The Canadian Tamil Congress (CTC) has sent an official letter to President Anura Kumara Dissanayake and the National People’s Power (NPP), congratulating them on their resounding and historic victory in the recent parliamentary elections.
In the letter, the CTC extended heartfelt congratulations on behalf of Tamil Canadians, acknowledging this landmark mandate as a reflection of the Sri Lankan people’s trust in the NPP’s vision for transformative governance. The CTC commended the NPP’s pledge to establish a transparent, accountable, and inclusive government, as outlined in its manifesto, and expressed optimism that this administration would honor its promises to the people.
The CTC’s letter highlighted the historic opportunity before the NPP to dismantle the executive presidency and introduce a new constitution that prioritizes democracy and the protection of the rights of all communities, including the Tamil people. Drawing from the manifesto, the CTC urged the government to ensure justice, inclusion, and equality for all, while taking immediate steps to address long-standing grievances.
In its letter, the CTC proposed the following critical actions:
Release of Political Prisoners: The CTC urged the government to release all remaining political prisoners as an important step toward reconciliation and national unity.
Repeal of the Prevention of Terrorism Act (PTA): Emphasizing the longstanding injustices associated with the PTA, the CTC stressed the importance of repealing this act as promised in the NPP manifesto.
Restoration of Land Rights: The CTC called for the return of privately-owned lands in the Northern and Eastern provinces that are currently occupied by the military, as well as a cessation of illegal land acquisitions, to rebuild trust and restore rightful ownership.
Protection of Religious Rights: To preserve the cultural and religious heritage of the Tamil community, the CTC urged the government to prevent the encroachment of Tamil worship sites and to halt the construction of new Buddhist temples in predominantly Tamil areas.
Implementation of the 13th Amendment and Provincial Elections: Until a new constitution is ratified, the CTC stressed the importance of fully implementing the 13th Amendment and conducting provincial council elections to ensure local representation and empower regional governance.
Reform of the Security Sector: The letter emphasized the need to align the military presence in the Northern and Eastern provinces with the rest of the country and to discontinue military involvement in commercial ventures such as farming and hospitality, which hinder local businesses and farmers.
The CTC expressed its belief that these actions would not only demonstrate the NPP’s sincerity in fulfilling its promises but also lay the foundation for a more equitable and inclusive Sri Lanka. With the overwhelming mandate entrusted to the NPP, the CTC urged the government to act swiftly on these issues to build trust and confidence among all communities.
The Canadian Tamil Congress stands ready to support initiatives that promote justice, reconciliation, and sustainable development in Sri Lanka.
The leader of the Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna (SLPP), former President Mahinda Rajapaksa claims that the party received the exact number of votes they had expected.
Speaking to the media today (16), he expressed that the victory of the National People’s Power (NPP) is a positive development, noting that freshers should be given the opportunity to see if they can succeed.
Commenting on the significant rise of the NPP from 3% of total votes in the previous general election to 61%, the former President said: It is the people of this country who voted, not outsiders. I think we should respect the public mandate… Maybe [they will] succeed, maybe [they will] collapse.”
In response to a question raised by a journalist, Rajapaksa also added that the SLPP will never give up and that he will not retire from politics, asking, Which politician retires from politics?”
Furthermore, he confirmed that no discussions are currently ongoing with former President Ranil Wickremesinghe regarding the future politics of the party.
When asked about his thoughts on what happened to Wickremesinghe in the recent elections, Rajapaksa said: I’m feeling so sorry for him, that’s all.”
The Colombo District has seen a profound shift in voter dynamics in the 2024 General Election, with the leader of the Samagi Jana Balawegaya (SJB) Sajith Premadasa suffering a significant decline in support.
Premadasa, who garnered an impressive 305,744 votes in the 2020 parliamentary election, managed only 145,611 votes this time—marking a loss of 160,133 votes.
Meanwhile, the rise of the National People’s Power (NPP) has made significant inroads into areas traditionally dominated by the United National Party (UNP) and subsequently the SJB as well.
Historically, constituencies such as Colombo-North, Central, East, and West have been strongholds for the UNP, boasting a long history of electoral victories. In 2020, Premadasa’s SJB managed to wrest control of these areas, consolidating its power. However, the tide has turned in this election, with the NPP claiming dominance in these constituencies.
This shift signals a major political realignment in the Colombo District, often regarded as the heart of the UNP’s support base.
For the first time, the sweeping mandate received by the NPP led by President Anura Kumara Dissanayake also included surprise backing from the North and East of the country which is dominated by the Tamil-speakinh community and had often been secured by the UNP, SJB or other Tamil political alliances.
However, SJB leader Premadasa was placed second in the Colombo District preference votes list in the 2024 General Election with 145,611 votes while fellow party members Dr. Harsha De Silva, Mujibur Rahman and S.M. Marikkar have also secured seats from the district.
Also, the Samagi Jana Balawegaya (SJB) became the main opposition party of the tenth Parliament after polling over 1.9 million votes (17.66%) and thereby obtaining 40 seats including 5 bonus seats in the House.
The Commissioner General of Elections Saman Sri Rathnayake states that there has been a significant reduction by 10% of the voter turnout in 2024 General Election, in comparison with Sri Lanka’s Presidential Election which was held in September 21.
The Elections Commissioner General also confirmed that 5% of the ballots casted have been rejected, which is 667,240 votes in total.
The total number of votes polled is 11,815,246 which amounts to a 68.93% of total registered votes out of which 11,148,006 were considered valid, according to the Election Commission.
Furthermore, Mr. Rathnayake clarified that only a candidate who contested the General Election and was defeated or a person whose name has already been mentioned in their party or independent group’s national list can enter the Parliament as an MP for the national list seats.
He also emphasized that all candidates who contested the election must submit their expenses reports to the Election Commission within 21 days.
According to the Elections Commissioner General, over 3.5 million citizens who were eligible to vote had not casted their votes during 2024 Presidential Election. The figure was 21.54% of the population that were eligible to cast their vote.
He had previously clarified that out of 17,140,354 registered voters, a total of 13,619,916 had cast their votes in the Presidential Election which was 79.46%, while 3,520,438 (21.54%) did not vote.
Ambika Samuel, the newly elected female representative to Parliament, has expressed confidence in the potential of the youth in plantation community and beyond to take an active role in politics.
Speaking about her journey into politics, Samuel, the first female Tamil MP to have been elected through a major political party from the plantation community, emphasized that her entry into the political sphere is not just a personal achievement but a stepping stone for others, especially young people from the plantation sector, who she believes have been confined to outdated frameworks.
I am the first to enter politics from here, and my brothers and sisters will undoubtedly follow. These are young individuals with immense talent and a genuine desire to serve the country. For too long, they have been trapped within certain limitations, but now that those barriers have been broken, we can expect a new wave of leadership emerging from the hill country and from other districts,” she added.
Samuel particularly highlighted the role of women, who she believes have long been restricted to traditional roles, particularly in the household.
Women were often confined to the kitchen, but many of them are capable of much more. They possess great potential, and their influence, until now, has been limited by societal expectations. With the first step I’ve taken in politics, we will undoubtedly see more women rising to leadership positions, both in Parliament and beyond,” she added.
Colombo, November 16: In the November 14 Sri Lankan parliamentary elections, the National Peoples’ Power (NPP) swept the Sinhala-dominated areas of the island, as predicted by many. The Sinhalas are the majority community in Sri Lanka and the NPP had the reputation of being a Sinhala nationalist party.
What came as a surprise was the NPP’s sterling performance in the Tamil and Muslim-dominated areas of North and East Sri Lanka.
Breaking with a seven-decade tradition, Sri Lankan Tamils flocked to the all-island National Peoples’ Power (NPP) party in preference to ethnic Tamil parties. Concern for good governance appears to have outweighed interest in traditional political issues like autonomy and accountability for alleged war crimes.
The NPP put the Tamils’ favourite party, the Ilankai Tamil Arasu Katchi (ITAK), in the shade, and emerged as the number one choice in most of the electorates in the Tamil and minorities dominated Northern and Eastern provinces.
The NPP’s performance was impressive especially taking into account the fact that the party was a total outsider” to the area. It was a Sinhalese” party which had no presence at all in the Tamil-dominated North ever before.
The NPP was also contesting in an area which had an enormous number of candidates vying for votes. In the Jaffna constituency for instance, there were 44 parties and Independent groups in the fray.
NPP’s Dominance
In Vaddukoddai, in Jaffna district, which had been an ITAK stronghold, the NPP came first, getting 21.5% of the votes; the All Ceylon Tamil Congress (ACTC) came second with 13.48%; and the ITAK came third with 13.39%. The rest went to the Democratic Tamil National Alliance (DTNA) and Independent groups.
In Kankesanthurai also, the NPP was in the lead with 13.37% of the votes. The ITAK got 12.57%; and the ACTC 7.15%. In Manipay, the share of votes had NPP at the top with 30.94%; and ITAK at number two with 13.49%. In Koppai, the NPP secured 29.86% and the ITAK 12.63%. The score in Uddipiddy was NPP 20.16% and ITAK 15.07%.
In Point Pedro too, the NPP came first with 21.89 % and the ITAK second with 19.71%. In Nallur, a Hindu stronghold, the NPP came first with 31.44% and ITAK third with 11.49%. In Jaffna proper, NPP came first with 41.46% and ITAK second with 11.81%.
However, in Kayts and Chavakacheri, the NPP got less than the Eelam Peoples Democratic Party (EPDP) and an Independent Group. In Kilinochchi, the ITAK President S.Sritharan’s pocket borough, the ITAK bagged 43.79% of the votes and came first. The NPP came second with 16.39%.
In Kalkuda in Batticaloa district in the Eastern province, the ITAK was the top scorer with 28.10 %. But in Batticaloa town, the NPP was first with 27.11% with the ITAK and the Sri Lanka Muslim Congress were slightly behind. In Paddiruppu, the strong hold of the Tamil Makkal Viduthalai Puigam (TMVP), the NPP stood third.
In Trincomalee District, which is ethnically mixed, the NPP got the largest percentage of votes in both Seruvila and Trincomalee town, cornering 56% and 40% respectively. In Mutur, the NPP came second to the Samagi Jana Balawegaya (SJB).
In Digamadulla (Amparai) district, the NPP was the top scorer in Amparai town, Sammanthurai and Kalmunai. It was second to the Sri Lanka Muslim Congress (SLMC) in Pottuvil.
Devoid of Ethnic Nationalisms
The election results show that the rhetoric of divisive Sinhala nationalism and Tamil nationalism did not dominate the discourse.
Sure, the usual Tamil nationalistic demands for federalism, accountability for alleged war-time atrocities, vacation of occupied military lands and the full implementation of the 13 th.amendment for more power devolution, were voiced by the Tamil contestants. But a substantial section of voters overlooked those issues and pitched for better governance, less corruption and more people-centred development promised by the NPP.
Tamils voted for the NPP despite the fact the NPP’s election manifesto had nothing to say on the Tamils’ issues as such. It promised a new constitution, but left its contents vague, leaving the matter to the parliament to be elected.
This was neither here nor there. And yet, the Tamils voted for the NPP because their attention was elsewhere, on their deteriorating economic circumstances created by the COVID 19 pandemic and the economic crisis of 2022. They were desperately in need of a government which will give them some relief.
It is not clear as to how the NPP government will bring relief to the people given the lack of financial resources, the dependence on foreign aid and debt repayment obligations.
Ahilan Kadirgamar, a professor at the University of Jaffna told Frontline magazine that the lands released from military occupation in the Northern Province could be developed by local cooperatives with a local village level official drawing up plans for their development and use. Development then will be bottom up” and top down” as is the case now. It will therefore be more effective. Fisheries could also be decentralised, Kadirgamar added.
Most importantly, the NPP, being a hard core Sinhalese or Sri Lankan nationalist party with no blemishes, can take bold steps to bring about ethnic reconciliation because it cannot be accused of being anti-Sinhala or anti-Sri Lankan.
The Tamils should make use the window of opportunities which is open now to realize their reasonable demands within the frame of Sri Lanka’s constitution.
What happened was after the war we had a bloated military, and no government had the guts to start a national discussion about the need to slowly demilitarise after the war
If they can have that forthright vision and try to work out these issues about militarisation, the release of land, about ensuring that the state structures work in each region for the benefit of those communities, that would go a long way
In terms of where Sri Lanka stands now, I would say it’s at a historic conjuncture. Sri Lanka is going through its worst economic crisis since probably the Great Depression of the 1930s, and the huge social and political changes we are seeing are related to this crisis. So it’s definitely at a pivotal moment
Ahilan Kadirgamar, who teaches sociology at the University of Jaffna and has been a long-time human rights activist, has a keen eye on developments in Sri Lanka. Less than two months since the new President, Anura Kumar Dissanayake was elected, Sri Lanka held parliamentary elections on November 14. The sociology professor and activist says the new government needs to meet the aspirations of not just the singular people, but minorities as well and he discusses Sri Lanka’s political and economic crises, highlighting the youth’s demand for change and challenges of ethnic reconciliation. In an interview with Amit Baruha of Frontline, Ahilan Kadirgamar talks about the elections, Sri Lanka’s future and more. Excerpts:
Q:Do you think Sri Lanka is at a pivotal moment in its history?
In terms of where Sri Lanka stands now, I would say it’s at a historic conjuncture. Sri Lanka is going through its worst economic crisis since probably the Great Depression of the 1930s, and the huge social and political changes we are seeing are related to this crisis. So it’s definitely at a pivotal moment. It’s also significant here in Jaffna because it has been 15 years since the end of the war. Just as there have been major changes in politics in Sri Lanka’s south who would have imagined that a coalition led by the JVP would come to the helm of state power? They tried twice through armed struggle and insurrections to capture state power, and now they’ve achieved it through democratic means. What they will do and can do is, of course, the big question. Similarly, Tamil politics is finally going through tremendous changes. Tamil nationalism started to gain ground in the 1950s, particularly in reaction to discrimination by the Sinhala elite who held power and played divisive politics. The Federal Party first took forward the demand for federalism, and eventually they backed various militant groups. As we know, the LTTE then wiped out all other militant groups, claimed they were the sole representative, and in my view, took the Tamil community on a disastrous, suicidal path which ended in that cataclysmic end to the war in 2009. The year 2009 should have been a moment of reckoning for the country. After a 26-year civil war, what do you do? In the south, the Rajapaksas decided to use it for their own consolidation. They strengthened Sinhala Buddhist nationalism and further militarised the country, particularly the north, in a very humiliating way towards minorities. But there wasn’t also the kind of self-criticism that was necessary within the Tamil community. The political elite here whether parliamentary parties or militants and eventually the LTTE owe some responsibility for where they have brought the Tamil community. There should have been self-criticism about the strategies needed to move forward. That didn’t happen.
Q: And why do you think it didn’t happen?
One thing the LTTE systematically did was wipe out the entire second-rung leadership. They not only wiped out all other militant groups, but as we all know, they murdered Amirthalingam, Sivasithamparam, Yogeswaran all of them were gunned down. Even the second-rung leadership and the left here were completely decimated. So there weren’t enough people left. A number of them were put forward as LTTE proxies. When the LTTE disappeared from the scene, these proxies decided to hold on to the parliamentary mantle and politics without really mobilising or engaging the people. Their claim was that with support from the international community, using the diaspora and with support from New Delhi/India, they would be able to deliver some kind of solution. But it was clear to many of us that when you have a political leadership that cannot mobilise the people, no solution is going to be real if they are negotiating that way.
Q: So are you trying to say that there’s been a delayed churn in Tamil politics in the North?
Yes, this should have happened, in my view, 10-14 years ago. Then we could have moved on. This has kept things on hold, and in a way, the kind of unravelling we are seeing might immediately mean there is no clear Tamil political voice. But it’s a necessary change we are confronted with, just as there is this long-overdue change in the south as well. Whether these changes will lead to something lasting, something progressive, something that the people are looking for is yet to be seen. On the other hand, we are facing the biggest crisis in our independent history. Poverty has more than doubled. Sri Lanka, along with Kerala and Cuba, was considered a development model in the 1970s. Our human development indicators were extremely high, even though our per capita income was very low, because of our policies—free education, free healthcare, food subsidies. Now all of that is at risk because of the economic crisis. For the first time in our history, we defaulted on our debt two years ago in 2022. The IMF and creditors have us by the throat, saying we should repay. All these crippling austerity measures are being pushed down on us so we can repay the creditors.
Q:How much can a new government do to address this suffering? Will it lead to other uprisings because of this economic situation?
There’s a lot at stake now because when a new government like this comes, and if they fail, there’s also the chance of a much more polarising chauvinist regime coming to power. So there’s a lot at stake in terms of the need for this new government to succeed in meeting the aspirations of not just the singular people, but the minorities as well. What we’ve seen over and over again in Sri Lanka is that when things go wrong, the ethnic card is used. First, the discrimination against Tamils which ended up in that horrible civil war. But what happened in the last 15 years? When the Rajapaksas started to realise they couldn’t manage the economy or meet the aspirations of the Sinhala people, the next round was against the Muslims. In 2012-2013, riots against Muslims started, constructing them as the new enemy with all kinds of fabricated stories. You see similar things even in India—it’s a regional and global phenomenon.
Q:Enemies are important.
Yes, enemies are important. And building up those enemies is important. And trying to gain power on the basis of constructing these new enemies. So there are some dangers. But at the moment, there is also a hopeful moment in Sri Lanka.
Q:So basically what you’re saying is there’s hope, but also the fear of a mischance again. From the little that I see in the campaign for your parliamentary elections, at least that rhetoric of Sinhala nationalism or even Tamil nationalism is not dominating the discourse. So do you think that’s a good thing, a welcome thing?
That’s definitely welcome. I think it’s important that we build on that because in the history of nationalisms here, I always say they are objective allies the two extremes are good friends, they need each other. When one starts to sink, the other becomes even louder trying to wake them up. Right now they have both been disrupted, and this is an opportunity for the North to work with the South.
Q:Which is quite rare in Sri Lanka, isn’t it?
A rare one. But there have been opportunities in the past. I should mention here one of my mentors whom you might have known, Kethesh Loganathan. I worked very closely with him.
Q:A real towering intellectual.
Yes. Sadly, he was assassinated in 2006. If people like him were around today, NeelanTiruchelvam and so on, the Tamil community would be much stronger for having these kinds of intellectuals. One of Kethesh’s books is titled Lost Opportunities because Sri Lanka has also been a history of lost opportunities. Hopefully, we would use this opportunity to its fullest and try to take it forward. There’s huge enthusiasm, particularly among the younger generations both in the south and north they want to see change in politics. But at the same time, because of the grave economic crisis, there’s this push to migrate, to run away hoping to find better pastures. I don’t think that’s the case. Even the West is in turmoil with anti-immigrant mobilisations, whether in Europe or North America. Nevertheless, a section of the youth feel their future is outside. I know it’s still early days as far as the government is concerned. It was only in September that Anura Kumara Dissanayake, or AKD as he’s known here, was elected. It’s barely been two months. But how would you assess some of the decisions he’s taken, especially appointing a Citibank appointee to head the Bank of Ceylon? Is he trying to signal to the business community and the rest of the world that he’s not going to rock the boat? Is that the signal he wants to send out? We have to keep in mind that he was elected president when they only had three parliamentarians out of 225. So after dissolving parliament soon after, saying they need a majority to be able to govern, the entire focus has been on winning the parliamentary elections. Having said that, they were worried about what forces would disrupt their possibilities. Certainly, the Colombo elite are very wary of what they see as an outsider having taken power. I think to some extent the international actors, the global actors, the West and so on, are also wary about the election of Anura Kumara Dissanayake. What we saw even in the days before the presidential election, as the wave became clear that they might win, was rhetoric saying here’s a Marxist who’s going to head this country.” That they won’t be able to manage the economy, that they would disrupt any attempts to rebuild it. So this kind of messaging in the Western press in particular was almost like blackmailed saying okay, if you’re not a Marxist, then you should stick to the IMF programme.
Q:Like there’s nothing in between.
Nothing in between. Even though they had come a long way to the political mainstream I characterise them as a left-of-centre party. So that kind of pressure… And keep in mind, the election was on September 21st. We go into what we call a blackout in terms of campaigning on the 18th. On the 19th, the former president Ranil Wickremesinghe announces he has sealed a deal with Sri Lanka’s creditors, the bondholders. Then immediately the Western press goes into this hyper discourse saying, Will this president continue with this?”
Q:So he was presented with a kind of fait accompli.
Yes. Within a week of being inaugurated, the IMF arrives in Sri Lanka, and within 10 days the Finance Ministry announces they will accept this bond deal. You can imagine how he was muscled into accepting, which of course for people like me, we see this as an unsustainable deal. In 2027, when the IMF program ends and the IMF has been the arbiter of this deal when we start repaying our creditors, we are going to be paying 4.5 per cent of our GDP in external debt servicing. That’s about 30 per cent of our revenues. But not only is it 30 per cent of our revenues, it’s about 30 per cent of our exports. So we have to collect that 30 per cent as revenues, convert it into dollars using our exports. This whole push to increase taxes and claiming that we need to increase our exports all of it is so we can repay the creditors and the IMF. People talk about this as an IMF bailout, and I’ve written about it as the myth of the IMF bailout. The IMF is only giving us $3 billion over four years. There’s no bailout because $3 billion over four years amounts to $60 million a month. Sri Lanka’s foreign earnings from the garment sector, tea exports, rubber, coconut, migrant remittances every month is 30 times that amount: $1,800 million. So there’s no bailout. But because we defaulted and the IMF is the arbiter, they are able to impose these huge austerity measures. The IMF is giving us $3 billion, but over the next 10 years, we will be paying them $2 billion in interest alone.
Q: So it is a trap.
It’s a trap. I think we are learning it the hard way. At some point this government will have to find a way out of this IMF program if they are to implement the kind of people-friendly policies they have promised. Coming back to the issue of ethnic politics in Sri Lanka and the delayed churn we were talking about earlier you rightly pointed out that an entire generation of Tamil leadership was wiped out by the LTTE, which already weakened the leadership. But what is your sense now? When the LTTE was around, the 13th Amendment wasn’t even considered a basis for discussion. When President Chandrika Kumaratunga presented her proposals to Parliament, it was a tragedy it was never put to vote. Even if it were defeated that was my view when I was a correspondent here she should have put it to vote. Even if it fell through because of the UNP and RanilWickremesinghe, at least she would have proved a point that she was a president who moved in that direction. We saw this bloody civil war, the insurrection, human tragedy at an unimaginable scale. Now, would it be that the hope Anura Kumara Dissanayake has generated, which was visible to some extent even in his political rally in Jaffna, might attract more people? His party got 27,000 votes, I think, during the presidential election. Is it your sense that many more people will come out in his support now? I think so. There is a wave towards the NPP. It’s partly his charisma, but more than that, people want change. People want change in the south, people want change in the north. They are ready to give the NPP a chance. So in that sense, I think more people in the north and east will also vote for them. But going back to this question of…
Q:A political settlement or agreement…
Yes, our demands have changed with time. In 1956, it was mainly a language issue. Then it eventually became a question of territorial devolution. Now there are minorities living all over the country, so I’m not sure how much we can rely on territorial basis alone. We probably also need power-sharing at the centre, like what you have in India a Senate or a second chamber to be able to check all of that. But I think at a very basic level, having gone through this tremendous destruction, when people talk about a solution, first they are looking for an acknowledgement from the south that something horrible has happened here. Let’s all come together as a country and say these people have suffered so much there needs to be a solution. Now, what that solution means… Sometimes lawyers think they have all the solutions. It’s not about this clause or that clause. I think people are open to see and they’re practical about it. The economy has changed what we thought in 1987 is not what the Sri Lankan economy is today in terms of what we want to do with devolution. Even though we sometimes stick to the same slogans, there are certain realities. For example, I am the chair of a provincial-level federation of cooperatives called the Northern Cooperative Development Bank. It’s a very positive thing that cooperatives are a devolved subject under the 13th Amendment. So if we want to sort out a problem, we can go to the commissioner here; we don’t have to go to Colombo. And cooperatives are very local institutions, so there it makes sense. We have to think where it makes sense, what is possible, and work that out. So we can use the experience of the 13th Amendment. There’s a lot at stake now because when a new government like this comes, and if they fail, there’s also the chance of a much more polarising chauvinist regime coming to power. ” So what you’re saying is that if there’s goodwill, more than clause A or clause B, it’s how you go about the process. And what kind of political leadership emerges in the north would also be important. Because we don’t want one arrogant elite in Colombo to control politics and then just transfer power to another arrogant elite in the north, if you’re serious about democracy. There is also the problem of caste here, the problem of other minorities. The northern Muslim community, who in 1990 were evicted from the North within 24 hours, are now trying to return. There are people from the plantations who, during the riots in the south, were displaced to the north many of them are still landless or feel discriminated against. So there are many things we need to sort out in the North as well. But nationally, there has to be a recognition. We need to come to terms with this long conflict and the war and give people confidence. When you say there are some voices from within the Tamil community, including in the University of Jaffna, which came out in open support of the NPP would you say that this is perhaps for the first time in many decades? I’m not so familiar with your history. Is it the first time that even a section of enlightened Tamil leaders are wanting to work with a political party which is based in the South? It is a new opening. There have been openings from time to time. In a way, I would say in 1994, when Chandrika came to power on a peace platform after the UNP ruled for 17 years, that was also a fresh moment and she was broadly welcomed. And till the LTTE literally torpedoed the whole process in March of 1995, I think. So there have been moments like this, and with the LTTE, people did not have the space to express that. That to some extent continued. There are virulent sections of the diaspora who would use their financial and political clout even today to try to label anybody who says we need to work with other communities in the south, because they’re very wedded to this notion. But I think the last month or two has been a major change. This opening has made even shutting down people, shutting down voices difficult because I think just like the mainstream Sinhala leadership has been exposed, the Tamil political leadership has also been exposed.
Q:Recently the government announced that the Jaffna-Achuveli Road will be opened. And at his public meeting in Jaffna the other day, the president spoke of returning lands and a number of other issues. Can you explain what would be the outstanding issues as far as day-to-day living of people here in Jaffna, in the peninsula, is concerned?
The Jaffna and Northern Province is still very rural. People’s mainstays are agriculture, fisheries, livestock and so on. So the land question is central. There was no reason why the previous governments after the war could not release all these lands, there’s absolutely no excuse for it in my view. In fact, they used the Forest Department, the Archaeological Department, various ploys to even take over more land. When Sirisena became president, a substantial amount was released, but still so much more should have been done. So in that sense, the land issue is crucial. If they can release these lands and then get the existing government machinery working Sri Lanka has a very extensive state structure in every village. In India what you call a Gram Sevak, here we have a Samurdhi officer, an economic development officer. The state reaches deep down, so you can do a lot with that or you can also curtail the people by using the state structure. Take fisheries there is the Fisheries Department which is controlled by the central government and the Fisheries Ministry. A fifth of our population depends directly or indirectly on fisheries. They could be an enabling actor or a stifling actor. Unfortunately, I must say they’ve been a stifling actor. Whether this government can have that vision and work with actors in the north to address that remains to be seen. These are the ways in which they can address the day-to-day concerns of the people. Some issues are also due to external conditions the economic crisis has meant that fuel costs have gone up, which has had a huge impact. So I think not only in the north but in the entire country, how they deal with the rural sectors and the food system is going to be crucial for this government’s survival. In terms of the North, I think it’s high time demilitarisation takes place.
Q: Are there a lot of camps here?
Yes, if you go to Mullaitivu, Kilinochchi and so on, large swaths of land are still controlled by the military. There’s absolutely no need for that, and it continues to be a humiliating presence for the local people. What happened was after the war we had a bloated military, and no government had the guts to start a national discussion about the need to slowly demilitarise after the war. Actually, the Rajapaksas really thrived on militarisation. They further militarised even Colombo, for example. It’s the way in which they embraced neoliberal policies, urbanisation, financialisation and so on. We know that neoliberalism works well with a certain kind of securitisation and an authoritarian state. That was their model. Now the NPP and the JVP, coming from a very strong Sinhala base in my view, are the kinds of actors who can also bring about these changes because they can’t be labelled as traitors to the Sinhala cause, so to speak. If they can have that forthright vision and try to work out these issues about militarisation, the release of land, about ensuring that the state structures work in each region for the benefit of those communities, that would go a long way. But there is also the political question of how, after these long decades of polarisation, you bring the country together politically. You have to show some goodwill by bringing about changes in the way things are run in the north as well.
Q: And the structures as well?
Right. And that will also depend now on if they are to bring about a new constitution. That would of course depend on the kind of strength they have in parliament to be able to do that, but either through that or through passing different kinds of laws to show their goodwill. But it’s pretty tough to amend your constitution. I mean, your new president has even promised, or his party had promised, the removal of the executive presidency. That’s a pretty long shot. That’s a long shot because you need a two-thirds majority in Parliament and also a referendum. So those challenges remain, but whether they can step by step build the confidence in that direction… I think people have been waiting to see what they will do after the parliament election because their whole thrust was to try to be able to govern by getting a majority in Parliament. And if they do get it, what they will then do after that is what people are waiting to see. Courtesy Frontline (Amit Baruah is a former diplomatic correspondent of The Hindu and foreign editor of Hindustan Times. He has reported from Delhi, Colombo, Islamabad, and Southeast Asia). (This article was originally published in the Frontline on November 13, 2024)
Sarath Wijesinghe President’s Counsel, Solicitor in England and Wales, former Ambassador to UAE and Israel and President Ambassador’s forum UK/SL
War is bitter dangerous and distractive.
There is no dispute or argument that President Trump is the most powerful world leader who can create wars or settle with his good office, strategy, of bad intentions backed by power struggle greedy for power. He is one of the richest in USA and the most powerful person on the Globe with the nuclear button in hand that could destroy the world in minutes. Obviously he could be a sensible, educated, and a man who loves the human and humanity. USA is the richest country with direct and indirect control over the world body UN, world finance and international order with strategies and world machineries. His re emergence has a direct and indirect impact and relevance to Sri Lanka and world over in various ways. President Trump declared at the inception of the taking over power at the speech of the policy document generally given special attention by the world powers that he is anti-war unlike many others. He is the centre of power Including the world economy, safety and security of the world and states whose actions and policies are paramount to the world peace as well as economy. President Trump’s policy on ‘’NO WAR’’ has been a given a sigh of relief to many including Sri Lanka and many peace loving nations, as the world has experiences two major wars previously with deaths destructions and irreparable losses still felt by many parts of the world which are documented as sad memories out of which the memories of Hiroshima, Nagasaki and the destructions at Vietnamese Middle East Wars and more before and after after two world wars. are cruel and and given rise to a path of peaceful and co existence with the advent of the United nations Organisation gave high expectations for the peace world with peaceful world order despite conflicts and running wars. International or national wars will bring disastrous results by using the most powerful and sophisticated weaponry backed by modern scientific inventions. Any war is destructive bitter and will cause deaths and will cause wanton damages to the properties and nations.
United Nations Organization
It is after the unfortunate events of the second worldwar that the world leaders formed the United Nations Organization replacing the League of Nation they felt insufficient. Mainly to maintain the world peace and avoid any possibilities of any other war wars in future. United nations Organization consist of five world powers as a supreme body with Vito powers to overpower any resolution with no reasons, and the five powerful nations are rich and deals in Arms deals and engage is the industry which is very profitable and lucrative depending on arms supply to the parties on war. No war and peaceful world is no business for them. Sri Lanka is a country battered by bitter war over thirty long years with unlimited destructions of property, of reputation, human lives and has taken the country many decades back to the history for revival. The wars have been so fierce and powerful that even USA – the world policeman said that war on LTTE in Sri Lanka is not a winnable war as it has spread as cancer and fully internalized and rooted with the powerful network that has shaken the world. Sri Lanka is credited to win the war and aware of the bitter consequences USA got directly and indirectly involved in many wars in the past having tasted bitter lessons of war yet continues to engage in war strategies and arms industry deals and as a part of security, business, as a part of there foreign policy they have given to spread the international network on positioning military worldwide. priority to.
USA as a military power base world over
Currently USA is engaged in 114 military conflicts world over, having deployed 173000 military personal in 159 countries with the potential to spark a war with the slightest move by either party is an indication how sensitive and dangerous the world is when considering the causes of previous worldwar with the loss of millions of lives and properties to the states individuals and to the history. Largest war continued for 781 years and the destruction of the bombing to Japan still haunts with the warning that a future war will last only few minutes for complete destruction of the globe, indicates the need of peace at any cost. It shows that way to war is a one-way drive by USA and the termination too is with them as other countries backed by the United nations Organization is completely on a NO WAR path shows the gravity of the situation and the sensibility of the path taken by the new President of the USA backed by the world over and UN Organization.
Worrying factor for Peace and Peaceful coexistence
Worrying factor for a peaceful world are some ruminants of fire under the ashes in areas such as Israel- Gaza issue and the Ukraine issue ignited by interested parties on the current disputed areas which is sensitive and easy to ignite.Despite wanton losses and destructions there are some parties who will be benefited on the war front and the sensible statements and steps taken by president Trump has sealed any possibilities to re-emerge the ugly head repetition of the previous wars that still as bitter memories and wrong decisions taken by some leaders who led he strategy and destructions during the calamity. The sad part of the truth is the part played by USA in almost every conflict in some capacity in all corners of the world that gives negative effects by using the war machinery to earn on arms deals. In this context the position taken by President Trump is historical and creditable considering the joint operations of Bush, Tony Blair rules to promote the Middle East War in the guise of finding for nuclear armaments on nuclear war which never found yet caused destruction and distribution of Middle East including Iraq, and many other.
Significance of the USA foreign Policy based on the foreign policy declaration of President Trump and formulation and implementation of Sri Lankan friendly Sri Lanka foreign policy.
Foreign policy of USA is the foreign policy of president Trump who was given a clear majority by the American people as a peace candidate for a peaceful,happy, prosperous USA based on peace and friendship the president proved immediately by extending friendship immediately the tradition fractions and leaders of ongoing warring fractions which has the potential for the third world war if ignited leading a wrong warring path and the world citizen will credit president trump for taking the citizen in the path of peace and peaceful coexistence unlike some of his predecessors.
USA interfering undiplomatically on internal affairs against the UN convention?
Considering the involvement of USA on economy welfare banking and all other areas in all corners of the world his election will have a direct and indict impact on a villager in ‘’Moaragala’’ to a citizen in Nigeria equally as the banking system, economy, politics and militarization is spread digitally and by AI world over and it should be the attempt and duty of the right minded technicians and educated to take it to the right direction without letting to the wrong hands and war mongers aiming at money making and acumination of wealth and power. All religions preach and prey for peace and peaceful co existence, and it is time for them to get together educating the politician south and educated to be on the path of peace and not the war path as some aspiring for for power and wealth at any cost. Wars are fought for watered, boarders, oil, resources,economic and power and supremacy over countries or regions in the absence of a proper and effective foreign policy , diplomacy, tact, and want of peace and peaceful co existence which is the reason states give special attention and priority to foreign policy formation and implementation to suit the respective nations.
Sri Lanka friendly foreign policy for Sri Lanka
Unfortunately the newly and popularly elected new government in Sri Lanka has still not formulated a proper foreign policy to suit and compatible with the world leader and world power, it is the duty of the new governance to give top priority for the formulation and implementation of foreign policy which is the duty of the leader of the government currently performing an excellent job in meeting 67 world leaders within a space of few days with the able foreign minister usually delegated to assist the President. Today the current governance has been given an exceptional mandate from all communities in all parts of the nation with unprecedent power with over 2/3rd majority to bring necessary changes to drive the nation on the correct and best path by wiping away inefficient and ineffective traditional, and communal politicians and political systems with honest and young vigour approved by the entire nation as one unanimously few days ago. It appears the young governance has proved the efficiency and honesty by deeds and conduct approved and believe by the majority giving way to the CGANGE the nation was agitating and expecting to exercise.
Promised CHANGE?
Change he promised was echoed when he was intertied by the media at the day he won election were mainly maintain law and order, goo governance, econimic stability and reforms, rule of law eradicating of corruption and bribery which are allegations to the rejected politicians wiped out by the masses at the general elections with one voice in the bloodless revolution that revalorised the econimic and political outlook of the nearly failed nation nation emerging victorious with new vigour and rejuvenate with the new victory with the election victory. Relevance and impact of President Trump’s victory has direct relevance to Sri Lanka as he as the most poerful man on earth who is in a position to influence the UN, IMF, and other nations and international organization to be inline with the USA foreign policy and the interests including her political and econimic agendas directly supervised by the powerful diplomatic missions carefully operating the network of diplomatic, econimic, and military missions and network installed d worldwide. Therefore Sri Lanka will have to mind steps at every steps carefully with political maturity. Sarath28dw@gmail.com
The 2024 General Election is a watershed moment in Lankan history. Interestingly the total number of votes won by NPP still falls short of the number of votes Gotabaya won in 2019. It is not the quantity but the quality. NPP won around the country from all communities and creeds. No party has ever won the north and the south both, let alone the east, west and the hill country too. This unity across the island was last seen during the rein of King Parakramabu the Sixth. Since his demise 557 years ago Sri Lankans across the island were never united politically until NPP won the election in 2024.
In 1994 Chandrika Kumaratunga won all but one electorate at the presidential election but the north didn’t vote in meaningful numbers. Besides it was achieved with the help of sectarian parties including SLMC, CWC and TULF. It is not unity, but disunity. None of that polluted NPP’s historic landslide victory.
Winning a war only consolidates land and power over land, not the people. Elections are the only way to unify people for one national plan. It never happened in Sri Lanka in over 550 years. Forced unity under the British was based on slavery, genocide, plunder and other evils of colonialism. It’s no voluntary unity. The moment the British colonial rule eased divisions erupted.
With 159 seats the first task of the NPP regime must be to replace the Constitution which is plastered 20 times so far but still falls short of defending national interests and fundamental rights of citizens. NPP government must also reach out to the main opposition SJB to join the effort. This is because the next ruling party may well be the SJB. Sri Lanka needs a Constitution that works for all, not just for one clan or political party. Other parties are irrelevant.
With great power comes great responsibility. It is expected that the ruling party will focus on long term peace and prosperity of the nation instead of short-term enjoyment, appeasement and indecision. People have vested substantial power in it for decisive action, change and visionary rule. It is possible to achieve with sensible and educated people in the government, inside and outside.
President Dissanayake must not forget what happened to Gotabaya – people will punish anyone if their economy is not looked after well. On economic matters the government must seek advice from educated economists and not from laymen or religious texts.
Old and outdated foreign policy disasters like middle path, non-aligned and India First” policies must not be repeated. All those who followed these policies had their rule cut short due to local and international pressure. Instead, Sri Lanka must follow a Sri Lanka first” foreign policy opportunistically aligning with economically beneficially countries and give a low priority to countries that have little economic worth to Sri Lanka.
Similarly, imposing majoritarian or minority beliefs on others is a disaster. No community accepts any other as any better or historic than them. It may be unpalatable for some outdated political elements but this is the hard truth and the path to coexistence.
Another pitfall that awaits is the charity trap. Disproportionate government investments in the north, east and plantations must not be made out of compassion or due to other non-economic reasons. These are bankrupting activities. If economic returns for the government is less than the investment value, it leads to national bankruptcy and further indebtedness. It is also a recipe to lose both the north and the south. People are unforgiving. Instead, private investors must be encouraged to invest on their terms.
In conclusion, people must shed their centuries-old divisive ethnic and religious dogma and support the regime achieve national (not party political) outcomes. This is a very rare opportunity that dawned on the island 557 years later and it must not be missed. If this fails, people will be compelled to look for alternative national structures that works for them.
Leading member of Ilankai Tamil Arachcu Katchchi (ITAK) M.A. Sumanthiran has not been elected to Parliament from the Jaffna district. The sole seat for the ITAK in the district has been won by Mr. S.Sritharan.
The National People’s Power received three seats, having received 24.85% of the total valid votes.
Harin Fernando and Ruwan Wijewardene, who both contested under the New Democratic Front (NDF) in the Badulla and Gampaha District respectively have been defeated.
Meanwhile Rehan Jayawickrama who contested for the Galle District from Samagi Jana Balawegaya (SJB) was also defeated Jayawickreme took to X, formerly known as Twitter, to confirm that he had not received a seat in parliament.
“Thank you to everyone who supported me in Matara. I placed third on the preferences list and didn’t make it to Parliament. Wishing the newly elected MPs all the best,” he posted.
Former Minister of Public Security Sarath Weerasekera failed to secure a seat in the Parliamentary Elections 2024 in the Colombo District, along with New Democratic Front candidate Sagala Ratnayake.
Weerasekera contested from the Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna.
The Election Commission of Sri Lanka has released the all-island final results in the 2024 General Election with the National People’s Power (NPP) securing a resounding victory in the Parliamentary Poll.
NPP has won 159 seats including 18 bonus seats after polling a total of over 6.8 million votes, which is 61.56% of the total votes counted.
Meanwhile, Samagi Jana Balawegaya (SJB) becomes the main opposition party of the tenth Parliament after polling over 1.9 million votes (17.66%) and thereby obtaining 40 seats including 5 bonus seats.
Ilankai Thamil Arasu Kachchi (ITAK) has won 8 seats including 1 bonus seat, New Democratic Front (NDF) has won 5 seats including 2 bonus seats while the Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna (SLPP) has managed only 3 seats including 1 bonus seat.
Meanwhile, ‘Sarvajana Balaya’ failed to win any seats, however, has managed to secure one bonus seat.
The United National Party (UNP), Democratic Tamil National Alliance (DTNA) All Ceylon Tamil Congress (ACTC), All Ceylon Makkal Congress (ACMC), Jaffna – Independent Group 17 and Sri Lanka Labour Party (SLLP) have won one seat each.
National People’s Power (NPP) – 6,863,186 (159 seats) Samagi Jana Balawegaya (SJB) – 1,968,716 (40 seats) Ilankai Thamil Arasu Kachchi (ITAK) – 257,813 (8 seats) New Democratic Front (NDF) – 500,835 (5 seats) Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna (SLPP) – 350,429 (3 seats)
All ruling parties since 1947 have been coalitions. While there were instances where a single party could form the ruling party, they still opted for coalitions (e.g. 1977). This was to gain as much support from the grassroots levels which helps in Local Government and later Provincial Council elections. 2024 has been a turning point in Sri Lanka’s elections for more than one reason. This year will see for the first time, Sri Lanka having a single ruling party without coalitions within it and with others separately elected to parliament.
Though it is unfamiliar in Sri Lanka, the greatest number of stable governments in other democracies have been single ruling parties without coalitions.
Coalitions Lead to Corruption and Betrayal of Voters
Coalitions are made before an election and after the election. At an election, voters are free to vote for whatever party that contests. However, when parties join together after the election, it betrays the wishes of the voter. The voter could have voted for Party A but they didn’t and instead they voted for Party B. If parties A and B band together after the election, they go against the wishes of the voter.
In order to buy coalition member parties, the main coalition partner has to bribe them with ministries, money and other appeasements. This is corruption. As these small parties that jump ship whenever it is beneficial to them, they continue to enjoy corrupt benefits and legal immunity.
Ending coalition politics can seriously reduce long term corruption.
Coalitions Distanced Ruling Parties from Minorities
There was a time when ruling parties and the main opposition had their very own Tamil and Muslim MPs. But with coalitions, this disappeared. By 2024, almost all elected Tamil and Muslim MPs came from sectarian political parties either alone or through a coalition. As a result, governments could not reach out to minorities. In order to reach out to minorities, the government had to go through sectarian political parties. This is a tragedy.
For instance, all elected Tamil (except 1) and Muslim MPs of the SLPP in 2020 came from its coalition parties. SLPP itself had just 1 Tamil MP and no Muslim MP. SJB had only 2 Muslim MPs of their own. Other Tamil and Muslim MPs were from its coalition allies.
Ending coalition governments can bridge minorities directly to the ruling party. If done properly and if the ruling party fields its own Tamil and Muslim MPs who would get elected, this can end the era of alleged and perceived discrimination against minorities.
A New Era of National (Not Sectarian) Politics
Sri Lanka has entered a new era of national politics. The old is dead and the new is powerful enough to turn tables on almost any perennial challenges that engulfed the nation, except sectarian politics, national aspirations, trade and budget deficits and the debt trap. These challenges require a whole different national structure. Short of that, the new political realities are promising. The ruling party, the main opposition and the people must embrace the change and make Sri Lanka better. It is a historic moment for the island nation, a first since gaining independence 76 years ago. Unlike other historic moments that were lost in the past, this opportunity must not be allowed to slip. The change is national, not sectarian, this time which is another first for the island nation in its known history.
According to the results released so far, the National People’s Power secured a resounding victory, with 80-70% of the votes
Hambantota District: NPP takes 5 out of 7 seats in Rajapakse stronghold.
The National People’s Power (NPP) has emerged victorious in the Hambantota District in the 2024 General Election, receiving 234,083 votes, which represents over 66% of the total votes.
National People’s Power (NPP) 234,083 (5 seats Samagi Jana Balawegaya (SJB) 52,170 (14.79%, 1 seat) Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna (SLPP) 26,268 (1 seat
With this substantial lead, the NPP has secured 5 seats, while the SJB and SLPP each earned one seat in the Hambantota District.
NPP wins Jaffna polling division in Jaffna District
The National People’s Power (NPP) has won the Jaffna polling division in the Jaffna District.national Peopl’s Power (NPP) 9,066 Ilankai Thamil Arasu Kachchi (ITAK 2,582 Samagi Jana Balawegaya (SJB) 1,612
NPP wins Galle District with over 68% of votes, secures 7 seats
The National Peoples Power (NPP) has claimed victory in the Galle District in the 2024 General Election, polling 406,428 votes, which accounts for more than 68% of the total votes.
National People’s Power (NPP) 406,428 (7 seats Samagi Jana Balawegaya (SJB) 93,486 (15.66%, 1 seat) Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna (SLPP) 31,201 (1 seat)< With this decisive lead, the NPP has secured 7 seats, while the SJB and SLPP each gained a single seat in the Galle District.
The National People’s Power (NPP) has won the Polonnaruwa District in the 2024 General Election, polling 159,010 votes, which accounts for over 68% of the total votes.
National People’s Power (NPP) 159,010 (4 seats)
Samagi Jana Balawegaya (SJB) 43,822 (1 seat}
With this overwhelming support, the NPP has secured 4 seats in the district, while the SJB earned 1 seat.
Image by history: The Assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand On the eve of the assassination’s centennial, discover how a teenage Serbian nationalist ignited the flames of World War I.
Sri Lanka recently hosted the Pathfinder Foundation’s fifth Dialogue with Diplomats at Cinnamon Grand Colombo, focusing on The Great Power Competition in the Indo-Pacific and its Impact on Small States in South Asia, with Special Reference to Sri Lanka.” This event brought together diplomats, experts, and local participants to discuss the complex geopolitical dynamics of the Indo-Pacific region and their implications for smaller states like Sri Lanka. The dialogue generated valuable debates and insights.
But as the author, I would like to offer another perspective to those engaged in the discussion surrounding this geopolitical event. In the context of the current geopolitical landscape, even a small, pocket-sized meeting can underscore the sensitivity and significance of such an event. It serves as an important reminder of the inherent risks that come with even minimal engagement in the great power competition.
For Sri Lanka, one of the most significant risks is the potential for strategic dependence. Even slight alignment with a major power could severely restrict Sri Lanka’s ability to make independent decisions. History has shown that such dependence often results in the erosion of sovereignty, turning smaller nations into mere pawns in a larger geopolitical chessboard. By aligning with one major power, Sri Lanka could find its foreign policy and domestic affairs influenced by external interests, compromising the nation’s autonomy and diminishing its ability to act in the best interests of its people.
Economic vulnerability is another pressing concern. Sri Lanka has long been susceptible to external economic influence, and over-reliance on foreign powers for aid, trade, or investment could open the door to economic coercion. Such dependency risks recreating a cycle of exploitation, reminiscent of colonial economic systems, where Sri Lanka’s economic sovereignty is compromised for the benefit of external powers. In today’s global order, this could jeopardize Sri Lanka’s economic stability and growth, pushing the country further from self-sufficiency and exposing it to external pressures that may not align with national interests.
Diplomatic isolation is another risk of becoming too aligned with any single power. Aligning too closely with one geopolitical bloc could alienate others, diminishing Sri Lanka’s influence in regional and international forums. The nation’s credibility and ability to advocate for its own interests would be significantly weakened, especially in forums where global cooperation on issues like human rights, trade, and security are crucial. By maintaining an independent foreign policy, Sri Lanka ensures that it can continue to build relationships with a variety of global actors, keeping its diplomatic options open and its national interests safeguarded.
Security is another area where Sri Lanka could face serious risks if it becomes entangled in the great power rivalry. The region has already become a focal point for escalating tensions between major powers, and Sri Lanka’s strategic location makes it vulnerable to military competition and conflict. The involvement of global powers in the Indo-Pacific could disrupt the delicate balance of Sri Lanka’s national security, leading to instability. Furthermore, involvement in security arrangements dictated by external powers might lead to compromises in national sovereignty, potentially exposing Sri Lanka to military conflict or unwanted interventions.
Internal divisions within Sri Lanka could also be exacerbated by foreign alignments. The country has a long history of political and ethnic divisions, and foreign influence could deepen these rifts. Competing factions within Sri Lanka might support differing foreign policies, leading to domestic instability. This internal disunity could ultimately weaken national cohesion and impede efforts to promote humanrights, democracy, and social justice—foundational values for Sri Lanka as a sovereign nation.
Sri Lanka’s historical stance of non-alignment and strategic autonomy offers valuable lessons in navigating these complex geopolitical waters. Our membership in the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) has been instrumental in allowing us to maintain independence while avoiding entanglement in global conflicts. These lessons, drawn from our past, underscore the importance of remaining neutral and preserving the autonomy that has allowed Sri Lanka to maintain stability and sovereignty. The dangers of strategic dependence, both economic and political, are too great to overlook, and it is crucial that Sri Lanka avoids repeating the mistakes of other nations that have sacrificed their independence in pursuit of short-term geopolitical gain.
The potential consequences of missteps in the geopolitical arena are clear. History is filled with examples where small, seemingly inconsequential actions have led to catastrophic outcomes. The assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in 1914, for instance, triggered a chain of events that led to WorldWar I. Similarly, the invasion of Poland by Nazi Germany in 1939 marked the beginning of World War II. More recently, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022 has demonstrated how local conflicts can have far-reaching global impacts. These events serve as stark reminders of how small decisions in the realm of foreign policy can spiral into larger crises. For Sri Lanka, even minimal engagement in the great power competition could have unforeseen consequences that may be difficult to reverse once set in motion.
The growing geopolitical tension in the Indo-Pacific, particularly between the United States and China, further complicates Sri Lanka’s position. China’s rise as a global superpower has changed the balance of power in the region, with the U.S. viewing this shift as a direct challenge to its global hegemony. The growing U.S. interest in the region, driven by competition with China, has led to increasing pressures on smaller states, including Sri Lanka, to take sides. While partnerships with major powers can offer economic benefits, the costs of such alignments—particularly in terms of sovereignty—may outweigh the advantages.
One example of this is the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) agreement, which Sri Lanka abandoned in 2020 after widespread public opposition. The MCC agreement aimed to promote economic growth by improving infrastructure, but concerns over sovereignty, particularly the risk of foreign-controlled land grabs, led to its termination. This agreement was linked to other U.S.-Sri Lanka agreements, such as the Acquisition and Cross-Servicing Agreement (ACSA) and the Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA), which could have potentially given the U.S. significant influence over Sri Lanka’s military and strategic assets. These agreements raised serious concerns about the erosion of Sri Lanka’s sovereignty and the potential loss of control over its own resources and territory. The public opposition to the MCC agreement demonstrated the strong desire among Sri Lankans to protect the nation’s independence and avoid becoming embroiled in the global power struggles of larger nations.
Public discourse on sensitive geopolitical topics is also fraught with risks. While intellectual debates can provide valuable insights, openly airing discussions about strategic alignments can be misinterpreted by external powers, potentially escalating tensions. Sri Lanka’s internal political polarization further complicates matters, as factions within the country may seize on these debates to advance their own agendas, exacerbating domestic divisions. To avoid these risks, it is crucial that Sri Lanka takes a more measured and cautious approach to foreign policy discussions, ensuring that they do not undermine national unity or provoke unnecessary external pressure.
The dialogue hosted by the Pathfinder Foundation can be insightful, but it is crucial to remember that strategic discretion and caution are key to protecting Sri Lanka’s sovereignty and ensuring a stable future. This review is based on the article available at Lankaweb.
In conclusion, Sri Lanka must tread carefully during this period of great power competition. While it is important to engage with global powers, such engagement must not come at the expense of Sri Lanka’s sovereignty, security, and long-term stability. Strategic discretion and caution are essential to avoid the risks of entanglement in conflicts and power struggles that do not align with our national interests. The wisest course may often be to refrain from participating in a competition where the stakes are high, and where the potential consequences could be disastrous for our people and our future. By maintaining strategic autonomy and prioritizing national interests, Sri Lanka can safeguard its sovereignty and preserve its democratic values in an increasingly complex and polarized world.
As the Dhammapada wisely advises: One is not called wise because one speaks much. One who is peaceful, friendly, and fearless is called wise.” Let us strive to be a nation that is peaceful, friendly, and fearless in the world.
Sri Lankan Airlines in a 5-minute advertisement is currently promoting ‘Ramayana Trail’ in India.
This video has gone viral on India’s social media.
In the advertisement, a grandmother is seen narrating the Hindu epic to her grandson where she states that the Ramayana is real.
Even the Archaeological Survey of India through an affidavit in the Indian Supreme Court stated that there is no historical and scientific evidence to establish the existence of Lord Ram or the other characters of the Ramayana. It denied that the Ram Sethu or Adams Bridge is a man-made structure.
But, Sri Lankan Airlines now seems saying all these are true.
In the video, the grandson questions the grandmother about the island where Sita was taken by Ravan after getting kidnapped; the grandmother replies that the kingdom of Ravan is today’s Sri Lanka
She states all the places in the Ramayana are real. Today we know Lanka as Sri Lanka,”
When the grandson asks Is the bridge still standing,” she asserts “Yes, you can still see it today,”
This is the SethuSamudram (Ram Sethu) Bridge.
The grandmother utters that Ravana was a great worshiper of Lord Shiva.
Indian X users have been so delighted by the advertisement and now state they want to visit Sri Lanka to follow the Ravana Trail.
One commented Beautiful, Visited Ella and Sigiriya! Thanks Sri Lanka for keeping the spirit of Ramayana alive”.
Another user commenting about Sigiriya stated one can still feel the presence of Mighty Ravana in Lion’s Rock!”.
Although some Hindus in India believe the story of the Ramayana, most people in this country do not believe it. Even majority of our Tamil bretheren did not believe Ravana until recently. They believe in Gods like Shiva , Vishnu, Gana and Parvati.
But now in some Tamil temples Ravana is worshiped as a God.
Koneswaran temple site in Trincomalee is today dedicated to Lord Shiva. Many Dravidian Hindus flock to this place. A huge idol of King Ravana worshiping Lord Shiva, near the sea, is built there.
Koneswaran is also believed to be a Buddhist temple – built by King Mahasen (334 – 361 AD). Buddhists believe that the 3 pagodas seen in the temple today are the ruins of that temple.
History books show that the ancient Portuguese Commander General Asawedu demolished this temple and stole its valuables. Although the Portuguese did not damage the Bodhi there, that was destroyed during the 1958 Sinhala/Tamil riots that happened under SWRD Bandaranaike’s watch.
In 1968, the Federal Party withdrew from the Dudley Senanayaka’s government over the ownership of the Koneswaran temple. This led to Dudley Senanayaka leading a very weak UNP government from 1968-1970. Dudley Senanayaka was adamant that Koneswaran was also a Buddhist place of worship.
In 1958, the SWRD Bandaranaike government (provocatively) introduced the ‘Sri’ letter to vehicles. This upset Jaffna Tamils. For the first time, Tamil-Sinhala riots flared up across the country.
In these racist riots, Sinhalese in Jaffna, Trincomalee and Batticaloa were subjected to torture. Many Sinhalese had to leave those areas and move to the South. In the South, in Wellawatta and Dehiwala areas, innocent Tamils were tortured.
It is true some Buddhists believe in Hindu Gods like Vishnu , Gana , and Shiva (due to the Up Country’s Nayakkar influence). But, they worship them believing to be local Gods, not Indian.
No Buddhists believe Ravana to be a God. This is the situation even today. Thanks to private television stations and YouTube channels, Sinhalese have started to accept Ravana as a king of ancient Sri Lanka.
This writer was told that a Sinhala program titled ‘Jeewamana Ravana’ or similar name is being aired in weekly segments even now by one Tamil dominated private TV channel. He is unsure of the veracity of this.
None of our ancient history books mention about a Ravana king. No archeological evidence has been found to support the presence of a Ravana kingdom being here about 4,500 years ago.
Of course, people lived here before Vijaya came. Balangoda Manawakaya was here 40,000 years ago.
According to Mahavansa, they were the Rakshas , Yakshas and Nagas. In general, we consider them as Hela.
Vijaya, the son of King Sinhabahu of the Laata country of Dambadiva’s Wanga Desh, mingled with the local Hela people and formed the Sinhalese nation (Sinha + Hela = Sinhalese). That was around 2,500 years ago .
Although some Sinhalese do not accept Mahavansa, India generally accepts it.
According to Mahavansa Sri Lanka is a Sinhala Buddhist state. The foundation for same was laid by the duo – King Devanam Piyathissa and Mihindu Maha Thero. During this time almost the entire country became Buddhist (except some Vaddhas).
If Ravana existed here, about 2,000 to 2,500 years before Vijaya’s arrival, he was a Hela.
There is no archaeological evidence here that such a person existed.
Ravana Ella , Ravana Cave , Sita Eliya , Sita Gangula are not names associated with Ramayana.
Ravana in Sinhala means ‘sound’ and Sita means ‘cold’.
In the Ravana Trail program (this includes areas such as Unawatuna (Rumassala) , Trincomalee , Chilaw, Sigiriya , Nagadeepa , Ella , Bandarawela/Nuvara Eliya, etc.), are we trying to heed the opinion of racists/separatists like Vigneswaran?
Dravidian separatists have been trying for some time to show that Sigiriya was the creation of a Dravidian king (Ravana) in Sri Lanka. This effort now has the blessing of Sri Lankan Airlines?
The Ravanaists have stated that the claws of the Lion in Sigiriya are not the claws of a Lion but the claws of Ravana’s Guru.
The world opinion about Ravana supports Tamil versions.
Websites/books like Wikipedia , BBC, Encyclopedia of Britannica, Oxford Encyclopedia – all state that Ravana was a staunch Hindu – meaning he was a Sri Lankan Tamil. International history books now say that the Chola king who invaded South India also treated him (Ravana) with respect.
World history books have established that Ravana was the best devotee/servant of Lord Shiva.
Because Ravana is accepted as a Tamil, they strongly imply that Hela people were Tamil. It is very difficult to break this international opinion now.
Between 1994 – 2015 our governments allowed our history to be distorted willy nilly,
If their opinion/argument is true, then Tamils are the original inhabitants of this country. This is why they say Sri Lanka is not a Sinhala Buddhist country.
As stated earlier, we say that the Helas were not Dravidians, after mingling with Vijaya’s Sinha, they became Sinhalese.
Thus, Sri Lanka is a Sinhala Buddhist country. Its foundation is not Dravidian, but Sinhala Buddhist.
Today, we are in the bottom of poverty. Does it mean we are ready to do anything for money?
It is important to bear in mind – a noble woman, no matter how poor she is, would not sacrifice her purity for money.
Sure, thousands of (mainly North and some South) Indians will flock here to traverse the newly created Ravana Path.
They are very welcome.
When they are here, they should be allowed to perform their religious rites/rituals.
We will earn lots of foreign exchange as a result of their visits.
But, we cannot allow our accepted history to be changed/distorted.
Simply for money, we cannot betray our history/nation.
Rumors are now spreading that there are ruins of Ravana everywhere in this country. This is to show thousands of Indian tourists who will flock here.
After the war, ancient stone pillars of the Sinhalese kingdoms (such as those of Devanam Piyatissa) that are in the jungles of the Eastern Province were used to create new Hindu temples. Now they say that are ancient Hindu temples, that existed prior to the Sinhalese arrival.
Conclusion – Rama and Sita are very sacred Godly figures to many Indian Hindus. We must respect this. They will come here in droves to explore the ‘Ravana Trail .’ Let them do whatever they wish.
The fact of the matter is that they are their religious beliefs, not ours.
Merely to facilitate them, we cannot ‘move our goal posts’ (ie, change/distort our history).
For example – we all know Sigiriya was built by King Kashyapa and not Ravana.
We cannot relate different histories to different nationalities. Eg. one history to Indians and another to the British.
Also, our children should always be taught the true history. There is the fear that they may pick up the history that we are currently ‘inventing’. This is very dangerous.
This writer has in previous articles pointed out that our school history text books are full of lies and fabrications.
For us – Rama , Sita , Ravana are fictional characters that come in the Ramayana Chapter of the Great Chronicle – Mahabharata; authored by Valmiki. Let us preserve this status quo. the other characters of the Ramayana
God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, Courage to change the things I can, And wisdom to know the difference.” Serenity Prayer – Reinhold Niebuhr (1892–1971).
By Mohamed Nader Al-Omari Courtesy defend Democracy
Protracted and unprecedented Arab resistance has depleted Israeli troop and reservist forces and forced Tel Aviv to seek out unconventional methods – including the recruitment of foreign mercenaries – to sustain Israel’s weary military and escalatory war goals.
Editorial Comment: (Israeli bombing has injured Sri Lankan UN Peace Keepers in Lebanon while other Sri Lankans are also sent as migrant agriculture and farm workers to that Middle East War zone. Israeli Soldiers of the IDF meanwhile dressed as tourists seek reset and relaxation in Zionist Chabad Community Houses set up across Sri Lanka. They are protected by the Sri Lanka military at the behest of US Ambassador Julie Chung who issued a terror alert last month, once again targeting the geostrategic Indian Ocean island’s Tourist economy. New forms of colonial bonded labour migration continue between Israel and Sri Lanka, neocolonizer and debt-trapped and occupied countries. It’s a Woke Migration Game.)
Facing increasing domestic pressure to reveal the true extent of their military losses in Gaza and Lebanon, Israeli officials have released figures that are likely to only reveal minimal numbers. The data claims that since the beginning of Operation Al-Aqsa Flood on 7 October 2023, around 12,000 soldiers and officers have been injured or forced into rehabilitation under the occupation state’s Ministry of Defense.
This includes 910 wounded during what Israel calls a limited ground maneuver” launched by Tel Aviv on the Lebanese border, in addition to the deaths of over 760 officers and soldiers and 140 left completely disabled. These admissions, although selective, have stirred growing skepticism within Israeli society, already at its most politically divided since the inception of the state in 1948.
The struggle to maintain power
Following the sacking of Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, questions are mounting: how does Israel plan to sustain its fighting force amidst the Lebanese resistance’s deadly daily attacks on them?
Opposition against compulsory military service from religious groups, particularly the Haredim, has compounded the army’s challenges – so has the removal of Gallant, an army dropout rate soaring above 17 percent, a wave of reverse immigration that has reached one million people in a single year, the highest since 1948, and increasing reluctance among shell-shocked reservists to return to the horror of battlefields in Gaza and the Lebanese border.
The treacherous northern front, especially, has become a symbol of perpetual fear for Israeli soldiers stationed there against Hezbollah, as history repeats itself in south Lebanon.
The huge shortage” of capable fighters has forced Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government to explore a range of unconventional options, especially after the Haredim conscription law passed in mid-July proved insufficient in addressing the manpower gap.
Turning to mercenaries
Many of these options are centered around utilizing tens of thousands of mercenaries, drawing on assistance from western intelligence agencies, and enlisting unconventional fighters, including Jewish militias.
For the past seven decades, successive Israeli administrations have been reluctant to encourage a wholesale migration or naturalization of African Jews – the ‘Falasha’ from Ethiopia – to an Israel rife with racism, citing their ‘lower status’ to Ashkenazi and Sephardic Jews.
As a result, only around 80,000 Ethiopian Jews, 20,000 of whom were born in the occupation state, hold Israeli citizenship. But today, desperate for manpower, the Ministry of Defense has begun granting amnesty to Falasha currently imprisoned for attempting illegal entry into Israel or for overstaying their visas.
These men, aged between 18 and 40, are being fast-tracked for citizenship on the condition that they enlist. The Zionist organization ‘Al-Harith’ has also been active in Ethiopia, recruiting and training Ethiopian Jews with promises of citizenship, job opportunities, and residence within Israel after the war. It is estimated that by October 2024, more than 17,000 Falasha, including only 1,400 women, have been recruited.
Germany’s collaboration in exploiting asylum seekers
Another initiative by the Netanyahu administration involves cooperation with German intelligence and Zionist organizations in Germany to recruit asylum seekers from Afghanistan, Libya, and Syria. Over the past seven months, the Values Initiative Association and the German–Israeli Association (DIG) have worked to enlist these refugees from war-torn Muslim-majority countries as mercenaries for Israel.
Offered monthly salaries ranging between €4,000 to €5,000 and fast-tracked German citizenship, many have joined the fight. Reports suggest that around 4,000 immigrants were naturalized between September and October alone.
This shift highlights a significant change in Berlin’s position – which once served as a mediator in prisoner exchange deals between Israel and Palestinian or Lebanese factions, but now vocally and materially leads global support of Israeli military objectives, under the guise of a moral obligation toward the occupation state.
Germany’s policy of supporting genocide in Gaza and terror in Lebanon was expressed by none other than Berlin’s Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock during her recent visit to Lebanon and then in her speech in the German Parliament, the Bundestag, in late September:
Germany considers Israel’s security to be an extension of its national security. Therefore, Germany is committed to Israel’s right to defend itself and to provide all possible assistance for that.”
The German government’s overt backing extends beyond policy statements. The Ministry of Defense announced that German warships in the Mediterranean – operating under UNIFIL – had shot down unidentified drones and provided logistical aid to the Israeli Marines in operations such as the kidnapping of a Lebanese naval captain suspected of being linked to Hezbollah.
The militaristic alliance and Germany’s role in gathering intelligence to counter Hezbollah rocket attacks have further solidified Berlin’s support for Tel Aviv, driven by a desire to make amends for its Nazi past.”
After the start of Operation Al-Aqsa Flood, Germany imposed further restrictions on citizenship applicants from Arab and Muslim countries, requiring them to make pledges not to criticize Israel or show sympathy for Palestinians as a litmus test for naturalization.
In early November 2024, Germany introduced a law for compulsory conscription of these Arab and Muslim applicants, claiming an intent to fill manpower shortages. Yet, this conscription would not involve service in Germany – a stipulation that has left many of these refugees wary of who and where they could end up fighting.
Desperate times
Israeli intelligence agencies, including the Shin Bet and Mossad, have also reconnected with remnants of the disbanded South Lebanon Army (SLA) militia to help recruit allies inside Lebanon. These recruits would either spy on Hezbollah positions or potentially take up arms against it should a regional escalation, akin to what happened during the war in 1982, materialize through provocations.
Meanwhile, Israeli intelligence has collaborated with European agencies and mercenary recruitment companies – including Blackwater, led by the Zionist Eric Prince – to enlist European mercenaries for the occupation army.
Although this practice dates back to 2023, recruitment efforts have surged lately. As reported by the Spanish newspaper El Mundo in late November 2023, a 28-year-old Spanish mercenary named Vidio Diaz Flores admitted to being recruited by Blackwater for approximately €4,000 per week to fight in Palestine. Israel sought to keep these kinds of recruitment initiatives under wraps, especially after five ‘foreign workers’ were killed when a resistance rocket targeted the Metula settlement.
These factors combined reveal an urgent desperation within Israel to address its human resource crisis in the ranks of its military forces, all while authorities are covering up their use of foreign mercenaries, likely to protect the image of their invincible army.”
Tel Aviv’s reliance on mercenaries resembles the US strategy in Iraq post-2003 – not only as a stopgap for declining manpower but also as a method to deflect criminal accountability since many of these mercenaries do not hold Israeli citizenship.
The cracks in the once-unshakable image of the occupation army are widening, and whether it can hold together under mounting internal and external pressures is far from guaranteed.
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It’s time to talk about Silicon Valley as an imperial force and what has to be done to resist its power.
Silicon Valley corporations are taking over the digital economy in the Global South, and nobody is paying attention.
In South Africa, Google and Facebook dominate the online advertising industry, and are considered an existential threat to local media. Uber has captured so much of the traditional taxi industry that drivers have been petrol bombed in the South African taxi wars”. Similar battles have broken out in Kenya.
Meanwhile, Netflix is not only pulling subscribers away from local television services, they are buying up content in Africa. The streaming giant is now the number one source of Internet traffic across the world.
In India, Facebook was forced to cancel its Free Basics” programme that gave the social media giant control over the Internet experience on mobile phones. Indians protested that the service deepened Facebook’s monopoly power and subjected them censorship and surveillance. Nevertheless, Facebook is expanding in most countries, including India, and Free Basics is active in over sixty countries. Through the project, Facebook has retained its influence in countries like Kenya and Ghana.
Big Tech corporations are wreaking havoc on the Global South. There’s a crisis in the tech ecosystem, and it’s called digital colonialism.Bottom of Form
What is digital colonialism?
Under classic colonialism, Europeans dispossessed native peoples of their land, exploited their labour, exercised extraterritorial governance, and perpetuated dependency and plunder through strategic underdevelopment. Corporations like the East India Company played a pivotal role in this process. In their pursuit of profit and power, Europeans took ownership and control of critical infrastructure, including ports, waterways, and railroads.
Under this arrangement, imperial powers designed railways for plunder by foreign empires: They bypassed the villages of the indigenous populations and linked up commercial and military outposts to the sea ports. Native peoples were exploited to extract raw materials, which were sent back to Europe for manufacturing. Surplus European products would then flood the colonies, undermining the indigenous population’s ability to develop its own local industries. Colonial powers deployed this infrastructural domination across their vast empire.
Similar to the technical architecture of classic colonialism, digital colonialism is rooted in the design of the tech ecosystem for the purposes of profit and plunder. If the railways and maritime trade routes were the open veins” of the Global South back then, today, digital infrastructure takes on the same role: Big Tech corporations use proprietary software, corporate clouds, and centralised Internet services to spy on users, process their data, and spit back manufactured services to subjects of their data fiefdoms.
For example, Google siphons user data from a variety of sources – Google Search, Maps, Ads, Android location services, Gmail – to provide them with one of the richest collections of information on the planet. Through the Open Handset Alliance and proprietary control of their killer apps, they ensure the world’s data flows into their corporate cloud. They then process the data for consumer and business services.
Thus, tech corporations have expanded their products across the globe, extracting data and profit from users all around the world while concentrating power and resources in one country, the US (with China a growing competitor).
Poorer countries are overwhelmed by readily available services and technology, and cannot develop their own industries and products that compete with Western corporations. They are also left unable to protect their people from exploitation.
Can Big Tech be held accountable?
Control over how technology works forms the foundation of digital colonialism. Software is often proprietary, which means that users cannot read, modify, or share the source code. This prevents them from understanding and controlling how their computers work.
The public cannot hold Big Tech corporations accountable if they cannot take direct action to change how their software works.
It is for this reason that American software programmer Richard Stallman started advocating for Free and Open Source Software in the early 1980s. A nonfree program is a yoke, an instrument of unjust power,” Stallman reasoned.
People should be given the freedom to control their computers, which requires them having access to software source code – the set of instructions that tells your computer what to do.
Free Software licenses are written to invert the authoritarian power of proprietary software: They secure the user’s freedom to use, study, modify, and share the software. They keep software free and open for everyone and enable accountability.
For example, Microsoft configures its Windows operating system to spy on its users. If it were not under the proprietary control of Microsoft, computer hacktivists would surely strip out its spying services and release a modified, spy-free” version of Windows for the public.
However, Free Software alone is not enough to protect the public interest because in recent years, surveillance capitalism has given rise to centralised Internet services outside of user control. Platforms like Facebook function as information intermediaries” which stand between end users. Want to send a picture to a friend? You send it to Facebook first, and then your friend downloads it from Facebook.
With the shift to centralised services run by corporate giants, the surveillance of users sky-rocketed. Cloud computing plays a key role. While Free Software creates accountability for software running inside your own device, it cannot produce accountability for cloud services run by corporations. This is because the software is running on someone else’s computer (Facebook, Google, etc). Corporate clouds dispossess the people of the ability to control their computers.
Cloud services provide petabytes of information to corporations, who use the data to train their artificial intelligence systems. AI uses Big Data to learn” – it requires millions of pictures to understand” how to recognise, say, the letter A” in its different fonts and forms. In this sense, data is the new oil”.
When applied to humans, the sensitive details of people’s personal lives become an incredibly valuable resource that tech giants are incessantly trying to extract.
The concentration of data is concentration of power
Feedback effects” of Big Data make the situation worse: Those who have more and better data can create the best artificial intelligence services, which attracts more users, which gives them even more data to make the service better, and so on.
Network effects, economies of scale, and vast resources for infrastructure, training, and product development further concentrate corporate power. Silicon Valley can hire the best computer engineers, purchase startups and competitors, and lobby governments for favours.
Add to this the fact that the Internet is universal and platforms are not easy to restrict without draconian censorship tools like the Great Firewall” of China, and we have a situation where Silicon Valley is concentrating power at the global level.
American Big Tech companies are just as dominant outside of the US as they are inside of it. And with US markets relatively saturated, they are seeking to colonise emerging markets.
Microsoft and Google, for example, are investing in efforts to place their software in Global South classrooms through programmes like Microsoft Partners in Learning and Google Classroom. This hooks young people into their products from an early age, and biases Global South software developers towards their software ecosystems.
Big Tech corporations are also building their own server farms in foreign countries to capture emerging markets and shift them towards the Silicon Valley model of a centralized cloud economy.
Some commentators maintain that for all the problems of Big Tech, they offer valuable services. A common trope is that Facebook connects the world’s users”. Using the same logic, people still praise the British for providing colonial subjects with railroads. The obvious point is that these systems were designed for domination, when they could have been built to benefit local communities.
At the same time, countries in the Global South are less able to protect their people from exploitation. Countries with power – the United States, the EU states, Australia – are the ones calling the shots on Big Tech companies.
This poses a problem: Users around the globe are being subjected to the norms set by US-based companies. Code is law” in the sense that computer code constitutes privatised regulation binding all users. If YouTube wants to block, say, the sharing of content protected by fair use, there’s not much that foreign jurisdictions can do.
The same goes for speech regulation, content moderation, and freedom of association: The major social networks use algorithms and employee rulebooks to censor content, shape what people see in news feeds, and determine which activist and other social groups people are allowed to form on their platforms.
This means that users outside of the US are under the de facto extraterritorial governance of Silicon Valley.
What can the Global South do?
If a system is designed for exploitation and control, then it needs to be changed. Railroads are great, but bypassing local villages for imperial power is not. If you want to stop exploitation and surveillance, you have to redesign these systems.
A movement to combine Free and Open Source Software with tools to re-decentralise the Internet is attempting to do just that. In 2010, Columbia Law Professor Eben Moglen announced the FreedomBox project: Free Software that turns computer devices into personal servers that provide the technology needed to run cloud services without a middle-man in control.
FreedomBox can host decentralised social networks like Mastadon or GNU Social as well as email and messenger services. It builds in the option for Tor onion routing to protect your privacy and allows you to store your data on your home device – and access it on the go.
The FreedomBox project incorporates major contributions from core developers Sunil Adapa and Joseph Nuthalapati. Over the past few months, they worked with NGO Swecha to successfully implement FreedomBoxes in twelve Indian villages.
The project uses old devices to offer WiFi connectivity to villagers while providing them decentralised services and blocking surveillance. The FreedomBox project is expanding to other villages, and it is open-sourced and built for replication across the world.
Initiatives like India’s FreedomBox should be developed and scaled up. In a feasibility study, researchers at MIT found that Internet re-decentralisation is workable from a technological standpoint. There are challenges, to be sure. Development is under-funded and getting millions of people to use new services could be difficult, but it is not impossible and its cost outstrips its benefits by far.
Tech that is Free and Open Source, interoperable, and decentralised can be built so that no institution anywhere in the world could own or control it. This would alleviate many problems of territorial jurisdiction. Adding in new legal tools to complement an overhaul of the digital ecosystem would further strengthen digital rights.
Fighting digital colonialism is important not only from the perspective of privacy and individual user rights and raises issues of Data Security and varacity. At a time where the global divide is threatening the environment and with it, our very survival, we cannot afford to further concentrate wealth and power. We must ensure that technology will serve the world’s people, not the interests of the one percent.
As the Vice Chancellor of Wits University in South Africa warned, Considerations of [technological innovations] have not even entered the public discourse and we are at a collective risk of once again merely being victims of economic forces and processes beyond our control.” Exceptionsnotwithstanding, few are contemplating how this actually works.
It’s time to talk about Silicon Valley as an imperial force, and take seriously the fundamental changes needed to stop digital colonialism.
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.
Visiting Fellow of the Information Society Project at Yale Law School
Michael Kwet is a Visiting Fellow of the Information Society Project at Yale Law School and a Postdoctoral Researcher at the University of Johannesburg. He is the author of Digital colonialism: US empire and the new imperialism in the Global South, and hosts the Tech Empire podcast.
Millions of Sri Lankans voted Thursday to choose a new parliament in a key election that will decide if the country’s new leftist president gets the mandate to push ahead with his agenda of improving lives for millions of people struggling with an economic downturn and stamping out corruption.
President Anura Kumara Dissanayake swept to power in September on his promise of systemic change in a country where public anger with mainstream political parties has been running high since the country’s crushing economic collapse two years ago.
Hoping to build on the widespread support he secured in the presidential election, he dissolved parliament and ordered snap polls about a year ahead of schedule. Dissanayake’s party, a fringe group, held only three seats in the 225-member parliament.
His coalition, the National People’s Power (NPP) is likely to win a majority, according to political analysts.
Normally in this country the presidential winner gets enough parliamentary backing to enable him to govern,” Paikiasothy Saravanamuttu, Executive Director of the Center for Policy Alternatives in Colombo, told VOA. Getting to the half-way mark, that is 113 seats, is crucial because he needs a majority to implement his program.”
About 17 million people were eligible to choose from about 8,800 candidates.
Many of the candidates contesting from the NPP are newcomers to politics. Some analysts say that is an advantage because they are not tainted by corruption in a country that has rejected traditional parties, blaming established politicians for a corrupt culture. Others point out that because they are mostly unknown faces, much will depend on whether President Dissanayake, a charismatic leader, was able to convince voters to back them.
Parliament needs more NPP members to establish a strong government which will eliminate bribery and corruption,” the Sri Lankan leader said in his final public meeting before the polls.
Although Dissanayake was a member of parliament for 25 years, his party, the JVP or People’s Liberation Front, was a fringe group on the margins of Sri Lanka’s politics. In the runup to the presidential polls, the 55-year-old leader put together a coalition that consists of members of his party, professionals, civil society organizations, women and youth groups.
People queue at a polling station before casting their ballots to vote in Sri Lanka’s parliamentary election in Colombo on Nov.r 14, 2024.
Public expectations in the country ran high as people headed out to vote on Thursday. Melanie Gunathilaka, a Colombo resident, who voted soon after polls opened, said she is optimistic the elections will pave the way for the change that many Sri Lankans are yearning for.
There was a lot of resentment among people like us about the misuse of state funds and mismanagement by the established parties,” she told VOA. We hope the new government will reflect a political culture that is rooted in transparency and accountability.”
The main challenger to Dissanayake’s coalition NPP, is the Samagi Jana Balawegaya, led by opposition leader Sajith Premadasa. The New Democratic Front (NDF), backed by former president Ranil Wickremesinghe, is also in the fray.
But the opposition campaign in the runup to the parliamentary polls was low-key. The opposition is in disarray, so the sense of a contest is not there. Only the NPP has held big rallies,” according to Saravanamuttu.
Voters directly elect 196 members of parliament, while the remaining 29 seats are allocated according to the proportional vote obtained by each party. Tens of thousands of security personnel were deployed at the more than 13,000 polling stations set up across the island country, at schools, temples and other public places.
The outcome of Thursday’s polls will be important in determining how smoothly Dissanayake is able to implement reforms he has promised, such as cutting taxes and supporting small businesses. His first task will be to appoint a full-fledged cabinet. At the moment he only has a prime minister and two ministers.
He backs policies that will ease hardship for working class people and has said that he will renegotiate the terms of a $2.9 billion bailout from the International Monetary Fund, while sticking with the program. While the IMF package helped stabilize the country’s economy, subsidies were slashed as part of austerity measures imposed by the IMF. Since the economic collapse, millions have fallen into poverty, food and fuel prices have skyrocketed and citizens say there are fewer job opportunities.
In the light of the prevailing utterly confused and divided and completely lost electorate, I opine it is a foregone conclusion that no party will get a clear majority to form a stable government at this election. The nation is stranded and dying in the midst of a vast sandy desert where there is no hope of a drop of water to drink.
Thanks to Ranil and Sajith on the one hand and thanks to Chandrika, Mahinda and Sirisena on the other, the UNP and the SLFP are already dead and buried long time ago with no chance of any revival at all, as formidable political forces in the country any more. Their misdeeds and blunders have driven the masses to look for an alternative in desperation to save their lives between the devil and the mid seas.
It is under such a unfortunate situation, where there is no hope of any political salvation, the JVP has extended its hands to save a sinking nation in mid seas. Today the JVP appears to be the best organized political party, particularly at the grassroot level that can give a ray of hope for a desperately sinking nation. But it too lacks any farseeing vision or a clear plan of addressing the burning issues of this country such as the skyrocketing cost of living or a solid future plan for nation building. Its powerful rhetoric against the past regimes and the class grievance articulated, setting the have nots against the haves are the motive engines of attracting the votes of the depressed and depressed masses that has catapulted them to power. The blunders of all other major traditional parties like the UNP, SLFP and the SLPP in the recent past have driven the masses in to a dream world of imaginary utopian world of their own. Whether they will enter a utopian world of plenty and prosperity or a world of more chaos and confusion under the new regime is a moot question. It is in to this world of uncertainty; the results of tomorrows election will definitely take this nation.
My perception of the election results of the 196 elected members on the 14th is
1.No single party will get a majority to form a government.
1 Nevertheless it is discerned the JVP will lead the election results. But it is doubtful whether it will get a solid majority to form a government of their own. It might end up somewhere around 75 to 80 seats the most.
2 Jaatika Samangi Bala Wegaya will come second with around 60- 70
3 The Dilip J’s bracelet might emerge as the third force with about 25-30
4 All others might get about 25 including the 17 Tamil MPP in the North and east.
5 Even if the Gase cylinder, the SLPP and the SLFP end up with no elected seat, it wants be a surprise.
This situation will most probably create a situation that no party will get 113, even with the national list members to form a stable government. Under this situation most probably Dilip Jayaweeras bracelet will be the deciding factor in forming the next government and it will definitely be a coalition Government and the bracelet might emerge as the party with the highest bargaining power, destined to play a major role in Sri Lankan politics.
Sarath Wijesinge – President’s Counsel, Solicitor in England and Wales, President Ambassador’s Forum (UK/Sri Lanka), former Chairman Consumer Affairs Authority, and former Ambassador to UAE and Israel
Rice and coconut are not directly and traditionally price controlled items
Rice and coconut are not price controlled items in Sri Lanka as the traditional price control act is abolished under act no 9 of 2003 by (at) the establishment of the Consumer affairs authority act thereby the power to control of certain consumer affairs were taken to S /19 onwards to the CAA act where only certain consumer items and services could be price controlled for the maximum price only on certain circumstances with the involvement of the ‘Line Minister’ under special circumstances of special and unusual necessity. Does rice and coconut come under this category? Yes ! some category of rice in very special instances, despite the controversial shortages of rice monopolized by few massive rice mill owners flexing the ugly muscle on the government and the poor farmer and the consumer. There is Paddy marketing Board to purchase paddy from the farmer at guaranteed price, with ample storage available and when the duty of the state employees is mealy to purchase paddy and release it to the market to be utilised by the small mill owners. It is such a simple process and now it is informed the Paddy marketing board has incurred losses to the extent of 20 million which is unbelievable whereby the massive mill owners have been given free hand to play and play out the famer and citizen. Plight of coconut is similar. Once tea,rubber and coconut have been the main income of the nation which is now gone down due to the mismanagement and lack of improvement in infrastructure and outdated cultivation processes. Currently Sri Lanka is self sufficient on coconut with the need to import soon due to mis management of the estates and destruction by the wild animals and pests destroying most cultivation. If managed well with the most inefficient and infective coconut board all parts of the coconut tree can be made productive to make it a treasure tree in the modern world of digitalised and AI age.
Aspiration of the consumer
The aspiration of the consumer is described and defined at the CAA act no 9 of 2003 ( which is the main legislation in force in Sri Lanka in addition to many subsidiary legislation) as a citizen or a citizen intended to use the items and services at a reasonable price ( consideration) in Sri Lanka leading a reasonable hard life due to the high cost of living ever increasing world over due to unavoidable circumstance where the governance appointed is expected to provide relief to the citizen/consumer for the existence of the consumer and the extended family. Cost of living is ever increasing with propionate increase in developed economies, but not in Sri Lanka which is economically unstable. Every citizens consumes consumer items and services for a consideration which is defined in different ways world over mainly in the British jurisprudence due to the development of trade within and outside the country due to naval power colonisation and active external trade with the western world dominated the trade with naval power. Aspiration and the demand of the consumer ( citizen) is for consumer items and services of quality at the reasonable price is mostly a dream than a reality when the country is embroiled in an economic turmoil with the citizen fighting to make ends meet with fast rising of cost of living world over in Sri Lanka citizen with a limited and static income. Rice and coconut are main consumer goods that are in short supply many due to the mismanagement and lack of vision and strategy and it is the duty of the young and educated to take these matters for rejuvenation.
Consumer,Trader, and the Regulator to play together for a better atmospheres on consumerism
The communication with the consumer, trader, CAA that is the main regulator is fast disappearing which is not a satisfactory situation on consumerism in Sri Lanka that needs rejuvenation on the introduction of the modern international platforms, effective presence of Artificial Intelligence and process of digitalisation changing the outlook of consumer and consumer with sky rocketing the prices of almost all consumer items and services. It is for their own benefits that they must identify their parameters and work together for the betterment of themselves and the nation they live in to avoid crisis situations. For example however powerful the trader is if he exploits the consumer that may not last as the end result would be his loosing clientele and the goodwill created that needs for his existence. The regulator should perform his job well impartially and effectively and the consumer has a duty to be award of their rights duties and obligations to excursive the rights as smart and educated consumers for the trader to be vigilant. The legislation (CAA) lacks teeth yet could be made poerful by creating by laws rules and strictly adhering to the regulatory process with the help of powerful legal team, as any less powerful legal system could eb mad effective by acting with a vision and proper leadership.
Cost of Living
Cost of living is money needed for essentials such as home health food ect. Essentials are a relative term when heating is an essential item in cold climates, and smart phone has become essential even in a remote village in Sri Lanka for the education of the downtrodden children in remote villages with lack of basic facilities who raise above odds quite successfully. Complains of high cost of living is a common occurrence worldover and governments are accused of rise of cost of living and any part of the world. Price of bread is now over one pound in the United Kingdom when it has been 6 (six) pence sometime back which is the stable food in UK when rice in Sri Lanka too is sky rocketing, and bread too is a controversial issue in UK and Sri Lanka with the existence old Bread Ordinance which is still in force in both countries. Same applies to the other consumer items and services. Consumerism is the mechanism is the process and the behaviour of the consumer, trader, industrialist and the regulator in regulating trade, protecting the consumer and the trading patterns such as competitive law and trade practices with modern platforms at this AI and digital age in the fast changing world. Therefore cost of living is a key factor in day to day with world economy and world politics affecting the citizens worldover irrespective of where they live. In Sri Lanka and developing world cost of living is a key factor in governance and developments that has a ripple effect worldwide economical politically and globally that trickles down to the villager in ‘’Hambantota ’’ in a debt ridden nation with limited resources and pressed with poverty due to lack of resources .
Who are responsible and answerable for the high cost of living?
Generally the government is power, trader, industrialist, manufacturer, are accused of the high cost of living and exploiting the consumer (citizen) in all parts of the world. Reduction of the cost of living is a joint effort/ venter by the consumer/citizen, trader, manufacturer, industrialist and of course the regulator that is the state which has the executive and legislative power and the legal systems incorporated to conduct the administrative and legislature mechanism and in Sri Lanka it is monitored and controlled by the Ministries of Trade, Health, Finance, many other Ministries and statutory bodies and incorporated Consumer Affairs Authority established by the act no 9 of 2003 established replacing the traditional legislation Consumer Protection act no 1/79, Fair Trade act no 1/87 and control of prices act of 1950 still in force successfully in the United Kingdom to date. CAA act formulated is a mixture of many systems such as Canadian, Australian, British and EU with a new system of directions in place of price control and direct application promoting competition, consumer education and establishment of consumer organizations for the implementation of the new system still in force with no changes at all since the inception. In the circumstances the responsibility on the smooth consumerism regime is on the shoulders of the CAA the governance and the consumer itself and you are expected to be active and organized as an educated and effective consumer who is expected to act in par with the CAA governance and the Consumer Organizations with ample powers on the CAA which the media sometimes say a toothless lion due to the ineffective and inefficient nature of the conduct of bushiness.
Food shortages and ‘’hoarding of food’’ now known as ‘’Food mafia’’ with sub titles ‘’Egg and rice Mafia’’ in Sri Lanka
Due to the mismanagements and non implementation of the legitimate powers of CAA and many other statutory bodies dishonest traders , producers, manufactures, and traders in general tend to Store/Hord consumer items illegally by creating artificial shortages for excessive profit’s at a later stage is not uncommon in Sri Lanka which is illegal and unethical under the provisions of CAA other legislation and norms of good trade practices on illegal and unethical exploitation of the citizen/consumer. Rice is the stable food in Sri Lanka imported and also locally produced yet on short supply due to monopoly of few traders monopolizing the entire rice trade against concepts and aspirations of the consumer and the governance to be in terms of competitive law as clearly directed in the CAA act and trade practices, yet it is happening due to the conduct of the greedy monopolistic traders in the shields of shady politicians and strength of black money. This is happening in open which is difficult to control with the limited staff of the Consumer Affairs Authority hereafter called CAA at the cost of the consumers and the practices on consumerism traders accumulating enormous and dipropionate profits regularly all the time in all kinds of consumer items such as eggs, vegetables and other. There is rarely a situation will arise on the basis of impossibility, on the possibility that there is a solution for any issue however difficult it is. Identify the solution and culprits behind the backtracking and find the person to lead the battle with honest experienced and committed dedicated and educated leadership. (Sarath28dw@gmail.com today is the world consumer day on topic digital market place 15/3/2018 Mirror by the author/ Digitalization and marketing 12/4/21 Colombo Telegraph/ SL on the path of Digitalisation Lanka Web/ case for a Consumer Ombudsman26/1024 Lanka Web/ World Consumer Day Lanka Web 14/3/24/)
The Tamil Separatist Movement continued the Settler Colonialism project after the British left. Illegal Tamil settlements were established in the north and east, after Sri Lanka got its independence. These Tamil settlements were set up silently and secretly, without the knowledge of the public. A small number knew about these illegal settlements, but when they reported it, the matter was treated very lightly.
Bandu de Silva observed that the process of settling Tamils in Vanni has been going on since 1950. Illicit immigrants were encouraged to come in by the rich Jaffna Tamils who had obtained large tracts of land in Vanni but did not have the labor.[1]
Senior Tamil government servants, such as Government Agents, also engaged in Settler Colonialism. Lorna Wright recalled that her husband was transferred in 1956 from Kandy to Vavuniya as Government Agent because the previous GA, Rajadurai had given 40 Tamils quarter acre of land each in Vavuniya.[2]
Gamini Iriyagolle in his book Tamil claims to land said that since 1957 ,there were secret agreements between successive governments and Tamil political parties, that land in the north and east would not be given to the Sinhalese. [3] The Tamil Separatist Movement was able to secure from the governments, the assurance that the north and east could be settled only with Tamils. The Sinhalese peasantry was excluded from all benefits of major projects in the north and east since 1957, observed Iriyagolle.
Accordingly, when 245 allotments were to be distributed at Morawewa Scheme in Trincomalee District, in 1962, the selection was limited to the Tamils in that district. The Sinhalese in that district were not included. As a result, there were only 225 applicants for 245 allotments that had been developed and irrigated at high cost, said Iriyagolle.
The existence of a secret agreement between the Tamil parties and the government is confirmed by Neville Jayaweera. Neville Jayaweera was GA in Jaffna, Trincomalee and Vavuniya in the 1960s. He observed that the Bandaranaike-Chelvanayagam Pact of 1957 and Dudley Senanayake Chelvanayagam Pact of 1965, had specified that all settlers of colonization schemes, were to be exclusively Tamil. There was strong opposition to this and both Pacts were abandoned. The BC and DC pacts were torn up but their contents were applied scrupulously,” said Neville Jayaweera. [4]
G. H Peiris in his essay “An appraisal of the concept of a traditional Tamil homeland in Sri Lanka” stated that ‘no Sinhalese peasants have been settled in the colonization scheme located in the districts of Jaffna Mullaitivu, Batticaloa and Mannar.[5] Cecil Dharmasena added that in land distribution, the original ethnic ratios in each AGA division were maintained. Sinhalese were settled only in the predominantly Sinhalese AGA divisions and in uninhabited forest lands. [6]
Dharmasena observed that the government set up many colonization schemes in the Northern Province for the benefit of Tamils, located at minor as well as major irrigation systems. Here is the data for major irrigation systems. At least 25 settlements schemes were set up and of over 10,000 families only 7 were Sinhalese, Dharmasena noted. Here are the figures
The Tamil Separatist Movement wished to expand its settlements, but lacked the numbers to do so. They decided to use estate Tamils to create new settlements. The Sirima-Shastri Pact of 1964 had agreed that 525,000 estate Tamils would be repatriated to India. These persons were picked up from the estates and taken to the north to be sent to India. They never got to India. The Tamil Separatist Movement intercepted these Tamils and planted them in the north and east, such as the Vanni. This was done silently without the knowledge of the public.
Neville Jayaweera said that in the late 1970s, the Gandhian Movement in which Devanesan Nesiah was very active, was engaged in moving estate Tamils and illicit immigrants from south India into Vavuniya with a view to colonizing that fat belt of land.[8]
Ven. Kitalagama Sri Seelalankara, Chief Incumbent of the Dimbulagala Temple (Dimbulagala Hamuduruvo) said that in 1971 or 1972 K.W. Devanayagam MP had brought estate Tamils to Kalkudah.
I wrote to Mrs. Bandaranaike and there was an inquiry. The authorities agreed to remove the squatters but Devanayagam intervened and asked for time for them to reap the harvest. They were given three months but the authorities failed to remove them. Instead of quitting, the encroachers went into the interior of thick jungles where they could live concealed, continued Dimbulagala.
These settlers were assisted by Sarvodaya, World Food Progamme and Gandhian Movement. Later they were given land in Vadumunai area in Batticaloa. Tamils in Batticaloa carried out a smear campaign against me. They went on to encroach on land in Polonnaruwa, concluded Dimbulagala.[9]
Jayatissa Bandaragoda was GA Trincomalee in the period 1978- 1981. During this time Bandaragoda had come across clandestine Tamil settlements in jungle areas inside Trincomalee, in China Bay, Kuchchaveli, Morawewa and Tampalagamam areas. In most of these, the people reported that a Catholic priest, an MP and his brother were helping. The one in China Bay was in the form of a religious peace haven or retreat and people settled there were all Tamils from tea estates. This was a campaign to colonize vacant land with Tamils. This was a well planned effort, he said. [10]
The columnist Kumbakarna exposed this strategy in Sunday Times in 1999. He pointed out that the combined population of the Vavuniya and Mullaitivu districts was 73,010′ in 1971. In 1981 it had increased to 143,803. Mannar population which was 53,025 in 1971 had increased to 68,178.This meant that at least 10,000 had been brought into Mannar, 60,000 into Vavuniya-Mullaitivu and another 30,000 settled in Kilinochchi district.
Who were these Tamils and where did they come from. This lakh or so of Tamil people were from among those to be repatriated to India under the agreement between the two countries. They were illegally settled in the Wanni during 1978- 87[11] said Kumbakarna.
Who carried out this scheme and who provided the financial resources? The Gandhian Movement of Rajasunderam, and the Tamil Relief and Rehabilitation Organization led by Nityananda and Kandasamy were principally responsible for carrying this out. Kumbakarna also named SEDEC, Sarvodaya and Redd Barna. Redd Barna was funded by Norway. Gandhian Movement, it is alleged was funded by America, concluded Kumbakarna. Redd Barna was a Norwegian NGO.
Anil Ameresekera said, at Menik Farm, I found several Indian Tamils who spoke good Sinhalese. They were estate Tamils who had lived in the hill country, they were to be repatriated under the Sirima Shastri pact to India, but had been resettled in Mullaitivu and Kilinochchi by NGOs such as Redd Barna.[12]
Settler Colonization use of estate Tamils continued in the 1980s. After the 1983 riots, people were collected from plantations in the south and transported out. This happened in our village Batapola where there had never been any ethnic strife, said Bandu de Silva. All Tamil laborers were collected one night and transported in lorries. [13]
A friend who had an estate in Deraniyagala area told me that her estate labor disappeared and then re-appeared some time later. She thought they had been taken to the north-east and then returned.
At the Mahaweli Ministry, Malinga Gunaratne received a report dated 12.10.1983 where it was stated, inter alia, that a new village had been created at the Alankulam and Navalangkulam tanks, which were located in the southern part of the Mullaitivu district. Alankulam tank is in Thirumurukandi, Oddusuddan.
The settlement was set up by the Gandhian movement with the support of the Ceylon Workers Congress, the report said. The settlers were estate Tamils. The team saw about 20-30 new families arrive from estates while they were there. Within a few hours they had built 12 cadjan sheds.
The settlement had 60-80 houses of semi permanent nature, a store and a small meeting hall with a young Christian priest. The investigating team were informed that that a group of young Tamils regularly came down to this village through Nedunkerni and directed the cultivation and the training of the youth. The priest had links with both Madhu and Kilinochchi. The settlers were kept under rigid supervision. They were paid a substantial living allowance by an unknown, well organized movement.[14]
In 1984 Jayatissa Bandaragoda was appointed Deputy Commandant for Civil affairs in the Joint Services Operations division of the armed forces. Bandaragoda’s team travelled to all the villages in districts of Mannar, Vavuniya, and Kilinochchi on a fact finding tour.
While doing this survey we found that a large number of families of estate Tamils had been settled on state land in these three districts. We prepared a map of the districts giving the ethnic composition of each grama sevaka division.
We found that in the period 1971 to 1981 about 80,000 people had been added to the population of these three districts in addition to the normal growth. They were persons repatriated in Sirima- Shastri pact. They were presumably stopped on their way to India and taken to these areas for settlement, apparently with the knowledge of the government servants of the area. A number of NGOs were involved in providing financial and organization assistance to these settlers.
Ceylon Workers Congress had given leadership to this and had retained the full loyalty of the Tamils. Each house we visited in the new settlements had Thondaman’s photo and each house donated a rupee per month to the CWC fund. The new land cleared by the settlers was cultivated with green gram. The government did not eject them and later they were given citizenship, concluded Bandaragoda. [15]
Redd Barna has carried out a resettlement programme of Tamil people from up country to Vavuniya in 1985, with the assistance of Sarvodaya, said Vijitha Herath. Herath said so in 2008 in his interim report to Parliament as Chairman, Select Committee of Parliament for investigation of the operations of NGOs and their impact.[16]
We do not know how many Tamils from India came into the north during the 30 years of Eelam war (1981-2009).[17] LTTE had encouraged Tamils to bring relatives from Tamilnadu over. Grama Niladhari was then bribed to state in an affidavit that they had been long time residents of Kilinochchi.[18]
The Tamil Separatist Movement was not deterred by the Mahaweli Development programme, which started operations in 1981. The Tamils were in an advantageous position where Mahaweli was concerned.
R. Paskaralingam, a much respected administrator knew the detailed scheme for Mahaweli long before the rest did. He outlined the scheme to a very appreciative audience at a SLAAS meeting I attended. I cannot recall his designation and have forgotten the date of the meeting but Accelerated Mahaweli had just been announced and SLAAS was anxious to know how it was going to be done. In 1980, the Permanent Secretary to the Mahaweli Ministry was T. Sivagnanam.
Malinga Gunaratne’s book ‘For a Sovereign state’ (1988) gives an account of Tamil activity at Mahaweli. When the Mahaweli scheme started, Settler Colonialism made sure that it had influence in the Ministry. Malinga found that the senior officials in all strategic positions at Mahaweli ministry were Tamil. They were in all strategic points in the Ministry and they were working for Eelam, said Malinga. They praised the LTTE, saying how brave and clever they were.
Those working in the Ministry saw the deceitful compromises made by those in power with the Tamil separatist politicians, said Malinga. He did not elaborate. When the government was told of illegal Tamil settlements in the Accelerated Mahaweli area, the government reacted with apathy almost as if the north was not a part of Sri Lanka.
At Mahaweli, the Tamil officers outmaneuvered and outflanked their complacent Sinhala counterparts, through clever stratagems, said Malinga. Their machinations were well calculated, well planned out and executed with clinical precision. The strategies adopted by them are too numerous to be mentioned in the book, he said. That is a pity. This information would have been valuable.
The Tamil officers made sure that the colonization schemes in the Mahaweli scheme were thinly populated, recorded Malinga. Large tracts of land were designated as elephant corridors, forest reserves, national parks and no settlement was allowed in them.
The Tamil officers provided facilities to the Tamil settlements only. Sinhala settlements were neglected and given step motherly treatment. Direct dialing facilities were installed in all Tamil outposts but the Sinhala settlement at Padaviya had no telephone, no electricity and no commercial activity. The Minister knows about these activities but he is helpless, the Tamil lobby is too strong, Malinga was told. [19]
Padaviya was bursting at the seams by 1980. The area could not accommodate the 2nd and 3rd generations. They would have had to fan out to Vavuniya and Mullaitivu .Tamil Separatist Movement saw this and started installing Tamil settlements on the border of Padaviya leaving a massive buffer zone between these settlements and the Vavuniya- Mullaitivu districts.[20]
Tamil Separatist Movement had studied the Mahaweli plan carefully and had marked out two strategic locations where Sinhala settlements could puncture Eelam. They were Maduru oya and Yan oya deltas. At Yan Oya illegal Tamil settlements were established by 1983. [21]
Mahaweli authorities had decided to divert Mahaweli water to Maduru Oya and develop the right bank of Maduru Oya. While the right bank canal was being cut, Tamil Separatist Movement started encroaching on Maduru oya delta from Batticaloa. Part of Maduru oya came within the administration of Batticaloa.
In August 1983 we got news of large scale land grabbing at Maduru oya. Messages were pouring into Mahaweli Ministry stating that there was a massive encroachment of Tamils on the right bank, reported Malinga.
Maduru oya engineers spoke to Malinga. They were frantic. They said we are developing the right bank at enormous cost to that that entire nation would benefit. But by the time we finish work there will not be any land left for settlement. It is all getting occupied by Tamil settlers. This activity is being encouraged by Tamil officials from Batticaloa who are working closely with the separatist movement. Politicians on the government side are also with these separatists. Please notify the Minister. The engineers came a second time to Malinga. Please hurry, they said, she situation is becoming very serious.
Mahaweli Minster Gamini Dissanayake, when he heard, wanted an army post placed at Maduru oya. But Director General of Mahaweli, NGP Panditeratne was reluctant to make this request and the army was not stationed at Maduru oya. Nothing was done to curb the illegal encroachment from Batticaloa. These encroachments did not engage the attention of any one. People in the south were not concerned, complained Malinga.There was studied apathy at the top.
In August 1983 Malinga sent two Mahaweli officials, to check on illegal settlements on Maduru Oya right bank. They reported that Tamil settlements were coming up around numerous small tanks in Maduru oya. They were being made in a systematic and methodical manner. Food supplies were coming to the encroachers from an organized body. More and more settlers were flocking in.
The delta was a hive of activity. Houses were coming up over night. Villages were given Tamil names, the few Sinhala settlers, mainly Vaddha were given Tamil names. District boundaries were being altered. The illegal Tamil settler was establishing himself with the active assistance of the Batticaloa administration. Malinga informed the Director General who took immediate action. Maduru oya delta was a declared a Mahaweli area, GA Batticaloa had no authority over it, thereafter.
At the same time, Ven. Kitalagama Sri Seelalankara, Chief Incumbent of the Dimbulagala Temple (Dimbulagala Hamuduruvo) came to Mahaweli Centre to meet Panditeratne. Malinga was present. You are the DG of Mahaweli. What you are doing while Mahaweli land is illegally occupied by Tamils from Batticaloa, Dimbulagala thundered.
Do you know that while you people are seated in this big office, separatist Tamils are mounting a massive encroachment on Mahaweli land at Maduru oya? They are encroaching on the right bank from Batticaloa. They are altering district boundaries, converting Sinhala villages by giving them Tamil name and changing the names of poor Sinhala people, continued the angry Dimbulagala.
I have been complaining to GA Polonnaruwa and all the officials of the Mahaweli for a long time but they have taken no action. There is tremendous pressure for land from people in Polonnaruwa, Minneriya and Hingurakgoda. They are objecting to the Tamil encroachments .Can you not send Sinhala people to this land quickly. Unless something is done soon, there will be no land left for the Sinhala people, concluded Dimbulagala. [22]
Dimbulagala was asked to send in some Sinhala settlers to Maduru oya, to match the Tamil settlements. Dimbulagala did so enthusiastically. He over did it, Tamil politicians complained, the government got scared and the Sinhala settlements were forcibly and brutally removed. That ended the Maduru Oya Sinhala settlement project. The Tamil settlements continued undisturbed. (Continued)
[1] Bandu de Silva. Sunday Island. 17.7.2011 p 15 .
[2] Lorna Wright. The A9 road. Sunday Island . 19.11.06 p 17.
