Colombo, July 2: UNESCO has included the Sri Lankan historical account, the Mahawamsa”, in its list of 64 new items of documentary heritage inscribed on the Memory of the World International Register.
The Memory of the World (MoW) Register lists documentary heritage which has been recommended by the International Advisory Committee, and endorsed by the Executive Board of UNESCO. on the basis of their world significance and outstanding universal value.
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Inscription on the Register publicly affirms the significance of the documentary heritage, makes it better known and allows for greater access to it, thereby facilitating research, education, entertainment, and preservation over time. There are 494 inscriptions on the International MoW Register, as of May 2023, the UNESCO’s website says.
Regarding the Mahawamsa, UNESCO says that it is one of the world’s longest-unbroken historical accounts. The Mahavamsa is the first of its kind in South Asia, initiating a mature historiographic tradition, presenting Sri Lanka’s history in a chronological order from the 6th century BCE.”
The authenticity of the facts provided in the document has been confirmed through archaeological research conducted in Sri Lanka and India. It is an important historical source in South Asia containing crucial information about the lifetime of the Buddha, Emperor Asoka and the rise of Buddhism as a world religion. The document played a significant role in popularizing Buddhism in Southeast Asia and contributed singularly to the identity of Emperor Asoka in Indian history.”
The existence of a number of manuscripts of the Mahavamsa in several countries as well as the transliteration and translation of the text to several Southeast Asian and European languages stand testimony to its immense historical, cultural, literal, linguistic and scholarly values,” it added.
George Turnour
The man who brought the Mahawamsa to the world outside Sri Lanka (or Ceylon as it was called) was a British colonial civil servant George Turnour.
Hugh Karunanayake, writing in the Daily Island said that George was born in Ceylon (as Sri Lanka was then known) in 1799. His father had come over to Ceylon in 1789 with the 73rd British Regiment and was appointed Fort Adjutant in Jaffna in 1795. Young George was sent to England for his education, and on his return as an 18-year-old, joined the Ceylon Civil Service.
Harry Williams writes in his Ceylon Pearl of the East” that the Colonial Service at that time, attracted men of culture for whom the betterment of mankind in general, and not personal prosperity, was the principal objective.” George Turnour who was Government Agent in Ratnapura, was one of these men.
It was by chance that Turnour became aware of the Mahawamsa. A Buddhist monk who he knew had placed some palm-leaf manuscripts on his desk.
Williams says: The documents which lay on the desk before him that morning (in 1826) were not connected with his routine duties as Government Agent. They afforded the key if a scholar could be found to decipher them, to such fabulous historic riches that the mere sight of them filled Turnour with excitement. He resolved to dedicate his own life to the task of solving the problem.”
At that time, the existence of a historical record called the Mahavamsa, or Great Dynasty, was known only to a handful of Buddhist priests.
Williams explains: It was a metrical chronicle, hiding in mystical verse the most astonishing dynastic history of any people, covering a period of no less than twenty-three centuries from the year 543 B.C. to A.D 1758. The language employed was Pali, which had long passed out of use, and to those who had, with difficulty, managed to translate a verse or two, the work had not seemed worth proceeding with.”
The authors of the chronicle had, it appeared, sacrificed sense for rhyme, the poem being mystical, verbose, and incomprehensible. It had fallen into such disrepute that few, even among the Buddhist priesthood, knew of its existence.”
One of the priests, however, named Gallé, recognized in Turnour a man of genius, and it is certain that, without Gallé, the history of Ceylon would have been lost. He sought out the Government Agent and told him of his conviction that a tika” of the Mahavansa was still in existence. Now, a tika” is a prose key, which, fitted into the mystical verse of the earlier poets, and reduces it to a commonsense narrative. Gallé was convinced that that was just what the Mahavansa was, an accurate record of events obscured by the flowery outer cover of metrical rhetoric.”
Proceeding further, Williams writes: Turnour ’s interest was aroused, and between them, a search was made of the only possible repositories of such a set of documents: the old Buddhist temples. They were successful. The missing tika” was found at Mulgirigalla, near Tangalle, a temple founded one hundred and fifty years before the birth of Christ. It was this manuscript which lay on Turnour ’s desk that morning in 1826.”
The difficulties of his task must have appalled the Government Agent. Although fluent in the Sinhalese vernacular, with considerable knowledge of Sinhalese script, he knew nothing of Pali; an extinct language at that time. It is the root language of Sinhalese, but clearly distinct from it. There were no textbooks nor vocabularies available, and no parallel documents for comparison. Turnour knew that he would be compelled to spend months delving into the minds of the very few Buddhist priests who were still able to remember a few words of Pali. And he would have to dedicate many years of his life to the work of research, for there were one hundred books of the Mahavansa, and they covered, in detail, two thousand years of Ceylon history during which fifty-four kings of the Great Dynasty-the Mahavansa of the title -and one hundred and eleven sovereigns of the Sulavansa or lower race, sat on the throne of Lanka.”
Williams goes on to say that Turnour was inspired by the beauty of Ratnapura’s imposing landscape to take up the onerous task of translating the manuscripts. The result: some thirty books of the Mahavamsa were translated, edited and arranged by him during his lifetime and published in 1836; ten years after his first glimpse of the tika.”
Sadly, Turnour did not live to complete the whole vast chronicle But recognition of the value of the record was instantaneous.
It was revealed as one of the most remarkable histories in existence, unrivalled as a dynastic narrative of an ancient and cultured civilization. That was not all. Turnour ’s research opened the path to the study and translation of carved inscriptions found all over India and among the countless monuments of two of the most remarkable lost cities in the world: Anuradhapura and Polonnaruwa, abandoned and forgotten in the arid plains of central Ceylon,” Williams writes.
When the news of Turnour’s death in 1843 reached Ceylon, there was widespread grief in the island among colonial officialdom and local elites, writes Hugh Karnanayake.
It was decided to establish a suitable memorial to Turnour and subscriptions were collected for the purpose. The subscription list was headed by the Chief Justice Sir Anthony Oliphant with a donation of £2-2sh. This was matched by similar donations from the following: Mr Justice Stark, Donald Davidson, Capt Kelson, Dr Cameron, Joseph Read, Lt Col Fletcher, J Jumeaux, JG Firth, CR Buller, Francis Hudson, Lt Hawkins, Capt Lillee, William Morris, F de Livera, TC Power, FB Norris, JH Rabinel, R Jefferson, H De Alwis Mudyr, David de Silva Mudyr, C Webster, S Northway, Don Hendrick Mudyr.”
Be that as it may, according to Williams, Turnour never received the recognition which was his due. He was almost unknown. A small and obscure road in Borella in Colombo, named after him, is the only reminder.
But his work is of an importance which increases with the passing of the years,” Williams says.
Thailand airlifted an elephant from Sri Lanka after the authorities accused the island nation of mistreating the animal. The elephant — Muthu Raja — was gifted to Sri Lanka almost two decades ago, in 2001.
More than two decades ago, in 2001, a Thai elephant was gifted to Sri Lanka. (Photo: AFP).
By Agence France-Presse: A Thai elephant that was gifted to Sri Lanka twenty years ago was flown back to Thailand on Sunday due to a diplomatic dispute over its alleged mistreatment. Thai authorities had given the 29-year-old elephant, Muthu Raja, also known as Sak Surin, to Sri Lanka in 2001. However, they demanded its return last year following allegations of torture and neglect while it was at a Buddhist temple in the southern part of the island.
The 4,000-kilogram mammal was transported from Colombo airport on a one-way commercial flight, costing USD 700,000 according to Thai officials. After arriving in Chiang Mai, the elephant will be quarantined at a nearby nature reserve.
Muthu Raja was taken from his temporary home at a zoo in Colombo before dawn in a specially designed steel cage. Four Thai handlers and a Sri Lankan keeper accompanied the elephant on the flight, while two CCTV cameras monitored its health during transit.
According to the chief veterinarian at Dehiwala Zoo, Madusha Perera, Muthu Raja was in pain and covered in abscesses when it was rescued from its previous abode last year. Animal welfare groups claim that the elephant had been forced to work with a logging crew, and its wounds, some allegedly inflicted by its handler, were neglected.
Once back in Thailand, the elephant will undergo hydrotherapy to treat a remaining injury to its front left leg, as per Perera’s statement. In Sri Lanka, elephants are considered sacred and protected by law. The organization Rally for Animal Rights and Environment (RARE), which campaigned for the elephant’s rescue from the temple, expressed dissatisfaction over its departure and is seeking prosecution for those responsible for neglecting the animal.
A nationalist group in Sri Lanka staged a demonstration outside the Thai embassy in Colombo, demanding the elephant’s continued stay in Sri Lanka for another six months. The wildlife minister, Pavithra Wanniarachchi, stated that Thailand was firm in its demands for the elephant’s return. Thai environment minister Varawut Silpa-archa did not comment on whether Muthu Raja had been mistreated but mentioned that the Thai government had halted the practice of sending elephants abroad. Bangkok’s diplomatic missions are now inspecting the condition of elephants that were previously sent overseas.
Dr. Aurangasri Hinriksson receiving the Order of the Golden Falcon at the President’s House in view of National Day of Iceland
During most of my adult life I was interested in international affairs, violation of human rights and the harm caused by racial and religious prejudices
All adopted children have the right to find their biological parents, but the parents do not have the same right as they have signed a document giving up that right
In my opinion, a mass DNA analysis of the mothers who gave away their babies for adoption, is the only way to locate some of the adoptees´ biological parents
Over the years I have formed a network of searchers and informers in various parts of Sri Lanka
I also got inolved in raising funds to build a music school in Isafirdi using my eastern cultural knowledge and also managed to raise funds to buy a life-saving boat for the Accident Prevention Society. In appreciation of the above charitable activities, I was awarded immediate citizenship. Today my son and I are dual citizens
Some of the cases that I investigated, demonstrated that newborns were stolen from hospital from unsuspecting mothers and whisked away to Colombo and kept in safe houses run by the above said lawyer in Kotahena and in Punchi Borella, till such time they were ready to be adopted by a prospective adoptee parent from Europe
Adoptions these days are very few and mainly from the Czech Republic and last year there were none. The Icelandic Adoption Society became a registered legal binding institution during the years 1999 to 2000. The Society follows strict rules and regulations set out by the 1993 Hague Convention on intercountry adoptions
Nowadays, when I find a mother, I use different tactics. I tell her something like that she has won the lottery because her son or daughter living abroad is looking for her and the best period of her life has dawned etc. I say that her lucky stars are shining before I determine whether I have found the correct person or not
In early 1980s, Dr. Aurangasri Hinriksson decided to settle down in Isafirdi, Iceland with her husband and little son. Her interests to serve the community were such that she not only taught English and Mathematics to her community, but even went to the extent of reuniting adopted children from Sri Lanka with their families. Back in the ‘80s, Sri Lanka was infamous for its baby farms and baby smuggling rackets. According to Dr. Hinriksson, during the 1985/86 period, Sri Lanka not only had baby farms, but there had been active child abductors, child agents and sellers who fell into the illegal child trade. On June 17, Dr. Hinriksson was bestowed with the Order of the Golden Falcon, the highest honour awarded by the Icelandic government to appreciate individuals who have done an exemplary service to society. In a candid interview with the Daily Mirror, Dr. Hinriksson shed light on how Sri Lankan babies were smuggled to countries such as Iceland, her experiences dealing with baby rackets and reuniting these children with their families and living the greater part of her life in one of the happiest countries in the world. Excerpts :
Q : Tell us about yourself and how it has been to live in a country like Iceland?
I was born in Colombo, Sri Lanka and educated at Visakha Vidyalaya. During my final school years I became the President of the Music Society and the Debating Society. After Leaving school, I studied German and Japanese and followed a Secretarial course. In the early 1970s I took up a job with the Food and Agricuture Department of the United Nations in Colombo. It was a secretarial and an administrative job. Later I got involved in organising conferences and workshops. During that time, I met my future husband to be-Thorir Hinriksson-a Fisheries Adviser attached to the United Nations. My marriage to him was severely opposed by my family and only 100 people, mostly close friends and UN diplomats, attended the wedding. A year later, my only child, Neil Shiran Kanishka was born and with his birth my family reconciled. My husband took up jobs with the FAO, Danida and Norad which took me and my little son to various parts of the world. In whatever country we lived in, I strived to learn the local language and study their culture and cuisine. In India I completed a BA and MA in Telugu at the University of Andhra. After living in countries like Bahrain, Iran and travelling widely in the Middle-East, Far-East and Europe, we decided to settle down in Iceland during the early 1980s. During most of my adult life I was interested in international affairs, violation of human rights and the harm caused by racial and religious prejudices. At first in Iceland, life was difficult for me because I did not speak Icelandic and because of that I had little choice in employment. Icelandic is a very difficult language to learn and I had no linguistic connection to any Nordic languages before. The family settled down in a north-western town called Isafirdi and soon the word spread around that I was good in Mathematics and English. For 20 years I helped students and then decided to become a teacher in the main stream education system. I completed a Masters in Pedagogy, a BA, MA and finally a Phd in English. I also got involved in raising funds to build a music school in Isafirdi using my eastern cultural knowledge and also managed to raise funds to buy a life-saving boat for the Accident Prevention Society. In appreciation of the above charitable activities, I was awarded immediate citizenship. Today my son and I are dual citizens.
Q : When did you first come across a child adopted from Sri Lanka?
I first got to know about the 1984/85 adoptions of children from Sri Lanka to Iceland, when a childless couple owning a lucrative bakery business in Isafirdi contacted me and asked me for advice. This family continued to become very close friends of mine ever since and I have found both parents of their adoptee daughter.
Q : Could you shed light on how babies were smuggled for adoption in Iceland back in the 80s?
In 1985/86 during which period most of the adoptions to Iceland took place, there was no proper Adoption Agency in Iceland, but an interest-based, non-profit making society without particular powers which was formed by some aspiring adoptee parents. They heavily depended on an infamous Dutch national called Damass for facilitating adoptions. Damass, ran an Adoption Agency called Flash based in Holland and he was working with a reputed (now disreputed) lawyer in Colombo. The latter had a sister working in the Child Welfare and Probation Department in Colombo who facilitated speedy approval for adoptions, legal as well as illegal. During this period there were baby farms in Sri Lanka, active child abductors, child agents and sellers who fed into the illegal child trade. Some of the cases that I investigated, demonstrated that newborns were stolen from hospital from unsuspecting mothers and whisked away to Colombo and kept in safe houses run by the above said lawyer in Kotahena and in Punchi Borella, till such time they were ready to be adopted by a prospective adoptee parent from Europe. At any given time the lawyer had child providers scattered all over Sri Lanka as well as collection centres. I have been in contact with some of these agents and they are still known as Billas”. The lawyer’s laundry man, a guy called Bettage Gamini Fernando of Wadduwa signed as uncle or guardian to thousands of children. Thirty one (31) years ago I detected false information given in adoption papers when Gamini was still signing for dozens of children. The fact that some of the children were recorded as born in two different hospitals and the parental names, ages and addresses were different in various documents, aroused my suspicions. Some of the adoptions to Iceland during this period were evidently illegal, though some were quite legal and currently tracing their parents is possible.
All adopted children have the right to find their biological parents, but the parents do not have the same right as they have signed a document giving up that right. The adoptees whose documents are false will not be able to locate their parents and as such their human rights have been violated. Further, some of the 1980s adoptions were to families who have failed in parental responsibilities in providing a happy home. At that time, with regards to the above mentioned cases, the adoption agency and the Ministry of Justice have failed to determine the social, mental and financial stability of the adoptee parents, as well as scrutinise the veracity of information given in the adoption papers. The relevant authorities have also failed in providing early, as well as continuous psychological support to adoptees whenever necessary. Today the Adoption Society is addressing the issue regarding psychological assistance to adoptees, as well as examining whether the adoptee parents are capable of providing a family environment comprising happiness, safety, love and understanding. Unfortunately, so far, providing assistance to find the parents or monetary compensation have not been looked into. In my opinion, a mass DNA analysis of the mothers who gave away their babies for adoption, is the only way to locate some of the adoptees´ biological parents. This is a very difficult task as many mothers will not come forward and also, such a venture will involve an enormous cost. This raises the question as to who will bear that cost and who will locate the mothers.
Q : You have done a lot of work to reunite these children with their families as well as find their roots. Could you share your experiences with us?
I was very clumsy and ignorant of the dangers involved when I started finding parents of adoptees at first; 31 years ago. I used to visit villages and ask for the woman who got illicitly pregnant and gave away a child in the 80s. My bulldozer tactics have exposed me to danger and on some occasions I have got surrounded by irate villagers who were annoyed because I was trying to dig out a dark secret the family wanted so desperately to hide. Nowadays, when I find a mother, I use different tactics. I tell her something like that she has won the lottery because her son or daughter living abroad is looking for her and the best period of her life has dawned etc. I say that her lucky stars are shining before I determine whether I have found the correct person or not. Whenever there is a serious doubt, I do a DNA test. Though there is a Company in Colombo which does DNA analysis it is difficult to use their services as both parties have to be present at the same time. Presently, I go through a Holland based society called Sri Lanka DNA to obtain DNA kits, which originally come from FamilyTree DNA in the USA.Over the years I have formed a network of searchers and informers in various parts of Sri Lanka, whom I remotely instruct. I use my own personal resources to fund the searches. Some of the searches I do myself whenever I am in Sri Lanka. I visit slums, remote villages for my work and often interact with criminals, drug addicts, alcoholics, ruthless child abductors and agents and also simple village folk. Sometimes it takes a few days to crack a case and sometimes it takes as long as 8 years or more. No doubt there is a huge element of risk involved in my work, but it is challenging; specially when there are positive results, I find it immensely rewarding. On the other hand, when I pull out an emaciated, toothless and wrinkled mother out from a slum, the adoptees in Iceland- who have led priviledged lives- are visibly disappointed. I tell them that I am sorry that I cannot bring forward Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt as their parents!
Q : Are there any unforgettable experiences you could recollect?
Each case is different from another. Some of the stories that the birth mothers say are poignantly and palpably sad and heart wrenching, while others I find hilarious. For instance, I was trying to find the father of one of the adoptees and I sought information from the birth mother who claimed that she had no connection to the father of the baby after she became pregnant. One day she said the father was Bada”, the next day it was Suda”, a week later she said it wasKota” and I panicked as to how many DNA tests I had to perform to find the real father. One of the names given in her list was also that of a Buddhist monk! A half a dozen names were given to me, but luckily, the second DNA test confirmed that the father was Hunga”, whatever that name means! Many of the destitute parents have been helped both by me and the adoptees.
Q : What are the inter-country adoption laws in Iceland?
In 1986 an Icelandic couple legally adopted a baby girl who unfortunately died in the hotel room the day before they were to fly home. The lawyer immediately substituted the dead baby girl with a new born baby boy. The papers of the girl was used for this purpose and the couple did not go to the courts again. On arrival in Reykjavik, they confessed about the substitution to the relevant Icelandic authorities. Adoptions from Sri Lanka were instantly banned. But what the authorities failed to do at that time and even now, was to examine the previous adoptions of 1985/86 adoptees to determine as to how many of their papers were false. After this incident, adoptions continued from other countries like India, Romania, Chile, Guatemala, China and Turkey. Adoptions these days are very few and mainly from the Czech Republic and last year there were none.The Icelandic Adoption Society became a registered legal binding institution during the years 1999 to 2000. The Society follows strict rules and regulations set out by the 1993 Hague Convention on intercountry adoptions. Eighty percent (80%) of the funding of the Society comes from the Ministry of Justice which is the Central Authority.Today, the Society runs a high-quality mediation service based on catering to the best interests of the children.
Q : You were recently bestowed with a knighthood by the Iceland government. How do you feel about receiving this accolade?
Receiving the Order of the Golden Falcon, which is the highest honour that the country could bestow on anyone who has done something exemplary, was the biggest surprise of my life. When I started putting families together, I did not even know that such an award existed and never worked towards getting that recognition. During the last years, I have struggled with the Icelandic/Sri Lankan adoptees over their human rights violations and racism that they have faced in this country. Often I have acted as a psychologist to them, though that is clearly not my profession. In some cases, I am their mother and keep daily contact with them, giving them the moral support they so desperately need. To me, this Knighthood I received, is a recognition of human rights and the struggle against racism and I thank the adoptees and everyone including the Icelandic Media for having brought my work to the attention of the President and the general public of Iceland. This award has humbled me and made me aware as to how much more work is required to assist the adoptees.
Q You have been living in one of the happiest countries in the world for the greater part of your life. Do you think Sri Lanka would achieve this status in future?
Living in a highly developed and affluent country is a great priviledge and I am thankful to my late husband for having taken the decision to move to Iceland many years ago. As a foreigner or rather an immigrant, to become qualified and recognised as an academic was an up-hill task. I often became a sitting duck for work-place bullies and racists. I can safely say that racial hatred and professional jealousies are lethal. Though humble pie is not my favourite dish, I have often been forced to taste it. Those experiences devastated me initially, but eventually steeled my resolve to move on, work harder and achieve a few of my goals. During the years I have lived here, I promoted Sri Lanka, contributing to all kinds of cultural events for fund raising purposes. I am a Buddhist and I believe in Karma and I feel that I came to Iceland for a specific purpose, and that is to learn, to give my best to whoever who asks for my help and whatever short-time is left in my life, I will try my best to serve that purpose wherever I am. Though I have lived in Iceland for decades and I am a citizen of Iceland, heart and soul I am a proud Sri Lankan. Whatever hardships the country is experiencing Sri Lanka is my country and that is where I truly belong. Iceland has been one of the top countries regarding happiness. Happiness seems to be measured by the country‘s wealth, education and health systems and over all salaries. However, Iceland is one of the most expensive countries in the world and it is known that a significant sector of the Icelandic population is dependent on antidepressants and sleeping pills! Drug addiction is also an existing social problem. For me, happiness is a state of mind and although financial prosperity can provide material objects and a good lifestyle, one can find happiness with lot less and by being contented with what you have. Sri Lanka has a long way to go to become a politically stable and an affluent country. But I strongly believe that, Sapathei, vipathei, nosalei, nothalei, ata lo dama huru helaya!”
Ex-President Maitripala Sirisena‘s counsel told the Supreme Court that Jude Shramantha Jayahama was released from prison following the due Constitutional process which the petitioner had suppressed to Court.
Faizer Musthapha PC contended this while challenging the Fundamental Rights petition filed by the organisation ‘Women and Media Collective’ against the pardon granted by former President Maithripala Sirisena to Jude Shramantha Jayamaha.
Counsel further asserted that it is unfair to target President Maithripala Sirisena as he had followed the due process of law.
Counsel underscored the fact on what the status would be of 69 other convicts whose death sentences were also commuted by the President.
Counsel questioned whether any Fundamental Rights applications have been filed against the President in those instances. Counsel Musthapha said the process was initiated during the tenure of Ex-President Mahinda Rajapaksa after which the death sentences imposed on 70 other convicts had been committed to life.
He also emphasized that former Attorney General Palitha Fernando had given an opinion that there was no premeditation by Jaymaha to commit the murder.
Counsel Musthapha told court that President Maithripala Sirisena had acted on the advice of the Attorney General and the Minister of Justice and the pardon granted to Jayamaha after three and a half years from commuting his death sentence into life imprisonment.
Counsel Faizer Musthapha PC made these assertions before the three Supreme Court Judges, Justice S. Thurairajah, Yasantha Kodagoda and Janak De Silva during the inquiry into the FR petition filed by the Women and Media Collective against the decision taken by Ex-President Maithripala Sirisena to release Jayamaha from life imprisonment by allegedly violating the law.
Counsel Sanjeewa Jayewardene PC appeared for the petitioner. Counsel Romesh De Silva PC appeared for the aggrieved parents of the deceased Yvonne Johnson.
Further hearing was postponed to July 13. (T. Farook Thajudeen)
A team of scientists from NASA is reportedly on a visit to Sri Lanka these days, in order to carry out research related to the alleged similarities in the stones found in Sri Lanka to those on the planet Mars.
The team of experts is led by Mr. Sunithi Karunathilake, a Sri Lankan national who is a Senior Scientist at NASA.
They will first join an observation tour in the Ginigalpalassa (GGP) and Indikolapalassa (IP) areas and then travel to the Ussangoda area in the Southern Province of the country.
When inquired by Ada Derana, Mr. Karunathilake mentioned that the geographical features in Sri Lanka have shown that the island composes of significant similarities to some of the rocks and soil on Mars.
Meanwhile, commenting on the matter, Ven. Kapugolle Anandakiththi Thero, a senior lecturer of the University of Kelaniya, pointed out that there are two specifically identified types of rocks found in these areas.
One of them is the Blue Marble Rock (Nil Garuda) and the other one is the Moonstone (Chandrakantha)”.
Ven. Kapugolle Anandakiththi Thero further stated that it is more important to decide on whether those are the exact names that should be given for these two types of rocks in Sinhala, after conducting further research on this…”
The Civil Aviation Authority of Israel has confirmed that a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) will be signed by the relevant authorities of Israel and Sri Lanka in order to commence the air service of providing direct passenger flights from Tel Aviv in Israel to Katunayake.
During a discussion held in this regard, Minister of Ports Shipping and Aviation Nimal Siripala de Silva said that the new air service will provide convenience to Israeli tourists who are looking forward to travelling to Sri Lanka.
Meanwhile, Israeli representatives said aircrafts belonging to Israel’s ‘Arkia’ airline are scheduled to arrive in Sri Lanka by October.
A special discussion regarding the commencement of direct passenger flights from Tel Aviv in Israel to Katunayake was held recently between civil aviation authorities of the two nations at the Ministry of Ports shipping and Aviation under the patronage of subject Minister Nimal Siripala de Silva.
Representatives from the Civil Aviation Authority of Israel including Israel’s Air Transport Division Senior Director were present at the discussion.
During the meeting, the Civil Aviation Authorities of the two countries also held discussions regarding coming into an agreement by resolving the existing issues regarding the commencement of the new air service.
Accordingly, the Civil Aviation Authority of Israel said a memorandum of understanding between the authorities of the two countries is yet to be signed.
The Israeli representatives further said aircrafts belonging to its ‘Arkia’ airline are scheduled to arrive in Sri Lanka by October.
Minister of Ports Shipping and Aviation Nimal Siripala de Silva said the opportunity to commence direct flights between the two countries was obtained following a discussion between President Ranil Wickremesinghe and the Government of Israel.
The Minister further said that Israeli tourists are looking forward to travelling to Sri Lanka adding that this air service will be very convenient to Israeli tourists.
The Minister also expressed that Sri Lankan workers who are engaged in various jobs in Israel will be given great convenience and financial benefit in purchasing air tickets.
The Ministry of Labour alleges that neither the union leaders nor officers have provided asset liability statements within the granted period.
When inquired by Ada Derana”, Secretary of the Ministry R.P.A. Wimalaweera stated that none of those 2,000 representatives has so far submitted asset liability statements.
In general, the officials including trade union leaders of state and semi-government institutions must submit their asset-liability statements to the Secretary of the Ministry of Labour, as per the Asset Liability Act.
Wimalaweera also stressed that although he has informed the relevant parties regarding the matter, no response has been received in this regard.
However, the ministry’s secretary further emphasized that he has not been granted authority through the act to take any further actions regarding the matter.
When Prime Minister Sirimavo lost the General Election in Sri Lanka in mid 1977, Sri Lanka did not have a foreign debt. During the time of Sirimavo and earlier, Sri Lanka got foreign loans on projects, where once the development project was completed the production brought about due to the completion of the project enabled the payment of the loan. They were all project loans. In 1975, Sri Lanka/s foreign debt was negligible. Then, the foreign debt, only $ 743 million, $ 75 million at the end of 1976 and at $ 750 million in 1977 were all incurred on projects and never on consumption. Thus we have to differentiate between foreign loans taken for projects, i.e.for development and foreign loans taken for consumption.
When President Jayawardena won the elections in mid 1977 instead of continuing the economy as Sirimavo had done , turned to the IMF for assistance. The IMF readily agreed to grant loans provided the Government relaxes rules re the use of foreign loans, allow anyone to use foreign exchange, relax all import controls, in short use the funds of these loans for consumption- to allow the rich to live in luxury. This was a major deviation from the manner we ran the economy since we achieved independence, when we somehow restricted imports and managed without falling into debt. Even in the 1950-1954 period when we implemented the major Gal Oya Development Programme retaining a US firm to build the tank, paid by us in dollars, we had restrictions in place for all imports. The essence was to manage all foreign expenses with the dollars we had. The rest- all development work running all Ministries etc.was done with printed Rupees.
The Minister of Finance Mr Ronnie de Mel in his Budget Speech of 1978 was over the moon regarding changing the modus operandi in running the economy. :
We cannot go round the World begging for Aid like international beggars for ever. We must get out of this vicious circle of no growth, stagnation and mounting internal and external debt.”
An year later,President Jayawardena was highly taken up and thought of it as a wonderful achievement,. In his words:
We adopted a package of new economic policies which envisaged a sweeping departure from a highly controlled, inward looking welfare oriented economic strategy to a more liberalized, outward looking and growth oriented one. Fundamental to the new economic policy was the adoption of realistic rate for the Sri Lankan Rupee with a view to reducing the price distortions arising from the previous attempts to maintain an over valued currency by means of stringent trade and payments control. The then prevailing multiple exchange system was unified and the Rupee was allowed to float. The resulting trade liberalization was expected to revive domestic industry by freer flows of raw material, spares and machinery by higher capacity utilization and by greater competition which at the same time was expected to provide better export incentives by inducing the import substituting industries to expand outward to export markets.” ( Address to the Federation of Economic Organizations of Japan, 12/09/1979, from Peace Unity and Coexistence by JR Jayawardena,Govt Press, 12,9,1985.)
Creating any production of any sort was totally not possible because, the bulwark of production oriented development tasks by various Government Departments was either totally abolished or sidelined, as dictated by the StructuralAdjustment Poliicy which the IMF forced us to follow-the Department for Development of Agricultural Marketing which purchased vegetables and fruits and ran a successful cannery was totally abolished. Other Departments like Small Industries and many development activities of other Departments were totally curtailed on the grounds that the Private Sector was to be the engine of growth and the officialdom that had attended to development tasks were confined to the barracks- finding some work to attend to.
This process forced on Sri Lanka inevitably caused total disaster as stated by the The World Bank in 1990:
In 1986, the deterioration of the economy had become evident. The growth rate of the GDP slowed to under 4%. Unemployment rose to around 17% and gross official reserves to less than two months’ imports.”(Trends in Developing Econmies:1990.
It is important to note that this utter deterioration had happened within eight years of following the Structural Adjustment provisions!
The foreign debt balooned to $ 1845 million by 1980, to $ 4063 million by 1986, to as much as $ 6723 million by 1993, to $ 9407 million by 1995 and $ 9191 million by 1996.
When Chandrika took over in November 1994, the foreign debt was at $ 9.7 billion and there was no turning back. The Development Infrastructure that been developed from 1948 to 1977 and which had achieved the country becoming self sufficient in paddy, the staple crop and all other development programmes had been either abolished or sidelined and there was no turning back.
Once in around the late Eighties on my trip to Kataragama, at Ambalantota I turned towards my office in 1958 and then my office covering the Southern Province for paddy purchases and rice milling was a part of an integrated complex including a large Lewis Grant Rice Mill, the summun bonum of the day that milled a thousand bushels a day. Over a hundred lorries of paddy were accepted a day. When the Mill was switched on, every Monday morning it will work nonstop till Saturday evening when it was switched off for cleaning and resurfacing the rollers on Sunday. If it stopped otherwise I had to interfere and get it working and I was held personally responsible. The Mill had been abandoned and was in pieces. The land some five acres was apportioned to various departments that had fenced them in and total neglect was the order of the day. The machinery which we doted on and cared for with our lives was in pieces, strewn everywhere. It was a scene that I could never have believed. That was what did happen to all over the island under President Jayawardena’s move to follow the IMF. The development infrastructure was in tatters and there was never a turning back.
The annual foreign exchange deficit is also an important indicator of development. In my words, Sri lanka was a country that could boast of the fact that it held a credit of $ 170 million in its foreign exchange budget of 1977. In less than five years of liberalization the foreign exchange deficit was as much as $ 892 . In 1995 this figure was at $ 997million.”
This increase in foreign exchange deficit happened due to the major changes that were made in the economy from the end of 1977. In 1980 the Minister of Finance boasted
We liberalized the economy and did so effectively and thoroughly.’(Budget Speech:1980)
Both President Jayawardena and Finance Minister Ronnie de Mel were taken for a ride. As the erudite South Asian Commission on Poverty Alleviation commented in 1992:
The Industrial Countries are for the first time since World War II are in need of markets for their produce. So they have put into effect the Structural Adjustment programme… the industrialized countries are pressurizing the reciepients of Structural Adjustment loans to open their economies to goods from them:(From; Meeting the Challenge:1992)
In this process of importing what we could have made the loans we took ended up in the donor countries in some form or other- for holiday travel, for financing their universities etc, while leaving the loans as a debt on Sri Lanka. It was a grand manipulation to make us fall into debt.
Sri Lanka’s foreign debt balooned to $ 11.3 bn by 2005 and the IMF backed out of giving loans. Then we sought finance somehow and even raised funds through issuing International Sovereign Bonds(ISB) at very high interest rates. At the end of 2014 our foreign debt was 42.9 billion and during the Yahapalana 2014 to 2019, as much as $ 12.5 billion of ISBs were taken. Yet none of these funds were utilized to create any production. Instead, they were used for extravagant living. In 2022 the debt had reached $56 billion and today in June the Government talks of foreign debt below $ 50 billion, which is very doubtful.
To be realistic what we can do and have the immediate ability to do is to find an agloritham of action to get into producing what we import. This too has to be on Government sector programmes because the private sector investors have fairly given up enterprise development due to high interest rates, and are satisfied with parking their capital in banks and enjoying high interest rates.
Thus the only option is to concentrate on import substitution type of programmes, making what the consumer needs. .This will reduce imports and help the country to save foreign exchange.
In the living memory of some of us we can recall the Divisional Development Councils Programme of the days of Prime Minister Sirimavo. It was directed by Professor Haalso deS Gunasekara, the eminent Professor of Economics of the University of Peradeniya and it was successful in training thousands of youths to become scientific farmers and handle livestock. It created employment for 33,300 youths and many new industries like making paper at Kotmale and building motor fishing boats and Crayons at Matara were very successful.
May our leaders consider such an employment cum poverty alleviation programme urgently,
Senaka Weeraratna, the inventor of DRS, has revolutionized the game of Cricket.
India under Narendra Modi can play a bigger role in the Cricket world wherever there is racism, sexism, and the like in ICC-administered cricket. The recently released damning Report on racism in English cricket is equally true of similar types of racism and inequity on race-based grounds within the ICC. There is no mechanism within the ICC to entertain genuine complaints from both players and cricket fans, especially from the Indian subcontinent.
A manifest wrong cannot be righted within the ICC. It can be done only by an external force. India must start showing the way by showing defiance of unfair decision-making at ICC. India must support Sri Lanka to gain international recognition for an invention that the entire Indian subcontinent and all the cricket-playing nations of the Indian subcontinent e.g. India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Afghanistan, and Sri Lanka can be proud of i.e., Decision Review System ( DRS).
DRS is based on the concept of ‘ Player Referral ‘ conceived by Senaka Weeraratna ( Sri Lankan lawyer) in 1997. Narendra Modi must start wearing a new mantle that is now appropriate to his new global role – to felicitate the high achievers ( from the Indian subcontinent ) who have broken new ground and world records.
India was the Vishwa Guru of the World. The mother of invention.
This will be great PR for India all over the world.
Senaka Weeraratna, the inventor of DRS, has revolutionized the game of Cricket.
Herodotus (History, Book 1.53) tells the story of Croesus, king of Lydia c. 585-546 BC in what is now Western Turkey and the Ionian shore of the Mediterranean. Croesus conquered Ephesus, Miletus and neighboring Greek-speaking realms, obtaining tribute and booty that made him one of the richest rulers of his time. But these victories and wealth led to arrogance and hubris. Croesus turned his eyes eastward, ambitious to conquer Persia, ruled by Cyrus the Great.
Having endowed the region’s cosmopolitan Temple of Delphi with substantial silver and gold, Croesus asked its Oracle whether he would be successful in the conquest that he had planned. The Pythia priestess answered: If you go to war against Persia, you will destroy a great empire.”
Croesus therefore set out to attack Persia c. 547 BC. Marching eastward, he attacked Persia’s vassal-state Phrygia. Cyrus mounted a Special Military Operation to drive Croesus back, defeating Croesus’s army, capturing him and taking the opportunity to seize Lydia’s gold to introduce his own Persian gold coinage. So Croesus did indeed destroy a great empire, but it was his own.
Fast-forward to today’s drive by the Biden administration to extend American military power against Russia and, behind it, China. The president asked for advice from today’s analogue to antiquity’s Delphi oracle: the CIA and its allied think tanks. Instead of warning against hubris, they encouraged the neocon dream that attacking Russia and China would consolidate U.S. control of the world economy, achieving the End of History.
Having organized a coup d’état in Ukraine in 2014, the United States sent its NATO proxy army eastward, giving weapons to Ukraine to fight an ethnic war against its Russian-speaking population and turn Russia’s Crimean naval base into a NATO fortress. This Croesus-level ambition aimed at drawing Russia into combat and depleting its ability to defend itself, wrecking its economy in the process and destroying its ability to provide military support to China and other countries targeted for seeking self-dependency as an alternative to U.S. hegemony.
After eight years of provocation, a new military attack on Russian-speaking Ukrainians was conspicuously prepared, ready to drive toward the Russian border in February 2022. Russia protected its fellow Russian-speakers from further ethnic violence by mounting its own Special Military Operation. The United States and its NATO allies immediately seized Russia’s foreign-exchange reserves held in Europe and North America, and demanded that all countries impose sanctions against importing Russian energy and grain, hoping that this would crash the ruble’s exchange rate. The Delphic State Department expected that this would cause Russian consumers to revolt and overthrow Vladimir Putin’s government, enabling U.S. maneuvering to install a client oligarchy like the one it had nurtured in the 1990s under President Yeltsin.
A byproduct of this confrontation with Russia has been to lock in America’s control over its Western European satellites. The aim of this intra-NATO jockeying was to foreclose Europe’s dream of profiting from closer trade and investment relations with Russia by exchanging its industrial manufactures for Russian raw materials. The United States derailed that prospect by blowing up the Nord Stream gas pipelines, cutting off Germany and other countries from access to low-priced Russian gas. That left Europe’s leading economy dependent on higher-cost U.S. Liquified Natural Gas (LNG).
In addition to having to subsidize domestic European gas to prevent widespread insolvency, a large proportion of German Leopard tanks, U.S. Patriot missiles and other NATO wonder weapons” are being destroyed in combat against the Russian army. It has become clear that the U.S. strategy is not simply to fight to the last Ukrainian,” but to fight to the last tank, missile and other weapon being deleted from NATO stocks.
This depletion of NATO’s arms was expected to create a vast replacement market to enrich America’s military-industrial complex. Its NATO customers are being told to increase their military spending to 3 or even 4 percent of GDP. But the weak performance of U.S. and German arms on the Ukrainian battlefield may have crashed this dream, while Europe’s economies are sinking into depression. And with Germany’s industrial economy deranged by the severing of its trade with Russia, German Finance Minister Christian Lindner told the Die Welt newspaper on June 16, 2023 that his country cannot afford to pay more money into the European Union budget, to which it has long been the largest contributor.
Without German exports supporting the euro’s exchange rate, the currency will come under pressure against the dollar as Europe buys LNG and NATO replenishes its depleted weaponry stocks by buying new arms from America. A lower exchange rate will squeeze the purchasing power of European labor, while lowering social spending to pay for rearmament and provide gas subsidies is plunging the continent into a depression.
A nationalist reaction against U.S. dominance is rising throughout European politics, and instead of America locking in its control over European policy, the United States may end up losing – not only in Europe but most crucially throughout the Global South. Instead of turning Russia’s ruble to rubble” as President Biden promised, Russia’s balance of trade has soared and its gold supply has increased. So have the gold holdings of other countries whose governments are now aiming to de-dollarize their economies.
It is American diplomacy that is driving Eurasia and the Global South out of the U.S. orbit. America’s hubristic drive for unipolar world dominance could only have been dismantled so rapidly from within. The Biden-Blinken-Nuland administration has done what neither Vladimir Putin nor Chinese President Xi could have hoped to achieve in so short a period. Neither was prepared to throw down the gauntlet and create an alternative to the U.S.-centered world order. But U.S. sanctions against Russia, Iran, Venezuela and China have had the effect of protective tariff barriers to force self-sufficiency in what EU diplomat Josep Borrell calls the world jungle” outside of the US/NATO garden.”
Although the Global South and other countries have been complaining about U.S. dominance ever since the Bandung Conference of Non-Aligned Nations in 1955, they have lacked a critical mass to create a viable alternative. But their attention has now been focused by the U.S. confiscation of Russia’s official dollar reserves in NATO countries. That dispelled the thought of the dollar as a safe vehicle in which to hold international savings. The Bank of England’s earlier seizure of Venezuela’s gold reserves kept in London – promising to donate them to whatever unelected opponents of its socialist regime U.S. diplomats designate – shows how sterling and the euro as well as the dollar have been weaponized. And by the way, what ever happened to Libya’s gold reserves?
American diplomats avoid thinking about this scenario. They rely to the one unique advantage the United States has to offer. It may refrain from bombing them, from staging a color revolution to Pinochet” them by the National Endowment for Democracy, or install a new Yeltsin” giving the economy away to a client oligarchy.
But refraining from such behavior is all that America can offer. It has de-industrialized its own economy, and its idea of foreign investment is to carve out monopoly-rent seeking opportunities by concentrating technological monopolies and control of oil and grain trade in U.S. hands, as if this is economic efficiency, not rent-seeking.
What has occurred is a change in consciousness. We are seeing the Global Majority trying to create an independent and peacefully negotiated choice as to just what kind of an international order they want. Their aim is not merely to create alternatives to the use of dollars, but an entire new set of institutional alternatives to the IMF and World Bank, the SWIFT bank clearing system, the International Criminal Court and the entire array of institutions that U.S. diplomats have hijacked from the United Nations.
The upshot will be civilizational in scope. We are seeing not the End of History but a fresh alternative to U.S.-centered neoliberal finance capitalism and its junk economics of privatization, class war against labor, and the idea that money and credit should be privatized in the hands of a narrow financial class instead of being a public utility to finance economic needs and rising living standards.
The irony is that America’s historical role has been that although it itself was not able to lead the world forward along these lines, its attempts to lock the world into an antithetical imperial system by conquering Russia on the plains of Ukraine and trying to isolate China’s technology from breaking the U.S. attempt at IT monopoly have been the great catalysts pushing the global majority along these lines.
By Engr. Kanthar Balanathan DipEE (UK), GradCert (RelEng-Monash), DipBus&Adm (Finance-Massey), C.Eng., MIEE, Former Director of Power Engineering Solutions Pty Ltd, Consulting Electrical Engineers Leading Engineer of the World 2006, UK Authority Award
The author had the ambition to write about history during his working career as an Electrical Engineer/Works Engineer (Elect) from 1969 to Feb 1977 at Kankesan Cement Works (KCW). It is the right time now that come forward to present them in a concise article format. The reason is that by hiding activities the world will not change and in particular the North is like a jungle dominated by a certain group of people only and others are treated quite indifferently & indecently. Discrimination & Oppression prevails in the North only. It is good to unravel certain hidden dirty qualities among our Tamils in the North. That’s the nature of the Tamils in the North. In India workers and officers are treated indifferently, with no courteousness, gallantry & or regard for the working class. Those Tamils who read this article shall understand their quality and correct themselves to have a positive progressive Tamil race or else the Tamil race will dissolve into any other race(s). No wonder why some Sinhalese do not like Tamils.
I commenced my working career on the 5th of December 1965 with the Department of Govt. Govt. Electrical Undertakings (DGEU). My career ended with the DGEU in September 1967 while working as a shift Officer at the Inginiyagala Power Station. During the period 5-12-1965 to 09/1967, I enjoyed my work as the environment was friendly and the Sinhala people were quite helpful and friendly. It was a totally friendly technical environment.
However, my professional life was shifted to be a detrimental oppressive and discriminatory life while at KCW. Although I asked for Puttalam, CCC Posted me to KCW.
In my working career at KCW, the Works Manager (WM) position was held by Tamils up to 1974. The organisation was in shambles. One WM arrives direct from Udupiddy at 8 am and then leaves sharp on the dot at 4 pm. He never stepped foot inside the factory at any instant. He was a Civil Engineer who was seconded for service by the Department of Highways or so. The only WM we had who was quite competent was A. Francis, who was a Mechanical Engineer, however, he left the organisation in 1971. Francis was a very capable engineer.
Late in 1974, a dynamic and energetic leader (Pat Vithanage) came as the Works Manager, appointed by Mr A. Elkaduwa, who was the Chairman of Ceylon Cement Corporation. After Pat Vithanage (WM) came to the works people behaved differently and were near decent, however, behind the back not at all courteous and honest. The staff had quite ethnic hatred towards Pat. Pat was decent and professional and had top managerial capability and people acted with courtesy towards him and the engineers.
This article will unstitch & loosen the dirty politics of the workers and engineers at KCW, although KCW does not exist now, the people in the North shall learn from this as to how they shall treat others and work.
On the day I started work, I was walking to the electrical workshop and a man was urinating on the road (inside works). This road has been used by women and men to access their workplace and canteen. I observed that there were dozens of toiles built which were only about 20 feet away from the man who was urinating. I advised the man to urinate in the toilet and not on the road. He quietly went off and complained to his union President and the WM. Mr Francis knows the character of the workshop people. He called me and said not to talk with any of the clowns in the mechanical workshop. I realised that the caste system came into the flow. I also comprehended that there was this caste system practised by even the COOLIES. Maybe the man (COOLIE) was related to (Filipino) SJV Chelvanayagam?
This article limits only to certain key incidents which distressed my anxiety and health. One of the WM (late Shunmuganathan) says always that he is thinking. He was sent to Germany for three-year training and came back just a few months before me. I comprehended that he did not do any modifications or solve any technical issues. He was my boss, and I was certain that he was not a fit and proper person to be my boss. That’s nature and the Jaffna man’s influence based on caste and culture. He looked like a Chinese guy in appearance.
Right from 1969, the precipitator does not work effectively and efficiently. My so-called boss always slides any outside complaints to me, and I had to face the public. With too much work I started to investigate the precipitator function. There were two issues faced by the Precipitator. (i) Voltage dips (VD) which were the CEB problem. Virtually I send 10-15 telegrams to the GM of the CEB about the VD. The CEB engineers had little clue about the issue. The issue here is that Chief Burner is a sixth or eighth-standard qualified person, however, his brothers were in the Police as DIG ad SPs. So, he was influential, and people do not bother him. Water must be sprayed in the fourth cyclone, however, because of the Voltage dips Burners do not spray water. The water spray equipment bends and had to cut it off to pull it out. (ii) The EHV electrode was made of barbed wires and suspended with guided weight. The dust accumulation bends the barbed wire and flashes to the cathode plate. The particular chamber has to be isolated immediately for the other chambers to function. So, the second issue here is that the electrode was not fit for the particular duty. (iii) The particles were of smaller size because of the type of grinding and sieve used. Very small particles can be carried away because the Precipitator design is not fit for its purpose. Shift Chemist does not understand high-tech explanations. Wondered whether they do a sample analysis to know the Standard Deviation at various levels in the silos. Quite doubtful cos they get annoyed when asked. No one in the Kiln or Chemist section understood ionisation and effective ionisation at low temperatures. The Chemist’s workplace is like a secular lab. Most of the staff have low education. A guy who was cleaning beakers, became a lab chemist because his brother was a Pathologist. He had only low education to 8th standard.
None of the WM did anything on my advice. After Pat Vithanage assumed office, he discussed with me and asked me to prepare a comprehensive report on the issues and solutions and send it to the Chairman through him, of course. I had two solutions. (i) Procure stainless steel discharge tips for at least one precipitator and install, (ii) Install Saturated Limiting Coupling on the 33kV live running from Chunnakam to Kaithady at Chunnakam. This equipment will limit the fault current. The 33kV line was running through saline areas and salt dust when deposited flashed to earth. The discharge tips for the Precipitator were ordered, and I left the organisation to assume duties in Feb 1977 in Nigeria. Pat and I attended a meeting with the engineers at CEB and explained the function of the SLC. The other alternative is to reroute the Chavakacheri line which is up to the CEB. None of the engineers or the Burners gave me support except Pat Vithanage and AB Elkaduwa.
The 3.3kV ID Fan motor failed once and, the culture at KCW is that any failure is shifted to the Works Engineer (WE-El). I saw one Tamil electrician throwing raw meal dust into the fan motor out of hatred against myself and Pat. The issue here was that the banding wire used was high-tensile stainless steel and it can give way at high temperatures. It was recommended to use high-tensile epoxy tape for the banding. I saw this guy was throwing raw meal dust onto the HV motor.
Most of the staff in the Kiln section were unqualified. A few with an A” level were okay, however, the other Burners including Chief Burner (late G. Joseph & Thuraisingham) were unqualified with 6th & 8th standards only. The problem here is that they cannot understand Parallax” issues. Always complain that the motor current and voltage are over the limit. The meters were installed about 6.5 feet above the floor. Quite often have to explain the parallax problem.
The gantry crane had a span of more than 60 feet, maybe. The drive shaft had several segments, and they were connected by bolting the flanges. The shaft is supported by a couple of bearings which had white metal bearings. The white metal, when worn off, introduce misalignment and heavy torque friction and a heavy torque is required to turn the shaft. What is required is to machine the bearing after filling it with white metal. However, the mechanical engineers who were incompetent did not want to do the job, however, blame the electrical section that the fuse blowing, and the overload relay tripping. The mechanical engineers or what I call them Sledgehammers wanted a higher setting of the O/L and a higher fuse rating. So, we did it knowing what will happen. The main drive shaft breaks. It was agony to explain the half qualified and the sledgehammers. Some Sledgehammers claim that they are from Peradeniya University and that they are superstars and know everything not knowing that they lack experience.
Similar things happen with the cement transport system. The FK Pumps. The FK pump is a screw conveyor which has a few segments coupled with flanges and is supported by bearings. The Workshop guys do not do good welding to standard, and the flanges fail and the motor trips. Immediately the complaint comes to the WM that there is an electrical fault. Okay, as donkeys we check the motor and the circuits and come up with a clean system. We direct the plant maintenance & Workshop and advice that the welding is not up to standard, for the reason for the failure. The Superstar Peradeniya engineers argue with me. I am an electrical and mechanical engineer, which is not known to the people at KKS leading them to override and bully the electrical section.
The irregularities in the supplies and Stores section: Most of the time, the welding rods are recycled through the shops to the stores again with a cut going into a team pocket. Items are bearings, domestic fuses, some cables, and consumables. Staff steel items from the stores to which some storekeepers help them. The Asst Accountant who was in charge of the stores was an incompetent person who always attacked people. He resembles a Japanese or a Korean.
A couple of engineers like three were quite honest but we were afraid to talk as the Union and the staff rise against us. Some so many irregularities and frauds happening at KCW; however, I cannot bring everything in one publication.
One example: An elec. an engineer from State Fertiliser Manufacturing Corporation (SFMC) was sent to my section for specialised training. What he did was apply for his IEE Charter stating that he is the cement engineer and that he is the boss of the place without my understanding. I also applied and when called upon for an interview by the CTE and Mr John Pillai asked me whether I was the Cement engineer. After discussion for over 2 hours, I advised them to check with the GM of Cement. On the day in Colombo, the GM called me and said that IEE checked with him, and that truth was conveyed to the IEE. GM was a Sinhalese person. I received my Charter in 1975 and believe that the SFMC engineer’s application was deferred by ten years. These are fraudulent activities by Tamils in the North.
The Head Office chairman and GMs in Colombo shall note this and be cautious as still, the North has CEB Offices and maybe branches of other Departments in the North.
My judgement and comprehension are that Pat Vithanage was the best WM in the North.
Tamils wanted a Tamil as the Governor of the NPC. GOSL should now understand why the people in the North need a Tamil. I comprehend that a Sinhalese Sri Lankan shall be appointed as the head of any Department in the North. I can bring out a significant volume of irregular and fraudulent practices in the North, which I cannot do at this instant.
Hope the Tamils will correct themselves rather than criticize others. A typical example is Arjuna Mahendran and his Son-in-Law for plundering Rs 20 billion.
Tamils are rude, greedy for money, hatred against the Sinhalese and low and medium cast Tamils, they have no traits, and have a low foolish culture which is worse than the worst humans in the world. Africans are better than Tamils.
No wonder why they want Tamil Eelam so that they can rule and oppress the low and medium-caste Tamils. Power sharing is a worthless statement in democracy. People decide who should govern a country. Sinhalese people are great and have a worthy character. Hats off to the Sinhala people of Sri Lanka.
Tamils will never change in their rude and rowdy attitude.
The airline’s inaugural flight on its Airbus A320 landed at Bandaranaike International with 110 passengers onboard. (Air Seychelles)
Seychelles’ national carrier, Air Seychelles, started operating twice weekly flights to Colombo after it made its inaugural flight on Tuesday, June 20th.
The airline operates the twice-weekly flights from Seychelles to Colombo on Tuesdays and Saturdays and returns on Wednesdays and Sundays.
The airline’s inaugural flight on its Airbus A320, which landed at Bandaranaike International, had 110 passengers onboard.
In a press statement from the airline, Sandy Benoiton, acting chief executive of Air Seychelles, said that Colombo is one of the largest markets not served by a nonstop flight from the Indian Ocean region.
“Seychellois love coming to Sri Lanka for a number of reasons, with tourism and medical being at the top of the list. Additionally, there is a large number of Sri Lankans working in Seychelles, primarily in hospitality and construction, all in need of easier access to their home country,” he explained.
Benoiton added that “currently, to fly between Seychelles and Sri Lanka, travellers must go via one of the Gulf carriers, which can take 10-12 hours of journey time, and at considerable expense. Our nonstop flight allows for a journey of approximately four hours in total.”
Benoiton said tourism and medical are at the top of the list for Seychellois travelling to Sri Lanka. (Air Seychelles) Photo License: CC-BY
Seychelles, an archipelago in the western Indian Ocean previously had a direct link with Sri Lanka. After the two countries signed an air services agreement in April 2013, it allowed both Mihin Lanka and SriLankan Airlines to operate on the Seychelles-Colombo route.
Mihin Lanka operated the service from November 2013 to October 2016 but then was replaced by SriLankan Airlines. The airline stopped its flight to Seychelles when the island nation shut down its airport in March 2020 amid the COVID-19 pandemic and returned when it reopened in December 2021.
SriLankan Airlines stopped its flights to Seychelles in December 2022.
Among the 110 passengers on board the inaugural flight were tourism officials – Sherin Francis, principal secretary for tourism, and Bernadette Willemin, director for destination marketing.
To celebrate the occasion, the tourism department, in partnership with Air Seychelles, hosted a trade event on June 21st.
Tourism Seychelles said that Francis and Willemin “unveiled the boundless possibilities the newfound connection offers, bridging the gap to previously untapped markets via the Colombo route.”
It added that “the partnership not only serves as a strategic move to unlock markets that were once challenging to access, but it also provides an opportunity for Seychelles to learn from Sri Lanka’s best practices and elevate its own tourism industry to greater heights.”
A travel trade event and dinner reception were hosted in collaboration with Tourism Seychelles with the participation of top travel agencies in Sri Lanka, and South Africa among others.
According to Air Seychelles, the Colombo service will also offer over 20+ connections through a future partnership with SriLankan Airlines.
“Once fully implemented, this will allow for a convenient one-stop connection to numerous destinations in India, Bangladesh, and top tourist spots such as Bangkok, Kuala Lumpur, Singapore and Tokyo as well as highly requested Australian cities, namely Melbourne and Sydney,” said the airline.
COLOMBO, July 1 — Sri Lanka’s inflation eased to 12 per cent in June, official data showed today, the lowest figures since the island nation careened into an unprecedented economic crisis last year.
Sri Lanka defaulted on its US$46 billion foreign debt in April 2022 and the public endured months of food, fuel and medicine shortages.
The crisis has eased since, with the government securing a US$2.9 billion bailout from the International Monetary Fund in March.
June inflation was the lowest since the 9.9 per cent figure recorded in November 2021.
It is down from 25.2 per cent in May and a peak of 69.8 per cent in September.
“Inflation is expected to reach single-digit levels by early third quarter 2023,” the Central Bank of Sri Lanka said.
This week, the government unveiled a debt restructuring plan which offers a 30 per cent haircut for international sovereign bondholders, who account for more than a quarter of Sri Lanka’s outstanding foreign obligations.
The IMF said last month that Sri Lanka’s economy showed “tentative signs of improvement” but warned Colombo still needed to pursue painful reforms.
Last year’s economic crisis sparked months of civil unrest which eventually toppled then-president Gotabaya Rajapaksa.
His successor Ranil Wickremesinghe has doubled taxes, removed generous subsidies on energy and sharply raised prices to shore up state revenue. — AFP
Several Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna (SLPP) and Samagi Jana Balawegaya (SJB) MPs were absent during the vote on the Domestic Debt Restructuring programme today in Parliament.
SJB MPs Rajitha Senaratne, Mayantha Dissanayake, Rohini Kaviratne and Mano Ganesan were among the absentees from the Opposition while Mahinda Rajapaksa, Namal Rajapaksa and Chamal Rajapaksa from the SLPP were notable absentees from the ruling party.(Yohan Perera and Ajith Siriwardana)
The Resolution on Domestic Debt Optimization (DDO) was passed in Parliament with amendments a short while ago (01 July).
Accordingly, the DDO strategy was passed in Parliament with a majority of 60 votes, with 122 votes in favour and 62 votes against.
Meanwhile, the Secretary General of Parliament Kushani Rohanadeera has informed the Secretary to the Ministry of Finance, in writing, that the DDO strategy was passed in Parliament.
A full-day special parliamentary session took place today, during which lawmakers debated the restructuring of local debt, initially proposed in a bid to achieve debt sustainability and economic recovery.
On 28 June, the Cabinet of Ministers unanimously approved the proposed sovereign domestic debt restructuring strategy for restoring sovereign debt sustainability.
Following two days of extensive discussions on the strategy and its impact, the Committee on Public Finance (COPF), chaired by MP Dr. Harsha de Silva on 30 June, gave its approval for the proposed plan, with amendments binding the Finance Ministry to the proposed plan, ensuring adherence to the approved concept paper and addressing concerns about potential deviations.
The Governor of the Central Bank of Sri Lanka (CBSL), Secretary to the Finance Ministry and its officials, creditors including banks, superannuation funds EPF/ETF and insurance funds were invited to the COPF sessions to discuss the matter at length and to hear their views.
In response to questions on the DDO’s impact on superannuation funds EPF, ETF and the guarantee given to ensure 9% interest rates, CBSL Governor Dr. Nandalal Weerasinghe assured that their calculations indicate no net present value loss to the EPF. However, COPF chairman has advocated for legislating a minimum return, as done in the 1958 EPF Act.
Further, concerns were raised about the burden falling on the EPF, the largest superannuation fund in the country, without the consent of the depositors.
The COPF chairman, Dr. Harsha de Silva said the committee members called for balanced burden sharing among all creditors, not entirely on the superannuation funds, in order to uphold equity in the DDO.
Meanwhile, COPF members also raised concerns about the government’s commitment to the proposed plan and adherence to the principles of the resolution. Finance Ministry officials acknowledging these concerns, pledged to strengthen the Fiscal Management Responsibility Act (FMRA) for compliance.
Domestic debt restructuring is a key condition in the International Monetary Fund (IMF) program, through which a bailout package of USD 3 billion was approved for Sri Lanka in March 2023. The IMF program unlocks more help from international funding agencies. Accordingly, the World Bank, earlier this week, approved USD 700 million in financing as budgetary and welfare support for Sri Lanka.
After defaulting on its foreign debt for the time in May 2022, Sri Lanka has been working to get the economy back on track and to meet the conditions set by the IMF. Sri Lanka aims to restructure its sovereign domestic debt before the second IMF review in September 2023 as the release of second tranche of the bailout package due in October would require notable progress on debt restructuring. The island nation received the first tranche to the tune of USD 330 million in March soon after the IMF Board approved the 48-month Extended Fund Facility (EFF).
War is too important to be left to the generals. This quote is as relevant today as it was in the early 19th century, when French statesman and journalist Georges Clemenceau first said it to stress the importance of civilian control over the military and the war. If this is so with the generals, then where do mercenaries stand when it comes to decisions on war?
Given this all-important rule of civilian political leadership taking control of the war, last week’s events in Russia lead to two conclusions: Either President Vladimir Putin has not mastered his war studies as the commander in chief of Russia’s armed forces or he has taken a calculated risk by placing his country’s war against Ukraine—call it the war against NATO—in the hands of a mercenary group called the Wagner group. The second possibility appears to have more traction.
Contrary to reports the Western media churned out of last week’s events in Russia, with some viewing them as an unfolding coup, Putin and his military chiefs were well in control and knew of the Wagner rebellion well in advance. It may even be a red herring—a collaboration of sorts between Putin and Wagner Chief Yevgeny Prigozhin to confuse the enemy. Who knows?
Reports say senior Russian General Sergei Surovikin knew of Prigozhin’s rebellion well in advance. He has since been arrested in what was seen as a thickening of the plot. Russia watchers said, however, the Wagner rebellion came as no surprise to the entire Russian leadership, as they were anticipating it and allowing it to happen to achieve political ends. There is much politics behind the plot. After all, war is the continuation of politics by other means. The drama started with Prigozhin launching a public criticism of Russia’s defence establishment, especially Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu, claiming that the defence ministry, by holding back military supplies to the front, was putting his fighters, many of whom were convicts recruited from prisons, in harm’s way.
As the Wagner chief continued his ranting and began to act as though he were the boss, strangely, there was little or no censure from strongman Putin or the military top brass. The West began to see Prigozhin’s criticism with joy, concluding that Putin’s hold on power was being challenged. The West saw the episode as a fissure in Russia’s resolve to fight the war as a united front.
The rebellion happened at a time when the Wagner Group had emerged as a powerful military force. Its victories on the Ukrainian war front had made Prigozhin a national hero. Prigozhin, the presidential chef turned billionaire military contractor, was once a trusted friend of Putin. He remains so, notwithstanding last Friday’s rebellion and Putin’s description of it as a stab in the back. Prigozhin made it clear that his rebellion was not against Putin or a coup attempt but against the defence establishment, which had ignored his pleas for urgent military supplies to capitalize on the military gains he and his troops had made in the capture of Ukraine’s Bakhmut region.
To assume that Putin was helpless in controlling the Wagner Group chief is political naiveté. Putin was in full control and knew when to strike and in what measure. For Russia, the Wagner Group, which was registered as a company in 2022, is still useful to carry out its global operations. The group is allowed to continue its military operations in Syria and Africa, including the war-torn Sudan, while Prigozhin himself was allowed to move into Belarus, which is pro-Russia and shares strategically significant borders with both Russia and Ukraine. His presence in Belarus is a serious concern for Ukraine and NATO, as it was only recently that Russia stationed its nuclear weapons in Belarus. Whether Prigozhin and his senior officers will play a military role in Belarus is a billion-ruble question, though Western critics say he is doomed. It was Belarus that facilitated the deal between Putin and Prigozhin. The deal is too magnanimous to be true. No arrests were made. The Wagner troops were allowed to go to Belarus or join the military under a new contract.
The Russian military, the police, the border guards, and the internal security force known as Rosguardia restrained themselves even in the face of the rebels’ march towards Moscow. Their non-intervention is unexplainable unless they have received orders from the top not to intervene and let the Wagner Group perform some stunts for the victory-starved West to cheer on. It is interesting not note why Ukraine and NATO did not make use of the rebellion to gain a military advantage on the war front when the rebellion was ongoing. Their failure shows their weakness. On the contrary, rebellion-hit Russia is still calling the shots, as Wednesday’s missile attack on Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, indicates.
The rebellion has, instead of weakening Putin, strengthened his hold on power and offered him an opportunity to show he could solve a serious crisis without bloodshed. Last week’s developments in Russia are too good to be true. Whatever it is, a nation shall not rely on mercenaries to wage war on its behalf. In 1499, the Italian city state, Florence, depended on mercenaries in its war against Pisa. While the war was raging, Florence’s mercenary army made a retreat when victory was in sight and Pisa was about to discuss a surrender deal. The betrayal by the mercenaries was one of the main political developments that inspired Nicolai Machiavelli to write his famous book, The Prince. Mercenaries were not to be trusted, he said, and insisted the Prince must build on sound foundations and have its own loyal army.
Mercenaries and auxiliaries are useless and dangerous. If the Prince bases the defence of his state on mercenaries, he will never achieve stability or security. Mercenaries are disunited, thirsty for power, undisciplined, and disloyal,” he wrote. However, Machiavelli did not outright dismiss the use of mercenaries. He advocated for caution and a nuanced approach. He proposed that a wise ruler should maintain a core standing army loyal to the state while judiciously supplementing it with select mercenaries when necessary. This is exactly what Putin has done. Many states in their fight against terrorism have worked with mercenary outfits which are no respecters of rules of warfare or human rights. It has happened in Sri Lanka during the 1988-90 insurrection and the separatist war against the LTTE.
Over time, the role the mercenaries have played has become sophisticated. The Americans had Blackwater mercenaries to carry out their dirty work in Iraq. Britain has SAS – Special Air Service, a military unit comprising largely foreign fighters. Information regarding this secretive group is highly classified. Though in the Western media, the Wagner group is portrayed as mercenaries, foreigners who fight alongside Ukrainian soldiers are glorified as volunteers who have signed up to fight Russian aggression. In the end, it is all a game of nomenclature. Just as the saying ‘one’s terrorist is another’s freedom fighter’ goes, one’s mercenary is another’s volunteer hero who ‘fights for a cause’.
Topped off by a curious ‘coup’ attempt in Russia, June has been a fascinating month with new geopolitical economic developments, twists and turns on many fronts: As US President Biden wooed, wined and dined India’s Prime Minister Modi (who was once refused a visa to America), France’s Macron sought an invite to the BRICS summit to be held in August from South African President Ramaphosa although France is hardly an ‘emerging economy’!
Perhaps Macron’s visit in BRIC’s was due to India’s Foreign Minister Dr. Jaishankar’s recent comment that; ’Europe has to grow out of the mindset that Europe’s problems are the world’s problems but the world’s problems are not Europe’s problems, having tired of lectures about India’s purchases of Russian oil and seemingly breaking Western sanctions.
‘Curiouser and curiousor’ cried Alice of the smiling cat in Wonderland as the US wooed the Indian Defense establishment with a promise of technology transfer and Macron seemed anxious to stay relevant vis-à-vis the BRICS and Global South in his complex pas-de-deux of corporation and competition with Biden.
Simultaneously, debt trapped Sri Lanka’s US Force” backed President Ranil Rajapakse tangoed at the colonial Club de Paris while attending Macron’s ‘Summit for a New Global Financing Pact’, where there was no mention of corruption, murder and other high crimes like the killing of a primary witness of a Court case on the 2015 Bondscam at the Central Bank of Sri Lanka (CBSL), in which President was a respondent before the case was dismissed.
The Club de Paris after all represents predatory Eurobond hedge funds like BlackRock which is Sri Lanka’s main private creditor, and their derivatives’ corruption rackets with networks of rating agencies, accounting, and legal firms that are part of the gravy train of the IMF’s ‘bailout business” as the Transnational Institute in Amsterdam termed it.
Meanwhile the French Spring culture and soft-power charm offensive unfolded for Colombo’s talking classes and twitterrati on the lawn of at the Sri Lanka Foundation to the strains of Edith Piaf’s classic ‘quand il me prend dans ses bras’ as the IMF mission and mandate creep operation to restructure Sri Lanka’s internal or Domestic debt (DDR) to impress the Club de Paris creditors got underway.
Clearly, with French fishing fleets extending their reach into the Central Indian Ocean, the Euro-American jazz ensemble would be playing as another postcolony sinks in debt. But is Macron’s pivot to the BRICs also due to recent setbacks received in Africa; Burkina Faso and Mali!
Need for a Balanced Foreign Policy to escape the Eurobond Debt trap
US ‘force’ backed Ranil Rajapakse however seemed oblivious of Macron’s pivot to the BRICS and the Global South. He persisted in promoting the myth that there is no alternative (TINA), to the IMF, the colonial club de Parise and Eurobond borrowing! He ignored calls from civil society and the Opposition for the strategic island nation to have a balanced Foreign Policy, work together with China and India which are not member of the Colonial Club to join the BRICS’ New Development Bank (NDB), in order to leverage its funds and avoid the fate of Argentina, which is caught in a vicious debt trap; dependent on, and pumped and dumped by predatory Eurobond hedge funds. [i]
Argentina is now on its 9th Default and 22nd International Monetary Fund (IMF), bailout package, again rocked by protests and has applied to join the NDB, but the Sri Lanka president, business community (captains of de-industrialization), and related think tanks and the local corporate media, journalists and bond traders seems to have not heard of the BRICS, NDB or Global South!
Gotterdemmerung: Regime Change in Nuclear armed Moscow?
Meanwhile, in the Russian theater, an exuberant President Zelenskyy claimed that Wagner Group boss Yevgeny Prigozhin’s short march to Moscow was the long awaited NATO-backed Ukrainian counter-offensive which had only ‘just started’ against Russia. That news item and visuals soon disappeared with the coup story fizzling out in less than 24 hours, while the global corporate media held a frenzy of speculation about the demise of Mr. Putin and the dissolution of Russia.
The curious ‘coup’ to take down Russian President Vladimir Putin was aparently checkmated by his friend President Lukashenko who appeared from nowhere to whisk off Prigozhin to exile in Belarus!
Wagner’s Prigozhin meanwhile sounded like a tragi-comic antihero in a Wagner Opera –Gotterdemmerung perhaps? He bewailed that the plan was never to unseat Mr. Putin or do regime change. Putin had helped his star to rise in the first instance. Nor was the plan to create civil war in beloved mother Russia, but to save his men. Putin’s approval ratings are after all are pretty high among the Russian public despite the United States and its NATO allies take on him.
Of course no one mentioned that Prigozhin’s Wagner Group followed in the distinguished tradition of US military contractors like Blackwater, storied in Scarhill’s (2008) book the Blackwater: The Rise of the world’s most powerful mercenary army” well known for dark deeds in Iraq and Afghanistan, that fought shoulder to shoulder with the US military.[ii] Blackwater has since been renamed Academi” of all things so that links to Black Rock and Black stone hedge funds are illusive.
Hardly surprising then that Macron’s request for an invite to the BRICS meeting in South Africa elicited a rather cool reply from President Ramphosa who replied that he’d consult the rest and circle back to Macron.
Meanwhile, in a script that read like a dystopian fairy tale, US President Biden who had been busy scenario mapping and modelling a post-Putin Russia and world order with Canadian Prime Minister Trudeau and other NATO supporters of the War Machine, then proceeded to deny that western intelligence agencies or Disinformation had anything to do with Prigozhin’s purported ‘coup’.
Cold War propaganda seemed to be part of the information war subsequently amplified by Kash Patel who suggested that Mr. Putin had staged the whole show — a new Wagner opera starring Prigozhin. Mr. Putin it seems had nothing better to do than stage own goals and black opera?
Playing with Fire? Regime Change in Nuclear Armed Russia
As events unfolded in Russia there were growing concerns about external attempts at ‘regime change’ which could endanger the planet by putting at risk Russia’s extensive nuclear weapons arsenal.
Regime change operations to divide and rule are designed to cause chaos also to unleash a cascade of violence’ and mask the external actors, behind apparently internal conflicts. This was evident in the playbook recently used in Sudan to destabilize the country and MENA region with the RSF paramilitary group fighting the Sudanese military, soon after the signing of a peace pact between Iran and Saudi Arabia to stabilize the region brokered by China.
Was the Sudan playbook used in Russia with the Wagner opera? It is hardly a secret that the intelligence agencies and Special Forces of the Empire’s military business industrial complex as President Dwight Eisenhower termed it, are past masters and experts at executing seamless Over the Horizon (OTH), Full Spectrum Dominance (FSD) regime change operations while maintaining the ‘mask of democracy’ as happened amid Aragalaya protests in debt trapped Sri Lanka, caught in a hybrid economic war last year. This enabled staging the strategic island’s first ever Sovereign Default while everyone was distracted with the carnivaleque Aragalaya and the installation of Donald Lu’s Force-backed President Ranil Rajapakse to market the narrative that Sri Lanka is bankrupt and there is no alternative to the IMF!
This was done amid a propaganda operation blaming China for the Default which was however staged due to predatory Eurobond debt and the Hamilton Reserve Bank of St Kitts and Nevwi taking out a Court case in New York against the government of Sri Lanka
IMF Mission and Mandate Creep to DDR: Park of Macron’s New Global Financing Pact?
Upon his return from Macron’s Paris Summit for a New Global Financing Pact” Sri Lankan President Ranil Rajapakse following orders received embarked swiftly on internal or domestic debt restructuring (DDR), by declaring an extended holiday and closing the country’s banks.
Although the strategic island’s first ever sovereign debt Default was staged due to EXTERNAL dollar denominated debt listed at $ 26 billion by the External Resources Department in April 2022, last year at the time of default, the island is witnessing IMF mission and mandate creep into Internal or Domestic Debt Restructuring (DDR), This, purportedly to send a signal to the predatory colonial club de Paris creditors. While Sri Lanka civil society groups have called to ban further borrowing from predatory private creditors the IMF requires precisely this from debt restructuring!
The IMF is however, mandated to deal with External dollar-denominated debt and NOT domestic or internal (rupee) debt. Moreover, while Sri Lanka’s debt has mysteriously ballooned with the IMF’s experts, and related accountants and massaging of figures to $86 Billion in a country were debt data, veracity, authenticity and security is highly problematic!
The IMF’s latest conditionality in the wake of Macron’s New Global Financing Pact appears set to increase Sri Lanka’s Debt Numbers Game and debt trap, and lays the ground for the IMF Fire sale of strategic national assets – lands, transport, energy and telecom sector infrastructure.
Remarkably, these same strategic assets had been previously listed and targeted under the US Millennium Challenge Corporation Compact (MCC), that was rejected by the people of a strategic Indian Ocean island that is perpetually in the cross-hairs of big power rivalry.
To be continued: IMF Mission and Mandate Creep into Domestic Debt Restructuring
Banking crisis is not a sudden problem for the country. It has been a growing problem and the superannuation management has associated with the banking crisis. The banking crisis created because lack of capital in the system, when the bank management has been ignoring capital requirement as the bank’s ability to stay strong depends on the strength of capital support. Government, as the owner of banks, has not worked out a way to increase capital consistent with increasing risk. The bank management should have proposed the government to issue at least 50% of shares to private investors to reduce the burden. If the government allocates a large quantum of budget funds for capitalization of the Bank of Ceylon, Peoples Bank and National Savings bank, no money left for other purposes. The best option was giving share to private investors. This was not done by the management.
To prevent the worse situation, the government should have not taken bank profits and allocate them for reserves. Each year, banks should have cutoff the accumulated loss from the capital and new capital should attract from the private investors. If it happened in 1970, and increased the volume of capital, banks would not face to the problem. The capitalization process has been implemented each year. If such practice has been done since 1970, Sri Lanka’s banking system would be the strongest banking system in Asia.
Since the 1978, capital requirement increased, but manak management did not advise the government, which scared to take right decision because of the threat of trade unions and opposition political parties.
Bank management was so corrupt and when they were granting credit, they did so many corrupt practices such as taking commission and other benefits. The results of such behaviour were granted credits transferring to past due and keeping them as non-performing credits. Government knew this situation but didn’t take action to dismiss the management.
Many stupid actions were taken by the government, like recapitalization in the early 1990s.
Provident funds such as pension funds, employee provident Fund, Employee Trust fund should have operated open market and government did not allow for such efficient ways and make blind eye to the corruption. To get out these problems, the following actions are essential. (1) More than 50% private capital should attract with a condition for buying bank. (2) Investments of government and Central bank bonds should convert to bank shares. (3) Credit management of Banks should reform to grant quality credits. (4) Superannuation management should be on like superannuation management in other countries
These actions will release the government. Banks and super funds will become powerful assets of the country.
(with courtesy and acknowledgements to Colombo Page News Desk)
A pointer towards those sources especially certain Tamil Organizations who from time continue to insist that Sri Lanka’s history has no authentication relative to the Sinhala Race has surfaced.They have often attributed the history of Sri Lanka to myth and folklore towards their own ends and objectives while debunking their connections to reality, so this is a stabilizer to the real history of Sri Lanka and not in keeping with the contradictions thrown by these protagonists as Sri Lanka indeed has a proven history relative to the Sinhala Race as chronicled in the Mahavamsa not to be ridiculed or questioned by feeble minded so called Tamil and other similar theorists as it bears no credibility towards realty.
On June 27th in Colombo,UNESCO (United Nations Education, and Cultural Organization) has inscribed Mahavamsa, the Great Chronicle of Sri Lanka covering the period 6th century BCE to 1815 CE, on its Memory of the World Register among 64 new items of documentary heritage added to the list this year.
According to the description in the UNESCO Memory of the World Register, Mahavamsa, one of the world’s longest unbroken historical accounts, is the first of its kind in South Asia, initiating a mature historiographic tradition, presenting Sri Lanka’s history in a chronological order from the 6th century BC.
Mahavamsa is known for its Sinlala origins and links to ancient Buddhist monks and scholars who chronicled events relative to Sri Lanka’s ancient history on Ola Leaf documents in Sanskrit and Pali the languages in use at the time and found preserved almost in their entirety through careful protection according to archaeological research and the work of many scholars over decades if not centuries of time.
The authenticity of the facts provided in the document has been confirmed through archaeological research conducted in Sri Lanka and India.
It is an important historical source in South Asia containing crucial information about the lifetime of the Buddha, the Emperor Asoka and the rise of Buddhism as a world religion.
The document played a significant role in popularizing Buddhism in Southeast Asia and contributed singularly to the identity of Emperor Asoka in the Indian history.
Existence of number of manuscripts of Mahavamsa in several countries as well as the transliteration and translation of the text to several Southeast Asian and European languages stand testimony to its immense historical, cultural, literal, linguistic and scholarly values,” the description added.
Mahavamsa also incorporates a period in time relative to Sri Lanka and the Sinhala race together with its companion text the Culavamsa.
The UNESCO recognition of its authenticity bears testimony to the origins of Sri Lanka as fact and not fiction.
Treasury bills (T-bills) and Treasury bonds are both types of debt securities issued by the government to finance its operations and manage its cash flow. However, there are several significant differences between the two:
Maturity: Treasury bills have a maturity of one year or less, typically ranging from a few days to 52 weeks. On the other hand, Treasury bonds have longer maturities, typically ranging from 10 to 30 years.
Coupon Payments: Treasury bills are issued at a discount to their face value and do not make periodic interest payments. Instead, the investor earns interest by purchasing the bill at a discount and receiving the full face value at maturity. Treasury bonds, on the other hand, pay periodic interest (coupon) payments to the bondholder until maturity, in addition to returning the face value at maturity.
Risk and Return: Treasury bills are generally considered to be the safest form of investment because they are backed by the full faith and credit of the government. As they have shorter maturities, they are also less sensitive to interest rate fluctuations. Treasury bonds, with their longer maturities, carry more interest rate risk. While they are still considered relatively low-risk investments, their prices can fluctuate more in response to changes in interest rates.
Investment Horizon: Treasury bills are commonly used by investors with short-term investment horizons or those seeking a safe place to park cash temporarily. They are often used as a means of liquidity management for institutions and individuals. Treasury bonds, with their longer maturities, are typically used by investors with longer-term investment goals or those looking for fixed income over an extended period.
Marketability: Both T-bills and Treasury bonds are highly liquid and actively traded in the secondary market. However, due to their shorter maturities, T-bills generally have higher trading volumes and more frequent auctions.
Yield: Treasury bills typically offer lower yields compared to Treasury bonds due to their shorter maturities and lower risk. Treasury bonds, with their longer-term commitment, tend to offer higher yields to compensate investors for the added risk and longer tie-up of funds.
It’s important to note that the specifics of Treasury bills and Treasury bonds can vary by country, and do due diligence before investing in them.
Dinesh GunawardenaPrime MinisterDemocratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka
The cooperative movement, which originated in Europe in the 19th century, was introduced to Sri Lanka in 1906. The Sri Lankan people, with their past precedents of thrift and mutual help that transformed their human qualities into a strong program procedure, easily adapted to the cooperative concept.
Since then, the cooperative movement was able to boost the rural economy by empowering the people. During the First and Second World Wars as well as in times of epidemics and calamities, exceptional relief was provided to the people through the cooperatives.
Through every economic era, the cooperative has been the lifeblood of our country. It is truly an example of conveying the mutual friendship and bond of its entire membership to the society and the entire country.
Later the People’s Bank, started with the initiations of Ministers Philip Gunawardena and T.B. Ilangarathna added enormous strength to the cooperative movement. It was the time when the cooperative movement has become closer to the masses.
In 1956, the People’s Government passed the Multi Services Cooperative Societies Ordinance, which further revitalized the cooperatives from village to village and became a new economic hub. Various societies including thrift societies, credit-facility societies, farming societies, handicraft societies, textile societies, etc. have flowed into new fields in terms of production and sales.
The cooperative movement, which contributed to uplift the economy of rural people in every province, contributed excessively to the sustainable development of the country. The theme of the International Cooperative Day of this year, ‘Cooperative movement for Sustainable Development’, is most appropriate.
There are many examples that can be taken from the cooperative movement in using the country’s wealth and human resources for national development.
Today, as we celebrate the International Day of Cooperatives, we shall work together with this economic organization which is essential to overcome the current day challenges, and its membership and different levels of government to continue its invaluable service.
Colombo, June 30: In the last few days there were hectic activities on Sri Lanka’s foreign relations front. They included President Ranil Wickremesinghe’s visit to Paris and London, Prime Minister Dinesh Gunawardena’s meetings with the Romanian State Minister for Foreign Affairs as well as with the envoys of two regional powers China and India. There were also simultaneous visits of warships of those two countries to the Port of Colombo.
All the above activities have proved Sri Lanka’s strict neutrality.
We are a neutral country, but we also emphasise the fact that we cannot allow Sri Lanka to be used as a base for any threats against India,” President Wickremesinghe said, during an interview with France24, responding to a question about China’s perceived military presence in Sri Lanka.
He pointed out that the Chinese have been visiting Sri Lanka for about 1,500 years and, so far, there has been no military base”.
There won’t be any military agreements,” the President stressed, We are a neutral country. He clarified that there were no issues of military use by the Chinese of the Southern port of Hambantota, which Beijing took over on a 99-year lease as a debt swap in 2017.
He assured that even though the Hambantota Harbour has been given out to China’s Merchants, its security is controlled by the Sri Lankan Government. The Southern Naval Command will be shifted to Hambantota, and we have got one brigade stationed in Hambantota in the nearby areas,” he added.
Political analyst Neville Ladduwahetty said Wickremesinghe’s statement on the neutral foreign policy of Sri Lanka would end negative speculations in some quarters. He clarified that since neutrality is a defined policy that has a legal basis and a history that precedes Non-Alignment, there is a need for the Neutral State to conduct its relations with other States according to recognized codified norms with reciprocity.
On the other hand, Non-Alignment was essentially a commitment to a set of principles by a group of countries that had emerged from colonial rule and wanted to protect their newly won independence and sovereignty in the context of a bipolar world.
Prime Minister Gunawardena also elaborated on the foreign policy of neutrality spelt out by President Wickremesinghe. The Premier explained this position during his recent meetings with the Romanian Minister of State for Foreign Affairs, and the envoys of India, China, the United Kingdom and New Zealand.
He briefed the visiting Romanian Minister Traian Hristea about Sri Lanka’s position with regard to international and regional issues as well as the measures taken to solve the issues related to the current economic crisis. He stressed the need for the continuous support of the European Union.
The Romanian Minister assured that his country would support Sri Lanka’s request for the continuation of GSP Plus duty concessions for Sri Lankan exports.
The outgoing High Commissioner of the United Kingdom, Sarah Hulton met the Prime Minister on the day the UK announced the decision to include Sri Lanka as a beneficiary country under the UK GSP Scheme Developing Countries Trading Scheme (DCTS)”. Through this scheme, duty concessions will be given for 92% of Sri Lankan exports.
Premier Gunawardena said Sri Lanka hopes that new investment projects will be initiated by the UK following the conclusion of the debt restructuring process and the unlocking of the IMF fund facility. He added that Sri Lanka encourages UK investment in sectors such as education, banking and financial services, IT/BPM, pharmaceuticals, hospitality and tourism.
Indian High Commissioner Gopal Baglay met the Prime Minister last week to discuss furthering bilateral cooperation. India and Sri Lanka agreed to work on a Road Map for cooperation between the two countries. Premier Gunawardena thanked India for the support to obtain a suitable IMF Program for Sri Lanka, for which financing assurances from creditors to make Sri Lanka’s debt sustainable are required as well as for the assistance during the economic crisis.
High Commissioner Baglay, referring to the increase of tourism, said India would take steps to increase flights between the two countries. He said the public sector as well as private airlines are willing to operate flights to destinations in Sri Lanka. Alliance Air wants to increase operations and extend current flights from South Indian destinations to the Jaffna to Ratmalana Airports as it has been opened for passenger flights.
The Prime Minister urged for more Indian investments in the sectors such as digitalization, alternative energy and agriculture.
Two days later Chinese Ambassador Qi Zhenhong met the Prime Minister at Temple Trees in Colombo to discuss bilateral relations. The Prime Minister said Sri Lanka looks forward to direct investments from China as well as investments in agriculture, renewable energy, IT, education and water supply sectors to provide long-term solutions to economic issues.
The areas covered during the discussion included issues relating to new investment projects, furthering trade with China, the Colombo Port City, the Hambantota Port, poverty alleviation, education, agriculture, cultural exchanges, high-level exchanges and assistance to the underprivileged. The Prime Minister made a special request to support to the Sri Lankan rice-growing rural population to increase production by introducing high-yielding rice varieties developed in Yunnan Province in China.
Ambassador Qi Zhenhong said he was pleased to see the resilience of Sri Lanka to overcome difficulties and assured China’s continuous support to Sri Lanka’s efforts to meet the current efforts at debt restructuring and meet economic challenges. The Prime Minister thanked him for the assistance provided by China to alleviate the current economic crisis in Sri Lanka. The Prime Minister made a special mention of the Chinese stand in support of Sri Lanka’s sovereignty at the international forums including the UNHRC.
The discussion was initiated with a reference to the historical bilateral relations between the two countries. Stressing the importance of further strengthening the longstanding cultural ties, the Chinese Ambassador said the Chinese Buddhist Associations will continue to help temples and set up internationally important Theravada Buddhist Centre in Sri Lanka. The Prime Minster agreed to set up a Coordinating Committee to expeditiously implement these proposals.
On Wednesday (June 28) New Zealand High Commissioner Michael Appleton called on Premier Gunawardena to discuss bilateral relations, economic challenges, debt restructuring, trade and investment, electoral reforms and regional issues. The Prime Minister called for an increase in bilateral economic cooperation between New Zealand and Sri Lanka and also enhanced support under the Colombo Plan.
The New Zealand envoy said that his country is also planning to provide expertise for Sri Lanka’s public sector reforms program. A team headed by the former Public Service Commissioner of New Zealand would come to Sri Lanka shortly to assist with this process.
The Prime Minister also asked the High Commissioner to share New Zealand’s experience in solving the land-holding issue of indigenous people as Sri Lanka plans to amend the outdated Lands Ordinance.
During the visit of Foreign Minister Ali Sabry to Beijing, China announced additional financial support to the Colombo Port City project. The Port City is expected to attract investments from the US, Europe, India, Saudi Arabia and many others in addition to the growing regional power of China.
These can be ensured by Sri Lanka’s strict adherence to the neutral foreign policy. Many experts pointed out that it is difficult to expect all States to respect Lanka’s neutrality as there will be attempts to influence Sri Lanka because of its unique strategic location as an important link in the international shipping route. Hence, it is essential to keep those pressures at bay by not taking sides in global or regional power games.
Sri Lanka’s decision to enact a compulsory minimum rate policy for Colombo hotels has led to a row between hoteliers and travel agents in the country.
Set for implementation from August 1 this year, the policy requires five-star hotels to charge at least US$130 per room, excluding taxes; four-star at least US$100 and three-star at least US$80.
Hoteliers and travel agents in Sri Lanka are in conflict over the new pricing policy for Colombo hotels
Travel agents are inflamed, saying that the policy is a poor decision as tourism is still slowly recovering from multiple crises.
Nishad Wijetunga, president of the Sri Lanka Association of Inbound Tour Operators (SLAITO), told reporters on June 27 that the move would result in Sri Lanka being portrayed as an expensive destination and discourage event planners from choosing the country for their meetings.
He added that Sri Lanka’s minimum rates were higher than the average room rates for hotels in competing destinations. Citing examples, he said Thailand’s average rate for five-star hotels was US$80 including taxes; Vietnam was US$105; Delhi US$95; Malaysia US$80.
He expects the policy to fail, and emphasised that market forces should determine prices.
A similar minimum rate policy was in force in 2009, and was later discontinued as hotels took to undercutting one another.
The government has defended the new policy. Tourism minister Harin Fernando said at a media conference on June 26 that the current room rates were not sustainable for hotels.
Hotels Association of Sri Lanka’s president, M Shanthikumar, has hailed the viability of the policy, saying that it would help improve the financial health of city hotels, save jobs, and boost industry earnings.
Hotels battling a string of crises in the country, including the pandemic, have been given a moratorium on loan repayments.
Shanthikumar added that the policy was necessary for Sri Lanka to overcome perceptions that Colombo was a cheap destination.
In response, SLAITO vice president Nalin Jayasundera said it was unfair to make tourists bear the financial burden of hoteliers.
stress the importance of civilian control over the military and the war. If this is so with the generals, then where do mercenaries stand when it comes to decisions on war?
