහන නැත. ශ්‍රී ලංකාව ඉදිරියට ගෙන යෑමට මෙවර අයවැයේ ආර්ථික උපායමාර්ග අසමත්ය. එය පුස් බංකොලොත් අයවැයකි. ජනතාවට මර උගුලකි.

‘වෙනසක්’ වෙනුවෙන් පෙනී සිටි නිරූපන ශිල්පීන් පිරිසක්.

එහෙත් සුද්දන්ට කුණු කොල්ලයට ඉඩම්ය. මහින්ද රාජපක්ෂ ආණ්ඩුව විදේශිකයන්ට ඉඩම් පවරා දුන්නේ නැත. සියයට සියයක් බදු පැවරුවේය. ලොකු පෞද්ගලික සමාගම්වලට, ඉහළ පැලැන්තියට සහන හෝල් සේල්ය. දුප්පතුන් පමණක් නොව ඉහළ සහ පහළ මධ්‍යම පාන්තිකයන්ටද අයවැයෙන් හතේ හත වැදෙනු ඇත.

බඩු මිල පහල දැමීම නයි-ඉණිමන් සෙල්ලම කැටයෙන් කරනවා වාගේ වැඩකි. එදා රුපියල් 140ට තිබූ පරිප්පු කිලෝව මෑතකදී 240 දක්වා ඉහළ දැමුවේය. අයවැය මගින් දැන් එය යළි රුපියල් 169 දක්වා පහළට දමා තිබේ. පාසැල් දරුවන්ට නිල ඇදුම් මැසීමට දැන් ලැබෙනුයේ රුපියල් 350ක වව්චරයකි. එදා නිල ඇදුම් ජෝඩු දෙකකට රෙදි ලැබුණේය. පිරිවෙන්හි අධ්‍යාපනය ලබන පැවිදි ශිෂ්‍යයින් 35,662කට සහ ගිහි ශිෂ්‍යයින් 30,542කට 2015 හිමිවිය යුතු සිවුරු සහ නිල ඇදුම් තවමත් ලැබී නැත. දැන් කියනුයේ එය 2016 නිල ඇදුම් සමඟ ලබාදෙන බවකි. අධ්‍යාපනය අයිතීන් ලබාගැනීම  ඉදිරියේදී ගඟට ඉනි කැපුවා වගේ වැඩකි.

මහින්ද රාජපක්ෂ ආණ්ඩුව රාජ්‍ය සේවකයින්ට තීරුබදු රහිතව රුපියල් 50,000ට යතුරු පැදියක් දුන්නේය. ලක්ෂ ගණනක සේවකයෝ එයට හිමිකම් කීය. යතුරු පැදියේ යනවිට වැස්සට තෙමෙන නිසා ඒ වෙනුවට යහපාලනය යටතේ රජයේ සේවකයින්ට දෙන්නට යෝජනා කළේ මෝටර් රථයකි. වාහන මිලට බදු පනවා දැන් එය සිහිනයකි. වෑන් රථයක් ලක්ෂ 30කින්ද, හයිබ්‍රිඩ් රථයක් ලක්ෂ 4කින්ද, ඉලෙක්ට්‍රික් මෝටර් රථයක් ලක්ෂ 20කින්ද ත්‍රීරෝද රථයක් 150,000කින්ද වැඩිවි ඇත.

අයවැයෙන් වැඩිවූයේ වාහන පමණක් නොවේ. වැඩිකල බදුබර අනුව විදුලි බිල, ජංගම දුරකථන ගාස්තු, හෝටල් සේවා ගාස්තු ඉහලට යෑම නතරකල නොහැක. අලුතින් සමාගමක් ලියාපදිංචියට රුපියල් 60,000කි. එය අහෝසි කිරීමට රුපියල් 250,000කි. ආර්ථිකයේ මර්මස්ථාන ජාවාරම්කාර පැලැන්තියකට අත්පත්කර ගැනීමට ඉඩකඩ සලසමින් සිටී.

තේ දල්ලට මිලක් ලැබුණේද නැත. රබර්ද එසේමය. බදු අඩු නැත. රැකියා විරහිත උපාධිධාරින්ට රැකියා දෙන බව කීවද එයට අදාල වැය ශීර්ෂයක්ද නැත. එහෙත් ඇමති සංඛ්‍යාව හෙට අනිද්දා තවත් වැඩිවනු ඇත. පරාජිත ශ්‍රිලනිප මන්ත්‍රීවරුන් තිදෙනෙක් පඩිනඩි, යාන වාහන ලබාදී මිලියන ගණනක් වැයකර ජනාධිපති ව්‍යාපෘති අධ්‍යක්ෂවරුන් බවට පත්කරමින් ජනතාවට තවත් බරක් පැටවූවේය. මේ සියල්ල අතරතුර දෙමළ බෙදුම්වාදීන් යැයි සැකකර අත්අඩංගුවට ගෙන සිටි ද්‍රවිඩ ජාතින් 269ක් ඇප පිට නිදහස්ය. දෙමළ බෙදුම්වාදයට සම්බන්ධ ජාත්‍යන්තර එන්.ජී.ඕ 8ක තහනම ඉවතටය.

පොහොර සහනාධාරය කප්පාදු කොට ගොවියා කබලෙන් ලිපට දමා ඇත. ආණ්ඩුව කියන්නේ පොහොර සහනාධාරයට ජනතා බදු මුදල් අතිවිශාල ප්‍රමාණයක් වැයවූවද අපේක්ෂිත අරමුණ ඉටු නොවන බවය. ඇතැම්විට ඊළඟ අයවැයේදි මෙම ‘නාස්තිකාර වියදම’ සම්පූර්ණයෙන් කපා දැමීමට වුවද ‘යහපාලන’ ටිකිරි මොළයට දැනුනොත් එහි පුදුමයක්ද නැත. පොහොර සහනාධාරය වෙනුවෙන් යල සහ මහ කන්න දෙකටම දෙන්නේ රුපියල් 25,000කි. එයද හෙක්ටරයකට අඩු ගොවිබිම් වලටය. මහින්ද රාජපක්ෂ ආණ්ඩුවේ පොහොර සහනාධාරය නිසා රට සහල් වලින් ස්වයංපෝෂිත විය. සහල් අතිරික්තයක් ලැබිණි. සහල් කිලෝවක මිල 60ට අඩුවිය. වසර 10කට ආසන්න කාලයක් තුළ එය සිදුවිය. පොහොර නොදැමීමෙන් වී පලදාව අඩුවනු ඇත. සහල් මිල ඉහළ යනු ඇත. සහල් කිලෝවක් නිපදවීමට රුපියල් 68ක් අවමය වනු ඇත. අතරමැදියන් සහ වෙළෙදුන් එක්වූ සහල් පාරිභෝගිකයින්ට හතේ හතය. ඇමරිකාවට තිරිඟු පිටි අපනයනය කර ශ්‍රී ලංකාවේ හොද පාරිභෝගික වෙළඳ පොලක් දැන් සාදා ගැනීමේ ඉඩ ප්‍රස්ථාව විවරකර ඇත.

එක ගමක් සංවර්ධනය කරන්නට ලක්ෂ 150කි. ගමට ලක්ෂ 150ක් තබා විමධ්‍යගත මුදල් යටතේ 2015 වසරේදී පාර්ලිමේන්තු මන්ත්‍රීවරුන්ට ලබාදෙන බවට අතුරු අයවැයෙන් පොරොන්දුවූ  ලක්ෂ 100ක මුදලවත් මෙතෙක් ලබාදී නැත. ලබන 2016 විමධ්‍යගත අයවැය යටතේ ලක්ෂ 150ක් දෙන බව කීවද තවමත් කථාව දෝලාවෙන්ය. ගමන පයින්ය. මහින්ද රාජපක්ෂ ආණ්ඩුවේ එක ගමට එක වැඩක් යටතේ ග්‍රාම නිලධාරි කොට්ඨාශ 14,000කට වසර 5ක් පුරා වාර්ෂිකව රුපියල් දස ලක්ෂයක් ගමේ පොදු වැඩකට ලැබුණේය. එයද ගමේ ක්‍රියාත්මක වන වෙනත් යෝධ යටිතල පහසුකම් සංවර්ධන වැඩසටහන් වලට අමතරවය.

වාර්ෂික වාහන දුම් සහතික පතට රුපියල් 5,000කි. එය රුපියල් 3,900ක වැඩිවිමකි. මාර්ග තදබදය අඩුවන තෙක් අලුතින් කාර් එකක් ගැනීම අයවැයෙන් කල්තැබූ ජනතාවක් සිටින ලෝකයේ එකම රට ලංකාව විය හැකිය. ලංකාවේ වාහන ලක්ෂ 15ක් පමණ වේ. දුම් සහතික දෙන්නේ සමාගම් දෙකකි.  ඌරන් කැකුණ තලනකොට හබන් කුකුළන්ට ජය මඟුල්ය. දුම් විමෝචන ගාස්තුව නිසා රටට බරක් නැති ස්වයංරැකියාවක් වන පාසැල් ලමුන් ප්‍රවාහන වෑන් රථ 40,000කට පමණ අතිරේක බරක් දැරීමට සිදුවේ. ලබන වසරේ පාසැල් වෑන්රථවල යන ලමුන්ගෙන් ඒ සඳහා වැඩිපුර රුපියල් 200ක් ගෙවිය යුතු බව දෙමාපියන්ට දැනටමත් දැනුම්දී ඇත.

ටෙලිකොම් සහ මොබිටෙල් සමාගමේ ගෝරියකි. ඇතුළත් ගැටය. පිටත් ගැටය. රෝස මලේ නටුවේ කටු කියමින් ටෙලිකොම්හි අධ්‍යක්ෂක ධුරයට සිය පුත්‍රයා පත්කර පැණි උරන්නේ පවුල් පාලනයට තැවතීමේ තිත තබනවා කීයූ පරාජිත අපේක්ෂිකාවකි. ටෙලිකොම් සමාගම තවත් පෞද්ගලික දුරකථන සමාගමක් වෙළෙඳපොලේ නියමිත මිලට වඩා ඇමරිකන් ඩොලර් මිලියන 30කට ආසන්න වැඩි මිලකින් ලබාගන්නට යෑමෙන් දැන් එතෙන ලොකු ගාල ගෝට්ටියකි. යහපාලන ඇත්තෝම හත්පොලේම ගාගෙන දබරකර ගනිති.

ඉතිහාසයේ පළමු වතාවට අධ්‍යාපනයට සියයට 6ක් වෙන්කර ඇතැයි කී කථාව ටොම් පචයා චිත්‍රපටියද පැරදවීමකි. සියයට 6 හදා ඇත්තේ අධ්‍යාපන අමාත්‍යාංශයට අයත් සියළු ඉඩම්, ගොඩනැගිලි, පාසැල්, ඩෙස් පුටු, භාවිතාවන වාහන, මහින්දෝදය විද්‍යාගාර, පාසැල් වැසිකිලි සහ කැසිකිලි ඇතුළු හැට හුට හමාරක් සමඟය. හැට හෝ හුට කෙසේ වෙතත් ෆූටා(විශ්ව විද්‍යාල ආචාර්යවරුන්ගේ සංගමය) නායකයින්ට නම් පැමිණි දුක් පැණි රසය. යහපාලනය වෙනුවෙන් උදු වැපුරූ ෆූටාවේ ඇතැම් ඇදුරෝ මුං බලාපොරොත්තු විය. අධ්‍යාපනයට සියයට 6 වෙන්කල තියරිය සොයාගත් කයිකන් අප්පු කළේ කයිකන් අප්පුට අවශ්‍ය විදිහටය. අධ්‍යාපනයට මුදල් හිඟවූවද පොලිස් කොට්ඨාශ ගණන 428 සිට 600 දක්වා වැඩිකර ඇත.

වැඩි පඩි සහ සම්පත් සොයා උගතුන් රට හැර ගියේය. රාජ්‍ය සේවයට එන උගතුන් සහ බුද්ධිමතුන්ට තීරු බදු රහිත වාහන බලපත්‍රයක් ලැබුණේ බුද්ධිගලනය නතර කිරීමේ එක් පියවරක් වශයෙනි. රජයේ ජේෂ්ඨ නිලධාරින්, වෛද්‍යවරුන්, ඉංජිනේරුවරුන්, සරසවි කථිකාචාර්යවරුන්, ගණකාධිකාරිවරුන් වැන්නෝ මෙම බලපත්‍රයට හිමිකම් කීහ. දැන් ඔවුනට මෙවර අයවැයෙන් වාහන බලපත්‍රය අහෝසිය. උගතුනට සහ බුද්ධිමතුන්ට අපමණ අගයකි. තීරු බදු රහිත බලපත්‍ර වලින් රජයට අහිමිවන ආදායමට වඩා බුද්ධිගලනයෙන් මව්බිමට සිදුවන පාඩුව මිල කල නොහැක.

බැංකුවලට 2016 සිට කල්බදු ලීසිං තහනම්ය. දිවිනැගුම බැංකුවේ අරමුදල් ජාතික ඉතිරිකිරිමේ බැංකු සමඟ එකාබද්ධ කර ඇත. දිවිනැගුම ප්‍රතිලාභින්ට ඉන් කිසිම සුගතියක් නැත. ගෑස්, කිරිපිටි මිල ඇතුළු අතවශ්‍ය භාණ්ඩ වර්ග 11ක මිල පහත හෙලීම ඇස් බැන්දුමකි. මේවා හිඟන්නන්ට පවුඩර් දෙනවා වාගේ වැඩක්ය. උපරිම මිලක් නියම කලද පාලන මිලක් නැත. දේශීය කිරිපිටි අඩුකිරීමෙන් බඩේ පහර වැදුනේ කිරි ගොවියන්ටය. කුඩා තේවතු හිමියන්ට, රබර් වතු හිමියන්ට, අල ගොවින්ටද සහතික මිලක් මෙම අයවැයෙන් ලබාදී නැත.

කම්කරු නීති සංශෝධනයට ලක්කිරීමේ යෝජනාවකි. පෞද්ගලික අංශයට දින 5 සතියක් අයවැයෙන් ලබාදීම හාම්පුතුන්ට සේවක ශ්‍රමය සූරාකෑමට හොද ඉල්ලමකි. සතියකට දින 5ක් සේවකයින්ට ෂෝක්ද?  මෙම වසරේදී ජාතික කම්කරු සභාවට දින 5 යෝජනාව ඉදිරිපත් කළේ හාම්පුතුන්ගේ සම්මේලනය මගිනි. එසේ නොමැතිව එම සභාව නියෝජනය කරන පිළිගත් වාත්තීය සමිති 47න් එකක් හෝ නොවේ. හාම්පුතුන්ගේ සම්මේලනය එහිදී ඉල්ලා සිටියේ කර්මාන්තශාලාවල යන්ත්‍ර සූත්‍ර ක්ෂයවීම්, ඉන්ධන, විදුලිය, ජලය, ආහාර,දුරකථන ගාස්තු, අනෙකුත් සේවා සෙනසුරාදා දිනයේත් වැයවීමට සාපේක්ෂව ආදායම අඩු බැවින් එදින සේවකයින්ට නිවාඩු දිනයක් බවට පත්කොට සතියේ දින පහේ සේවා කාලය පැය 9ක් කිරීම දෙපාර්ශවයටම වාසිදායක බවය. එහිදී වෘත්තීය සමිති පෙන්වා දුන්නේ  පැය 8 පැය 9 බවට පත්කිරීමෙන් කම්කරු ප්‍රඥ්ඥප්තිය පවා උල්ලංඝණය කෙරෙන බවකි. වැඩිවන පැයට ප්‍රමාණවත් අතිකාල දීමනාවක් හාම්පුතුන් එහිදී ඉදිරිපත් නොකළේය. එම යෝජනාව විසදුමක් නොමැතිව ගලායමින් තිබියදී මෙවර අයවැය මගින් එය බෞතීස්ම කිරීමේ ප්‍රයත්නයක් දරා තිබේ. දිනකට පැය 9 සේවයේ කටුනායක සහ බියගම ආයෝජන කලාපයේ කම්හල් කිහිපයක දැනටම ක්‍රියාත්මක නොවෙනවා නොවේ.

විදේශකයින්ට මෙරට ඉඩම් අයිතියට තිබූ සීමා ඉවත් කිරීම, ආයෝජන සඳහා බදු සහන ලබාදීම, සුපිරි බද්ද අහෝසි කිරීම ආදිය මෙවර අයවැයෙන් යෝජනා කර තිබේ. දිනකට පැය 9 ‍ක සේවා මුර යෝජනාව සලකා බලන්නට සිදුවෙන්නේ මෙහෙව් පසුබිමකය. අයවැයෙන් පාර කැපෙනු ඇත්තේ සැබෑ ආයෝජකයින්ට නොව ශ්‍රම මංකොල්ලකරුවන්ටය. ද්විත්ව පුරවැසි ඉල්ලා සිටි 14,525කින් දැනටමත් 3,000කට උත්සවශ්‍රීයෙන් පුරවැසිකම් ලබාදී ඇත. ඔස්ට්‍රේලියානු පුරවැසියන් 648කට එමගින්  ශ්‍රී ලංකා පුරවැසිකම හිමිවූවද කුමාර් ගුණරත්නම් තවමත් සිටින්නේ කෑගල්ල බන්ධනාගාරයේය.

ඒකාබද්ධ විපක්ෂය ලෙස පෙනි සිටින ශ්‍රිලනිප ජනතා හිතවාදී මන්ත්‍රීවරුන්, මහජන එක්සත් පෙරමුණ, ජාතික නිදහස් පෙරමුණ, කොමියුනිස්ට් පක්ෂය, පිවිතුරු හෙළ උරුමය ඇතුළු පාර්ලිමේන්තු මන්ත්‍රීවරුන්ගේ සංඛ්‍යාව 41කි. කථානායක පිළිගත්  විපක්ෂයට ඇත්තේද මන්ත්‍රීධූර 22කි. ඒ උතුරු නැගෙනහිර නියෝජනය කරන ද්‍රවිඩ සන්ධානයේ මන්ත්‍රීවරුන් 16ක් සහ ජනතා විමුක්ති පෙරමුණේ මන්ත්‍රීවරුන් 6කි. අයවැය හමුවේ ඔවුන්ගේ භුමිකාව දෙස රටම බලා සිටී.

බම්බුවේ තැම්බුවත් ගොට්ටේ තැම්බුවත් හැලියේ කටට රෙද්ද බැඳලා තැම්බුවත් කුරක්කන් පිට්ටු නං කුරක්කන් පිට්ටුමය. එමෙන්ම උණ පුරුකේ ඇද හරින්නට බැරිවා සේ එජාප ආණ්ඩුවල අයවැය කැරැට්ටුවද දන්නෝ දනිති. අයවැයට පක්ෂ ශ්‍රිලනිප මන්ත්‍රීවරුන්ට අලුතින් වාහනයක්, ඉන්ධන සමගින් රියදුරෙක් සහ සෙසු සංතෝසම්ද ලැබෙනු ඇත. ජනතාවට දුක ශ්‍රිලනිප වාහෙලා පිරිසක්ද මේවාට හෝයියා කීමට දියවන්නාවේ සිටීමය. සීබ්‍රා වගේද කෝබ්‍රා කියන්නේ මේවාටය.

ධර්මන් වික්‍රමරත්න 

journalists@gmail.com

ඡායාරූප සටහන්

Sri Lanka Well Wisher.

It was just that to get anything done at the Ministry of Education you had to go through Mr Sunil aka ‘Gonawala Suni’l. Let me briefly explain my experience.

During the 80’s my sister and BIL lived in Kandegoda, Ambalangoda, with my mother.  My BIL worked in Colombo and travelled daily to Colombo on the Samudra Devi. They had two son’s one at Trinity and the younger fellow at Dharmasoka. As my sister was at home she used to teach English to the village kids absolutely free. Naturally the number of kids grew.

Then the Vice Principal of the village school Kandegoda Maha Vidyalaya wanted my sister to come and Teach English for the school ids. (By the way the Vice Principal happened to be my Grandfathers drivers daughter – a graduate Teacher.). Again my sister taught gratis on a volunteer basis. Later they wanted her to join the staff, which she did as by then she was involved with various other activities of the school.

My mother made the mistake of telling my sister that if she was going to be teaching she might as well do it properly and become a Trained Teacher. With much inconvenience she attended the Teacher Training School at Bolawalana close to Negombo.

Now after she graduated she got a posting in the Hambantota District. So now, they had a situation of living in Ambalangoda, Husband working in Colombo, wife at somewhere in Hambantota, one son in Kandy and the other in Ambalangoda. No amount of appeals from my Sister, the village school and the Principal was even considered. When all avenues failed my BIL spoke with Gamini Dissanayake who was a good friend of both my brother and BIL as they were school mates at Trinity.  GD arranged for my BIL to meet Ranil who at that time was the Minister for Education. Ranil told my BIL to go and meet coordinating officer Mr Sunil at the Ministry. He did not know who this Mr Sunil was. Anyway he went to the Ministry and waited outside Mr Sunil’s office for hours. Then he saw a person dressed in white go into the office. He didn’t like the of him and asked the peon or the catcher fellow outside who that person was. He had said ” e sir apey Suni sir ne. Mr Sunil Gonawala”. It then only clicked who this Mr Sunil was. My BIL had thought to himself if this is the kind of thug I have to go and speak with might as well bugger the job, he collected his papers went home, arranged to pay the Bond and asked my sister to stay at home.

This is not an isolated case. Nothing in that Ministry got done without the say so of Gonawela Sunil.  Every thing apparently was done at a price. So that is the way Mr Clean Ranil Wickramasinghe operated.

As far as I am aware Ranil is a conceited dreamer who trusts no one other than his cronies, and most definitely not the electorate and lives in a world of his own. He may think he is doing the best but sadly I don’t think so.

the “West” has NEVER gone out of it’s way to help Sri Lanka in a meaningful way. They have the greater portion of the Trade as it benefits them. The Old Fox JR with all his so called US ties and having an absolute pro Western stance was left to his own devices when the sh1t hit the fan. China on the other hand has been Sri Lanka’s friend irrespective of which Party was in Power. So was Pakistan and Russia. The Western countries where there is a sizeable Tamil Diaspora voter base blindly pander to their tune.

Appeasement will never bring reconciliation.  When DB W​i​jethunga said that the minorities are like the vines entwined on a tree, he did not mean to disparage the Minorities. I believe what he meant was for the vines also  to survive the tree itself must be strong and survive. The minorities especially the Tamils should realize that. Yes  obviously there are areas where improvement is necessary. But it must be a two way thing. Whatever is done is not enough for the Tamil Politicians. Saumya Murti Thondaman did and got more for his people by working with JR. The Sinhalese as a community have been bending over backwards to make positive gesturers to the Tamil community since 1983 or even before. but this has NOT been re

The way Ranil, Sira and Mangala are heading is to undermine the Sinhala community.  With a nation at peace – thanks to MR – we can prosper economically, if the morale of the majority is high. If the self esteem and the morale of the Sinhalese are shattered we will not achieve broad based economic advancement. With Ranil it has not happened, it is not happening nor will it happen in the future.

Beginning of LTTE Suicide Attacks- Courtesy Sinhalenet

A 18-year-old man from Kokkuvil Hindu College, Senthuran Rajeswaran, born on 18^th September 1997, widely believe as a very close associates of the LTTE Tamil terrorists and pro-separatist diaspora student leader from Koappaay North, went ahead with suicide mission of his life Thursday morning by jumping in front of a speeding train at Kokkuvil junction for the sake LTTE terrorists and Tamil terrorism.
His body was found torn into pieces in school uniform and police and Army intelligence officers are investigating his association of re-activation of LTTE Tamil terrorism again in Sri Lanka.

Pro-LTTE Tamil terrorists’ students at the University of Jaffna launched violence demonstration soon after the suicide mission completed by Senthuran Rajeswaran as to looks like a pre-planned mission.

It is common culture in the Tamil communities to perform a suicide mission for every pretty things like dead of a film stars, politicians and even for popular a sportspersons.  

 ධර්මසිරි සෙනෙවිරත්න

 ජෙනීවා , ඔබේ අනියම් සැමියා විසින් ඔබ අසරණ කර තම සිතැඟි ඔහුට රිසි අයුරින් සපුරා ගන්නා බව අපි දනිමු  ඔබ ඔහු අ ත ඇති මල් පොකුරක එක මලකි. තවත් ලස්සන මල් ඒ මල් පොකුරට  යා කර ගන්නට ඔහු ඔබවද යොදා ගනී . ලෙයින් මසින් ඔහුගේ මනදොල පුරවනවා මදිවට ඔහුට  ‘පිම්පි  ”කම් කිරීමටද ඔබට සිදුවී ඇත .නියම හෝ අනියම් කිසිදු ගැහැනියක්  තම තුරුලේ සිටින මිනිහෙක් තවත් ගැහැනුන් තුරුලට ගන්නවාට සාමාන්‍යයෙන් අකමැතිය .එහෙත් අසාමාන්‍ය ත ත්වයන් යටතේ අසාමාන්‍ය ගැහැනුද ඇත .ඔබද ඉන් එකියක් විය හැක .අනියම්  සැමියා බෙහවින් බලවත්ය ලෝක පොලිස් කාරයෙක් මෙන් චන්ඩි පාට්  දමන්නෙකි සල්ලාලකම මෙන්ම අනුන්ගේ දේ කොල්ල කෑමට ගොස් ටිකෙන් ටික සකල ධනය විනාශ කර ගනිමින් සිටින ඔබේ අනියම් සැමියා හදන්නේ  මැරෙන්නට පෙර හැකි තරම්  විනෝද වීමටය ”’කාපල්ලා බීපල්ලා  ජොලි කරපල්ලා ‘ යනු ඔහුගේ  ජාතික  ගීතයය්.
                                            මේ විස්තර  හොදින් දත්  ඔබටත් වඩා දක්ෂ පිම්පියෝ දැන් ලංකාවට අරක් ගෙන ඇත .ඔවුහු ඔබට ඉතසිතින් සහය  දීමට කැමතිය  . එන්න  ජෙනීවා  ඔවුන් ලස්සන ලස්සන මල්  ඔබට පෙන්වනු ඇත . වසර තිස් ගානක් තිස්සේ දුර්ඝන්ධය පැතිරී  තිබු රටක් සුවඳ වත් කල ඒ මල් වැනි මල් වෙන රටකින් සොයා ගත නොහැක .එවැනි දුර්ලභ පුෂ්පයන් මෙහි පිම්පියන් විසින් ඔබට  පෙන්වනු ඇත . හැබය් පෙන්වන්නේ අතින් නොවේ . එනිසා අත් දිහා නොබලා  උන්ගේ නහය නැටවෙන විදිහ බලන්න .වැඩිය ප්‍රසිද්ධ නොවෙන සේ පිම්පි කම් කර න්නට උන් දක්ෂය මොන පාදඩ වැඩ ය කලත් පස්සේ සුදනන් වෙන්නටය් උන් නහයෙන් පෙන්වන්නේ ..ඔබ ක්‍රම සහ විධි  උන් ගෙන් ඉගෙන ගන්න . උන්ටත්  සොච්චමක් ඉල්ලා දෙන්න ඔබේ අනියම් සැමියා ගෙන්  . . උන්ගේ ”එදාවේල ටුවර්ස් ”’ වලට එය සෑ හෙය්  . උන්ට අනාගතයක් අවශ්ෂ්‍ය නැත .. උන්  ටත් අවශ්ෂ්‍ය ඔබේ අනියම් සැමියාගේ  ජාතික ගීය  ගයන්නටය .””කාපල්ලා බීපල්ලා …..””””
                                                   කෙක්කක්  නැතිවම මේ මල් කඩ න්නට  බට හැකිවෙන පරිදි අතු ඉති බිමට නමාගෙන දැනටමත්   උන් ලෑ ස්තිවී ඇත. ඩෙස්මන්ඩ් සිල්වා  විසින්  දුන්”” සළු පිළිවලින්”” සැරසී ගරු ඝාම්බීර ලෙස  තම විලිවසාගෙන සිටි  මේ පුෂ්පයන්  නිරුවත් කර ඔබට බලන්නට දැන්  සුදානම්ය.. ඉතින් ඔබට ඇත්තේ මේ මල් කඩාගෙන ගොස් ඔබේඅනියම්   සැමියාට   අවශ්‍ය දෙ  යක් කර ගැනීමට ඉඩදී ”කවුළුවඅතරින්   ” හොරෙන් බලාසිටීමය්  . ඒ ජො ලියත් ම දෑ  නේද ?.
                                    අනේ ජෙනීවා  ඔබේ  හොර මිනිහාට  කියන්න ” අපිට සලකනවානම්  මල් නොවෙයය්   මුළු මහත් පරිසරයම  එයාගේ අවල කෙළියටගැලපෙන පරිදි  සුදානම් කිරීමට අපි ලෑ ස්තිය්  කියල .”’ ලංකා පිම්පියෝ  කියනවා කියල . චීනෙන් අරගෙන හරි අපිටත් ඩොලර් දෙනවනම් උගේ  පොකුරේ  තවත් මලක් වෙන්න අපි සුදානම්  කියලත් කියන්න  සිල් ගන්න ජාතියක ගේ  සිල් බිඳින  ඕනෑම දෙයක් කරන්න ලංකා පිම්පියෝසුදානම්  කිව්වය් කිව්වම  ඒ වචන ටිකෙන් මිනිහා සියල්ල තේරුම් ගනිය්. මෙරට තවත් පිලිපීනයක්  හෙවත් විදේශික  ගණිකා මඩමක් වුනත් කවුද ගණන් ගන්නේ . දැනට මේ ඇති . හමු වුනාම ඉතිරි ටික කියන්නම්.  

වෛද්‍ය රුවන් එම් ජයතුංග

Texas teen handcuffed, arrested for bringing homemade clock to school 

හැදුවා මම තනිවම

අරුම පුදුම බඩුවක්

සිසුන් ගුරුන් පුදුම කරන්න​

පරිගණකයකින් ගලවාගත්

කොටස් එකලස් කර​

හැදුවා මම ඔරලෝසුවක්

අරුම පුදුම මේ බලන්න

ගෙන ගියත් එය ගුරුතුමිය වෙත

ලොකු හරියක් දාගන්න​ට

පැන දිව්වා ඇය මර බයෙන්

නිපැයුම මගෙ බෝම්බයක් කියමින්

දිවි ගලවාගන්න පන්තියේ ළමයි

සැඟඋනා මේස ය​ට

ගැහෙනවා ඔවුන් මර බයෙන්

සමහරු කලිසම් තෙමාගෙන

මුළු පාසලම ගෝට්ටියක්

සිසුන් ගුරුන් හිස් ලුලූ අත දුවන​

නව නිපැයුම අතේ තියන්

හිටියා මම බලාගෙන

නමත් මගේ අහමඩ්

ආගමත් ඉස්ලාම්

ඒ නිසා තැතිගත් විදුහල්පති

කථා කෙරුවා පොලීසියට

පොලිසියෙන් විත් පාසලට

කුදලාගෙන ගියේය මා

ඉස්ලාම් ත්‍රස්තයෙකු ලෙසට

අනේ මගේ ආත්ම ගෞරවය

සේදී ගියානේ මොහොතින්

ඉස්ලාම් ත්‍රස්තයෙකු කියමින්

කෙල ගැසූවයි පාසලේ ළමුන්

තරහෙන්  මගේ මුහුණට

මාංචුලා මගේ දෑත​ට

අපරාධකරුවෙකු විලස​ට

පොලිස්කරුවා දැක්කුවේය

ළමා රැඳවුම්ගාරයකට මාව

අනේ මම නොවෙමි ත්‍රස්තවාදියෙක්

ළමයෙකු වෙමි මම කුතුහලය තිබෙන

ඒකයි හැදුවේ මේ ඔරලෝසුව

තේරෙන්නේ නැද්ද ඔහෙල​ට

අල්ලාගේ නමින් මරාගෙන මැරෙන

ත්‍රස්තවාදීන් හිටියත් සැමතැන

නොවෙමි මා ත්‍රස්තයෙක්

ජීවිත නසන දේපළ වනසන

වෙමි මම පොඩි ළමයෙක්

නව නිපැයුම් කරන

වෛද්‍ය රුවන් එම් ජයතුංග

Courtesy Island

Former External Affairs Minister Prof. G.L. Peiris has alleged that the country is in chaos due to the government’s failure in every sector. Prof. Peiris issued the following statement headlined ‘The Anatomy of Yahapalanaya’:

“One of the most senior Ministers of the Government in a public speech in his home constituency has declared that Yahapalanaya is in tatters and that even the debris cannot be found.

It is quite obvious that this is the reality on the ground.

The question, however, is whether, leaving Yahapalanaya aside, there is today any kind of Palanaya at all in the country.

Let alone good governance, there is at present a total breakdown of governance, to a degree which this nation has not seen at any time.

When has the Sri Lankan public ever been treated to a combination of the following development which would be an unprecedented comedy, but for its disastrous effect on the nation and its stability?

In vital institutions like the Insurance Corporation, Hyatt, Hilton and Litro Gas, there are two sets of appointments by two Ministers. One set of officials appointed by one Minister are refusing to give way to the other set of officials appointed by the other Minister. The tug of war continues and chaos prevails.

The comedy assumed such proportions that, in one institution (The National Dangerous Drugs Control Board) there were two chairmen – one upstairs, one downstairs, each insisting that the other is an impostor.

The Minister and the Deputy Minister cannot agree on appointments to Boards within the purview of the Ministry. Allegations and counter – allegations are hurled at each other in the public media. The Deputy Minister has publicly accused the Minister of violating basic norms of transparency in making appointments.

A Minister has publicly complained that he cannot perform his duties properly, because a cabinet colleague has planted his son to spy on the Minister and his work.

Nepotism has reached record levels in a matter of 10 months.

Ministers are gleefully appointing sons, daughters, brothers and family members without the slightest inhibition.

What is particularly striking is the brazen attitude displayed.

One Minister, in justifying the appointment of his brother to one of the largest corporations in the country, demanded to know what is wrong with this appointment. “I have confidence in my brother, so why can’t I appoint him?” he wanted to know.

Another Minister, who had appointed both his son and his daughter, said: “they both worked hard for me in my election campaign, so what is wrong with appointing them?”

These are the inspiring manifestations of Yahapalanaya.

The public was told that all these appointments to statutory bodies will not be left to the whims and fancies of each Minister, but will be examined and approved by a committee consisting of the President and the Prime Minister.

The country is entitled to know whether these family appointments, which have become the norm, were approved by the President and the PM.

Yahapalanaya regime came into office on the promise of a leen and clean administration.

Today, the total number of Cabinet Ministers, State Ministers and Deputy Ministers exceeds the number under the previous government. And the number continues to grow. Outside this vast throng, other Members of Parliament are openly told that they can have a car, chauffeur and fuel if they agree to support the government.

The overriding (indeed only) motive is to divide the loaves among the fishes.

Delivery of results in the least important consideration.

Allocation of functions has no rational whatsoever. Anything goes, provided that as many people as possible can be made happy. An extreme example is the joining of Higher Education with Highways. The Finance Minister has no control over state Banks or even the Central Bank. This of course is quite unique.

Ministers have complained that they have no financial allocations and, in some cases, not even offices. One Minister, reportedly, was told (when he complained) that he would share an office with his wife (a Deputy Minister).

The situation regarding corruption establishes another record.

The current scenario is unbelievable. Ministers (supposedly governed by collective responsibility) are hurling allegations at each other publicly regarding the gravest of crimes and financial frauds.

One Minister accuses another of selling to the government outdated equipment. Another Minster accuses a Cabinet colleague of a Rs. 269 million fraud, using a personal Foundation. Ministers are in a free for all, accusing each other of being bribed by private companies. The Avant Garde issue has seen the government divide itself into two warring camps.

What is the need for an FCID at all, except to harass and intimidate political opponents? All that is necessary is to probe allegations by Ministers against Ministers.

There is complete atrophy in nerve centres of the Administration.

A good example is the Attorney-General’s Department.

A situation is arisen, in which it is impossible for the Attorney-General to discharge his duties with propriety. The institution of criminal proceedings, and discontinuing proceedings (by resorting to a nolle prosequin) are decisions to be made professionally, on an objective appraisal of the evidence. Today, the Attorney-General is receiving conflicting political directions, and is caught right in the middle between warring Ministers. Some Ministers are openly working with other offices in the A-G’s Department and using memoranda prepared by them, to challenge the A-G’s decision.

The tug-of-war is so bad that the Human Rights Commission has now publicity declared that it proposes to look into the situation in the Attorney-General’s Department.

FCID, CIABOC and a host of other similar initiatives have driven fear into the public service to such an extent that no one wants to make a decision or to accept responsibility.

There was the reported episode of a secretary to a Ministry insisting on following detailed tender procedures before ordering four chairs to be placed in front of the Ministers desk.

One can imagine what the situation is, with regard to acceptance of officials of responsibility for the implementation of major development projects – irrigation, highways, bridges, ports, hospitals etc. The name of the game is ducking responsibility all round – in case there is trouble later.

The country is certainly paying a heavy price for Yahapalanaya.

by Carlo Fonseka Courtesy Island

When word came from Singapore on the 8th of November that Venerable Sobitha was dead my emotions overwhelmed my reason. To admit this is not necessarily to embrace unreason. Some critics jibed that my reason must have “fled to brutish beasts”. A Shakespearian insight came to mind: “He jests at scars that never felt a wound”. Remember, it was the judgment of the great 18th century rationalist philosopher David Hume that “reason is and ought only to be the slave of the passions”. In actual fact, passions, emotions, desires and feelings are what compel human beings to act; reason serves only to choose the effective means (fair or foul) to achieve what emotions dictate.

On 9 September Venerable Sobitha and I participated in what proved to be, alas, his last public event. We took part in a musical program promoting temperance held at the Sumangala Hall of the Sri Jayawardenepura University, organized by some students under the guidance of Venerable Sobitha. The next morning he had walked into a ward of the National Hospital Sri Lanka to consult a neurologist (Dr. Padma Gunaratne) about his backache which had become unbearable. Perceptive doctor that she is, Dr. Gunaratne having thoroughly examined Venerable Sobitha neurologically, had also recognized the existence of a heart problem andhad therefore referred him to the Institute of Cardiology. Less than two months after that event, Venerable Sobitha died of pneumonia in a hospital in Singapore. That was the final outcome of the dedicated medical care Venerable Sobitha received from an ad hoc galaxy of over a dozen of our best doctors who did their best for him. During the period between the 10th of September and the 8th of November the venue in which Venerable Sobitha received treatment was changed six times, with his consent, of course, and in his best interest. But to what purpose? For my part, although I was constantly on the scene, there was nothing definitive I could do except to watch too many cooks spoiling the broth and finally lamenting the death of my very dear friend.

To Blame or not to Blame

Far be it from me to blame the dedicated doctors who undoubtedly did their best to save Venerable Sobitha’s life. In mycareer as a doctor, I erred fatally five times and reported my errors to the world in the last issue of the British Medical Journal of 1996. (If you care to, you can read about my errors by googling my article titled “To err was fatal”). So who am I to blame others for erring? What cries for explanation in Venerable Sobitha’s case, however, is why after being treated by a high-powered team of dedicated doctors, my 73 year old friend who walked into hospital and had straightforward elective heart surgery had to die a couple of weeks later of pneumonia in a Singapore hospital. Having been an ubiquitous presence on the medical scene of our country for 55 years, I know that according to WHO estimates even in developed countries as many as 10 out of every 100 patients are gravely harmed while receiving hospital care. For example, according to the Institute of Medicine Report, in the USA it is estimated that upto 98,000 medical error deaths occur annually. Again, in developed countries, Health Care Associated Infections (HAI) complicates anything upto 10% of admissions in acute care hospitals. The scope of patient safety problems in developing countries such as ours is not well documented but itcertainly cannot be less than in developed countries where “patient safety” is at a premium. In fact, “Patient Safety” is a fundamental element of health care extensively and intensively addressed by the WHO. To repeat, worldwide, adverse events occur in about 10% of hospital patients. Apart from errors committed by doctors, there are other causes of hospital deaths. According to the WHO publication titled Regional strategy for patient safety in the WHO South-East Asia Region (2016 – 2025) deaths may result from unsafe processes such as communication failures, ineffective teamwork, overwork by health care personnel and even poor patient handovers! In the case of my obliging Venerable friend,he was “handed over” at least six times during his terminal illness.

Patient Safety

Patient Safety is not a high priority discipline in our country. To tell the truth, in a recent postgraduate examination in surgery (MD, Surgery February/March 2013) a question was set by one public spirited examiner on Patient Safety. Almost all the candidates fared so badly in this question that the authorities concerned arbitrarily decided to expunge the question from the examination paper. Otherwise the pass rate would have become unacceptably low! So much for the importance of patient safety in our country. The sad truth is that in our country when it comes to patient safety, anything goes!. I believe that Venerable Sobitha was only one victim of the rotten state of medical care in our country. Significantly enough, Venerable Sobitha who saved democracy for our country during his life has compelled us to focus on patient safety for the rest of us, by his death.

Minor Inquisition

The Island prominently published my lament on Venerable Sobitha on the day of the spectacular funeral the nation gave him (12thNovember). Predictably, some members of my profession had grave misgivings about the wisdom of my public lament. On the 16th of November the Sri Lanka Medical Association (SLMA, not to be confused with Sri Lanka Medical Council, SLMC) summoned me for a meeting to clarify certain matters arising from my lament. The meeting turned out to be a minor inquisition. The committee members of the SLMA are distinguished professors, specialists and consultants who have all excelled me their old physiology teacher in the field of medical practice. Some of them told me in no uncertain terms that I should not have indulged in a public lament particularly because I happen to be the current President of the SLMC. I riposted that the public knows me not so much as the President of the SLMC as a Scientific Firewalker and that our noble profession had nothing to fear from the lamentation of a firewalker about the death of a friend. One of my interlocutors Dr. Sarath Gamini de Silva, a loquacious, witty, inveterate rhymester and general physician, in the October issue of the Official Newsletter of the SLMA raised a question with poignant relevance to Venerable Sobitha’s case: “… How competent is a person trained in one area mainly, say an endocrinologist … to be called a specialist in treating … heart disease or neurological disease …?” Venerable Sobitha’s main problem was a heart problem and he died of neurological complications which resulted in pneumonia. Dr. de Silva concludes his piece titled Thoughts on Current Specialist Practice with a set of rhyming verses one of which goes like this:

“Let not the patient be used as bait

Left helplessly, resigned to his fate

Rectifying matters can’t be left to the state

Let the profession act before it is too late”

That is precisely the burden of my lament about Venerable Sobitha’s death.

Conclusion

Believe it or not, by the fortuitous concourse of circumstances, the next morning (17/11) I had to go to the Kingdom of Bhutan to discuss the very subject of Patient Safety. It was on the invitation of the WHO. I was accompanied by Consultant Surgeon Dr. Lalantha Ranasinghe, Vice-President of the SLMC and Dr. Chandana Atapattu, a dedicated Member of the SLMC. On behalf of the SLMC, we participated in the Sixth Technical Meeting of the Medical Councils Network of the WHO South-East Asia Region. The theme of the meeting was the “Roles of the medical doctor for Patient Safety”. The subject that had been allocated to me long before my beloved friend Venerable Maduluwawe Sobitha passed away. The pity of it is that this was the equivalent of bolting the stable door after the horse had fled to another world.

Pepe Escobar Courtesy RT

RT

By Pepe Escobar, TomDispatch | News Analysis

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PEPE ESCOBAR

– දිල්රුක් කන්නන්ගර

හද්දා ගොන් කමකට අත ගසමින් UNP ආණ්ඩුව පොහොර සහනාධාරය කපා ඒ වෙනුවට මුදල් දීමට තීරණය කර ඇත. ලැයිස්තුවෙන් පාර්ලිමේන්තු රිංගා ගත් බත් බැලයෙක් කියනුයේ වස විස පොහොර නිසා ගොවීන් ලෙඩ වන බැවින් මෙම තීරණය ගත් බවයි. මෙහි ගොන්කම වන්නේ එම මුදලින් ගොවීන් එම වස විස පොහොර ම ගන්නා බැවිනි. ආදේශක පොහොර හඳුන්වානොදී මුදල් පමණක් දීමෙහි වැඩක් නැත.

මෙහි සැඟවුණු අරමුණක් තිබේ. ලෝක බලවත් කෘෂි සමාගමක තැරැව්කරුවන් සමග එක් වී මෙරට ගොවි තැන කාබාසීනියා කිරීම ඔවුන්ගේ සැලසුමයි. සිංහලෙන් කථා කිරීම අපහසු යයි පින්සෙන්ඩු වූ පනික්කියා ඊටම උර දෙමින් කියන්නේ සහල් නොවවා ඒ වෙනුවට ළූණු, අල වැනි වා වවන ලෙසය. සිංහලයාගේ ප්‍රධාන ආහාරය බත යයි උච්චාරණය කරන නොදරුවාගේ පමණ වත් දැනුමක් නැති අම්බරුවෙක් රටේ මූල්‍ය බලා කියා ගැනීම රටේම අවාසනාවකි.

සහනාධාර මුදල් ගොවියා අත පත්වන්නට පෙර හොරු දහ පහළොස් දෙනෙකු හරහා යයි. එයින් පොහොසත් වන්නේ නියඟයට නියන් සහනාධරයෙන්ද ගං වතුරට ගං වතුර සහනාධරයෙන්ද යටි මඩි ගහන දෙසපාලු තක්කඩින්ය. ගල් අඟුරු මගඩි සිඳුණු තැන එහෙම හෝ හරි හමබා කර ගන්නට අසමත්ජාතීන් සිටිති.

රට වැටී ඇති ණය උගුලෙන් ගැලවෙන්නට තව තවත් ණය ගන්නා ආණ්ඩුවට ලෝක බැංකුව ද කියා සිටින්නේ ගොවිතැන වනසා ලන ලෙසටය.

මුදල් ලද ගොවියා ට වෙනත් මූල්‍ය අවශ්‍යතා ඇත. ගොවිතැන අත හැර දමා වෙනත් දේවල මුදල් නාස්තිකර ගොවියෝ අන්ත අසරණ වෙති.

ලැයිස්තුවෙන් පාර්ලිමේන්තු රිංගා ගත්තන් තව කලෙකින් බුද්ධ දේශනා වෙනුවට මුදල් ගෙවන ක්‍රමයක් සොයා ගනු ඇත. මුදල් ලත් පින්වතා එම මුදලින් සැදැහැම් සිතුවිළි පහල කර අමා මහා නිවන් සුව විඳිනුයේ මනු ලොවෙමය.

By M D P DISSANAYAKE

The Great Grand Mother Alexandra Mary Elizabeth II, 89 years of age, has decided to attend the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in Malta, to be held in November 2015.

The Official Website of The British Monarchy has reported ” The Queen, accompanied by The Duke of Edinburgh, will visit Malta and attend the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) which takes place in Valletta from 27 to 29 November. The Prince of Wales, accompanied by The Duchess of Cornwall, will also attend CHOGM in support of The Queen.”

In early 2013, The Queen of Tamil Eelam announced ” she would not be attending the biennial Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting to be held in Sri Lanka”.  At that time she was 2 years younger, but quoted health reasons for not attending the Colombo Meeting.  Now the Queen of Tamil Eelam 2 years older, has apparently no health reasons, but fit and ready to travel to Malta.  It was the first time in 40 years, the Queen of Tamil Eelam did not attend a CHOGM meeting.

When would you call a Queen a “liar”?

Gomin Dayasri Courtesy The Daily Mirror

Dr. Tilak S. Fernando

Health care in Sri Lanka has been telescoped, focussed and become a contemporaneous topic where the ‘ Yahapalanaya’ government has promised to allocate more money to develop the Health Care Services.

Supplementary to this subject, pharmacies and qualified pharmacists in Sri Lanka has equally become a current topic to discuss. According to Ministry spokesman attached to Health, Nutrition and Indigenous Medicine (news item), although there are four thousand pharmacies within the country there are only one thousand qualified pharmacists to cater for the public, which sounds alarming!

In order to prevent disease or reduce ill treatment to patients and to improve public health, mechanisms for evaluating and monitoring the safety of medicines in clinical use are vital. Equally, qualified pharmacists are expected to be professional in their duty, with the knowledge and expertise to provide convincing information on medicine they dispense with.

Sri Lankan Law

 In Sri Lanka, law specifically warrants all qualified Pharmacists to hold a professional certificate. Despite such laws, what seems to take place today is many qualified & registered pharmacists tend to display their licences by hanging those inside their pharmacy for the public to view and employ unqualified cashiers to serve medicine to the public.

It is mandatory to give clear details of the drug and potency on the receptacle when pharmacists hand over drugs to the public. In Sri Lanka such norms seem to override international procedures and drugs are simply placed into small envelopes (with only swallowing instructions written on the envelope). The reason for this being many tends to buy drugs in small quantifies rather than a full pack or a bottle full! The most disappointing or rather the dangerous factor, however, is that anyone wearing a white overall can stand behind a sales counter in a pharmacy and hand out anything to the public, even the patient does not have a prescription (mostly to their known customers)!

Such unorthodox procedures pose a problem to naive patients, as on the one hand they are unaware of what drugs they are supposed to gulp day in and out, and also poses the problem if and when they decide to consult different medical officers with such ‘unidentified’ drugs as the majority is not ware of what they have been consuming!

In Most cases the patient carries an exercise book with him/her where the doctor registers notes in it, but on the whole the average person depends on the pharmacist to write details properly –i.e. the name of the drug, its potency etc. along with ‘ how to take ‘ instructions, when drugs are purchased from the pharmacy. In Western countries the General (family) Practitioner maintains records of his/her patients and whenever a patient is referred to a specialist or to a hospital there is always interaction with the patient’s regular GP and the hospital concerned.

Another major problem the Sri Lankan public faces is the price discrepancy in drugs that tend to vary from pharmacy to pharmacy; the excuse given being that imported drugs from the West and USA are dearer than the Indian drugs!

Standardising of Drugs.

Wherever the drugs are mass-produced, the manufacturers need to conform to either British Pharmacopoeia, European Pharmacopeia or the USP Pharmacopoeia standards, and to do that their laboratories need to obtain reference standards from the British pharmacopoeia, European pharmacopoeia or USP pharmacopoeia to analyse and evaluate their new products to ensure that they conform to any one of those standards. Only then the drug manufacturer is permitted to print on their drug packages as BP, EP or USP.  In some of the drugs sold in Sri Lankan pharmacies there are drugs without this information at all, except the country of manufacture displayed. This postures another worrying factor to buy drugs for those who have  some basic knowledge about the system that operates in the drugs industry.

Press reports issued recently indicated that the Health, Nutrition and Indigenous Minister Dr. Rajitha Senaratne has instructed the health authorities to formulate rules and regulations to control the prices of new drugs.  In the past, Cosmetic Devices and Drugs Control Authority, out of a glut of complaints from the public against pharmacies, managed to raid countrywide imposing heavy fines on those who violated relevant regulations.

 PATIENTS’ RIGHT

 The difference between the West and Sri Lanka is that in the West patients have the right to open their mouth and enquire from the medical officer what drugs are being prescribed and for what as many believe that its their body, their life and they are entitled to know what are being asked to swallow! The medical officer on the other hand explains to his/her patients in detail about the prescribed drugs. Antibiotics are the last things on a Western doctor’s mind to prescribe to a patient whereas in Sri Lanka it seems to be the norm! Added to such misery patients have got into the habit of requesting antibiotics even for a nose cold or a small cut! So the doctors prescribe and pharmacies hand out willy-nilly

There does not seem to have a uniform law in Sri Lanka or it is not strictly implemented with regard to the issuance of drugs, its price, with or without a prescription. Recently a friend known to the writer had to go through a maze to find out about a cancer drug called Arimdex (1mg), which had a huge price difference, where the price of a prominent pharmacy in Colombo was so exorbitant where an average cancer patient could not afford!

 Despite such huge price differences in major pharmaceutical institutions in Sri Lanka the irony is why the lives of cancer patients have been made much harsher and added more pain and misery to their gloom by making such an important drug a rare commodity and sold at exorbitant prices! How many cancer patients among low-income groups can afford to buy such a drug? Are we, as a society, prepared to consign such patients into a death row labeling them as terminal patients with no hope at all?

 HEALTH INSPECTORS

 The major impediment for such abuses of health regulations is believed to be the inadequacy of Health Ministry Inspectors to monitor and raid pharmacies regularly in the absence of an effective programme rather than leaving it to the officials at the Consumers Association to pound on such law breakers.

 Cancer sufferers are evidently on the increase and this is an area for health authorities to look into with wide open eyes when they are bolstering the health regulations by amending the cosmetic Devices and Drugs Act 27 of 1980 imposing severe punishments of Rs. 100,000 or one year jail sentence or both for violators of health regulations.

Another vital point to raise would be the doctors in Sri Lanka have the same attitude towards patients. Ask any questions regarding the diagnosis and medication given, they frown! This is more adversarial as unlike pharmacists, many doctors have personal experience of how patients are treated in western countries.

What Sri Lanka needs is a strict Pharmacovigilance system similar to that of in the European Union to monitor the efficacy of medicine and  to take remedial action to reduce the risks and increase the benefits of medication.

Our society is changing and the expectations of our citizens are also changing. There is a need to ensure that we too have a system, which is robust but also transparent and effective.

tilaksfernando@gmail.com

by  Rajiv Malhotra  Indian–American researcher, author, speaker. Current affairs, inter-civilization, science -Courtesy Swarajya

The sanctity of the mela is under threat from many directions. Keeping a traditional gathering open to all is different from losing control of it.

When Harvard University created a major new initiative called the Harvard Kumbh Mela Project, Hindus naturally became impressed and proud. After all, it brought global importance to our heritage. However, it is my nature to cross check such foreign interventions, and, therefore, I decided to study the project more closely. I also decided to take a look at various other international interventions on the Kumbh Mela besides those by Harvard. What I found has disconcerted me on several counts.

I have organized my concerns into the following categories, in increasing order of seriousness:

1. Dilution as exotic tourism
2. Source of research for appropriation and digestion
3. Distortion and secularization of the mela itself
4. Infiltration and hijacking by Christian and Islamic groups
5. Condemnation as another human rights violation” to be exposed through atrocity literature.
6. This is the destructive stage.

To put it bluntly, I am suspicious of Harvard’s involvement, even if those directly involved in it might be innocent at this stage. Nor is my concern entirely focused on Harvard. There is a long history of Western interventions that have benign and noble beginnings, but that later take a dangerous turn. There is still time to investigate the risks discussed below, and I will offer some concrete recommendations to prevent the hijacking and destruction of the Kumbh Mela.

Professor Diana Eck, Harvard’s renowned professor of Hinduism studies, made a telling remark in the official video by Harvard’s Kumbh Mela project team. In a sense, she inadvertently gave away the hidden agenda. She said that she missed seeing feminist NGOs at the mela (1). This is exactly how Ford Foundation started its interventions in India several decades back: by training, funding and empowering several feminist NGOs in India, and then using them to dish out atrocity literature on Indian society, along with the large-scale training of a whole generation of Indian women in Western feminist ideology. The goal was to make Western feminist ideologies fashionable among the bright, young women of India by constantly encouraging them to do studies on women’s oppression in Indian society. I certainly want our society’s serious gender issues to be studied and remedied; however, there ought to be balanced research on the pros and cons of importing Western feminism into Indian society in such an aggressive manner.

The resources for gender studies within Indian traditions should also be brought into play in such analyses.

We should not be surprised to find Harvard and other influential institutions starting to bring in feminist groups to look for issues at the Kumbh Mela, such as the following: Is the mela dominated by males? Are women being exploited by the events? Are there rapes and harassment? These are some of the standard templates used by such institutions to kick-start their programme. Women are incentivized to speak up as victims of culture”, leading them to exaggerate or even outright fabricate complaints. Such investigations feed copious databases riding on the back of which eventually we will face interventions in the name of women’s rights.

In other words, if one looks at the themes and results produced by the hundreds of anthropology and social sciences projects on India, the same list of research investigations can easily be applied to the Kumbh Mela. This would make the mela a new site for research” in South Asian studies. Thus far, the mela has been almost entirely ignored by Western researchers, and so far their sites” for such research have been in poor villages, in Hindu chauvinism” organizations, in episodes of violence where Hinduism can be blamed, etc. I fear that this mela is about to turn into the latest playground for such mischief.

In the same way, demographic studies will soon be commissioned on caste exploitation at the mela. The façade will be to position these as diversity studies. The real goal of these will be to look for inequalities in the facilities available to caste groups. As in all sociological research, Indian NGOs and political groups representing various fragments will get roped in to politicize the mela. Once unleashed, this trend will get out of hand and fuel a dangerous fragmentation among mela attendees. There will be fights instigated by caste groups, among north/south constituencies, and among various ideological streams and social groups. For thousands of years, all this diversity has co-existed in mutual harmony and respect, and this is what the foreign interventions will try to disrupt in the name of modernization.

If the other trajectories of Western research interventions are any indicator, one may expect Western-sponsored research to look for crime against sadhvis and lower caste participants. There will be dissertations written with juicy allegations concerning women being victims of rape, tantric sex orgies, etc. Case studies will get published in National Geographic magazine, and Western television documentaries will be produced on dowry, sati, idolatry, some naked sadhus allegedly eating human flesh, etc.

The mela will turn into the biggest unexplored frontier of the exotic, uncivilized and dangerous” others. It is far too open, and this offers huge opportunities for Western frontiersmen seeking adventure, fame, and fortune. Already, there were media reporters at the Nasik Kumbh Mela saying that there ought to be large scale distribution of condoms at the Kumbh Mela. Times of India set the ball rolling on this sensation (2) with India Today and Britain’s Daily Mail quickly picking up the hot story (3).

A blog by the Harvard Kumbh Mela team reported: One of the major outcomes of this group’s research was observing the concern many people at the Kumbh had about the pollution produced throughout the course of this festival.”  (4) In other words, we can expect future research on how the mela causes pollution, and just as Divali, Ganesh festival, and some other Hindu festivals have already become targeted as environmental hazards, so will the Kumbh Mela be added to the list of primitive nuisance practices. Students from Harvard and other places will be assigned projects to document the health hazard being caused by immersing ash and other ritualistic objects into the Ganga and by the cremation of dead bodies and disposal in the rivers all year long, etc. In other words, apart from the feminist and sociological lens explained above, the environmentalism lens will also get applied to study” the mela. This will be presented (and appreciated by many Indians) as Western assistance” to help upgrade and modernize the mela.

The atrocity literature production about the mela is bound to explode with the help of camera crews that are everywhere. One enterprising Westerner bragged that he participated in the tradition of kite flying on the river bank, as this allowed him to hide a camera on his kite, thereby turning it into a drone for filming from the sky: imagine the treasure trove of scandalous and sensational video footage he could collect this way!

There are already attempts by Christian missionaries to infiltrate the mela for proselytizing. Any restrictions against this are likely to be challenged by missionaries with the help of their Western and Indian supporters. Arguments will be made that since nobody owns the mela” or the Ganga (or any other public place where the mela is held), every citizen should have an equal right to go for a dip in the river. Such infiltrations will start in a small and passive way to get inside the door, and then gradually become entrenched and expand in size, scope, and level of assertiveness. Missionaries are experienced in entering as good guests using sama (friendship) and dana (charity). They will undoubtedly bring lots of free things to give away, and this will be a big hit among the villagers who comprise most of the attendees at the mela.

I anticipate that many confused Hindu groups who teach that all religions are the same will become facilitators to help such penetration by Abrahamic religions. How would one object to a so-called Hindu organization wanting to put up pictures of Jesus depicted as a yogi, or Mother Mary in a saree wearing a bindi? How would one stop prasad being given away by a missionary school wanting to feed the poor children at the mela? There are plenty of confused Hindu groups seeking the international limelight and money who will be glad to facilitate in opening such doors.

Harvard’s Pluralism Project (also run by Diana Eck) could easily open the door in the name of studying and nurturing pluralism”. To disarm naïve Hindu leaders, it will offer patronizing praise for Hindu tolerance” that would stir pride among these leaders. All this would make it difficult for anyone to deny them free access for their strategic intrusions.
Secularization of the Kumbh Mela is another shift that is not far away, either. Nothing stops Pepsi, Reliance, Airtel, Amazon or Flipkart, or any other consumer brand, to put up its large tent at the mela, show some spiritual movies to qualify as a religious pavilion, and then openly market its products and services. If not outright selling, this could be a place for soft sales to bring new clients into the door. In other words, seen from their viewpoint, the Kumbh Mela is a great brand marketing event. Some enterprising corporate houses will start a sales distribution channel catering specifically to religious festivals. Given the prestige of being secularized”, many people will find nothing wrong with this modernization” of the mela.

The first mela intervention by Harvard has already succeeded in its goal to secure a buy-in from many kinds of elites in India. Unfortunately, these elites lack far sightedness and are easily bought off, in exchange for prestigious association with Harvard and other international institutions. Harvard’s special book on its Kumbh Mela Project was launched in New York with the prestigious sponsorship of Asia Society (5). The India launch of the book was held at Oberoi Hotel, one of Delhi’s most prestigious locations. The chief guest at this event was none other than the Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh, who was given the limelight to secure his support. He was so grateful for the honor that Harvard has arrived” in his town or state, or rather, that he has arrived on the world stage thanks to Harvard (6).

Scholars of the colonization process must take note that Harvard refers to its work as mapping” the Kumbh Mela (7). One has to read Benedict Anderson’s Imagined Communities to understand how the British colonialists were obsessed with the mapping (in a broad sense of organizing databases) of the geography, population, religious practices, social and political structures, all for the purpose of developing a template for better negotiation and control. The same kind of mapping had earlier been done in North America by the European settlers, which helped their systematic aggression against the natives. Some of the best socio-religious databases on India at the district and village level are the ones developed by the Church and CIA.

This initial stage in the Kumbh Mela intervention is to become established as some good guys” who are wanting to help. To establish those good guy” credentials, they are now busy making inroads with politicians, leaders of various Hindu sampradayas and sants, by inviting them into their documentaries and visits to the USA. Unfortunately, many of these Indians are totally clueless, with insufficient competence at doing the purva-paksha of a sophisticated opponent. They have no idea of how the game is being played. They do not seem to appreciate that short-term benefits are often at the cost of long-term control.

Harvard refers to its Kumbh Mela project as an interdisciplinary one, combining many departments each with its own separate lens. The departments already participating include: urban planning, logistics, public health, religious studies, business school, anthropology, design school, etc. Each lens is highly secularized, lacking even an iota of shraddha for our traditions. They are looking for interesting specimens” to study. This is a perfect example of a synthetic unity framework being used to study (and distort) the integral unity.

None of the materials produced by Harvard’s team have discussed the metaphysical meaning of the yajna being carried out at the Kumbh Mela. When they did discuss the myth” behind the mela, it was presented as some exotic, primitive story along the lines of a Hollywood movie like Lord of the Rings. They do not have the embodied knowing experience, or even the interest, to appreciate the metaphysics of ritam and yajna, and how these manifest in every aspect of the world including in our lives. Such a profound insight into the integral unity lacks because there is no shraddha in the top leadership of the project. None of the project experts interviewed on camera mentioned anything about the metaphysics of re-enacting the cosmic yajna as the purpose of the mela. It is the latest hunting ground for the anthropology of the exotica and erotica.

Harvard’s team has announced that in the next phase they will move from descriptions/modeling to prescriptions and interventions. This will make it more dangerous in my opinion. The purpose of their interventions, they said, will be to solve issues” and bring better architecture/public health policies and assistance.” In other words, they make no secret that having mapped” the Kumbh Mela within their framework, now it’s time to intervene in various ways. Sadly, we have quite a few clueless swamis, sadhus and gurus already eagerly waiting to serve them as functionaries for reforming” the Kumbh Mela.

We are well along the following trajectory of Western interventions in the Kumbh Mela:

1. It starts out as curiosity-seeking field trips to bring back exotic reports, mostly benign and respectful at this stage.

2. More formally trained anthropologists and social scientists enter the arena and develop frameworks into which mappings are made. This privileges certain ways to see and understand the phenomena. It is a technique to make the strange look familiar (and safe) in terms that Westerners can deal with. Of course, the new framework is alien to the insiders of the tradition.

3. Elitist Westernized Indians, as well as some naïve traditional Hindus, buy into this new framework to understand the mela. This is when their drishti gets reprogrammed with the Western (whitened) gaze. Such Indians become very important in the spread of the Western mind set into the mainstream.

4. Many useful things learned get digested into Western knowledge systems.

5. Christian groups (followed by Muslims as well), initially seen as champions and as our friends, take over the greater share of the mental space of the mela participants.

6. The result is the rejection of many elements that have been important in the tradition, and this rejection is postured as a sort of reform movement”. In fact, it is a distortion and relies upon one-sided facts and flawed analyses.

I am not saying all these stages will necessarily happen. I predict this as the likely trajectory if things continue in a present manner. The grand effect of all this will be a sweeping shift in the adhikar to interpret our traditions.

I find the Western interventionists making multi-year strategic plans with the benefit of having similar experiences in their other interventions. But I do not find any prominent Hindu leaders taking note of this syndrome, much less offering a counter-discourse.

My recommendations to Hindu leaders are as follows:

1. We should remain open to outsiders but not lose control to them.

2. Kumbh Mela should remain anchored primarily as a sacred yajna to re-enact the cosmic processes. It must not turn into a tourism spectacle or grand circus of weirdness for outsiders to enjoy. Even though there is money to be made from such a large gathering, that agenda should not take control over the mela.
The group of akhadas (sadhu organizations) that have run the mela since time immemorial must assert its authority firmly. This means that it must bring in advisors who know how these dangerous forces operate, especially those who have done the requisite purva-paksha on such forces.

3. Under the leadership of the akhadas, the state governments involved must develop risk assessment and risk management strategies to pre-empt the kinds of threats I am raising here.

4. Those firmly established as insiders (practitioners with shraddha) should retain control to evaluate the issues that do exist, and that need to be addressed from within. This includes making all kinds of studies ourselves, rather than abandoning that responsibility and letting outsiders take control over the data gathering and analysis about the mela. Issues like pollution and any form of social oppression must be taken seriously and dealt with by our leaders. Changes must be discussed and implemented, to move with the times. Our smritis are not meant to be frozen and do need constant debate and change in the face of new developments. Scientific validation of traditional practices must be done by our organizations and not be granted on a platter to outsiders.

5. Since 90% of the participants are traditional Hindus from villages and small towns, these innocent and humble persons must be given the utmost respect; they are the last remaining true practitioners of our heritage. They come from faraway places at great cost and effort because for them this is a very special spiritual experience.

6. Our leaders must develop poison pills to protect against digestion. These include respect for living gurus, sacred places, non-translatables, sacred sounds and mantras, sacred objects and symbols.

References on next page

Barnes Abeywardena Courtesy Island 

November 26, 2015, 9:19 pm

When one examines Sri Lankan politics one cannot but think that the President and the PM think that they have now outsourced what they should do to some commissions. Why else should the government keep saying it is up to the authorities to take action against the illegal acts and corrupt individuals? The President, the PM and half the Cabinet went around the country to convince us how corrupt the MR Regime was but now they seem to have forgotten it, except of course Wijedasa R and Tilak Marapana, who in fact are saying just the opposite, defending some of the corrupt deals and if not for Marapana’s resignation, I am sure several more would have joined him . It is clear that some of the corrupt ministers are eagerly waiting in the wings for the right moment to start defending their ‘partners in crime’.

How did the ‘yahapalanaya’ government, at least some of those in it have the audacity to move in the wrong direction? Many of us understand that the president had to do certain ‘un- yahapalanaya’ things in the overall interest of ‘yahapalanaya’, that a large number of his voters would disapprove, to ensure that MR would not get a ‘mechanism’ to come back to power: 1) If he hadn’t accepted the leadership of the SLFP, MR would have appointed his corrupt MPs to the national list and the government would have been weakened. 2) If he hadn’t appointed corrupt MPs as ministers, they would have most definitely joined MR making it impossible for the President and the PM to govern.

Besides the above actions that one could tolerate, the President made a big mistake by appointing his brother as SLT chairman and that too in an indecent hurry, almost immediately after coming to power as if his brother’s life was at risk if it wasn’t hurried and by doing so he has weakened his moral authority. Arjuna and others are now happily following the Presidents example with justifiable confidence that they are safe. Corrupt politicos must be thinking that the message is ‘we cannot be corrupt as much as before, but corrupt we could be, only a little less and a bit slowly’. The president himself planted the germ and it would not be easy for him to stop it from spreading. PM’s Central Bank issue is another big germ and he could have appointed a proper committee to investigate and act on it to nip the problem in the bud but he did not.

Consequence was that some of the Ministers came out openly to defend the crooks. Marapana has resigned because he is not a ‘politician’ and it is clear that Wijedasa who has much more thick skin than Marapana, would not resign. It seems that neither the President nor the PM want to take any action perhaps worrying that he will go and strengthen the hands of the MR gang or perhaps because their hands are a little weaker due to their own ill-considered actions.

However, we are thankful to the President and the PM for appointing the independent commissions as promised but then that is only half the job done and it is the easier part because the politician were forced to vote for constitutional amendments by the vast majority of the voters. But making sure that the commissions function well is going to be much more difficult and to the independent minded, it doesn’t seem that the Government is fully steadfast in its resolve to the commissions are functional as they should be.

It is very clear to us, the independent observers that at least several politicos in the government, given half the chance, will put a spanner in the works of ‘yahapalanaya’ and undo the reforms the President and the PM have managed to introduce.

Barnes Abeywardena

Courtesy Island

Thousands of people who voted for this “Yahapalanaya” government are thoroughly disappointed with some of its actions. Inability to prosecute those who are supposed to have committed serious financial irregularities, the Avant Guarde Incident, gross nepotism, unabated corruption in all public institutions and unsolved problems in the health and education sectors, crime and child abuse remain serious issues affecting the general public

The latest crime that has affected mainly the middle class, majority of who voted this government into power is the sudden rise in the prices of electric vehicles where the tax has gone up from 5% to 50%. Several private individuals who imported electric cars are now left in the lurch unable to pay the exorbitant taxes announced. Most of them have imported these cars as it was logically anticipated that they are eco-friendly and cheaper to run. In fact the government itself announced that there would be electricity terminals all over the country to get these vehicles charged. Some people had to borrow money from the banks to open the Letters of Credit (LCs) and are in a quandary as to how to clear these vehicles.

The writer has a nagging suspicion that this too is an act of corruption committed by the big time car importers and certain ministers. It was mentioned previously that the car importers met the Minister of Finance and he may have surreptitiously indicated to them in private that the tax on those cars would go up after the budget since no official announcement was made. The big car operators made use of this opportunity and imported thousands of these vehicles in anticipation of the price rise. The writer sensing such an event was unable to obtain an electric car from any of these importers at a reasonable price. They sighted the reason that after the budget the prices may change and to pacify me said that it may even come down! They have collectively agreed on a common moratorium to withhold sale of these cars. The silence of the big time importers on this issue is deafening! Some of them issue feeble statements that there will not be people who could afford these vehicles at such exorbitant prices. However these statements have been issued even previously and everyone who needed a car some how went for it. The tragedy of all these is that most of the educated civil society members and academics who relentlessly campaigned for the election of the present government are certainly an unhappy lot.

It has not affected the very rich and even the very poor. The rich will continue the comforts of their Mercedes and BMWs where as for the poor the only form of transport is the bus.

As an affected motorist I feel there is nothing that we could do since the government is adamant and does not appear to relent. I gather that there are several ships anchored in the Hambantota and Colombo harbours where not a single vehicle has been cleared and the importers are impatiently waiting for the government to do something about it.

An affected motorist

By BANDULA JAYASEKARA Courtesy Island

The government has been singing hosannas for America’s Permanent Representative to the United Nations, Samantha Power, who was here on a brief visit. Is Samantha Power genuine genuinely interested in Sri Lanka or government politicians are gullible? Is Sri Lanka bending over backwards to please the US?

Power, who had a strained relationship with former President Mahinda Rajapaksa, is a much welcome guest in Sri Lanka these days though she did not receive the same welcome in India. In Sri Lanka, Foreign Minister Samaraweera took it upon himself to host the US diplomat to dinner whilst in India only Joint Secretary Sujata Mehta in charge of Multilateral and Economic Relations which oversees the UN did so. Power described Samaraweera as a good friend. However, she just couldn’t describe Indian Foreign Minister Sushma Swaraj in endearing terms. India, which is very concerned on protocol issues, would never offer such welcomes. In a way it is not surprising that such things are happening in a country where ambassadors could even reach the former through text messages. Late Lakshman Kadirgamar would have none of it. Certain protocols must be practised. On an earlier occasion, Samaraweera, whom I respect, got flak from sections of the Sri Lankan media for his welcome hug for the US assistant secretary for South Asia, Nisha Biswal. They said he would have reserved it for his counterpart, US Secretary of State John Kerry.

United States Ambassador to the United Nations Samantha Power plays Elle with Muslim girls at the Osmaniay College in Jaffna on November 22, 2015. (File Photo)

Samantha Power and Susan Rice may be the confidantes of US President Barrack Obama but that does not mean we should act in breach of protocol to please them. Power holds a cabinet rank in the Obama government. The government may try to justify its action on the grounds that it wants to strengthen relations between the two countries.

President Mahinda Rajapaksa, like several others, doubted Power’s interventional motives in spite of her much-flaunted ‘human rights defender’ status. She once told Rajapaksa that he should not contest again. When Rajapaksa asked her as to why he shouldn’t contest, she said because he would win! The former President is on record now saying that the US helped the common opposition to defeat him! He disliked Power and have described her as arrogant, undiplomatic and interfering. Rajapaksa thought the US would go all out to have him defeated.

Rajapaksa cannot blame the US alone for what befell him. He, too, was responsible for his own downfall due to nepotism and abuse of power and not giving freedom to his own Ministers. He ignored the cracks within his own party and his supporters.

Samantha Powers is obviously happy that Rajapaksa is out of power. I agree that no one could be in power forever (not even Samantha Power) and President Rajapaksa shouldn’t have sought a third term. No sooner had she arrived here Power tweeted: “In Sri Lanka for first time since 2010 Jan. elections a sea of change in human rights climate. Important leaders continue path towards justice and accountability.” Her agenda in Sri Lanka was made clear by that tweet.

Some question the motive of Power’s visit to Sri Lanka. Many are still in the dark. Why didn’t our Permanent Representative to the United Nations in New York, Dr. Rohan Perera, accompany her? Did Sri Lanka fail to see how India treated her in Delhi? Did anyone at the Sri Lankan Foreign Ministry check with its High Commission in New Delhi why Samantha Power went red faced when questioned by the aggressive Delhi press; they laughed at her when she tried to lecture them on terrorism? Is Sri Lanka going to make a bigger mistake by trying to discard China and other countries completely to curry favour with Uncle Sam? Sri Lanka should understand that the US has no permanent enemies or permanent friends. It uses anyone to further its interests. However, the US respects the countries ruled by leaders with some self-respect.

What does Power want in Sri Lanka at a time where there is a heightened terror alert in Europe and other parts of the world including her own country? She wants demilitarisation, reconciliation, rights of Sri Lankan people, accountability etc. Is Samantha Power qualified to speak for the rights of all Sri Lankans? She said the same thing when she visited in Sri Lanka in 2010, just one year after Sri Lanka defeated terrorism.

In Sri Lanka she met President Sirisena, Prime Minister Wickremesinghe, Governor of Northern Province Palihakkara (a former respected Foreign Secretary) Chief Minister C. V. Wigneswaran, went to the Jaffna library to make a donation, played elle with schoolgirls and posed for photographs. She also conducted sessions for the ‘youth’ groups in Sri Lanka. She did not forget to give us a lecture on our suffering for 30 long years! She ate hoppers with Sri Lankan ministers and tweeted them. (A former diplomat based in the US told The Island her public diplomacy failed because she was just acting. It was clearly visible.) She visited the Jaffna-based Uthayan newspaper, which was attacked several times and praised its courage. No one has the right to attack anyone in Sri Lanka, media or any other institutions. No one should go unpunished. However, what she failed to tweet was that the newspaper is owned by a politician representing the TNA, which has acted as the LTTE’s mouthpiece and recognized the terrorist outfit as the sole representative of the Tamil speaking people. She also said free press was the guardian of democracy and human rights. How come she did not want to meet veteran Tamil United Liberation Front leader, Veerasingham Anandasangaree, who had the courage to stand up to terrorism even at the risk of his life and limb.

Is Power capable of specifying what she wants. How could she ask any other government in the world to be accountable when the US is blamed the world over for atrocities against countries like Iraq and Afghanistan. Did Power tell the United Nations that no weapons of mass destruction had been found in Iraq? What is her take on Tony Blair and his recent ‘apology’ after all the destruction and mayhem overseas? Why is Blair still trying to play a role in the Middle East process?

The new US Ambassador to Sri Lanka Atul Keshap is a seasoned diplomat with a smiling face. He has worked very closely with Robert Blake, who tried to interfere with the affairs of Sri Lanka at a later stage. He surely was a good man at the beginning and I even did his first ever interview in Sri Lanka for Rupavahini. What’s up Uncle Sam’s sleeve? What are the power games the US is playing in Sri Lanka, unbeknownst to India and China? Is President Maithripala Sirisena fully briefed on the situation?

Only time will tell.

By Kelum Bandara Courtesy The Daily Mirror

The government’s enhanced relation with the US is reflected in Power’s remarks that the US-Sri Lankan relationships was taking place in ‘a wholly new and fresh way’. Soon after her arrival in the country, she interacted with Foreign Affairs Minister Mangala Samaraweera. In her remarks to the media after the meeting, she said,”

Mr. Minister, it’s wonderful to be here in Sri Lanka. I just touched down a few hours ago and I already feel immersed in the warmth and hospitality of your dynamic country – your dynamic and welcoming people. You reminded me in our meeting that we only met for the first time in February of this year, and I had to pinch myself because I feel in such a short time we have together been able to cooperate already on so many issues both bilaterally – through the relationship between the United States and Sri Lanka – but also on shared collective security and how to reach out to the broader international community.”
Sri Lanka has been a real partner of the United States at the United Nations. The Sri Lankan president came to President Obama’s summit on peacekeeping in September and made one of the most ambitious announcements and set of commitments of any leader – extremely important. On issues of human rights and democratic accountability around the world, Sri Lanka has become, again, a close partner and someone we can count on to also stand up for the aspirations of people who aren’t doing so well elsewhere in the world,” she said.

Ambassador Power noted it was refreshing to see the changes that took place in the country after the two main elections conducted here. In fact, she said the Sri Lankan people chose democratic and accountable governance, and chose the path of reconciliation over division and the path of hope over fear.
During her short visit that ended on November 24, she reached out to what she called ‘broad swathes of Sri Lankan society’.  That included meetings with President Maitripala Sirisena, Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe, and Opposition Leader R. Sampanthan. Besides, she flew to Jaffna to meet with Northern Province Chief Minister C.V. Wigneswaran and civil society leaders based in the area. 
During the term of the previous government, the US–Sri Lanka relations have strained, particularly on the political front. It happened because the then government led by former President Mahinda Rajapaksa saw the US involvement in post-war affairs as intrusive and an affront to the sovereignty of the country. But, with the change on January 8, the new government under President Maitripala Sirisena, had a fresh look at the issue and chose to cooperate with the US.
The fresh approach eventually resulted in Sri Lanka also co-sponsoring the US resolution adopted by the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) in September this year.  Sri Lanka is a party to this resolution, and shouldered with virtual responsibility to execute its provisions, be they populist in one corner of the country, or not elsewhere.

It is apparent that the US will continue to keep a close tab on what is happening in the country. It was indicative of Ambassador Power’s remarks on one occasion during the visit, that the world was watching what was happening in Sri Lanka far more closely.
She said, The last thing I’d just like to say – which I shared with the Minister and his team in our bilateral meeting, but I’d just share with the Sri Lankan people – is that the world is watching what’s happening in Sri Lanka far more closely, I think, than any of you can imagine. The changes that have been put in place in a very complex and diverse political environment over the course of the last nine or ten months have grabbed the world’s attention,”.

US Ambassador sees SL as land of opportunities 

Alongside, the US looks keen to tie up with Sri Lanka in economic relations.  That country has grasped the potential of Sri Lanka given its strategic position in the Indian Ocean. It was obvious when US Ambassador to Sri Lanka Atul Keshap addressed a recent function to mark the US Trade Show, an event that took place prior to the visit of Ms. Power.

In his address, he noted, I don’t have to tell you that Sri Lanka enjoys tremendous advantages that American and other companies around the world can take advantage of.  First of all as you all know, it sits beside some of the busiest shipping lanes on the entire planet.  If you go down to the old Galle Fort and look out from the ramparts, you will see containerized shipping, tankers, freighters from all around the world, they all pass Galle Fort on their way between the straits of Malacca and the straits of Hormuz.  I see ships coming to the port of Colombo from right outside my office window.  It is clear that Sri Lanka is on the global map.

So Sri Lanka has quite a geographic positioning.  It is so close to the markets of South Asia, so close to the markets of the Middle East, so close to the markets of South-east Asia.  I don’t need to tell you any of this, you already know this.  It also has Free Trade Agreements with many of the countries in the region, making it an excellent location for assembly, logistics and other commercial endeavours.  And, as I have discovered, Sri Lanka is a tremendous place and it makes an excellent regional hub and an excellent place to live.  These are messages I have already begun to deliver to the American business chambers around the region, throughout the Indo-Pacific region, South-east Asia, East Asia, South Asia and other places.  It is true by all means that the government is poised to strengthen its links with the US on all fronts.

Yet, the joint Opposition appears to be having a different world view.  This   political group loyal to MR sees that Sri Lanka should not line up with a certain power bloc of the world, as one of its junior members.

Joint Opposition sees Russian President as Vigorous Figure

A joint Opposition delegation led by former External Affairs Minister Prof. G.L. Peiris met with Russian Ambassador Alexander A. Karchava at the embassy on Tuesday, and made its stance clear.  During the meeting, the Opposition delegation was critical of allowing foreign officials to visit the sensitive military installations in the country.

This criticism was in obvious reference to the visit of the UN Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances to the naval base in Trincomalee. Later, they alleged that there was a torture chamber. The Navy denied it later.
Prof. Peiris told the meeting, According to a news report, the government has directed to arrest 20 intelligence officials. More and more military personnel are arrested whereas more and more LTTE people are released.”

He said the Opposition delegation greatly appreciated the contribution made by the Russian Federation during Sri Lanka’s difficult times.
We also appreciated the contribution of Vladimir Putin, the Russian President in the contemporary world as a vigorous figure who has made great difference to the contemporary world order,” he said.
This was part of the opposition’s engagement with the Heads of Diplomatic Missions in Colombo.

Bandula –Ravi spat over bloated figures

The budget debate is currently underway in Parliament, and the allegation of falsification of figures, in one instance, has drawn the attention of critics.
Opposition MP Bandula Gunawardane locked horns with Finance Minister Ravi Karunanayake over the matter, and it resulted in the suspension of parliamentary sitting during the budget debate on Monday for ten minutes. Speaker Karu Jayasuriya called for a meeting with both of them in his office. Besides, Leader of the House Lakshman Kiriella, Chief Government Whip Gayantha Karunatilake, Justice Minister Wijeyadasa Rajapakshe and  a few top finance ministry officials were also present at the meeting.

Again, at the meeting, Mr. Gunawardane and Mr. Karunanayake took on each other. The former charged that the capital value of school buildings and playgrounds had been taken into account and included in the recurrent expenditure under the vote of the Education Ministry.  He said Rs. 124.4 billion had been added in this manner to show that the government was living up to its promise that six percent of the GDP would be apportioned to develop the education sector. It was a main campaign theme of the United National Party (UNP).

However, the latter rebuffed the allegation saying the capital value had   to be considered as a modern technique of budgetary estimations.
I wonder why Mr. Gunawardane doesn’t understand it,” he said.
The joint Opposition is not ready to give up its fight against the government on this matter. In fact, it decided to move a no-confidence motion against the Minister.

Budget formulated on UNP policies: SLFP dissidents to vote against?

The budget contains proposals, both to be appreciated and criticized.  But, in the public domain, it has been subjected to severe criticism due to lack of concessions and welfare measures. The budget takes the form of a blueprint for long-term economic reforms. Mr. Karunanayake mentioned it as a wake-up call for the private sector to invest.

The Minister also called it an extension of economic reforms    initiated by late President J.R. Jayewardene, and carried forward   by late President R. Premadasa – the two vigorous UNP leaders.
Now, a National Government is in place.  Mr. Karunanayake is the Finance Minister of such a Unity Government formed between the UNP and the SLFP.
Against this backdrop, the Rajapaksa group of the SLFP found this budget unacceptable. The group viewed the budget as something against core values and policies of SLFP.

Be that as it may, President Maithripala Sirisena asked the party’s MPs to vote for the budget as SLFP is now part and parcel of the National Government.  First all the MPs of the party met with the President and the party’s General Secretary Duminda Dissanayake, a right hand loyalist of President Sirisena, announced it to the media. But, SLFP dissidents were unhappy about it, and even sought a denial from Mr. Dissanayake.

The MR group had a discussion with the President separately on Tuesday and informed of its decision. The President said he would only request all the MPs of the party to     vote for the budget, but not order anyone in this regard.

Subsequent to this meeting, the MR loyalists met again, and decided to seek more modifications and ramifications to the budget.   Accordingly, the President will engage with the relevant authorities, including Mr. Karunanayake as the Finance Minister once he returned from his overseas tour.
The final decision of the MR group has not been announced as yet, pending the outcome of the President’s proposed engagement. However, all indications are that the group will vote against the budget.

Basil runs to President

After a lapse of exactly one year and two days, former Economic Development Minister Basil Rajapaksa ran to President Sirisena. The duo are arch rivals in politics after the President fell out with MR, the brother of Basil,  and challenged him at the January 8th Presidential Election.  After his fallout, President Sirisena found more faults with him for what he called ‘political undercuts and injustices’ done to him when he served in the Cabinet at that time.  After defection, the President even accused Basil of spoiling his long-standing friendship with   MR.
The two had not met with each other since defection. Yet, Basil Rajapaksa encountered the President at the wedding reception of former Minister Arumugam Thondaman’s daughter on Sunday.  The two had an informal chat and hurried away.

‘His Royal Highness of Jaffna’ writes to Mangala 

Regi Remedius Kanagarajah, a Jaffna-born person domiciled in the Netherlands calls himself a descendant of  a royal family that ruled Jaffna in ancient history;  has written to Foreign Affairs Minister Mangala Samaraweera offering his assistance to bring about everlasting peace in the country.
This individual who addresses himself as ‘His Royal Highness’ had sent the letter to the Minister recently.   – See more at:

http://www.dailymirror.lk/96871/but-joint-opposition-hails-russia#sthash.vguD72du.dpuf

Dr Hector Perera  London

I am sure you are aware of the fact that energy is a big question for the general public, the price is always on the rise, not coming down at all. Unlike in hot weather countries, over here energy is used for heating and eating. A large number of families find it’s very difficult to use energy comfortably for both purposes.

Here I have come up with a scientific technique to save a reasonable amount of energy wasted in cooking foods such as pasta, spaghetti, rice then vegetable or meat curries such as chicken or beef. Just like some of our beautiful Sri Lanka ladies, majority of British TV chefs love to shower with cooking aroma while cooking. I am prepared to show the public how to save some energy then avoid any cooking aroma getting deposited on them while cooking. Baking, frying and grill cooking are out of my question because no energy can be saved in those kinds of cooking.

Demonstrated to the public

I have demonstrated to The Sustainable Energy Authority in Sri Lanka how to save a little more than 60% energy wasted in cooking those kinds of food. The people in Sri Lanka mainly eat rice and curries unlike the public in England. I think still quite a lot of people even in England eat rice, pasta and spaghetti as well other than pies, pizzas, burgers and takeaways so some people even in England also can benefit from my energy saving cooking method. That means my method can be used by many millions of people who live in England to save some energy wasted in cooking. I mentioned quite clearly only some energy can be saved because that depends on the utensils including the right kind of cooker.

One of my questions is if my method can be accepted by The Sustainable Energy Authority and approve that the method saves a reasonable amount of energy, why not it’s accepted by any energy authorities in England?  Further the invention commission in Sri Lanka filmed my energy saving cooking and added that to their official web site. I have written to some leading gas companies in England but they are not prepared to come forward either to approve or disprove my method. I agree that the gas companies are business people and their purpose is to supply the gas to the general public. They are not to be blamed for wastage of gas as the consumers have to meet the expenses which depends on the customers. I even placed £50,000/00 yes fifty thousand sterling, in case the energy saving experts in England disproved my technique. The energy authorities in Sri Lanka have already approved my method so questions with them. I am sure they are under the impression that I am not that childish or stupid to place that kind of money, if I cannot prove my scientific energy saving technique.

I was in touch with every possible authority

I even wrote to the Energy Minister Rt Hon Mathew Hancock in the previous Tory government but I didn’t get any reply from him either. I will be in touch with the present energy minister, perhaps I might get a reasonable reply. Then I wrote to DECC, Department of Energy and Climate Change as well. Then they send a whole list of web sites they are involved but didn’t pay any attention to my finding. It appears they don’t want to know. Further I wrote to the mayor of London Rt Hon Mr Borris Johnson but he even not bothered to reply then on repeat appeal he send me a letter saying that it is not his responsibility. He is worried about pollution which is directly responsible for wastage of gas. Then I wrote to BBC requesting to let me show my energy saving on any TV programme so that the public would decide if my method is a real or a fake and useful to them. I must say BBC replied immediately but so far I didn’t get anywhere with the TV people.

I have demonstrated with many TV media in Sri Lanka

Back in Sri Lanka, I have demonstrated my scientific energy saving cooking in several TVs such as ITN, TNL, Derana TV then with Sirasa TV media and no public objected with my work. I explained in simple terms so that the general would understand my scientific energy saving method. Just words only cannot explain this technique, it should be supported with a demonstration. I even demonstrated three times to some public in a complex of apartments in Colombo. I spend for all the expenses for hiring the tables and chairs for the occasion then the work was filmed by a professional cameraman. My intension was to help the public save some energy by following my method of energy saving cooking.

My method is scientific

The method is based on well-established scientific laws. I used scientific terms such as thermodynamic equilibrium condition, intermolecular, intramolecular reactions, thermal capacity, methods of heat loss such as convection, conduction and radiation and a few more terms in explaining this energy saving cooking. Two gas laws that I used in my explanations are accepted even up to date by leading Universities in America and in England.

British TV cooking demonstrations

I have watched far too many cooking programmes in British TV but to my surprise none of the so called eminent chefs have not demonstrated my kind of energy saving techniques in their cooking. Some of the chefs love to get showered with cooking aroma while cooking and occasionally the cooking aroma catches fire. May be they are under the impression that higher the fire more viewers get attracted to watch their shows. I have a feeling that some of those kinds of cooking totally put off the public about home cooking and more people get addicted to junk foods which are not quite healthy. That kind of cooking demonstrations discourages the public to cook and gives the impression that cooking is a tedious matter. I will be able to demonstrate that cooking is an absolutely easy task.

I hope you would take this matter into your considerations despite that you are responsible for far too many political problems to solve here and abroad. I am sure you would understand as the winter approaches many people have the problems with energy with for eating and heating. As I mentioned before I am not able to demonstrate how to save energy in all kinds of cooking. I am very specific in my work. I am not a chef or a cook but a chemistry teacher with BSc [Hons] MSc PhD qualifications. I apply science in cooking to save energy then to avoid any cooking aroma while cooking. Sir, you may inquire more details of my work then if I deserve any recognition please see to this matter at your convenience. I am confident that I deserve some kind of recognition for SCIENTIFIC ENERGY SAVING COOKING TECHNIQUE. I am still wondering why my work is not good enough for the TVs in England, perhaps I didn’t contact the right people to show my work in the TVs in England. Your comments are welcomed perera6@hotmail.co.uk

Gilbert Mercier NEWS JUNKIE POST

The sad reality about the United States of America is that in a matter of a few hundreds years it managed to rewrite its own history into a mythological fantasy. The concepts of liberty, freedom and free enterprise in the land of the free, home of the brave” are a mere spin. The US was founded and became prosperous based on two original sins: firstly, on the mass murder of Native Americans and theft of their land by European colonialists; secondly, on slavery.
..
This grim reality is far removed from the fairy tale version of a nation that views itself in its collective consciousness as a virtuous universal agent for good and progress. The most recent version of this mythology was expressed by Ronald Reagan when he said that America is a shining city upon a hill whose beacon light guides freedom-loving people everywhere.”

In rewriting its own history about Thanksgiving, white America tells a Disney-like fairytale about the English pilgrims and their struggle to survive in a new and harsh environment. The pilgrims found help from the friendly and extremely generous Native-American tribe, the Wampanoag Indians, in 1621. Unfortunately for Native Americans, the European settlers’ gratitude was short-lived. By 1637, Massachusetts governor John Winthrop ordered the massacre of thousands of Pequot Indian men, women and children. This event marked the start of a Native-American genocide that would take slightly more than 200 years to complete, and of course to achieve its ultimate goal, which was to take the land from Native Americans and systematically plunder their resources. The genocide begun in 1637 marks the beginning of the conquest of the entire continent until most Native Americans were exterminated, a few were assimilated into white society, and the rest were put in reservations to dwindle and die.

When Christopher Columbus discovered” the Americas in 1492, on his quest for gold and silver, the Native population, which he erroneously called Indians, numbered an estimated 15 million who lived north of current day Mexico. It was, by all considerations, a thriving civilization. Three hundred and fifty years later, the Native American population north of Mexico would be reduced to fewer than a million. This genocide was brought upon the Natives by systematic mass murder and also by disease, notably smallpox, spread by the European colonists.

Columbus and his successors’ proto-capitalist propensity for greed was foreign to Native Americans. They viewed the land as tribal collective ownership, not as a property that could be owned by individuals. Columbus and his successors were not coming to an empty wilderness, but into a world which, in some places, was as densely populated as Europe, and where the culture was complex, where human relations were more egalitarian than in Europe, and where the relations between men, women, children and nature were more beautifully worked out than perhaps in any other places in the world.” wrote Howard Zinn in his masterful A People’s History of the United States.

In many ways, the US’ celebration of Thanksgiving is analogous to setting aside a day in Germany to celebrate the Holocaust. Thanksgiving is the American Holocaust. The original crimes of genocide and slavery are not limited to US early history but have found an extension in the policies of modern-day US. The systematic assault on other nations and cultures still goes on under various pretenses or outright lies. United States wars of empire are going on today more than ever before. These wars have left millions of people dead across the world in the course of American history, and they are still fought for the same reasons behind the Native American genocide and slavery: namely, to expand the wealth of the US elite.

Defenders of Thanksgiving will say that whatever the original murky meaning of the holiday, it has become a rare chance to spend time with family and show appreciation for what one has. For most Americans today, however, it is hard to be thankful. As matter of fact, unless you belong to the 2 percent who represent the US ruling class you should not be thankful at all. How can you be appreciative for what you have if you have lost your house to foreclosure, don’t have a job and can’t feed your family? How can you be appreciative if you are a homeless veteran? How can you be appreciative when you are poor or sick in a society without social justice? On this Thanksgiving day, rich celebrities and politicians will make a parody of what should be real charity by feeding countless poor and homeless. This will ease their conscience, at least for a while. Charity, however, should not be a substitute for social justice. Just to ruin some people’s appetites before they attack that golden turkey: keep in mind that today we are celebrating a genocide.

By Saman Indrajith Courtesy Island

The four-party Tamil National Alliance (TNA) yesterday said that it would withdraw its support for the Maithripala Sirisena-Wickremesinghe government unless the latter addressed grievances of Tamil speaking people.

The warning was given by TNA MP and Deputy Chairman of Committees Selvam Adaikalanathan (former TELO commander) opening the budget debate.

The MP reminded the government that those living in the Northern and Eastern Provinces had exercised their franchise in support of Maithripala Sirisena at the January presidential poll as they wanted a change. They hoped that there would be a difference and their grievances would be redressed. They expected at least they would get their lands back.

The TNA parliamentary group has 16 members including two appointed via the National List.

The MP alleged that the people had apparently been taken for a ride again. Life in the Northern Province was uncertain again due to the present government adopting the policies of its predecessor, he alleged.

Addaikalanathan said Tamils had been promised their land back within 100 days of the formation of the Sirisena-Wickremesinghe government early this year. Although a committee under a former President had been tasked to examine the release of land, the government had apparently changed its stance, the former TELO militant said. He acknowledged that some land previously held by the military had been released.

“We have requested the government to change a District Secretary and appoint a Tamil speaking official but in vain.”

Dr Sudath Gunasekara

Prior to Jan 8 2015 people in this country saw these two persons as non- asserting utterly week men. Their assumption was purely based on the past behavior of these rather unusual friends. But strangely after Jan 8^th and more particularly after August 17 both of them, though with different agendas, of course with one bottom line of eliminating MR and consolidating power, have risen like the phoenix from ashes to everybody’s surprise and now started to display unusual power.

Most spectators were trying to find the reason/reasons for this overnight change.  Almost all have come to the conclusion that it is the anti Sinhala, anti Buddhist Western world lead by the US and India abroad and at the same minded people at Home lead by Chandrika that has catapulted these two strange friends  to such mighty and unexpected heights.

The following two links will clearly explain the secret behind this phenomena

“if any regime in any nation violates the prevailing precepts of
acceptable governance, then the international community is morally
obligated to revoke that nation’s sovereignty and assume command and
control of the offending country. Assuming command and control is
mostly through diplomatic endeavors”

———- Forwarded message ———-
From: Kamal Rajapakse <kamal.rajapakse@sky.com>
Date: Mon, 23 Nov 2015 22:34:47 -0000
Subject: Power & Soros in Sri Lanka to press for Federal Constitution
To: Sinhale News <sinhale.news@yahoo.com>

Power & Soros in Sri Lanka to press for
Federal Constitution

By Daya Gamage – Asian Tribune Political Analysis
Washington, D.C. 20 November (Asiantribune.com):
U.S. Permanent Representative for the United Nations Samantha Power,
Obama administration’s top foreign policy advocate is scheduled to
visit Sri Lanka November 21-23. This is her second visit, the previous
one being June 2010 during the Rajapaksa administration.
In January 2016, American multi billionaire George Soros is scheduled
to visit Colombo – it is said – for an economic discourse.

Both visits are significant when both of them, since 2012, have been
direct participants of UN-Department of Political Affairs- initiated
‘promotion of federalism’ in Third World nations envisaged to
bifurcate nations on ethnic lines.

The two visits are even further interesting when Colombo has an
American diplomatic envoy – Atul Keshap – who is a strong believer of
a federal structure in Sri Lanka. He has gone on record advocating the
system.

And more interesting because the Sirisena-Wickremasinghe
administration early this week made an official announcement – with
cabinet approval – that the Executive Presidential system will end
with Sirisena’s completion of his term and that in early 2016 the Sri
Lanka legislature will be transformed into a ‘Constitutional Assembly’
to draft a new constitution for the country.

U.S. Permanent Representative for the United Nations Samantha
PowerBecause of the Rajapaksa administration’s ill-advised
triumphalism soon after the Eelam War IV ended in May 2009 giving the
11% minority Tamils a sense of defeat which helped the operatives –
who were once ‘Material Supporters’ to Prabhakaran’s Tamil Tigers –
within the Tamil Diaspora to convince the US State Department and
foreign offices of the EU nations that they are the ‘voice’ of the
Tamil people reviving the issue of federalism in Sri Lanka.

The operatives of the Tamil Diaspora – now the so called voice of the
Tamil people – in their dialogues with the officials of the state
department and Obama White House – convinced that the best solution to
redress Tamil grievances was a constitutional arrangement devolving
administrative and development powers to the ‘Tamil Homeland’.

Having fulfilled her desire as, first, Obama White House human rights
and genocide czar, then as US ambassador to the UN retaining her
influence over White House foreign policy initiatives to take Sri
Lanka to the UNHRC, Geneva on the issues of accountability, Dr. Power,
since 2012, was instrumental in getting the UN Department of Political
Affairs (DPA) to come out with a broad plan to re-structure several
developing Third World nations’ constitutional arrangement to impose
federalism as an answer to ethnic minority grievances. Napal was one
example.

The DPA for decades has been under the effective control of the State
Department. The Under- Secretary-General, the second most senior
office holder next to the Secretary-General, has always been a former
state department official. Currently, it is headed by Jeffrey Feltman,
the former assistant secretary who had served the state department for
more than two decades.

It is in this context that the visits of Power, this week, and Soros
next January so crucial to the existence of Sri Lanka as a united
nation.

The UN, since 2012, has been holding a number of closed-door meetings
and seminars at which the partition of UN member states has been
discussed. Most of the meetings have been held under the direction of
the UN Inter-agency Framework for Coordination on Preventive Action
(the Framework Team or FT). The FT is directly under the control of
Under- Secretary-General (Political Affairs).

The process in 2012 commenced during Under Secretary-General
(Political) B. Lynn Pascoe’s period who retired from his senior state
department position at the behest of Washington to take over the
position. The holder of this position as the head of the Department of
Political Affairs (DPA) advises the UN Secretary-General on peace and
security issues globally, while overseeing “good offices” initiatives
and field-based political missions carrying out peacekeeping,
preventive diplomacy and peace-building activities. The incumbent also
oversees the UN electoral assistance provided to dozens of its member
states each year.
The FT, when 2012 process started, advanced the work of President
Obama’s then “information czar” Cass Sunstein and his wife Samantha
Power who was an influential member of the U.S. National Security
Council.

The FT has also trained certain activists around the world,
particularly in developing and other countries with pro-western
governments, to use “the system” to effect change. It is a well known
fact that the entire FT operation at the UN is bankrolled with George
Soros money.

When the process commenced in 2012, Sri Lanka, apart from Nepal, was
also a target for the identity federalism engineers. During the 2008
presidential campaign, both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama received
large campaign donations from front groups for the Tamil Tigers which
was in 1997 designated as a terrorist organization by the U.S. State
Department. As a way of thanking the Tigers for their support, the
Obama administration, Soros, and the International Peace Institute of
Norway (which has been called a front for NATO, Soros, and the CIA and
which supported the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam [LTTE] during
their long civil war against the Sri Lankan government) have been
pushing for a federal system in Sri Lanka that would create a
Sinhalese, Tamil, and Muslim federation, with secession following.

A widely-read blog itmakessenseblog.com noted in a 2012 report that
although South Korean Ban Ki-moon is the Secretary General of the UN,
his most important deputies represent the interests of NATO and its
allies. The Undersecretary General for Political Affairs is B. Lynn
Pascoe, a former U.S. ambassador to Indonesia and Malaysia and is
thought by many UN staffers to have links to the CIA. The
Undersecretary General for Safety and Security is Gregory Starr, a
former Director of the U.S. State Department’s Diplomatic Security
Service who is also thought to have close links to the CIA. The
Assistant Secretary-General for Strategic Planning and Policy
Coordination is Robert Orr, the former Director of Global and
Multilateral Affairs at the U.S. National Security Council on which
the CIA is represented. The Executive Director of the UN Children’s
Fund (UNICEF) is Anthony Lake, a former U.S. National Security
Adviser.

It is with this scenario initiating federal structure in many Third
World small nations on ethnic lines that US State Department officials
declared the best political solution to Sri Lanka’s ‘National Issues’
is serious devolution of power with a federal structure.

The incumbent Under-Secretary-General Jeffrey Feltman is well within
the process of promoting federal structure of government in many Third
World small nations such as Sri Lanka.

American ambassador to Sri Lanka Atul Keshap has gone on record his
authoritative declaration that this South Asian nation needs a federal
structure to redress minority Tamil grievances. Previously, he was
working very closely on Sri Lankan issues with Robert Blake when he
was the assistant secretary of the South Asian Bureau. Mr. Blake was
the US envoy in Colombo during the period the Sri Lanka military
undertook the final assault on the Tamil Tiger movement.

Atul Keshap has been to Sri Lanka on two occasions, one in June 2014
and the other in February 2015.

Ignoring the Sinhalese consensus that establishing a federal structure
in the Island is a stepping stone for separatism, a political concept
under which the Tamil Tigers launched its military offensive since the
mid-seventies until its domestic demise in May 2009, Atul Keshap made
the statements to the effect of the necessity of a federal structure
when he accompanied assistant secretary Biswal on an official tour in
June 2014 at media interview in Colombo.

Officials in the United States Department of State based in Washington
do not make policy statements to the effect what other nations should
undertake unless they are determined as policy planks at the highest
level of the American government. Earlier in this note we disclosed
how the ‘federalism process’ commenced at the UN in 2012.

When Mr. Atul Keshap, not once but several occasions in the same
interview with a Sri Lankan newspaper – Daily Mirror – about the
vitality of establishing a federal structure in Sri Lanka, he was
obviously pronouncing a policy plank of the United States Government
already determined at some high level.

At this June 20, 2014 interview Mr. Keshap told what the United States
believed in saying: “the U.S. believes in a very bright future for
this country and it believes that Sri Lanka has the potential in terms
of human capital, in terms of resources, in terms of geographic
location, in terms of having secured peace after a very brutal civil
war – a country connected to the entire world. A country that is not
the subject of UN Human Rights Council Resolutions because it has
perfected its democracy and perfected its respect for human rights. A
country that has created a meaningful formula for devolution of power
and federalism, to ensure coherence among the various regions. A
country that is reconciled, peaceful, and prosperous”.

Lamenting about the long delay in bringing changes Mr. Keshap said:
It’s been five years since the war ended and I haven’t seen any
meaningful discussion or movement along the lines of a meaningful
negotiation of the very tricky political issues related to federalism.

Samantha Power’s visit to Colombo is the culmination of this
development at a time the Sirisena-Wickremasinghe administration
envisages to promulgate a new constitution for Sri Lanka.

Samantha Power rose to prominence in government circles as part of her
campaign to promote a doctrine known as the Responsibility to Protect.
It is a doctrine advanced by the UN and is predicated on the
proposition that sovereignty is a privilege, not a right, and that if
any regime in any nation violates the prevailing precepts of
acceptable governance, then the international community is morally
obligated to revoke that nation’s sovereignty and assume command and
control of the offending country. Assuming command and control is
mostly through diplomatic endeavors.

The worldwide leader in the promotion of this doctrine that Samantha
Power worked to develop is the Global Center for Responsibility to
Protect (GCR2P). One of the biggest financial supporters of the GCR2P
is the Open Society Institute which itself is a branch of the Open
Society Foundation,, an organization created by financier George
Soros.

Apart from providing financial backing to the Responsibility to
Protect, Soros personally believes in and promotes the philosophy. In
an article published by Foreign Policy in 2004 entitled “The People’s
Sovereignty: How a New Twist on an Old Idea Can Protect the World’s
Most Vulnerable Populations,” Soros presented his take on the
principles that undergird the Responsibility to Protect.

“True sovereignty belongs to the people, who in turn delegate it to
their governments,” Soros wrote.

And: “If governments abuse the authority entrusted to them and
citizens have no opportunity to correct such abuses, outside
interference is justified. By specifying that sovereignty is based on
the people, the international community can penetrate nation-states’
borders to protect the rights of citizens.

“In particular, the principle of the people’s sovereignty can help
solve two modern challenges: the obstacles to delivering aid
effectively to sovereign states, and the obstacles to global
collective action dealing with states experiencing internal conflict”.

Sri Lanka is faced to deal with this emerging situation with the
arrival of Dr. Samantha Power and George Soros. One could see the
fall-out of ‘internationalizing’ a ‘domestic’ issue and the LTTE
transformation from militarism to ‘Global Diplomatic Maneuver’ with
tacit State Department and United Nations participation.

– Asian Tribune -. One could see the
fall-out of ‘internationalizing’ a ‘domestic’ issue and the LTTE
transformation from militarism to ‘Global Diplomatic Maneuver’ with
tacit State Department and United Nations participation.

– Asian Tribune –

H. L. D. Mahindapala

Part III

In a fit of anti-Sinhala-Buddhist rage Mr. Izeth Hussain, the Sri Lankan caricature of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the leader of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, also known as ISIS or Daesh, has warned the ethnic majority (the Sinhala-Buddhists) that what happened to the French colonialists in Algeria will happen to them. ” ……………(T)he times they are a-changing,” he cries out loud like a muezzin in striped Western pants from his political minaret. He says: The relationship between the majority and the submerged minority could sometimes, not always, and to some extent, be similar to the relationship between colonial master and native. The natives revolted against their masters, and so could the submerged minority.(i.e., the Muslims.) He threatens and hectors partly to denigrate the Sinhala-Buddhists and partly to pit the Muslims against the Sinhala-Buddhist. He  is playing a dangerous game in rousing anti-Sinhala-Buddhist racism.

He adds: The Muslims are becoming visible and – unbelievable though it may seem – some Muslim politicians have been actually speaking up for the Muslim people.” In other words, he is warning the ethnic majority that the Muslims can react violently like the gun-toting, trigger-happy ISIS – if necessary – to get whatever they want. Mr. Hussain is not only hinting, in a subtle way, at a Daesh / Caliphate (a la ISIS),  but also goes to the extreme of welcoming the Indian intervention of training and arming the Tamil terrorists. It is inconceivable that a diplomat of any country would commend the next door Big Bully for destabilizing the neighbourhood. But that is what Mr. Hussain does. In the same breath he states that the government has failed in its efforts of nation-building. But will it ever be possible even for a hundred Einsteins to a build a nation out of traitors?

In case I’m accused of misrepresenting or distorting let me quote Mr. Hussain’s text which refers to the Indian export of terrorism to Sri Lanka, just to put the record straight. Taking cover behind  the alleged thinking of  the international community Mr. Hussain says: ……. India was justified in providing training and weapons to the insurgent Tamils, even though India disastrously mishandled the problem at a later stage.”  Then riding his routine anti-Sinhala-Buddhist hobby-horse he concludes by saying : I must acknowledge that the Muslims have supported the Sinhalese in every act of racist idiocy against the Tamils.”

These quotes (all from his articles published in The Ceylon Telegraph) sum up the anti-Sinhala-Buddhist ideology that Mr. Hussain has been promoting in his articles. In going down this path he has virtually abandoned – nay, condemned! – the earlier enlightened policies of deriving mutual benefit through peaceful co-existence – policies pursued by pioneering leaders like T. B. Jayah, Badi-ud Din Mahamud, Dr. M.C. M. Kaleel, a loveable and mild-mannered healer who won the good will of all communities in the heart of Colombo, and his bete noir, A. C. S. Hameed who won repeatedly in Akurana, largely a Sinhala-Buddhist electorate. As opposed to these leaders Mr. Hussain has opted to direct his fatwahs and harams relentlessly against our indecent Islamophobes – with whom our last Government was in joyful cahoots.” Who are these Islamaphobes” mentioned by him? In his text he refers only to our indecent Islamophobes – with whom our last Government was in joyful cahoots.” This could only mean the Bodu Bala Sena in particular and the Sinhala-Buddhists in general. Nowhere in his text does he mention any other community or force, other than the Sinhala-Buddhists allied to the Rajapakse Government. In his own circumlocutory way he makes it clear that he is targeting the Sinhala-Buddhists as our indecent Islamaphobes”.

Before going any further it is necessary to examine this statement in the historical context, particularly to assess how the so-called public intellectuals of our time distort the reality to demonise the Sinhala-Buddhists. At first, it must be conceded that in the longest running war in Asia it is the Tamils of the North and the East that got the worst beating from all sides – from the Sri Lankan forces, the Indian IPKF and, most of all, from their own liberators”, the LTTE. The Sinhalese suffered mostly under the terror unleashed by the LTTE. But for no reason at all, it is the non-combatant and neutral Muslims who were subject to some of the worst cruelties of the Tamil Tigers simply because were Muslims. Islamaphobia reached its obscene nadir when the Muslims at prayer were massacred mercilessly in Kathaankudy. Islamaphobia reached its racist zenith when 75,000 Muslims were given 48 hours to quit Jaffna so that the ethnic purity of Jaffna could be retained for the Tamils. Besides, the Tamil attacks on the Sinhalese could be considered as acts of retaliation. But what had the Muslims done to the Tamils? The attacks on the Muslims led by the Tamil leadership is tantamount to pure Islamaphobia and nothing else.

Now these are not isolated incidents in the history of Jaffna. Islamaphobia is endemic to Jaffna. The Yalapana-Vaipava-Malai or the History of the  Kingdom of Jaffna, translated and edited by C. Brito, 1879, (See footnote)  records the gruesome details of Islamaphobia that gripped Jaffna under Tamil rulers. Historical  record 1: The remnants (the Malays) inhabited the villages of Sava-kach-cheri and Savaang-kodu. But Sangkili drove them also out of his kingdom.” (p. 34 – Ibid)). He had also expelled the Buddhists and  destroyed their temples.

Historical record 2 : During the supremacy of the Ulanthesar, a colony of Sonakar (Moors) came from Kayilpaddanam and other places and settled in South-mirisivil, the name  of which they changed into Usan. They were originally Tamils by race but had embraced the Mukammathu-matkam by the compulsion or  persuasion of one Santhach-chaivu. Their chief means of subsistence was trade, which they carried on from fair to fair in Savakach-cheri, Kodi-kamam, Eluthu-madduwal, and Mukavil. After a time they abandoned Usan and founded a new settlement in Nallur, on and around the site of  Kantha-Swamy-Koyil. The Tamils viewed their presence with displeasure, as they thought that it might be detrimental to the cause of their religion when the time should come  for the restoration of the temple. They tempted the Sonakar to leave the place, with money and entreaties, which when they found unavailing they had recourse to a plan that proved effectual. They put a quantity of pig’s flesh into the wells of their enemy by night. When the defilement was discovered, the Sonakar were  in great distress of mind. They could neither drink the water nor cook their meals with it, and they saw themselves driven to the necessity of choosing between starvations on one hand and emigration on the  other. They chose the latter and sold the place for whatever money could get from the Tamils and retired to the east of Navanthurai. (p.55 – Ibid).

Compare this with two similar historical events in the south. The Dutch  pursued a deliberate policy of targeting the Muslims. They were rivals in trade and getting rid them was an official policy. When the Dutch drove out the Muslims from the east coast they were given refuge by the Sinhala kings. And when Jaffna was ethnically cleansed of 75,000 Muslims by the Tamil leaders of the LTTE the Muslims once again found a safe haven only in the Sinhala south. So whose politics is driven by Islamaphobia? In the vaunted democracies of the West they are now closing the gates for the Muslims seeking refuge. Did the Sinhalese ever refuse to give a home to the Muslims whenever they were persecuted by their Islamaphobic enemies?

Furthermore, the Sinhala-Buddhist south has constantly sent Muslims to Parliament as their representatives. Muslim mayors of various cities, including the capital, and local councillors have been elected by the majority Sinhala-Buddhists. If the Sinhala-Buddhists were the indecent Islamaphobes” , as stated by Mr. Hussain, would they have ever elected the Muslim politicians to be their representatives? And compare that with the number of Muslims elected in Jaffna. So who is afraid of the Muslims? Who is driven by Islamaphobia? Mr. Hussain refers the Bodu Bala Sena as the indecent Islamaphobes”. He also claims that the Rajapakse government was in cahoots with them. Let us concede that for the moment. But if he is judging the Sinhala-Buddhist as indecent Islamaphobes” by passing judgment on the Ambalangoda incident how should he judge the Tamil Hindus who liquidated the Muslims in  the Eastern province? Using his own measurements in judging the Muslims, can Ambalangoda be compared to Kathaankudy? How many Muslims were expelled from Ambalangoda at the point of a gun? Were the Sri Lankan forces deployed to restore peace and order, or to do a Kathankuddy?

Any fair judgment should be based on the manner in which the Sinhala-Buddhist leadership handled the Ambalangoda incident. How the initial events went from  bad to worse at the lower-ethnic leadership level is debatable. But  ultimately the ethnic rivalry in Ambalangoda  should be judged by how it was resolved without allowing it to spill over into a national conflagration. Mr.Hussain accuses the Rajapakse regime of being responsible for the Ambalangoda conflict. But he ignores the critical factor in which President Rajapakse intervened to nip it in the bud. If Rajapakse was driven by Islamaphobia shouldn’t he have done what Prabhakaran did to the Muslims in Jaffna and the East?

In defending the Muslims against Islamphobia he urges the Sri Lankans to judge the Muslims from their positive achievements and not from their Bamyan barbarism. If he is the intellectual he claims to be, shouldn’t he apply the same principle in judging the Sinhala-Buddhists? Shouldn’t he too judge the Sinhala-Buddhists by their tolerant culture that gave shelter to persecuted Muslims and Catholics and not by the aberrant lunatic fringe? He knows what happened in Gujerat when Narendra Modi was governor. Even the American government refused a visa to him at one  time because of the gross violations  of human  rights. He  should ask  my friend Alavi Moulana, the Governor of Western Province, how many local or central governments in the south sponsored genocidal attacks on the Muslims. At least, shouldn’t he apply common sense and evaluate the rise of the Muslims from their humble origins as traders in the Sinhala kingdoms, their subsequent growth and advances without going through the persecutions and massacres inflicted by the Christians in Europe, or the Tamils in the North?

Mr. Hussain labours indefatigably and incessantly to portray the Muslims among the Sinhala-Buddhists as if they are the Palestinians persecuted by the Israelis. He complains, with bitterness, the idiocy” of the Muslims supporting the Sinhalese. But he has conveniently forgotten how Rauf Hakeem signed an agreement with Velupillai Prabhakaran who, despite the promises in the agreement, relentlessly slaughtered the Muslim babies, pregnant women and those at prayers. So is the idiocy” in supporting the Sinhalese or the Tamils? Who is it who has a well established record of persecuting and slaughtering Muslims in Sri Lanka?

Take the case of the Tamil leadership going on the offensive against the Muslims saying  that they are actually Tamils who had converted to Islam. From the beginning of the 20th century the Tamil leadership has been denying that the Muslims have a separate identity from the Tamils. The Muslims rightfully claims that they are descendants of the Arab traders. But as seen even in the statement of Yalapana-Vaipava-Malai the Tamil leadership had always denied the separate identity of Muslims and claimed that they are Tamils who had embraced Islam. This theory was revived and propagated by Ponnambalam Ramanathan at the turn of the 20th century to deny the Muslims their place in the political firmament. By classifying them as Tamils the Jaffna Tamils were hoping  to grab whatever share of power that would accrue to the Muslims. Historical records establish that both physically and ideologically the Tamil leadership had acted against the best interests of the Muslims. They were out to absorb the Muslims into their political fold so that it would increase their demographic power in the electorate. And when they failed they either expelled them or massacred them. The political forces that lifted the Muslims from their submerged / invisible” status came from the alliances with the Sinhala leadership. Mr. Hussain, however, refuses, to view the Sinhala-Buddhist as their partners in peaceful co-existence. Looking through his  myopic glasses, he campaigns unceasingly to kill the goose that laid the golden eggs for the Muslims.

Historical evidence points to the fact that Islamaphobia has been a recurring factor in Tamil politics. But it is the Sinhala-Buddhists who, despite 1915”caused by Muslim arrogance and intransigence, never failed to extend a generous hand to shelter the Muslim minority. The Muslims grew, prospered and advanced from  their submerged / invisible” status to one of the most visible communities because they co-existed as good and reasonable neighbours, friends, school-mates, business partners, professionals, cricketers, footballers etc., with the Sinhala-Buddhists. If, as he says, the Sinhala-Buddhists are afflicted with Islamaphobia they would  not be in Sri Lanka. They could have been driven out like the Muslims in Christian Europe, or in the Tamil North. As a trading community they thrived mainly because their customers, by and large, were the Sinhala-Buddhists. The Muslim community has advanced from the ranks of butchers and shop-keepers to professionals because Badi-ud din Mahamud, as Minister of Education in the Sinhala government” government, succeeded in giving advantages to the less advantaged Muslim community through his standardized system. As opposed to this the only big deal signed with the Tamil leadership, Prabhakaran, left the Muslim leader, Rauf Hakeem, with hundreds of Muslim corpses at his feet.

Mr. Hussain hails Hakeem, who is standing on a pile of Muslim corpses, as the great leader of the Muslims and condemns the Rajapakse regime who, despite its many infirmities, snuffed  out the ethnic violence in Ambalangoda that was  developing into a national disaster. And brushing aside all the positive gains of the Muslims, he is threatening the Sinhala-Buddhist to be aware of the rise of the submerged” force of the Muslims  who like the Algerians can rise to overthrow the French colonialists.

Moral : Sinhala-Buddhists be aware : the camel which was given refuge in the Sri Lankan tent is stirring now to throw out those who gave shelter and protection to the helpless creature when it had nowhere to go.

Footnote: The author, Mayilvakanam, in  his preface states that he wrote his text at the request of Dutch Governor, Jan Maccara, (1736). Mayilvakanam adds that he wrote his book out of materials collected from Kayilasa-malai and other ancient works.” Brito  in his  translator’s preface states : The work is looked upon as one of the great authority among  the Tamils of Jaffna, and there are several manuscript copies of it extant in the peninsula.

An  interesting episode in the book is the prophecy made about the kingdom of Jaffna. King Pararajasegaram asks Supathidda-muni, a respected seer who visits the court, what  shall happen to this  kingdom.” In a lengthy reply he prophesies that after the Portuguese, the Dutch and the English the country will come  under one  umbrella. The sovereignty will never again come back to your descendants.” (p. 29 – Ibid.)

Dr Sudath Gunasekara President Senior Citizens Movement Mahanuwara 25.11.2015

Open Appeal to Mahinda Rajapaksa Ex President

Leave the Chandrika-Maitri trap at least now and take the lead to save this Country and the Nation

As a patriot who love my country and the Sinahala Nation I appeal to MR to leave this Chandrika/My3/Ranil vicious political circle immediately at least now with all his followers elected (whatever left before more frogs could jump), with people like DEW, Vitarana, GLP, Dinesh, Weerawansa and Gammanpila before he is finally sent to the guillotine or to a sausages factory close by.

Had he listened to the advice to do so by my good friend Prof Nalin de Silva before elections the story of the present Parliament would have been entirely different. Similarly if he had listened to what I said in my long E mail of 2^nd Dec 2014 and at least didn’t go for elections on Jan 8th, forgetting all the other 99 suggestions I made (in my 100 Panatha), he would have still remained as the President of this country. He dint listen to good counseling for which he is paying back now with compound interest. At least now he should try to be sensible to listen to good counseling because the nation needs a man or woman of his caliber, a man or an iron woman to rescue and protect this 2500 year old heritage and the victory of 2009, ere it is lost in the Indian Ocean forever in the light of what is happening now.  Because reconciliation with this vicious Troika will never works. I would like to remind him the story of the foolish fox that followed a goat for days expecting something dangling in its rear side will fall at any time, but never it never fell. Finally you know what happened to the hungry fox. Again I would like to remind you the advice given by Nalin not to trust My3. He will never change. He has proved by now beyond all reasonable doubts that he is more a Vaireepaala than a Maitreepala. MR and all his followers should have understood this long time ago, if they had closely followed what My3 had been saying ever since he won the elections on Jan 8th. Just think of what happened to Ven Sobita Thera the ‘Nandimitra’ of Jan 8^th battle who strived so hard to bring him to power. Yours is only a hopper betrayal but his is million times more serious than an egg hopper. As a result he died. But fortunately you are still alive.

Dear MR you must at least now realize that no one in this world knows everything, except Lord Buddha and no Leader in world history had won a battle or a war without being advised by an eminent adviser. Those of who know history will tell you that Kurushestra war would never have been won by Arjuna if not for Krishna; Vedeha would never have won over Miyumlunuwara if not for Mahushada. Chandragupta would never have defeated Dhana Nanda and installed Chandragupta Dynasty the forerunner of the Mauriya Empire if not for Kautilya. This is why all Kings of yore always had a set of eminent Purohitas lead by an Agrapurohita, who never gave dead ropes unlike the Purohitayas of today.

I suggest at least now you seek the good counseling of a Council of eminent monks of standing who do not sell their advice for personal gain but offer it to you only for the love of the country, the Sinhala nation  and the  Sasana as they always have done throughout in our history. If you don’t do it now and continue to follow the proverbial Goat” I can assure you, it will never fall. Only you will be doomed along with this country and the nation. I am making this appeal to you as I still strongly believe that, going by past performance, you are the only leader among the living professional politicians who can resurrect this nation. As for me I am ever prepared to assist you without expecting anything in return, other than fulfilling our 100 Panatha, for the sake of my country, my nation and my religion.

I also request you to read the annexture as to why I say so.

Teruwan saranai!

By Charles S.Perera

She is part of the USA Administration represented in the UN.  USA with its 200 odd year history is a hybrid nation of European pioneers who built their nation on the ashes of the original inhabitants.  These pioneers  reduced the original Americans to an insignificant minority.  Therefore American history and culture is not one of unification of people but one of  destruction and division. There primary effort is to keep themselves secure from re-arising of the original inhabitants of America, and destroy nations of composite communities to never make them a challenge to USA.

Therefore they interfere into sovereign states to divide people according to communities. The Americans as history has taught them interfere into developing countries to help the minorities  to separate themselves  isolating the majority and make the majority community  less important. This is what they did with the American Indians –the indigenous people of America.Apaches etc.

Samantha Power has come to Sri Lanka to  discuss with the Tamils in the North  to discuss  the ways to arrive at their object of a separate Tamil State in the north.  As Sri Lanka is now being ruled by a set of political fools they do not seem to have an idea as to  what USA is upto  after having  changed regime , passing resolutions in Geneva against Sri Lanka for the elimination of Tamil terrorists, getting advise from the Tamil diaspora  making an all out attempt to set a Tamil State in the North.

These foolish Sirisena Ranil Government is facilitating matter for USA and the enemies of Sri Lanka to divide the country making the Tamils the determining factor of Sri Lanka’s breakup as a sovereign state.

USA has never in its history helped any country and its people to rise above economic disabilities and assisted them to become a sovereign state  other than to break up nations to form other nations like it did in Serbia.

USA has made its past history and destruction of people a culture .  Today USA has no other  object in its foreign policy other than  to  make USA with its 200 odd year history the leading nation of the world.

Samantha Power is a part of this hybrid culture. Power once in an interview described a hypothetical need for a mammoth protection force” to police a peace accord between the Israelis and the Palestinians which drew much criticism. Later she disavowed the comment and had even asked the host of the interview to remove the video from his web.

When Samantha  Power was before  the Senate Committee  for the confirmation of her appointment to the UN, Marco Rubio, the Florida Republican, asked her to explain what she meant, in a 2003 essay in The New Republic, when she called for a historical reckoning with crimes committed, sponsored or permitted by the United States.” Power disavowed the piece, saying that she probably very much overstated the case,” and adding, This country is the greatest country on earth. I would never apologize for America.” Rubio pressed the point, leaning toward the microphone, his eyes sweeping the gallery, and Power had to repeat the line—This is the greatest country on earth”—two more times.

Ron Johnson, a Wisconsin Republican, brandished notes containing a quote in which Power referred to the United States as the most important empire in the history of mankind.” He asked, Do you believe America is an empire?”

Power replied, . I believe that we are a great—a great and strong and powerful country, and the most powerful country in the history of the world,” she said. Also, the most inspirational.”

Power is an American interventionist to disrupt nations and use war as a tool for that purpose.  Ben Rhodes, the deputy national-security adviser for strategic communications, recalled, that Power has consistently urged the Administration to consider intervention, including intervention in the expanding war in Syria

It is said Power returns over and over to one question: To what end can America’s power be directed? The President, by his own account, is less sanguine.

Power worked with traitors to their home land.  She makes it obvious in her visit to Sri Lanka. In Iraq Power was the point person on Iraqis who had worked with Americans.

Power is ambitious.  She has no sympathy for other nations and other people. What matters for her is to make the world believe in the   greatness of America, and project her self importance..” ….. for nearly two decades, Power has left others with a clear sense of her long-range aspirations for higher office and her muscular style of foreign policy. She began her career as a reporter in Bosnia, where her colleagues joked that she might become Secretary of State and reignite the Cold War.

Power is a favourite of President Obama, who himself is not a  sympathetic and a generous  man.  His foreign policy is American centered .  He has one view of terrorism where it concerns America and another where it concerns other countries like Sri Lanka which fought a terrorist war”. It is a question of their terrorists against whom it is prepared to carry out relentless wars, and terrorists of other countries who America would pamper and encourage.

President Obama, in his speech before the General Assembly of the UN, offered his rationale for the bombing campaign. He described the air strikes with a moral, if not a strategic, certainty that he had previously resisted: There can be no reasoning, no negotiation, with this brand of evil. The only language understood by killers like this is the language of force. So the United States of America will work with a broad coalition to dismantle this network of death.” It fell to Kerry, Rice, Power, and others to try to recruit and maintain that coalition.

How can the terrorists  be different in Sri Lanka ?

This is Obama’s policy against terrorists as understood by him, their terrorist are real terrorists,  and  terrorists elsewhere like in Sri Lanka for him and Power are freedom fighters. What a set of hypocrites they are   who claim leadership of the world ?

Samantha Power wanted to remind her peers of the human implications of terrorism. It’s not a geopolitical strategic abstraction,” she said. It is about groups that target families who are flying on airplanes, and take the lives of firefighters who are trying to rescue other people. It’s about preventing that.” So far, progress had been slow. People have not shut their borders, they have not put laws in place, they have not acted with the urgency that is needed.”

Powers is of Irish Origin. Her father was  a Dublin pub piano player, raconteur, dentist, and drinker named Jim Power—a fearsomely formidable pub debater,” as the Irish Independent once put it. Samantha Power says I was extremely close to my father, inseparable, Where we hung out most of the time was the pub.” Her father died at 47 drinking in his favourite Pub.

Samantha Power started life as a war reporter in Bosnia. When she was not  accepted to be sent to Bosnia as a war reporter  for lack of experience , she did not hesitate to break into the editors office   …….. when the editor left one night she sneaked into his office and stole some stationery. I wrote this letter saying, ‘Please provide Samantha Power with all the credentials she needs. ” It worked.  That is Samantha Power who will stoop to any thing to have her way..

Michael Rose UN Commander in Bosnia had nick named Samantha  and her  reporter friends Bomb the Bastards bunch”. . Power had said , These guys who had been terrorizing these people were going to be stopped!”

In her second year of law school, Power took a class on the just use of force. I began looking at the historical cases of genocide, looking at the Armenians, the Khmer Rouge, and Saddam Hussein’s Al Anfal campaign and Rwanda,” she said. She wrote a paper for class and sent it to Anthony Lewis, then a Timescolumnist, and Martin Peretz, who was editing The New Republic, both of whom followed the Bosnia war closely. They told her she should try to turn it into a book. She did, and the result was  ‘A Problem from Hell,’ ” published in 2002. In it, Power reconstructs deliberations in the Clinton White House and in the State Department and other agencies as officials overlooked or rejected proposals for U.S. intervention. She criticized those who avoided using the word genocide” in their statements, and praised those who resigned in protest of inaction, such as Marshall Harris, a thirty-two-year-old Bosnia desk officer at the State Department. America’s repeated refusals to end genocides were not accidental products of neglect,” Power wrote. They were concrete choices made by this country’s most influential decision-makers after unspoken and explicit weighing of costs and benefits

With the backing of the Security Council, the U.S. and its allies imposed a no-fly zone and bombed Libyan forces. But Gates opposed using the U.S. military to prevent a humanitarian disaster unless there was a clear image of what would follow. In his recent memoir, Duty,” he recalls telling aides to withhold information on military options from staff members at the National Security Council and the White House: They don’t understand it, and ‘experts’ like Samantha Power will decide when we should move militarily.”

When I ( Even Osnos of The New Yorker), asked Gates about that criticism, he said, It was not just her. It was several White House staffers. They were Ben Rhodes and Samantha and, I might add, Susan Rice—particularly strong advocates of getting involved in a U.S. military engagement. And I don’t know whether these folks have a guilt complex over the Clinton Administration’s having botched Rwanda, where the U.S. did nothing, or what, but they are very much driven.” He said, It becomes detached from U.S. national interests. So I was totally opposed.”

The image of Power, Clinton, and Rice became a cartoon—Obama’s Valkyries leading him to war—but Gates does not believe that Obama ever broadly embraced Power’s expansive view of humanitarian intervention. He said, I think he was being pressured by the Europeans, particularly the French and the British and the Italians, and their interests were much more directly involved than ours. And I think he was more influenced by that, and by the arguments for preventing this humanitarian disaster, than he was by any kind of broad strategic or philosophical commitment.”

France is already suffering for that

But Power was responsible for the messing in Libya during and after Gaddafi.  On this subject, Power’s characterological direction of error may be the belief that a frank discussion of Libya’s lessons exposes her to deeper criticism, and could undermine support for future interventions. Libya was the first clear test of her toolbox, but she has stopped short of analyzing her record with the rigor that she once brought to the study of others.

Libya’s deterioration had a spillover effect. For many in the government—including the President—Libya didn’t go so well,” the former senior White House aide told me. If Libya had been a great success, that would’ve created more momentum on the Syria debate. And it wasn’t.”

Power who had the ear of the President was responsible for the Lybian disaster. Power speaking about Obama had told the journalist , I can be a pain in the ass, and that’s what he wants. That’s what’s so amazing. There are plenty of people out there who could check the conscience box.” She went on, There are milder personalities that could create the illusion of inclusion, and spare you the headache of argument and counter-argument, and President Obama did not choose that milder version.”

Power and Obama entered the Administration farther apart than their pedigrees and their friendship might have suggested: she advocated intervention and American exceptionalism; he spoke of America as the most powerful leader in the world, but recoiled from the adventurism of the Bush wars and the presumption of enduring American primacy, focussing instead on the need to rebuild the country at home. After nearly six years, Power still believes that America retains the capacity for brute or moral force to shape the course of global events—to bend the curve—but Obama, by his own account, does not. To some degree, there has always been a contradiction between the Administration’s determination to retrench from the costly adventures in Iraq and Afghanistan and the expectation of restoring American credibility through moral leadership and actions.

Power had said, As time wears on, I find myself gravitating more and more to the G.S.D. people”—the get shit done” people, a term favored by Susan Rice. We’re racing against the clock here to get as much done as we can. So when you run across people who know how to be bureaucratic samurais, or are especially persuasive in their diplomacy internationally, spend more time on those relationships, and on brainstorming with those individuals, to achieve a common purpose. Principles and positions only take you so far.” ♦

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/12/22/land-possible

These are the perons Sri Lanka yahapalanaya  has embraced criticising Mahinda Rajapakse regime which made Sri Lanka an independent Sovereign State neither attached to the West nor to the East.  Samantha Power is a dangerous person to be allowed to come to Sri Lanka and meet the Tamils.  With this type of relationship Sri Lanka will not remain a unitary Sovereign State for long. Samantha Power  speaking of Sri Lanka had referred to a darkest and most painful chapters in its country’s past.

That chapter is not what it was before the 8 th January, 2015, but it is, what it has become since Maithripala Sirisena became the President. Sri Lanka which saw continued development projects since the elimination of terrorists is stagnating today, bringing it closer to bankruptcy and a territorial break up. Sri Lanka under Maithripala Sirisena’s Presidency has already become failed State.

Samantha Power has met the Foreign Minster Mangala Samaraweera- a person blind to political reality through his hatred of the former President, who  continues to push the government into  a precipice of disaster. Samantha Power has not made a friendly visit and her visit has other reasons beneficial to USA. She had not failed to mention  that USA is serious about the accountability process , a semantic infiltration  for war crimes investigations.

The pat on the back with which poor Maithripala Sirisena will be happy may be  her remark: “One example I shared with the Foreign Minister is the President’s intention to dilute the power of the presidency at a time all around the world we have leaders who are trying to extend their powers and term limits, change their constitutions in order to ensure that they have more power. This is a fresh air in strengthening checks and balances in Sri Lanka”.

However she has warned, “so we are watching, I am here to find out from the people of Sri Lanka what the U.S. could do to make your democracy more prosperous”. But she only met the Tamil Separatists , and they are only a part of the people of Sri Lanka.

Samantha Power has lot of qualifications but she is no diplomat. She openly supports Sri Lanka Tamil dissidents .  That has become the role of USA and Europe today.  She who visits Sri Lanka for the first time should have also gone to the South to inquire what the Sinhala people have to say about the Sri Lanka Tamils.  She has not come to help reconcile the communities, but distance the Tamils further away from the majority Sinhala.  That is why people like her are a danger to Sri Lanka.  But the pelerine Ranil Wickramasinghe is not a patriotic Sinhala politician.  That is why he dos not raise his voice against  the visiting Americans and Un Officials who pander to the cause of the Tamil separatists.

The present Government of Maithripala Sirisena has made Sri Lanka a subject nation , a colony of the USA and the West.   They will further destroy Sri Lanka that was saved from terrorism and gradually developed as a sovereign State into development, peace and security.

We want USA,UN or Western visitors to speak to the Tamil separatists and tell them the necessity to reconcile with other communities and make unitary Sri Lanka their true home.  Sri Lanka Tamils should take their own decitions without being influenced by the Tamil diaspora which has a different Agenda.

Goodbye Samantha Power we do not like you, please do not come again to put people against people in Sri Lanka.

Dr Sudath Gunasekara

Prior to Jan 8 2015 people in this country saw these two persons as non- asserting utterly week men. Their assumption was purely based on the past behavior of these rather unusual friends. But strangely after Jan 8^th and more particularly after August 17 both of them, though with different agendas, of course with one bottom line of eliminating MR and consolidating power, have risen like the phoenix from ashes to everybody’s surprise and now started to display unusual power.

Most spectators were trying to find the reason/reasons for this overnight change.  Almost all have come to the conclusion that it is the anti Sinhala, anti Buddhist Western world lead by the US and India abroad and at the same minded people at Home lead by Chandrika that has catapulted these two strange friends  to such mighty and unexpected heights.

The following two links will clearly explain the secret behind this phenomena

“if any regime in any nation violates the prevailing precepts of
acceptable governance, then the international community is morally
obligated to revoke that nation’s sovereignty and assume command and
control of the offending country. Assuming command and control is
mostly through diplomatic endeavors”

———- Forwarded message ———-
From: Kamal Rajapakse <kamal.rajapakse@sky.com>
Date: Mon, 23 Nov 2015 22:34:47 -0000
Subject: Power & Soros in Sri Lanka to press for Federal Constitution
To: Sinhale News <sinhale.news@yahoo.com>

Power & Soros in Sri Lanka to press for
Federal Constitution
By Daya Gamage – Asian Tribune Political Analysis
Washington, D.C. 20 November (Asiantribune.com):
U.S. Permanent Representative for the United Nations Samantha Power,
Obama administration’s top foreign policy advocate is scheduled to
visit Sri Lanka November 21-23. This is her second visit, the previous
one being June 2010 during the Rajapaksa administration.
In January 2016, American multi billionaire George Soros is scheduled
to visit Colombo – it is said – for an economic discourse.

Both visits are significant when both of them, since 2012, have been
direct participants of UN-Department of Political Affairs- initiated
‘promotion of federalism’ in Third World nations envisaged to
bifurcate nations on ethnic lines.

The two visits are even further interesting when Colombo has an
American diplomatic envoy – Atul Keshap – who is a strong believer of
a federal structure in Sri Lanka. He has gone on record advocating the
system.

And more interesting because the Sirisena-Wickremasinghe
administration early this week made an official announcement – with
cabinet approval – that the Executive Presidential system will end
with Sirisena’s completion of his term and that in early 2016 the Sri
Lanka legislature will be transformed into a ‘Constitutional Assembly’
to draft a new constitution for the country.

U.S. Permanent Representative for the United Nations Samantha
PowerBecause of the Rajapaksa administration’s ill-advised
triumphalism soon after the Eelam War IV ended in May 2009 giving the
11% minority Tamils a sense of defeat which helped the operatives –
who were once ‘Material Supporters’ to Prabhakaran’s Tamil Tigers –
within the Tamil Diaspora to convince the US State Department and
foreign offices of the EU nations that they are the ‘voice’ of the
Tamil people reviving the issue of federalism in Sri Lanka.

The operatives of the Tamil Diaspora – now the so called voice of the
Tamil people – in their dialogues with the officials of the state
department and Obama White House – convinced that the best solution to
redress Tamil grievances was a constitutional arrangement devolving
administrative and development powers to the ‘Tamil Homeland’.

Having fulfilled her desire as, first, Obama White House human rights
and genocide czar, then as US ambassador to the UN retaining her
influence over White House foreign policy initiatives to take Sri
Lanka to the UNHRC, Geneva on the issues of accountability, Dr. Power,
since 2012, was instrumental in getting the UN Department of Political
Affairs (DPA) to come out with a broad plan to re-structure several
developing Third World nations’ constitutional arrangement to impose
federalism as an answer to ethnic minority grievances. Napal was one
example.

The DPA for decades has been under the effective control of the State
Department. The Under- Secretary-General, the second most senior
office holder next to the Secretary-General, has always been a former
state department official. Currently, it is headed by Jeffrey Feltman,
the former assistant secretary who had served the state department for
more than two decades.

It is in this context that the visits of Power, this week, and Soros
next January so crucial to the existence of Sri Lanka as a united
nation.

The UN, since 2012, has been holding a number of closed-door meetings
and seminars at which the partition of UN member states has been
discussed. Most of the meetings have been held under the direction of
the UN Inter-agency Framework for Coordination on Preventive Action
(the Framework Team or FT). The FT is directly under the control of
Under- Secretary-General (Political Affairs).

The process in 2012 commenced during Under Secretary-General
(Political) B. Lynn Pascoe’s period who retired from his senior state
department position at the behest of Washington to take over the
position. The holder of this position as the head of the Department of
Political Affairs (DPA) advises the UN Secretary-General on peace and
security issues globally, while overseeing “good offices” initiatives
and field-based political missions carrying out peacekeeping,
preventive diplomacy and peace-building activities. The incumbent also
oversees the UN electoral assistance provided to dozens of its member
states each year.
The FT, when 2012 process started, advanced the work of President
Obama’s then “information czar” Cass Sunstein and his wife Samantha
Power who was an influential member of the U.S. National Security
Council.

The FT has also trained certain activists around the world,
particularly in developing and other countries with pro-western
governments, to use “the system” to effect change. It is a well known
fact that the entire FT operation at the UN is bankrolled with George
Soros money.

When the process commenced in 2012, Sri Lanka, apart from Nepal, was
also a target for the identity federalism engineers. During the 2008
presidential campaign, both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama received
large campaign donations from front groups for the Tamil Tigers which
was in 1997 designated as a terrorist organization by the U.S. State
Department. As a way of thanking the Tigers for their support, the
Obama administration, Soros, and the International Peace Institute of
Norway (which has been called a front for NATO, Soros, and the CIA and
which supported the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam [LTTE] during
their long civil war against the Sri Lankan government) have been
pushing for a federal system in Sri Lanka that would create a
Sinhalese, Tamil, and Muslim federation, with secession following.

A widely-read blog itmakessenseblog.com noted in a 2012 report that
although South Korean Ban Ki-moon is the Secretary General of the UN,
his most important deputies represent the interests of NATO and its
allies. The Undersecretary General for Political Affairs is B. Lynn
Pascoe, a former U.S. ambassador to Indonesia and Malaysia and is
thought by many UN staffers to have links to the CIA. The
Undersecretary General for Safety and Security is Gregory Starr, a
former Director of the U.S. State Department’s Diplomatic Security
Service who is also thought to have close links to the CIA. The
Assistant Secretary-General for Strategic Planning and Policy
Coordination is Robert Orr, the former Director of Global and
Multilateral Affairs at the U.S. National Security Council on which
the CIA is represented. The Executive Director of the UN Children’s
Fund (UNICEF) is Anthony Lake, a former U.S. National Security
Adviser.

It is with this scenario initiating federal structure in many Third
World small nations on ethnic lines that US State Department officials
declared the best political solution to Sri Lanka’s ‘National Issues’
is serious devolution of power with a federal structure.

The incumbent Under-Secretary-General Jeffrey Feltman is well within
the process of promoting federal structure of government in many Third
World small nations such as Sri Lanka.

American ambassador to Sri Lanka Atul Keshap has gone on record his
authoritative declaration that this South Asian nation needs a federal
structure to redress minority Tamil grievances. Previously, he was
working very closely on Sri Lankan issues with Robert Blake when he
was the assistant secretary of the South Asian Bureau. Mr. Blake was
the US envoy in Colombo during the period the Sri Lanka military
undertook the final assault on the Tamil Tiger movement.

Atul Keshap has been to Sri Lanka on two occasions, one in June 2014
and the other in February 2015.

Ignoring the Sinhalese consensus that establishing a federal structure
in the Island is a stepping stone for separatism, a political concept
under which the Tamil Tigers launched its military offensive since the
mid-seventies until its domestic demise in May 2009, Atul Keshap made
the statements to the effect of the necessity of a federal structure
when he accompanied assistant secretary Biswal on an official tour in
June 2014 at media interview in Colombo.

Officials in the United States Department of State based in Washington
do not make policy statements to the effect what other nations should
undertake unless they are determined as policy planks at the highest
level of the American government. Earlier in this note we disclosed
how the ‘federalism process’ commenced at the UN in 2012.

When Mr. Atul Keshap, not once but several occasions in the same
interview with a Sri Lankan newspaper – Daily Mirror – about the
vitality of establishing a federal structure in Sri Lanka, he was
obviously pronouncing a policy plank of the United States Government
already determined at some high level.

At this June 20, 2014 interview Mr. Keshap told what the United States
believed in saying: “the U.S. believes in a very bright future for
this country and it believes that Sri Lanka has the potential in terms
of human capital, in terms of resources, in terms of geographic
location, in terms of having secured peace after a very brutal civil
war – a country connected to the entire world. A country that is not
the subject of UN Human Rights Council Resolutions because it has
perfected its democracy and perfected its respect for human rights. A
country that has created a meaningful formula for devolution of power
and federalism, to ensure coherence among the various regions. A
country that is reconciled, peaceful, and prosperous”.

Lamenting about the long delay in bringing changes Mr. Keshap said:
It’s been five years since the war ended and I haven’t seen any
meaningful discussion or movement along the lines of a meaningful
negotiation of the very tricky political issues related to federalism.

Samantha Power’s visit to Colombo is the culmination of this
development at a time the Sirisena-Wickremasinghe administration
envisages to promulgate a new constitution for Sri Lanka.

Samantha Power rose to prominence in government circles as part of her
campaign to promote a doctrine known as the Responsibility to Protect.
It is a doctrine advanced by the UN and is predicated on the
proposition that sovereignty is a privilege, not a right, and that if
any regime in any nation violates the prevailing precepts of
acceptable governance, then the international community is morally
obligated to revoke that nation’s sovereignty and assume command and
control of the offending country. Assuming command and control is
mostly through diplomatic endeavors.

The worldwide leader in the promotion of this doctrine that Samantha
Power worked to develop is the Global Center for Responsibility to
Protect (GCR2P). One of the biggest financial supporters of the GCR2P
is the Open Society Institute which itself is a branch of the Open
Society Foundation,, an organization created by financier George
Soros.

Apart from providing financial backing to the Responsibility to
Protect, Soros personally believes in and promotes the philosophy. In
an article published by Foreign Policy in 2004 entitled “The People’s
Sovereignty: How a New Twist on an Old Idea Can Protect the World’s
Most Vulnerable Populations,” Soros presented his take on the
principles that undergird the Responsibility to Protect.

“True sovereignty belongs to the people, who in turn delegate it to
their governments,” Soros wrote.

And: “If governments abuse the authority entrusted to them and
citizens have no opportunity to correct such abuses, outside
interference is justified. By specifying that sovereignty is based on
the people, the international community can penetrate nation-states’
borders to protect the rights of citizens.

“In particular, the principle of the people’s sovereignty can help
solve two modern challenges: the obstacles to delivering aid
effectively to sovereign states, and the obstacles to global
collective action dealing with states experiencing internal conflict”.

Sri Lanka is faced to deal with this emerging situation with the
arrival of Dr. Samantha Power and George Soros. One could see the
fall-out of ‘internationalizing’ a ‘domestic’ issue and the LTTE
transformation from militarism to ‘Global Diplomatic Maneuver’ with
tacit State Department and United Nations participation.

– Asian Tribune -. One could see the
fall-out of ‘internationalizing’ a ‘domestic’ issue and the LTTE
transformation from militarism to ‘Global Diplomatic Maneuver’ with
tacit State Department and United Nations participation.

– Asian Tribune –

G.K. Rajapakshe Kandy Courtesy Island

November 24, 2015, 7:46 pm
The world is still caught in the hue of terror of the Paris attacks by ISIS and their outcome. The lost ones are mourned, the world shared the grief of Paris and there was no one that didn’t think the unsuspecting civilians would have been living their content lives if not for those attacks. This attack has been recognized as a terrorist act that has created a huge impact in the world

Terrorism is defined as ‘the calculated use of unlawful violence or threat of unlawful violence to inculcate fear; intended to coerce or to intimidate governments or societies in the pursuit of goals that are generally political, religious, or ideological’ by the United States Department of Defense. Attacking unsuspecting civilians would certainly create unrest and fear in society, and that seems to be a shared common strategy of LTTE and ISIS, through which they try to achieve their goals.

For 30 long years we Sri Lankans endured such terrorism on a daily basis. The terror waged by the LTTE made the news of bomb blasts in the capital, airports, and massacres of unarmed civilians, so frequent to us. The LTTE did, in fact, induce fear among civilians by their guerilla tactics.

As a result of that, many civilians claimed refugee status in other countries. Parents were afraid to travel in the same vehicle for fear of orphaning their children in case a bomb blast happens. School children were asked to carry transparent bags and no one dared to help a stranger. Everyone was on guard about each other. The commercial capital was not a safe place. Those who were already in the capital had to pray for loving family members to reach home without getting blown to smithereens in a bomb blast. No one knew if the day would end right now or later. The Syrians have faced similar and worse situations due to having a terrorist organization on deck.

There are sympathizers for these terrorist organizations, too. They help with funds and weaponry, believing those organizations are fighting for a worthy cause. However, the political, religious, or ideological reasons provided for those attacks do not validate murder. While the LTTE tried to justify their killings by showing ethnic discrimination as a reason, ISIS does it by putting forth religious reasons.

France has decided to retaliate and now they are at it. Though they advised us of peace talks when we were waging war, they did not consider it an option. Maybe, they learnt a lesson by taking Sri Lanka as an example. You can’t spoon-feed a grown lion when it tries to kill you. The condemnation of other nations and countries did very little to reduce LTTE attacks on civilians and the persuasion to have a ceasefire lead us back to war, after they used the short break to strengthen their fronts.

Military confrontation is a way a terrorist organization will thrive and gain more sympathizers and contributors of funds. The more effective their stunts are, the more productive they seem to be. If it cannot be defeated militarily or armed confrontation, then it would have to be stopped strategically by neutralizing the ideology behind them.

The confrontation of these reasons should come from those whose beliefs are adapted by these organizations. If a terrorist organization is run on a misguided religious belief, then the objection should come from its moderate believers. If Islamic believers protest ISIS which commits terrorist acts in the name of religion, it would question the core unit of the organization. Unless they speak up, the moderate believers would also get judged by the performance of those who pretend to commit murder in the name of the ideology that they put forth. Terrorism induces fear, and the fear will create suspicion in people, anyway.

Not only Sri Lanka, or Paris, most countries fall apart due to terrorism. We cannot dilute their violent activities by the justifications they offer. Acts of violence against unarmed civilians are unethical and create tension and suspicion and in turn disrupt civilian society. It is high time we set the social structure right in order to have a safer world, than what we have at the moment. In order to do that, everyone needs a motive and actively participate in achieving that. After all, we all have only one world to share.

නලින් ද සිල්වා 

by Shamindra Ferdinando Courtesy Island

The French response to Nov. 13 Paris massacre should be examined against the backdrop of Sri Lanka having to address accountability issues during eelam war IV (Aug 2006-May 2009).

In accordance with overall Western strategy, France, a current member of the Geneva-based United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC), pushed for war crimes probe, targeting Sri Lanka. The Western project was meant to undermine the previous government of war – winning President Mahinda Rajapaksa. Western powers accused Sri Lanka of atrocities, as well as excesses. However, French counter-terrorism operations, launched in the wake of the Paris massacre, underscored the use of maximum force against a ‘target,’ according international media. Obviously, the French wanted the alleged ‘mastermind’ of the Paris massacre dead.

The French police fired over 5,000 rounds at a safe house, at Saint Denis, where Abdelhamid Abaaoud, 27, the suspected ‘mastermind’ of the Paris massacre was hiding. The French tracked down the jihadist within days after gunmen killed 130 persons in coordinated attacks.

According to the media, the suspect was first hit in the head by a police sniper and then blown to pieces by numerous grenades, during the raid in the suburb of Saint-Denis. The French had to conduct forensic tests to identify the mutilated body. The media, quoted Paris prosecutors, as having said the suspect’s body had been ‘riddled with bullets’, adding that it was unclear whether Abaaoud had detonated a suicide belt.

Three persons died in the assault, namely the Paris attack mastermind, Abdelhamid Abaaoud, his cousin, Hasna Ait Boulahcen, and another man who detonated his own suicide bomb which caused a massive explosion, (not Ait Boulahcen as previously thought).

France also dispatched her only nuclear aircraft carrier, Charles de Gaulle, to join the ongoing assault on ISIS targets in Iraq and Syria. The warship left for the Persian Gulf on Thursday (Nov. 19), six days after the massacre.

French delegation meets Army Chief

French Ambassador, in Colombo, Jean-Marin Schuh, and Rear Admiral Antonie Beaussant, Joint Commander of the French Forces in the Indian Ocean, paid a courtesy call on Friday afternoon (Nov 20) on Army Commander Lt. Gen. Crishanthe De Silva. Rear Admiral Beaussant arrived in Colombo to attend the sixth edition of the Galle Dialogue 2015 International maritime conference, organized by the Navy. Having expressed condolences, Lt. Gen. De Silva offered to share Sri Lanka’s experience in combating terrorism.

Sri Lanka can share her experience in fighting terrorism with France, as well as other members of the European Union. In spite of on and off setbacks and shortcomings, Sri Lankan police and military gained vast experience in fighting small groups of terrorist infiltrators, not only in the then operational areas, but Colombo, as well. Having sponsored terrorism, in Sri Lanka, in accordance with her Geo-political strategies, India, too, experienced small groups of Sri Lankan infiltrators, mounting attacks in the late 80s and early 90s.

Before further discussing India’s experience, in hunting down Sri Lankans, and Indians, involved in the May 1991 Rajiv Gandhi assassination, it would be pertinent to recollect the unprecedented LTTE assault on the World Trade Centre, and the Hotel Galadari, before a small group of terrorists seized control of a section of Lake House, during Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga’s presidency. The LTTE struck around 7, on the morning of Oct 15, 1997, three days after the opening of the World Trade Centre. In spite of heightened security, in the city, and its suburbs, and severe restrictions on the movement of people from areas under LTTE control, to the South, the LTTE succeeded in infiltrating again. Prabhakaran mounted a devastating attack, on the Central Bank, on the morning of January 31, 1996.

The LTTE developed a fine strategy for infiltration. Those tasked with mounting attacks even used places of religious worship to coordinate attacks.

Europe under ISIS pressure

The ISIS would have found it relatively easy to infiltrate Paris due to lax border controls. Absence of effective security measures, within French borders, obviously facilitated the largest ever coordinated assault, within EU borders. The French assault, on the Saint Denis hideout, revealed their inexperience in handling such a situation. The firing of over 5,000 rounds of ammunition, during the siege, on the suspects safe house, revealed the absence of a clear strategy. Obviously, two hugely embarrassing incidents,, in the wake of Russia having to acknowledge the possibility of ISIS planting a bomb in a Russian airliner, last month. The Oct 31 blast, over Sinai, killed 224 persons, on their way from Egypt to Saint Petersburg.

In the aftermath of the May 21, 1991, suicide bombing that killed the then Congress leader, Rajiv Gandhi, at Sriperumbudur, Tamil Nadu, India launched a major manhunt for those responsible. The wanted included both Sri Lankans and their Indian accomplices. The operation, spearheaded by the Special Investigation Unit of the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), lasted nearly 100 days. Perhaps, Europe should closely study the LTTE infiltration, as well as the Indian search operation, leading to the elimination of the killer squad. There had never been an operation similar to that undertaken by India against a foreign undercover team.

At the time of humiliating security failure, Tamil Nadu had been under direct rule of the Central Government of India due to dismissal of the then DMK government. The take over took place after the Centre blamed the DMK for rapid deterioration of law and order situation.

The French tracked down the Belgian mastermind, of the Paris massacre, after having followed Hasna Ait Boulahcen, who also died in the police raid, whereas India was lucky to have retrieved a camera, from the Gandhi assassination site, which contained a series of shots of the scene, before the blast, captured by an Indian, on the LTTE’s payroll. The Indian photographer had been positioned close to the blast and he, too, perished. As the digital technology hadn’t been available at that time, the Indians didn’t realize the paramount importance of available evidence until the film roll in Chinon was developed. If not for the LTTE overwhelming desire to have the Gandhi’s assassination captured on film, the killer squad could have easily returned to Jaffna, across the Palk Strait.

The killer squad (remember, the team comprised Sri Lankans and Indians) carried out a ‘dry run’ at a propaganda meeting of the then Prime Minister V.P. Singh, at Chennai on May 7, 1991. Clearly, Indian security agencies hadn’t considered a real threat from the LTTE though its battlefield capabilities were known.

Israeli ambassador on LTTE terrorism

Former New Delhi-based Israeli ambassador to Sri Lanka, Mark Sofer, during an interview with this writer, in early 2011 said that his country was a victim of suicide bombing, pioneered by the LTTE. Sofer said that many Israeli civilians had been killed and wounded due to human bombs and Sri Lanka should be proud of achieving military victory over the LTTE. Sofer emphasized the strongest possible measures against terrorism and those sponsoring violence. At that time, Europe wouldn’t have at least considered the possibility of ever experiencing a security nightmare. Of the 10 ISIS personnel, killed in Paris, on Nov 13 and Nov 18, at least four certainly committed suicide by exploding explosives-laden vests.

Sofer said that the LTTE had influenced those causing mayhem in the Middle East. He alleged that LTTE suicide attacks had inspired those targeting Jewish targets.

It would be pertinent to recall that India created the LTTE, in the 80s, and the West paved the way for gradual build-up of the ISIS in accordance with its overall political-security strategy until it was too late. Having received Western financial and military backing, including advanced training, ISIS took on the West with devastating success.

LTTE inspires Oslo massacre

The LTTE, which once received the Tamil National Alliance (TNA) recognition as the sole representative of the Tamil speaking people, inspired violence abroad. Norway’s worst atrocity is a case in point.

Norwegian Anders Behring Brevik massacred 77 persons, in July, 2011, in two separate attacks in Norway. Before the mass slaughter,

Breivik, in his 1,518 manifesto, which was released hours before he carried out the massacre, said had felt that Europe should follow the LTTE example of expelling the Muslims from Sri Lanka He had interpreted the expulsion of Muslims, from the North, in October/November 1990, by the LTTE, at gun point, as a move by the then government of Sri Lanka to drive out the Muslim community.

The killer’s manifesto also referred to the Anuradhapura massacre, in 1985, and the slaughter of Muslims at the Kattankudy Mosque, in August 1990.

Remember, the al Qaeda attack on USS Cole in the port of Aden, on Oct 12, 2000, prompted the LTTE to proudly claim the operation was inspired by its own tactics. The mission killed 17 US personnel and injured 39 others.

The international community never bothered to examine the LTTE influence in grooming international terrorism.

The state-of-the-art Destroyer was rammed by a small craft, laden with explosives, which blew a 40 foot hole in the side of the guided missile ship.

The operation was very much similar to the Black Sea Tiger hit on surveillance command ship, ‘Edithara’, in the Kankesanthurai harbour, in the mid 90s.

Sea Tigers employed similar tactics in another successful attack on another SLN vessel, ‘Abeetha’, off Point Pedro, on May 4, 1991.

Soosai on Al Qaeda attack on USS Cole

Thillaiyampalam Sivanesan, aka Soosai, in an exclusive interview with BBC’s Francis Harrison, during the Oslo-managed Ceasefire Agreement, boasted Al Qaeda copied tactics from the LTTE. Soosai is quoted as having said that other terrorist groups should learn from the LTTE as the Al Qaeda had already copied them.

The interview, with Soosai, recorded during the LTTE celebrations of Heroes’ Day, and broadcast over BBC Television, was posted on the BBC Website’s South Asia section, under the heading, “Tamil Tigers Reveal Suicide Secrets” as a video clip. The news feature introduced the Black Tigers as “the Original Suicide Bombers of the World.”

Referring to the attack on USS Cole, Soosai said “They are using our tactics. I think in Yemen they used our strategy of suicide attack to blow up an American ship. That is exactly what we used to do.”

Soosai is believed to have been killed, in May 2009, while crossing the Nanthikadal lagoon with LTTE leader, Velupillai Prabhakaran, and his family.

Examination of LTTE’s project to assassinate Rajiv Gandhi, during the polls campaign in Tamil Nadu, should be a case study for Western intelligence services. The LTTE picked Pakischandran, of Udippidy, Jaffna, to spearhead the operation. The man was also identified as Raja Arumainayagam. The operative was also called ‘one-eyed Jack’, Sivarasan, Raghu and Raghu Anna. Having received military training from Indians, in the early 80s, Sivarasan had been a veteran undercover operative responsible for a spate of operations in India, including high profile killing of the EPRLF leader, Padmanabha, and 12 of his key associates, on June 19, 1990. India turned a blind eye to LTTE operations in Tamil Nadu. Having wiped out the EPRLF group, Sivarasan, who personally carried out the attack with another LTTE operative, returned to Jaffna. Although, Sivarasan could have crossed Palk Straits few times, subsequently to carry out Prabhakaran dictates though there was no record of such movements. However, the Sivarasan’s hit squad, assigned to assassinate Gandhi, reached Tamil Nadu on May Day, 1991, after leaving Madagal, on the previous day. The squad included two female suicide cadres. The squad stayed with Indians committed to the eelam cause until the May 21 assassination of Gandhi. Interestingly, Sivaran, wounded in action during Operation Liberation, was believed to have been moved by the Indian Air Force, Jaffna to India, soon after the signing of the Indo-Lanka Accord, in late July, 1987.

Sivarasan, and the other suicide cadre, evaded Indian security agencies for near 100 days until troops surrounded their Bangalore hideout, on Aug. 19, 1991. Following a 30 – minute exchange of fire fight, the Indians laid siege to the building with the Black Cats deciding to delay a frontal assault until the next day. When the Black Cats entered the building without facing resistance, they found seven bodies, two female and five men, including Sivarasan; the man with many aliases Sivaran shot himself in the head while others took cyanide. The dead included Subha, the second suicide bomber sent in case Dhanu, for some reason, couldn’t go through the operation.

India disposed the bodies of those Sri Lankans perished in crackdown. At least 21 Sri Lankans committed suicide to avoid arrest. In addition to them, suicide cadre Dhanu claimed the life of Rajiv Gandhi. India never offered to send bodies of those terrorists back, nor Sri Lanka ever asked for them.

Western media, particularly some British media outfits, glorified the LTTE. The BBC’s coverage of LTTE suicide cadres promoted those who believed in violence.

In the wake of the Paris massacre, Europe stepped up security with Belgium recently experiencing a massive security scare.

The unprecedented crisis will compel Western powers to review granting of citizenship to outsiders. Tamils, of Sri Lankan origin, received citizenship at Sri Lanka’s expense. Having obtained citizenship of a particular country, they put pressure on that government and also worked jointly with similar groups to achieve political objectives. Sri Lanka having to face international scrutiny is a case in point.

To be continued on Dec 2