RAJAN MENON / TOMDISPATCH Courtesy Truthdig.com

What Climate Change Should Have Taught Us

Washington’s vaunted rules-based international order” has undergone a stress test following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and here’s the news so far: it hasn’t held up well. In fact, the disparate reactions to Vladimir Putin’s war have only highlighted stark global divisions, which reflect the unequal distribution of wealth and power. Such divisions have made it even harder for a multitude of sovereign states to find the minimal common ground needed to tackle the biggest global problems, especially climate change.

In fact, it’s now reasonable to ask whether an international community connected by a consensus of norms and rules, and capable of acting in concert against the direst threats to humankind, exists. Sadly, if the responses to the war in Ukraine are the standard by which we’re judging, things don’t look good.

The Myth of Universality

After Russia invaded, the United States and its allies rushed to punish it with a barrage of economic sanctions. They also sought to mobilize a global outcry by charging Putin with trashing what President Biden’s top foreign policy officials like to call the rules-based international order. Their effort has, at best, had minimal success.

Yes, there was that lopsided vote against Russia in the United Nations General Assembly, the March 2nd resolution on the invasion sponsored by 90 countries. One hundred and forty-one nations voted for it and only five against, while 35 abstained. Beyond that, in the global south” at least, the response to Moscow’s assault has been tepid at best. None of the key countries there — Brazil, India, Indonesia, and South Africa, to mention four — even issued official statements castigating Russia. Some, including India and South Africa, along with 16 other African countries (and don’t forget China though it may not count as part of the global south), simply abstained from that U.N. resolution. And while Brazil, like Indonesia, voted yes, it also condemned indiscriminate sanctions” against Russia. 

None of those countries joined the United States and most of the rest of NATO in imposing sanctions on Russia, not even Turkey, a member of that alliance. In fact, Turkey, which last year imported 60 billion cubic meters of natural gas from Russia, has only further increased energy cooperation with Moscow, including raising its purchases of Russian oil to 200,000 barrels per day — more than twice what it bought in 2021. India, too, ramped up oil purchases from Russia, taking advantage of discounted prices from a Moscow squeezed by U.S. and NATO sanctions. Keep in mind that, before the war, Russia had accounted for just 1% of Indian oil imports. By early October, that number had reached 21%. Worse yet, India’s purchases of Russian coal — which emits far more carbon dioxide into the air than oil and natural gas — may increase to 40 million tons by 2035, five times the current amount.

Despite the risk of facing potential U.S. sanctions thanks to the Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act (CAATSA), India also stuck by its earlier decision to buy Russia’s most advanced air-defense system, the S-400. The Biden administration eventually threaded that needle by arranging a waiver for India, in part because it’s seen as a major future partner against China with which Washington has become increasingly preoccupied (as witnessed by the new National Security Strategy). The prime concern of the Indian leadership, however, has been to preserve its close ties with Russia, war or no war, given its fear of a growing alignment between that country and China, which India sees as its main adversary.

Many other countries simply preferred not to get sucked into a confrontation between Russia and the West.

What’s more, since the invasion, China’s average monthly trade with Russia has surged by nearly two-thirds, Turkey’s has nearly doubled, and India’s has risen more than threefold, while Russian exports to Brazil have nearly doubled as well. This failure of much of the world to heed Washington’s clarion call to stand up for universal norms stems partly from pique at what’s seen as the West’s presumptuousness. On March 1st, when 20 countries, a number from the European Union, wrote Pakistan’s then-prime minister Imran Khan (who visited Putin soon after the war began), imploring him to support an upcoming General Assembly resolution censuring Russia, he all too typically replied: What do you think of us? Are we your slaves… [Do you take for granted] that whatever you say we will do?” Had such a letter, he asked, been sent to India? 

Similarly, Celso Amorim, who served as Brazil’s foreign minister for seven years during the presidency of Luis Inacio Lula” de Silva (who will soon reclaim his former job), declared that condemning Russia would amount to obeying Washington’s diktat. For his part, Lula claimed Joe Biden and Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky were partly to blame for the war. They hadn’t worked hard enough to avert it, he opined, by negotiating with Putin. South African President Cyril Ramaphosa blamed Putin’s actions on the way NATO had, since the collapse of the Soviet Union, provocatively expanded toward Russia’s border.

Many other countries simply preferred not to get sucked into a confrontation between Russia and the West. As they saw it, their chances of changing Putin’s mind were nil, given their lack of leverage, so why incur his displeasure? (After all, what was the West offering that might make choosing sides more palatable?) Besides, given their immediate daily struggles with energy prices, debt, food security, poverty, and climate change, a war in Europe seemed a distant affair, a distinctly secondary concern. Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro typically suggested that he wasn’t about to join the sanctions regime because his country’s agriculture depended on imported Russian fertilizer.

Leaders in the global south were also struck by the contrast between the West’s urgency over Ukraine and its lack of similar fervor when it came to problems in their part of the world. There was, for instance, much commentary about the generosity and speed with which countries like Poland and Hungary (as well as the United States) embraced Ukrainian refugees, having largely shut the door on refugees from Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria. In June, while not mentioning that particular example, India’s foreign minister, Subrahmanyam Jaishankar, highlighted such sentiments when, in response to a question about the European Union’s efforts to push his country to get tougher on Russia, he remarked that Europe has to grow out of the mindset that [its] problems are the world’s problem, but the world’s problems are not Europe’s problem.” Given how singularly silent” European countries had been on many things which were happening, for example in Asia,” he added, you could ask why anybody in Asia would trust Europe on anything at all?”  

The West’s less-than-urgent response to two other problems aggravated by the Ukraine crisis that hit the world’s poor countries especially hard bore out Jaishankar’s point of view. The first was soaring food prices sure to worsen malnutrition, if not famine, in the global south. Already in May, the World Food Program warned that 47 million additional people (more than Ukraine’s total population) were going to face acute food insecurity” thanks to a potential reduction in food exports from both Russia and Ukraine — and that was on top of the 193 million people in 53 countries who had already been in that predicament (or worse) in 2021.

A July deal brokered between Ukraine and Russia by the U.N. and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan did, in fact, ensure the resumption of food exports from both countries (though Russia briefly withdrew from it as October ended). Still, only a fifth of the added supply went to low-income and poor countries. While global food prices have fallen for six months straight now, another crisis cannot be ruled out as long as the war in Ukraine drags on.

The second problem was an increase in the cost of both borrowing money and of debt repayments following interest rate hikes by Western central banks seeking to tamp down inflation stoked by a war-induced spike in fuel prices. On average, interest rates in the poorest countries jumped by 5.7% — about twice as much as in the U.S. — increasing the cost of their further borrowing by 10% to 46%.

A more fundamental reason much of the global south wasn’t in a hurry to pillory Russia is that the West has repeatedly defenestrated the very values it declares to be universal. In 1999, for instance, NATO intervened in Kosovo, following Serbia’s repression of the Kosovars, even though it was not authorized to do so, as required, by a U.N. Security Council resolution (which China and Russia would have vetoed). The Security Council did approve the U.S. and European intervention in Libya in 2011 to protect civilians from the security forces of that country’s autocrat, Muammar Gadhafi. That campaign, however, quickly turned into one aimed at toppling his government by assisting the armed opposition and so would be widely criticized in the global south for creating ongoing chaos in that country. After 9/11, the United States offered classically contorted legal explanations for the way the Central Intelligence Agency violated the Convention Against Torture and the four 1949 Geneva Conventions in the name of wiping out terrorism.

Universal human rights, of course, occupy a prominent place in Washington’s narratives about that rules-based world order it so regularly promotes but in practice frequently ignores, notably in this century in the Middle East. Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine was aimed at regime change against a country that posed no direct threat to Russia and therefore was indeed a violation of the U.N. Charter; but so, too, was the 2003 American invasion of Iraq, something few in the global south have forgotten.

The War and Climate Change

Worse yet, the divisions Vladimir Putin’s invasion has highlighted have only made it more difficult to take the necessary bold steps to combat the greatest danger all of us face on this planet: climate change. Even before the war, there was no consensus on who bore the most responsibility for the problem, who should make the biggest cuts in greenhouse gas emissions, or who should provide funds to countries that simply can’t afford the costs involved in shifting to green energy. Perhaps the only thing on which everyone agrees in this moment of global stress is that not enough has been done to meet the 2015 Paris climate accord target of ideally limiting the increase in global warming to 1.5 degrees Centigrade. That’s a valid conclusion. According to a U.N. report published this month, the planet’s warming will reach 2.4 degrees Centigrade by 2100. This is where things stood as the 2022 United Nations Climate Change Conference kicked off this month in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt.

As a start, the $100 billion per year that richer countries pledged to poor ones in 2009 to help move them away from hydrocarbon-based energy hasn’t been met in any year so far and recent disbursements, minimal as they have been, were largely in the form of loans, not grants. The resources the West will now have to spend just to cover Ukraine’s non-military needs for 2023 — $55 billion in budgetary assistance and infrastructure repairs alone, according to President Volodymyr Zelensky — plus soaring inflation and slower growth in Western economies thanks to the war make it doubtful that green commitments to poor countries will be fulfilled in the years to come. (Never mind the pledge, in advance of the November 2021 COP26 United Nations Climate Change Conference, that the $100 billion goal would be met in 2023.)

The Ukraine war has had direct effects on climate change that will continue even after the fighting ends.

In the end, the surge in energy costs created by the war, in part because Russia’s natural gas supplies to Europe have been slashed, could prove the shot in the arm needed for some of the biggest emitters of carbon dioxide and methane to move more quickly toward wind and solar power. That seems especially possible because the price of clean energy technologies has declined so sharply in recent years. The cost of photovoltaic cells for solar power has, for instance, fallen by nearly 90% in the past decade; the cost for lithium-ion batteries, needed for rechargeable electric vehicles, by the same amount during the last 20 years. Optimism about a quicker greening of the planet, now a common refrain, could prove valid in the long run. However, when it comes to progress on climate change, the immediate implications of the war aren’t encouraging.

According to the International Energy Agency, if the Paris Agreement’s target for limiting global warming and its goal of net zero” in global emissions by 2050 are to prove feasible, the building of additional fossil-fuel infrastructure must cease immediately. And that’s hardly what’s been happening since the war in Ukraine began. Instead, there has been what one expert calls a gold rush to new fossil fuel infrastructure.” Following the drastic cuts in Russian gas exports to Europe, new liquefied natural gas (LNG) facilities — more than 20 of them, worth billions of dollars — have either been planned or put on a fast track in Canada, Germany, Greece, Italy, and the Netherlands. The Group of Seven may even reverse its decision last May to stop public investment in overseas fossil-fuel projects by the end of this year, while its plan to decarbonize” the energy sectors of member countries by 2035 may also fall by the wayside.

In June, Germany, desperate to replace that Russian natural gas, announced that mothballed coal-fired power plants, the dirtiest of greenhouse-gas producers, would be brought back online. The Federation of German Industry, which opposed shutting them down well before the war started, has indicated that it’s already switching to coal so that natural gas storage tanks can be filled before the winter cold sets in. India, too, has responded to higher energy prices with plans to boost coal production by almost 56 gigawatts through 2032, a 25% increase. Britain has scrapped its decision to prohibit, on environmental grounds, the development of the Jackdaw natural gas field in the North Sea and has already signed new contracts with Shell and other fossil-fuel companies. European countries have concluded several deals for LNG purchases, including with Azerbaijan, Egypt, Israel, the United States, and Qatar (which has demanded 20-year contracts). Then there’s Russia’s response to high energy prices, including a huge Arctic drilling project aimed at adding 100 million tons of oil a year to the global supply by 2035.

U.N. Secretary-General António Gutteres characterized this dash toward yet more hydrocarbon energy use as madness.” Using a phrase long reserved for nuclear war, he suggested that such an unceasing addiction to fossil fuels could end in mutually assured destruction.” He has a point: the U.N. Environment Program’s 2022 Emissions Gap Report” released last month concluded that, in light of the emissions targets of so many states, Earth’s warming in the post-Industrial Revolution era could be in the range of 2.1 to 2.9 degrees Celsius by 2100. That’s nowhere near the Paris Agreement’s more ambitious benchmark of 1.5 degrees on a planet where the average temperature has already risen by 1.2 degrees.

As the Germany-based Perspectives on Climate Group details in a recent study, the Ukraine war has also had direct effects on climate change that will continue even after the fighting ends. As a start, the Paris Agreement doesn’t require countries to report emissions produced by their armed forces, but the war in Ukraine, likely to be a long-drawn-out affair, has already contributed to military carbon emissions in a big way, thanks to fossil-fuel-powered tanks, aircraft, and so much else. Even the rubble created by the bombardment of cities has released more carbon dioxide. So will Ukraine’s post-war reconstruction, which its prime minister estimated last month will cost close to $750 billion. And that may be an underestimate considering that the Russian army has taken its wrecking ball (or perhaps wrecking drones, missiles, and artillery) to everything from power plants and waterworks to schools, hospitals, and apartment buildings.

What International Community?

Leaders regularly implore the international community” to act in various ways. If such appeals are to be more than verbiage, however, compelling evidence is needed that 195 countries share basic principles of some sort on climate change — that the world is more than the sum of its parts. Evidence is also needed that the most powerful countries on this planet can set aside their short-term interests long enough to act in a concerted fashion and decisively when faced with planet-threatening problems like climate change. The war in Ukraine offers no such evidence. For all the talk of a new dawn that followed the end of the Cold War, we seem stuck in our old ways — just when they need to change more than ever.

Courtesy The Hindu BusinessLine

Minister of Aviation Nimal Siripala de Silva and Minister of Agriculture Mahinda Amaraweera along with three other junior ministers in the government of President Ranil Wickremesinghe were sacked

At least two front-line ministers in the Sri Lankan government have been suspended by the Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP) for breach of party discipline, it was announced on Tuesday.

They have been suspended temporarily until they offer explanations,” Dayasiri Jayasekera, the party general secretary, told reporters.

Minister of Aviation Nimal Siripala de Silva and Minister of Agriculture Mahinda Amaraweera along with three other junior ministers in the government of President Ranil Wickremesinghe were sacked by the SLFP’s central committee which met last night.

The party held that they had violated the central committee’s decision not to be part of the government.

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The suspensions came ahead of the parliamentary approval vote of budget 2023 which is due to be unveiled later this evening.

However, the party suspensions do not mean the two ministers are sacked from the cabinet of Wickremesinghe.

Economic reforms

Wickremesinghe, who is also the minister of finance, has proposed tax reforms to raise government revenue as part of his measures to overcome the current economic crisis due to the shortage of foreign exchange in the island nation.

The economic crisis led to wide-scale protests across the country, leading to the resignation of the then president Gotabaya Rajapaksa.

Wickremesinghe, who took over in the middle of the crisis, promised economic reforms to bring the country back on the growth track.

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Ranil presents crucial budget aimed at recovery and reform of Sri Lanka economy

. The World Bank has estimated that Sri Lanka’s economy will contract by 9.2% this year

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His proposals to privatise some of the state business ventures have caused heartburn among parliamentarians alleging that Wickremesinghe had even targeted Sri Lanka Telecom, which is making profits.

Some have vowed to oppose the privatisation move by voting against the budget.

The SLFP sacking of its seniors has added significance as among those shown out is the former leader of the SLFP, Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga, who was the president of the country between 1994 and 2005.

Kumaratunga was until Monday a patron of the party formed by her father SWRD Bandaranaike.

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The project will be executed through a 35 year-long BOT contract

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by Arundathie Abeysinghe Courtesy PIME Asia News

Some 300 Sri Lankans are rescued off Vietnam after trying to sail on a fishing boat from Myanmar to Canada. A syndicate tries to smuggle Sri Lankan women into Oman and the United Arab Emirates; meanwhile, police smash a group demanding 1.5 million rupees for a job in Romania.

Colombo (AsiaNews) – The economic crisis that has brought Sri Lanka to its knees is fuelling human trafficking. Police have made some arrests following recent operations.

In Negombo trafficking in humans begun in 2010 when the first of 12 boats left for Australia but only one made it over the following three years, this according to Ravindu Fernando who spoke to AsiaNews.

Since last June, the economic crisis is driving more and more people to seek employment abroad, fuelling the illegal traffic in humans again, with most people leaving convinced that they will not go back because of the country’s current situation.

“For illegal traffickers, human smuggling is a lucrative trade,” Fernando explained. These smugglers do not pay attention to the perils faced by their customers during the journey.”

A senior government official told AsiaNews that, although an island-wide crackdown has been launched, it is difficult to nab the traffickers as the kingpins who have arranged the journeys and profited from them operate mostly in the shadow, their activities concealed by sub-agents, skippers, and crew members who carry out illegal transactions for them.”

This month, after some initial resistance, local authorities in Vietnam brought ashore some 303 boat people fleeing Sri Lanka. The group included some 200 men, plus women and children.

A Japanese vessel rescued them near the Spratly Islands when the fishing boat they were sailing in got into trouble. Eventually, they were handed over to the Vietnamese Navy.

The fishing boat had left Myanmar, a country that has sadly become a hub for human trafficking, bound for Canada.

Once taken to Vietnam, the people on board the ship refused to return to Sri Lanka and asked the Vietnamese authorities to provide them with asylum, either in Southeast Asia or in another country.

It is unclear whether all 303 Sri Lankans travelled together or in groups to Myanmar or how they got to Myanmar,” a senior Sri Lankan Navy officer told AsiaNews. Before they were rescued on 6 November, their boat stalled for nearly 40 hours, unable to manoeuvre and was drifting freely.”

Recently, the authorities smashed another human trafficking ring that illegally shipped Sri Lankan women to Middle Eastern countries like Oman and the United Arab Emirates.

The main suspect and a local broker were arrested and indicted, while a woman voluntarily turned herself in to the Crime Investigation Department for her alleged involvement in the racket.

Sources in the Sri Lanka Bureau of Foreign Employment (SLBFE) said that four people, including a foreign national, were arrested at a hotel in Badulla on Sunday following a tip-off.

The people in question were interviewing candidates for a job in Romania with each asked to pay 1.5 million rupees (just over IS$ 4,000) for this opportunity.

When SLBFE officials along with police officers raided the site, 25 people had already joined the employment scheme. The people who organised the recruitment drive were arrested.

Courtesy Financial Express

President Ranil Wickremesinghe, who is also the finance minister, had presented the budget on November 14 featuring tax reforms to raise government revenue

Sri Lanka‘s Parliament on Tuesday approved the 2023 budget, with 121 lawmakers voting for and 84 opposing it in the 225-member House.

President Ranil Wickremesinghe, who is also the finance minister, had presented the budget on November 14 featuring tax reforms to raise government revenue.

On Tuesday, second reading of the budget was approved by a majority of 37 votes in Parliament with 121 members voting in favour while 84 voted against.

Courtesy Hiru News

Former Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa says that everyone should support the budget in accordance with the amendments.

He mentioned this while making a special statement in Parliament today (22).<br /><br />Meanwhile, he said that he never left the people and ran away.

“The President as the Minister of Finance indicated in the budget that he will create a new economy. To create such an economy, there are many long-term and short-term activities that we need to do. We must understand all this with the realities of the global economic and political process. Only if we move in such a strategic plan we can create a positive future, so it is important that we all support it subject to the amendments

Courtesy The Daily Mirror

An international force is behind Sri Lanka’s economy and this force is still active, Former Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa told Parliament today.

Speaking during the second reading debate in the House, the local agents of these forces are still active.

It was them who sponsored protests that are taking place in the nation. Their action affects the tourism sector which has begun to recover now,” the former PM said.

Some are questioning the defence allocation. I would like to tell them that a country’s defence is more important than anything else. We will not allow the nation’s security to be at stake,” he added.

The budget 2023 is a giant leap to stabilize the economy though it does not fulfil aspirations of some sectors. The emphasis made on the youth in the budget is welcome. Loss making state enterprises should be restructured. However we are of the view that profit making enterprises should be safeguarded. We are against selling off national assets to the foreign forces,” he also said.

One has to remember that the Yahapalana government had gone for borrowings which the country cannot resist. We have not neglected social welfare even during difficult time. We have managed our finances and ensured social welfare in the past. We shall do the same in the future as well,” he stressed. (Yohan Perera and Ajith Siriwardana)

Courtesy Adaderana

The government of Myanmar donated a consignment of urgently required essential medicines and medical supplies worth over USD 1.48 Million to Sri Lanka, on Monday (Nov. 21).

The consignment was officially handed over to the Ambassador of Sri Lanka to Myanmar, Janaka Bandara, by the Union Health Minister of Myanmar Dr. Thet Khaing Win, in a ceremony held at the Department of Medical Research in Yangon.

Accepting the consignment, Ambassador Janaka Bandara extended his gratitude and sincere thanks to the government and the people of Myanmar, for the generous gesture of donating medicines and medical supplies to the people of Sri Lanka, in this difficult hour.

The State Prime Minister of Myanmar Senior General, Min Aung Hlaing has granted this donation in response to a request made by Ambassador Janaka Bandara at his Credential Ceremony on 07 June 2022.

The Embassy of Sri Lanka in Yangon says it will make arrangements to dispatch this consignment of medicines to Sri Lanka, as the earliest possible.

Courtesy Adaderana

Acting Minister of Mass Media, Shantha Bandara says that steps will be taken to initiate disciplinary action against teachers who had attended schools dressed in casual attire.

Responding to a question during the Cabinet press briefing today (Nov. 22), he emphasized that the Ministry of Education must take disciplinary action in this regard since the culture, morals and the existence of the school system should not be allowed to be changed.

I hope that the Educational Minister will definitely take necessary actions”, he added.

Further, the Acting Minister mentioned that the matter will be taken up for discussion in the near future.

Commenting on the matter, Minister of Justice Wijeyadasa Rajapakshe stressed that the trade union leaders who are shouting in the agitations, should learn the country’s culture first, and then engage in trade union activities.

Diverse forces are acting to destroy the culture of the country. It is very easy to destroy a country through cultural confusion”, he charged.

Courtesy Adaderana

The Cabinet of Ministers has green-lighted the Bill prepared by the legal draftsman to set expenditure limits on election candidates for their campaigns.

In a statement, the Government Information Department stated that the relevant Bill has received the Attorney General’s clearance.

The proposal tabled by the Minister of Justice, Prison Affairs and Constitutional Reforms, Dr. Wijeyadasa Rajapakshe to publish the said Bill in the government gazette has received the approval of the Cabinet of Ministers.

Subsequently, it will be presented to the parliament for its approval.

According to Minister Rajapakshe, the expenditure cap for election candidates will be determined by the Election Commission.

The candidates can lose their parliamentary membership if they exceed this limit, Minister Wijeyadasa said further, addressing the media briefing to announce Cabinet decisions.

KAMALIKA PIERIS

When Ralph Pieris told me ‘I was one of those who persuaded Sarachchandra to show Maname at Lionel Wendt theatre’ I sniggered a little. I knew the Lionel Wendt audience of the 1950s. It was culturally insensitive, utterly ignorant, and wanting only to be seen at a ‘western’ cultural event. Why present Maname there. My own preference for seeing Sinhala plays in Colombo was Lumbini or YMBA, never Lionel Wendt.

But I recently read something that changed my mind. Lionel Wendt Memorial Fund issued a document to celebrate fifty years of performances at Lionel Wendt Theatre, titled Applause at the Wendt” (2003). This document gives great prominence to Maname, starting from the front flap of the cover and going on till the 1960s section ended.

The front flap said that the Lionel Wendt theatre opened in 1953 with Gorky’s Lower Depths” directed by Jubal. The next sentence said, Professor Ediriweera Sarachchandra’s Maname was produced at the Lionel Wendt Theatre in 1956, breaking new ground.”  I realized then that the Lionel Wendt Centre was very proud of the fact that it had hosted Maname.

The Foreword” on page ix said ‘The Lionel Wendt Memorial Art Centre has been the site of many revolutions, [including] the meeting of East and West when Sinhala language theatre found acceptance at the Wendt.’ The author is talking about Maname.

The book continues to talk about Maname and Sinhala theatre in the main text. There are 28 essays in the book on the various performances held at the Lionel Wendt theatre and of these, the greatest amount of space is given to Sinhala theatre. There are nearly thirty pages on Sinhala performances at the Wendt.

 Maname gets ten pages (p 23-33) with four essays, titled Maname the masterpiece”, Maname the super drama”, The finest thing on the Sinhala stage”, and ‘In Sinhala at the Wendt”, which is about a lady who wanted to send her servant to see the play. They were written by Shyamon Jayasinghe, Chandraratne Manawasinghe, Regi Siriwardene and DC Ranatunga.

This sequence was followed by two more essays, ( p 34-52) by Henry Jayasena ‘Theatre without barriers’ and    DC Ranatunga ‘Sinhala theatre’s golden era’ . There were a record 270 Sinhala plays produced by about 200 dramatists in the 1960s, he said.

 In his essay, Shyamon Jayasinghe said that with Maname the Wendt formally opened for indigenous drama.  Shyamon added that in 1956, there was a cultural revolution in Sri Lanka. Change was demanded by the intelligentsia and the burgeoning indigenous middle class. Maname was a product of this new creative spirit.  Maname was also something of a movement, said Shyamon. The actors had wanted to ‘attack the   bastion of the westernized Kurunduwatte bourgeoisie with their play’. This explains the ‘missionary ‘motive for the choice of venue, concluded Shyamon.

 Others observed that those who pushed for the Wendt as a venue probably felt that the local westernized elite needed a substitute for its half baked English theatre.  In their own interest, they should be exposed to high quality local theatre instead. Sarachchandra   also thought so. He had invited Martin Wickremasinghe to an early rehearsal and Wickremasinghe had written about the play under the title an intensified folk play’ for Daily News.

Sarachchandra had  asked the undergrad performers  also to write to the news papers on Maname. This is not as absurd as it sounds. Most, if not all of the performers would have offered Sinhala as a subject for the degree and would have been able to write effectively on the subject of Sinhala theatre. HL had written a piece on the potential of the folk play for contemporary national theatre but Daily News had not published it, he said.

DC Ranatunga noted that Maname was the start of Sinhala theater at the Wendt. This was the start, he said.  With Maname, Sinhala theatre had made its way to the Wendt. DC Ranatunga drew attention to comments made by Regi Siriwardene in the 1959 State Drama Festival souvenir. In that essay, Regi had   said Maname broke down the barriers of taste and culture which had separated the English educated and Sinhala educated urban and provincial audiences.

Maname demonstrated that the popular interest in song and dance could be reconciled with the demands made by the cultivated theatergoer. Sinhala theater is no longer stagnant, new creations are going on and an audience is being built up which is capable of responding to the original experiment, concluded Regi.

Maname at the Wendt had other positive results. After Maname, the Lionel Wendt theater became accessible to the Sinhala theatergoer. Earlier, there was a forbidding aura about the Wendt, which kept Sinhala theater people away. Perhaps it was the location in Colombo 7.  Also the price of the ticket which was Rs 2,  was too much for clerks like us, said Henry Jayasena.

The Sinhala dramatists were first drawn to the Wendt to see Maname, said Henry Jayasena. We four, Gunasena Galappatty, Dayananda Gunawardena, Sugathapala de Silva and myself were there   on all four nights to see Maname, said Henry Jayasena. The performance of Maname for four nights at the Wendt was a breakthrough, said Jayasena.

 After Maname the Wendt was not longer a strange place for Sinhala theatergoer.  We started to book the Wendt for our plays, after that. Lumbini was still our main location, but it was a school hall, it was hot and the audience noisy.  The Wendt had the atmosphere of strict theatre and we liked it. Wendt was the only building that had been designed as a theatre and it was comfortable. Actually, this type of closed theatre was developed in the west because of the cold climate, but the local dramatists liked it.

Sinhala dramatists and theatergoers no longer felt strange at the Wendt, agreed Ranatunga. Following the usual opening turn at the Lumbini or YMBA in Borella, they would bring their play to the  Wendt where   they found a new audience. Henry Jayasena preferred to open at Lumbini but always brought his creations to the Wendt. They come because of the acoustics and also because it is much more intimate, concluded Ranatunga.

 The Lionel Wendt Memorial Theatre was initially associated with western culture because that was what was shown there first.  But the two personalities responsible for the Theatre, Lionel Wendt and Harold Pieris were not that obsessed with our western culture. They had seen western culture in situ, in London in its authentic form and had little patience with its imitation in Ceylon.

In Ceylon, Lionel Wendt and Harold Pieris supported traditional culture and contemporary talent. Harold Pieris (1905 -1988) who was the Chairman of the Wendt complex in  1956, was receptive to Maname because he was interested in traditional culture. His specialty has been Sanskrit, but he has also known as classical Sinhala.

 Harold Pieris had studied at Cambridge,   had gone to  Berlin in 1932 to study Sanskrit and Pali, then back to Cambridge in 1934 to do his Masters in Sanskrit.   He was a dayake at Gotami Vihare, Colombo and had invited his brother-in-law, George Keyt to do the murals there. Harold Pieris and Len Van Geyzel contributed 13 English translations from classical Sinhala poetry to the Anthology of Sinhalese Literature edited by Reynolds and published by Unesco (1970).  

When Sarachchandra vacillated about  Colombo, Harold Pieris sent a positive response.  He was determined to show Maname at the Wendt. He was not going to let this chance go.  When Sarachchandra announced that they simply could not afford the Wendt, Harold Pieris offered the full run of four days, free of charge, an offer Maname could not refuse.

Lionel Wendt(1900-1944)  would have been pleased that Maname was shown at his theatre. The intelligentsia knows Lionel Wendt as a skilled exponent of ‘western’ culture, notably photography, western music, and the 43 Group. But he was also interested in the indigenous culture of the time, specifically dance and music.

He admired Udarata dance, gave it financial support, and made stunning photographs of the leading dancers and drummers, Gunaya, Jayana, and Suramba. He included the Gajaga vannama in Song of Ceylon,  and took the dancer Ukkuwa and the drummer Suramba to London for the soundtrack.

I  vaguely recall seeing at an exhibition, a concert programme  of a performance by Lionel Wendt, which featured Sunil Santa,(sic) somewhere near the interval. I think   this was dated 1930s. I am unable to locate this item now but I am tentatively including  this here  because  Wendt    knew the local music scene. He   knew Deva Suriya Sena and included him in at least one concert.  It is quite possible  that Wendt  would have   also   met  Sunil Santa.  Sunil Santa’s  musical ability was well known before he went to India.

The seminal contribution of the University of Ceylon, Peradeniya in developing Sinhala theatre  in the 1950s and early 1960s  has not been  sufficiently recognized. The Sarachchandra plays in Peradeniya were not amateur theatricals.  Undergraduates were not performing plays for the casual enjoyment of a university  audience. Sinhala theatre at Peradeniya was a serious activity with a national objective and the result was very positive.

The University of Ceylon, Peradeniya produced a series of Sarachchandra plays which   became part of the national repertoire of Sinhala theatre. Maname  (1956) was followed  by Kada valalu,(1958)  Elova gihin melova awa,(1959) Vella vahum (1960) and Sinhabahu (1962).  Except for Maname,  the rest were   first performed at Peradeniya.

In all the plays , except Vella Vahum,[1]  the actors were Peradeniya undergrads.  Two of them went to become influential theatre personalities, Trilicia Gunawardene and Somalatha Subusinghe.    Malini Ranasinghe sang for decades in Sinhabahu.

At Peradeniya there arose the happy coincidence of a brilliant dramatist, Sarachchandra,   on the permanent staff,   supported by clumps of  willing undergraduates,  arriving batch after batch from 1955 to 1961,  eager to  participate in his plays. They   were available because University of Ceylon was the only university at the time,  and  all undergraduates, talented or otherwise,  ended up there.  Today they will be scattered in numerous universities.

Sarachchandra was also able to get support from those members of the academic staff who understood what he was trying to do, were sympathetic and possessed the skills the plays needed. The University administration allowed the use of university premises for rehearsals.  Permission would have been needed for any activity taking place within the university, and play rehearsals would have been readily allowed. No university will refuse to support a play.

The first of this cluster of Peradeniya plays was Maname.’ Maname’ was uncharted territory and its creation was a collective effort observed H.L.Seneviratne.  If so, then Peradeniya is entitled to some credit for Maname.

My view is that long before Maname appeared at Wendt in Colombo Peradeniya would have known that it had produced a play of national stature. It is the Arts faculty at Peradeniya which would have seen the significance of Maname first, not the audience at Wendt. The Arts Faculty had the competence to evaluate Maname .

As the Maname rehearsals progressed, the indications were that the play was going to be a success, said HL Seneviratne. The poetic excellence of the play, the allure of the songs, the music, the visual impact, the excellence of the acting, and the perfection of its artistic unity, could be seen at the later rehearsals, especially the final dress rehearsal. 

This evaluation would have come from those watching, certainly not those performing, nor from those working backstage. Those two groups would have been too close to the play to judge it. Also, they were on stage, or backstage, not in the audience.

I am making these comments from my own experience of watching Sinhabahu. Like everybody else in Peradeniya at the time, I too attended the first performance of Sinhabahu.  To me, it looked like a dress rehearsal. Some actors looked scared and I thought at least one would fall off the circular stage.

 But when I went for lectures the next morning, I found the ‘Block’ buzzing with admiration. They all said Sinhabahu was absolutely marvelous.   The first positive response therefore was from within the University.  I think that it would have been the same for Maname.

Maname was a pioneer venture. That is probably why Peradeniya allowed it to open in Colombo and not Peradeniya. When it came to Sinhabahu, Peradeniya wanted the honor of presenting it first. Sinhabahu first appeared at Peradeniya and then at Kandy. It went to Colombo much later.

Maname continued to be a hit because, like most successful plays, it appealed simultaneously at the level of high culture and also popular culture. For high culture, Maname offered a jataka story in refined language, with chorus and Potegura. The play contained conflict, suspense, and resolution.   For those who wanted entertainment, Maname dished out the formula, there was music, song, dance, romance, and betrayal. The song Premayen mana ranjita” came early on in the play, and the audience was hooked. ( To be Continued)

[1] Vella vehum was written for the minor staff of the university, at their request. I saw it at  St Anthony’s College Hall and liked it. Vella Vahum showed that the minor staff of the University of Ceylon were also talented.

තිස්ස ගුණතිලක 

මෙම ලිපිය ඊයේ (2022 නොවැම්බර් 20වනදා) lankaweb හි පලවූ කාලාම සූත්‍රය තුල ප්‍රකටවන නාම-රෑප පරිච්ඡේදය” සමග සබදී.

බුදුන්ගේ දහම ලොවේ සැමට පොදුවේ අදාල විය යුතුය. Universally applicable to all mankind. තතාගතයන් වහන්සේ ලොවේ එක් ජන කොටසක් සදහා පමනක් දේශනා කල දහමක් නැත. ජාති භාෂා ආගම් දේශසීමා ආදියෙන් බෙදී වෙන්වී පවතින ලොවකට පොදුවේ ගැලපෙන දර්ශනයක් ඉදිරිපත්කල පලමු හා එකම තැනැත්තා බුදුන්වහන්සේමයි. විවිධ දෘශ්ඨි කෝණයන්ගෙන් බුද්ධදර්ශනය දකින්නහුට ධර්මයේ ඇති මෙම විශ්වීය ස්වාභාවය (universality) හමුනොවන අතර ඹවුන් එම දහමේ ඇති සුන්දරත්වය හෝ ගැඹුර කිසිදා අවබෝධ නොකරනු ඇත.

තතාගත දහම එක්තරා ජන කොටසකට පමනක් අදාලයයි හැගෙන පරිදි විමර්ශණය හෝ දේශනා වන්නේනම් එම දේශකයා දෘශ්ඨිගත අයකුබව ඹබ දත යුතුය.

උදාහරනයක් ලෙස කාලාම සූත්‍රය තතාගතයන් වහන්සේ කාලාමයින්ට දෙසූදහමක් බවත් එය තුලින් නිදහස් චින්තනය මුල්වරට ලොවට හදුන්වාදී ඇතිබවත් සෑම දෙයක්ම පිලිගැනීමට පෙර විමන්සනය කල යුතුබවත් මේ දේශකයන් අපට කියාදෙයි. මොවුන් දෘශ්ඨිගතවී ඇතිතරම මෙයින් දත හැකිය. එක් එක් කෙනා දහම  විමන්සනය කරනාවිට හමුවන්නේ එක් එක් අයගේ මනසේ විවිධ මට්ටම්වලට (දෘශ්ඨි) අනුව ගෝචරවන දහමකි. එවැනි දේශනාවක් තතාගත දහම තුල හමුනොවේ. තතාගත දහම දුක කෙලවරකරන එකම මාර්ගයයි. (ඒකායන මග්ගෝ), සිතට සිහිය පවත්වා (සතිය) සිතේ ඇතිවන රෑපය හා අරෑපය (නාම) වෙන්වෙන්ව දැකීම පමනමයි කල යුත්තේ. මෙම ක්‍රියාවලිය හා ඒ හා සබැදි දහම පරම සත්‍යයම වන අතර එහි එක් එක් අයගේ විමන්සනයට භාජනයවිය යුතු යමක් අඩංගු නොවේ, කලයුතුවන්නේ ‘දැකීමම පමනයි’ (දස්සනේන පහාතබ්බා). නාමයක්වන වචනය (අරැපය) මෙම ක්‍රියාවලියට බාදාවක් වන ක්ලේශයක් බවත් ඉන් ඈත්වියයුතු බවත් කාලමා (කාලා-ක්ලේශ, මා- තවන) සූත්‍රය තුලින් තතාගතයන් වහන්සේ අපට කියාදෙයි. මෙයයි සත්‍ය දැකීමේ සැමටම අදාල පොදු විශ්වීය (universal) මාර්ගය. එය එක් එක් අයගේ විමර්ශණයට/දෘශ්ඨියට අනුව වෙනස් නොවන දහමකි.

සියඑම දෘශ්ඨිවලින් මිදුනුතැන ‘සම්මා දිට්ටි’යි.

සුභ පැතුම් 

තිස්ස ගුණතිලක 

2022 නොවැම්බර් මස 22 වනදා

High Commission of Sri Lanka in New Delhi

Sri Lanka proposed to set up a group of Eminent Persons with a view to helping galvanize greater political will and to create further international awareness among states on the importance of combating terrorist financing, at the recently concluded 3^rd No Money For Terror (NMFT) Ministerial Conference in New Delhi.

Sri Lanka’s High Commissioner to India Milinda Moragoda, who led the delegation of Sri Lanka to the Ministerial Conference made this proposal in his statement to the Conference. The 3^rd No Money For Terror Ministerial Conference on Counter-Terrorism Financing was held from 18-19 November 2022 in New Delhi, hosted by the Government of India.

The Conference, which was inaugurated by the Prime Minister of India Shri Narendra Modi on Friday saw the participation of delegations from ninety-three countries and multilateral organizations.

The Conference extensively discussed global trends in terrorism and terrorist financing, use of formal and informal channels of funds for terrorism, emerging technologies and terrorist financing and requisite international co-operation to address challenges in combating terrorist financing.

Delivering the country statement of Sri Lanka, High Commissioner Moragoda further stated that political will on the part of member states is the most significant component in international cooperation to address the multi-faceted challenges faced when combating terrorist financing. He said that though the objective of the Conference on No Money for Terror,” which is to sensitize the international community to the dangers of ignoring this issue, is commendable, there should be a mechanism to provide continuity to the work of the Conference.

In this context, High Commissioner Moragoda proposed that India, as the Chair of the present Conference, take the lead in creating a group of Eminent Persons selected from among the member states with a view to helping galvanize greater political will and to create further international awareness among states on the importance of combating terrorist financing.

The 1^st and 2^nd No Money For Terror Ministerial Conferences were held in Paris in 2018 and in Melbourne in 2019 respectively. The 3^rd NMFT Conference was built on the progressive agenda of an integrated approach with collective involvement initiated in the first two Conferences. 

High Commission of Sri Lanka
New Delhi

By Shamindra Ferdinando Courtesy The Island

General Secretary of the Democratic Left Front (DLF) Vasudeva Nanayakkara, MP, yesterday (20) said that the UNP had sold the urea plant at Sapugaskanda to a foreign buyer who set it up in an Arab country.Having brought the machinery as scrap iron the buyer had re-installed the machinery and today Sri Lanka procured urea from that facility, Nanayakkara said.

The veteran politician called what the UNP had done a crime by the nation. The former minister said so when The Island sought an explanation from him about his brief exchange with UNP National List MP Wajira Abeywardena on Saturday (19) during the fifth day of the 2023 Budget debate.MP Nanayakkara said that those who had sold such a valuable national asset owed the country an apology as the hapless people struggled to cope up with the ever-worsning economic-political-social crisis.

When MP Abeywardena recalled the assassination of Industries Development Minister C. V. Gooneratne about a week after he informed Parliament of an agreement Sri Lankan entered into with a US firm to produce fertiliser here, Nanayakkara asid, Who sold the urea plant as scrap iron, please tell us?”

MP Abeywardena only said that Sri Lanka had a lot of scrap iron, which had to be disposed of. The UNPer refrained from responding to MP Nanayakkara’s query.An LTTE suicide bomber killed Minister Gooneratne along with 22 others, including his wife, at Ratmalana, on June 7, 2000.

Abeywardena entered Parliament in July this year, filling the vacancy created by Ranil Wickremesinghe’s election as the President to complete the remainder of Gotabaya Rajapaksas’s five-year term.Nanayakkara alleged that Budget 2023, presented by President Wickremesinghe, in his capacity as the Finance Minister, on 14 Nov., had revealed that the latter’s strategies hadn’t changed. It was clear that the incumbent government was taking advantage of the current economic crisis and planning to dispose of many profit-making public sector ventures, the former minister in charge of water supply and drainage told The Island.

Lawmaker Nanayakkara quit the Cabinet after the then President Gotabaya Rajapaksa sacked his Cabinet colleagues Wimal Weerawansa and Udaya Gammanpila in the first week of March this year over their opposition to the sale of 40 percent shares of the Yugadanavi power plant to US-based New Fortress Energy.Responding to another query, MP Nanayakkara, who represented the Uththara Lanka Sabhagaya, said that its members wouldn’t vote for the Budget. The outfit consists of lawmakers who entered Parliament on the SLPP ticket and National List MP Ven. Athuraliye Rathana of Our Power of People Party (OPPP).

At the onset of MP Abeywardena’s speech, he dealt with a spate political assassinations and attempted assassinations, beginning with grenade attack on the UNP group meeting in Parliament, chaired by the then President J.R. Jayewardena, in August 1987. Having referred to the 2019 April Easter Sunday carnage, lawmaker Abeywardena asked whether Sri Lanka’s economy was being controlled by external elements. The former minister stressed the responsibility on the part of the Central Bank to work in accordance with the policies of the government, whether they were right or wrong.

MP Nanayakkara questioned who benefited from the sale of the urea plant.Geologist Dulip Jayawardena, involved in the examination of the Sapugaskanda site, said that the plant had been built in the early 80s by British firm Kellogg Overseas Corporation. Jayawardena said that the plant built over a period of nearly four years was capable of producing 980 tons of urea a day.

The State Fertiliser Manufacturing Corporation (SFMC) had been established as a wholly-owned Government entity, under the State Industrial Corporation Act of 1973, and was expected to meet Sri Lanka’s demand, the former official said.

Jayawardena pointed out how the powers that be deprived urea plants of raw material naphtha by exporting the same. According to him, international bids were called in 1986 and the plant was sold to an Indian company. Jayawardena claimed that the selling price of the urea plant that had been in operation from 1982 to 1985 was never disclosed.

Sugath Kulatunga

Rather than adopt export-led development and aim at a healthy balance of trade and payments and provide productive employment, all past governments resorted to devaluation and prolific borrowing as the remedy. The outcome of the multiple devaluations and IMF prescriptions has been negative as far as the trade balance is concerned. The LKR which was 8.83 in 1976 declined 15.56 to a US dollar after the 1977 devaluation and slumped to LKR 100 per dollar in 2005 and 135 to a dollar in 2015 and today it is frozen at 365 per one USD.

In 1977 before devaluation there was a positive balance of trade of 41 million US dollars which became a minus 680 $ in 1978, minus 3656 in 2007, and rocketed to 10,343$ million in 2018.

The panacea adopted to solve the trade deficit was to devalue the currency with a view to discourage imports and encourage exports. Devaluation has been a futile exercise in Sri Lanka where at the time of independence in 1948 the US dollar was only 3 rupees and now it is over 350 rupees. We continue to chase the dollar without focusing on the real problem of poor export performance. We were lulled into complacency with the increasing revenue received from the repatriation of income from foreign employment and returns from tourism. As usual, we did not realize how vulnerable they are to global conditions and unexpected health issues. When the covid hit the world and Sri Lanka both these sources dried up.

We are now in a dire strait and people are demanding to know who is responsible. Already a case is before the courts against the political leaders of the time and the Governors of the Central Bank. The culpability is not with a few individuals but with the prevailing system in making crucial decisions on monetary and fiscal policy. In the blame game of looking for the culprits of the present economic crisis, there are a few parties that are left out.

The Central Bank is considered the repository of knowledge in economics in the country. It is staffed with the cream of the intelligentsia of SL who are well-trained and well-paid. This august body is responsible for the national monetary policy. In addition, it has been the recent tradition that senior central bank officials are seconded to the Ministry of Finance to serve as the Secretary of Finance and as advisers and are directly involved in the formulation of the fiscal policy of the nation. Thus, it is the Central Bank that is responsible for both the monetary and fiscal policy of the country. In addition, they are often located in the Ministry of Planning too. Ministers of Finance and Planning may come and go but these panjandrums stick around like Tennyson’s Brook. These economists write in their annual reports on the status of the economy and produce volumes of statistics on the persistent adverse balance of trade and its impact on the balance of payment. But they have not offered a long-term solution.

A partner in the crime is the Constitutional malefactor the Parliament. Although at the national level the Parliament is vested with full control of public finance vide Article 148 of the Constitution this supreme body of our representatives ignored the chronic deficit in the current account balance over the years.

The opposition in Parliament has to bear the major share of the blame. It is their responsibility to expose glaring policy faux pas by the government and direct the government on the correct path. This was a problem with all oppositions as they were guilty of the same blunder. The only contribution of the Yahapalana government was to cry hora hora against MR while ransacking the Central Bank. The list (100 pages) of the beneficiaries of the scam is still concealed in the Archives and the GR regime was not keen to reveal it.

 It is noted (CBSL statistics) that for the last 71 years from 1950 to 2021 the current account was positive only in 8 years. The easy solution resorted to by our brilliant ministers of finance was to devalue the currency. At the time of Independence, the US dollar was only LKR 3 and now it is LKR 360. The country has gone to the IMF with the begging bowl 17 times and adopted structural adjustments and other IMF devices eagerly of which import liberalization was at the core. The other nostrum was to borrow. The nation has now to bite these two magic bullets.

Media too has to take a share of the blame as it too has not brought into focus the hard issues involved. In many other countries, the media plays a vital role in probing and identifying the real issues and creating public opinion to force political authorities to deal with the core problems of the economy.

The revolutionaries’ think tanks, Universities, and professionals have been blind to the fundamental issue. The solution was export-led development with industrialization. It is also the sensible answer to reduce unemployment.

The present crisis is the result of a national collective criminal negligence from generation to generation.

Sugath Kulatunga

Aloysius Hettiarachchi

On today’s BBC World service (19.11.22) they showed buses and cars running on liquid Hydrogen. This appears to be a new innovation perhaps initiated by tech companies or universities of the UK and is very relevant to the day’s happenings. COP27 is taking place in Egypt and Qatar is showcasing its financial clout of ‘petro dollars’ in their controversial staging of the world cup with equally controversial alcohol and gay ban in the vicinity of the playing fields.

So, is this the end of fossil fuels, and whose innovation is it? I remember seeing a video that described a Sri Lankan scientist (or an engineer) predicting and then actually making that solid hydrogen about a year or so ago. If it is true should he not be given the Nobel Prize as it will put an end to the burning of fossil fuels that degenerate our environment? Multibillionaires like Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk talk about special attributes of our place and Sri Lankans these days. Why not find out details about our scientist/engineer and publish them as he appears to be an unsung hero? The Moratuwa engineer who developed a Google-like search engine which they seem to have bought before they became a force to be reckon with went unnoticed. Let the same not happen this time around.

Sasanka De Silva  Pannipitiya

Making it mandatory for children to come to school to get an education is a very outdated concept.

Allowing them to attend school in any attire is the way forward.

Some argue that the prescription is to make all children look equal, and class disparities will not matter then, but for how long?

Only for 8 hours, after which the rich go their separate ways and the less fortunate go their separate ways. 

To maintain balance in society, it is necessary for there to be good and bad, wealthy, and poor, but I am not here to discuss how that balance should be allocated.

Many kids will drop out of school if they don’t have a uniform to go to school, whether it be because of prior karma, God’s will, or whatever label one chooses based on their own views and convictions.

In a city setting, this condition might not be as obvious, but because most of the children come from wealthy or middle-class families, the problem is not brought to light and most people believe it does not exist.

However, this is fairly common in rural areas and presents a significant obstacle for many people who are less affluent.

By putting an early barrier in the form of a uniform, we are not aiding many deserving rural youngsters in their pursuit of a better life.

A good education is the most effective method to escape poverty and lead a happy life.

If it was a matter of quick identification, then instead of requiring them to attend school wearing a proper and required uniform, which many are unable to obtain mostly due to poverty, offer them an inexpensive, waterproof identification card with a lanyard.

I think we should enable children to acquire an education by attending school in whatever clothes they can afford and secure, rather than trying to change the makeup of society for a few hours by requiring that all children wear a predetermined uniform.

Sasanka De Silva

Pannipitiya.

Dr Sarath Obeysekera

lanka C news | ධීවර බෝට්ටු සඳහා හරිත හයිඩ්‍රජන්…

Sorry to say this 

This is like LNG to be used as CNG to power cars like in many countries 

Why all of a sudden Green hydrogen?

Why cannot we develop Solar power on boats?

Green hydrogen may have to be stored in Fish collector vessels which should carry green hydrogen storage to replenish the fisherman’s boat hydrogen stock

So far no country has done this except In some Norwegian vessels where hydrogen is used

Good idea 

The question is who will implement it 

Attention to LNG to green hydrogen ?

Maybe green funds were promised at Cop27?

Can you imagine this

Our multi-day fishing boats of 45 to 55ft are equipped with Hyundai engines run with diesel or petrol with no generator to give power for 21 days depending on ice flakes taken with them no generator 

We are talking about gree hydrogen as fuel!

Engines to be converted to run on green hydrogen?

The best option is to deploy a few mother vessels in the deep sea which carry fuel water and ice plants to store the fish catches 

Help fishermen in that way

තිස්ස ගුණතිලක 

භාහිර රෑප හැඩතලයේ ප්‍රතිබිම්භය පංචේන්ද්‍රියන්ගේ ප්‍රසාදනය වීමෙන් ‘ස්ඛන්ධ ක්‍රියාවලිය’ ආරම්භවන බවත් ඒ නිසාම සිතේ රෑප ලෝකය හටගන්නා බවත් අප දැන් දන්නෙමු. ඒ රෑප සංඥාව පෙර මතකය හා ගැලපීමෙන් (විතක්ක විචාර වීමෙන්) භාහිර රෑප හැඩතලයට අනූරෑප නාමය (අරෑප ලෝකය-world of labels) සිත තුල සංකාර වෙයි. විඤ්ඤාණයට හේතුවන මෙම සංකාරය භාහිර රෑප හැඩතලය පිළිබද සම්පූර්න දැනුම (නාමය) සිතට ලබාදෙයි (සංකාර පච්චයා විඤ්ඤාණ). 

උදාහරනක් ලෙස; දකින්නේ භාහිරයේ ඇති පුටුවක වර්ණරෑප හැඩතලයේ ප්‍රතිබිම්භය යයි සිතමු (චක්ඛු ප්‍රසාදය). එම වර්ණරෑපයේ ‘සංඥාව’ පෙර මතකය හා ගැලපීමෙන් සම්මුතියෙන් පනවාගත් (ප්‍රඥ්ප්ති) නාමය වන ‘පුටුව’ හා එහි සම්පූර්ණ ගුණ (characteristics) සිත තුල ‘සංකාර’වී පුටුව පිළිබඳ සම්පූර්ණ දැනුම ‘විඤ්ඤාණ’ වේ. විඤ්ඤාණය යනු භාහිරයේ හමුවන හැඩතලයේ සම්පූර්ණ රෑප (රෑපීය) දැනුමයි.

මෙසේ භාහිර රෑපය නිසා සිත තුල ඇතිවන සංකාරය (නාම රෑපය නැතහොත් අරෑපය) තෙයාකරය – වචී සංකාරය, කාය සංකාරය හා මනෝ සංකාරය වශයෙනි. වචී සංකාරය යනු භාහිර රෑප හැඩතලයේ ප්‍රතිබිම්භය සිත තුල වචනයට පෙරලීමයි. එසේම කාය (ක්‍රියා) සංකාරය යන තැන භාහිර රෑප හැඩතලයේ ප්‍රතිබිම්භය ලියන වචනය (ලේඛණය) ඇතුළු අනිකුත් ක්‍රියාවලට පෙරලේ. වචනය (භාෂාව) කතාකලත් ලියුවත් දෙයාකාර සංකාරයම නාම රෑපයකි.

සත්‍යය හමුවන්නේ අරමුණේ නාමය ඉවත්කල තැනයි. නාමය ඇතිවනවිට භාහිරය ආත්මීයවී ආස්වාදය හමුවේ. භාහිරය ආත්මීය නොවන විට ආදිනවය හා නිස්සරනය හමුවේ.

මහනෙනි, අර්ය මාර්ගය අවබෝධයට (දුක නැතිකිරීමට) කල යුත්නේ ‘ස්ඛන්ධයේ උදය-වය’ දැකීමම පමනකි. එනම් ස්ඛන්ධය (රෑප වෙදනා සංඥා සංකාර විඤ්ඤාණ) යේ ඇතිවීම හා නැතිවීම දැකීමය (දස්සනේන පහාතබ්භා). ස්ඛන්ධයේ ඇතිවන අන්තයේ ‘රෑප’යත් නැතිවන අන්තයේ ‘නාම’යත් නැතහොත් අරෑපයත් (විඤ්ඤාණයත්) පවතී. රෑපය හා අරෑපය එකතුවන තැන (විඤ්ඤාණ පච්චයා නාම රෑප) භාහිර රෑප හැඩතලය උපාදනයවී භව වීමෙන් භාහිරය ‘දෙයක්/යමක්’ ලෙස දැනෙන කාම ලෝකය සිත තුල සකස්වී දුක උපදින ගර්භය ඇතිවේ.

නාමය හා රෑපය එකතුවන තැන ඇත්තේ දුකමය. සිත තුල මෙසේ ඇතිවන ‘අයහපත්වූ’ නාමය සෑමවිටම උත්සාහ කරන්නේ රෑප ලෝකය හා එක්වී යමක්/දෙයක් ලෙස දැනෙන කාම ලෝකය සකස්කීරීමටයි. අවිද්‍යව යනු මෙම ක්‍රියාවලියයි.

කාලාම සූත්‍රය තතාගතයන් වහන්සේ දේශනාකලේ කේසපුත්‍තයේ වැසියන්ටය. කාලා – කෙලෙස්,  ම – තවන/නැතිකරන යන අර්ථය ගෙනේ.

එහි අන්තර්ගතයවන 

1 තෙපි අනුන් කියනු ඇසීමෙන් නොපිළිගනිව්. 

2 පරම්පරායෙහි ආ හෙයින් නොපිළිගනිව්. 

3 මෙය මෙසේ විය හැකියයිද නොපිළිගනිව්. 

4 පිටක පාළිය හා සමාන වේයයිද නොපිළිගනිව්. 

5 තර්‍කානුකූලයයිද නොපිළිගනිව්. 

6 න්‍යායට අනුකූලයයිද නොපිළිගනිව්. 

7 මේ කාරණය යහපතැයි කල්පනා කිරීමෙන්ද නොපිළිගනිව්.

8 අප නුවණින් තීරණයකොට ගන්නාලද දෘෂ්ටියට සමානයයිද නොපිළිගනිව්.

9 මේ මහණ තෙමේ යහපත් කෙනෙකි, ඔහුගේ කීම පිළිගත යුතුයයිද නොපිළිගනිව්. 

10 මේ ශ්‍රමණ තෙමේ අපගේ ගුරුයයිද නොපිළිගනිව්. 

යම් ධර්මයක් ක්ලේශන්ගේ ප්‍රහානයට හේතුවන්නේ යයි තමන්ම අවබෝධකරන්නේද දුක නැතිකීරීමට එයම ඉවහල් වන්නේය. කාලාම සූත්‍රයතුල අන්තර්ගතය මෙයයි.

තතාගතයන් වහන්සේ ඉහත සදහන් කරැනු දහයම ප්‍රතික්ෂේප කලේ ඒ සියල්ලම පරිච්ඡේදකල යුතු නාම (අරෑපාවචර) ලෝකය ඇතිවීමටත් පැවතීමටත් ඉවහල්වල බැවිනි. මේ කරැනු දහයේම අන්තර්ගතය ‘සංකාර නාමයක්’ වන වචනයයි.

ක්ලේශයන්ගේ ප්‍රහානයට (කාලාම) භාහිරය යමක්/දෙයක් බවට පත්කෙරෙන නාම රෑප පරිච්ඡේදය කල යුතුබව මෙම දේශනයෙන්ද ගම්‍යවෙයි.

අනාගාමි මාර්ගයේ සිට අර්හත් මාර්ගයට පිවිසීමට රැක්ඛමූලගතෝ ශුන්‍යගාරගතෝ විය යුතුවන්නේ වචනයෙන් (දෙඩීමෙන් හා ඇසීමෙන්) නාම ලෝකය සකස්නොවීමටයි, නාම ලෝකයෙන් බැහැරවීමටයි. නාම ලෝකය (නාමය) මැකීයන තැන මතුවන්නේ සදාතනික නිවනයි.

සුභ පැතුම් 

තිස්ස ගුණතිලක 

2022 නොවැම්බර් මස 20 වනදා

“නීතියේ සිංහල නුගමුල”

(මෙම කෙටි ලිපිය කියවීමට පෙර ලෝකයේ සිංහල ජනතාව මිලියන 18ක් බවත් දෙමළ ජනතාව මිලියන 80ක් බවට අදාල දත්තය දක්වමි.)

සිංහල ව්‍යාපාරිකයන්ගේ ලංකාවට එන්න තියෙන ඩොලර් ප්‍රමණය, මිලියන 80ක් වූ ලෝකය පුරා විසිරී ඉන්නා දෙමළ ජනතාවගේ ව්‍යාපාරවල ආයෝජනය කිරීම හේතුවෙන්, එකී ඩොලර් ලංකාවට එන්නේ නැත. මේ උපයන ඩොලර් ආයෝජනය කර ඇති රටවල් සහ ව්‍යාපාර පිළිබඳ විමර්ශනයකින් මේ බව පැහැදිලි වෙයි.

ඉංදියාවේ හිංදූන් මේ ආකාරයට ක්‍රියා කරන්නේ නැත. ඔවුන් විදේශවලින් උපයන සෑම ඩොලරයක්ම ඉංදියාවට ගෙන එයි. ඒ සඳහා නීති ඉංදියාවේ පැන වී ඇත. ඒ නිසා ඉංදියාවට ඩොලර් ප්‍රශ්නයක් නැත.

ශ්‍රී ලංකාවෙ එසේ නීති පැන වී නැත. එකී නීති පැනවීම වැළැක්වීමට දෙමළ ඩයස්ෆෝරාවේ නීති විශාරදයන් ඉඩ දෙන්නේද නැත.

එසේම සිංහල ව්‍යාපාරිකයන් ලංකාවේ යම් ව්‍යාපාරයකට ඩොලර් ආයෝජනය කළ හොත් රාජ්‍ය ආයතන මගින් එකී ව්‍යාපාරයේ කටයුතු නතර කරවන ආකාරයද එකී ඩයස්ෆෝරා නීති විශාරදයන් දනී.

මේ සඳහා හොඳම උදාහරණය, විදෙස් නීති සහ ජාත්‍යන්තර ගිවිසුම් ශ්‍රී ලංකාවේ නීති පද්ධතියට ඇතුළත් කිරීමට උත්සාහ කළ අලි සබ්‍රි අධිකරණ ඇමතිගේ කෝවිඩ් -19 පනත් කෙටුම්පත (මෙම උත්සාහය පරාජය කළ ආකාරය 2021 ජූලි 06 පාර්ලිමේන්තු හැන්සාඩ් වාර්තාවේ 1389-1459 පිටුවල ඇති SC/SD/24/2021 නඩුවේ ශ්‍රේෂ්ඨාධිකරණ තීරණය බලන්න) සහ සිංහල භාෂාවෙන් නීති අධ්‍යාපනය ලබා දීම වැළැක්වූ 2020.12.30 අංක 2208/13 ගැසට් පත්‍රයයි.

මෙහි ප්‍රතිඵලය වන්නේ ශ්‍රී ලංකාවේ රජයේ දේපල ආයෝජන මුවාවෙන් දෙමළ ඩයස්ෆෝරාවේ අතට යාම ඉක්මන් වීමත් සිංහල භාෂාව රාජ්‍ය භාෂාවෙන්, නීති පැනවීමේ භාෂාවෙන් සහ අධිකරණ භාෂාවෙන් ඉවත් වීමත් ය.

“නීතියේ සිංහල නුගමුල”
ෆීනික්ස් නීති සංග්‍රහය,
වෛද්‍ය තිලක පද්මා සුබසිංහ අනුස්මරණ නීති අධ්‍යයන වැඩසටහන.

Malinda Seneviratne

There are two questions. First, does research really matter or rather does research drive decisions when it comes to policy planning? Second, what is the role or research institutes or, put another way, do policy-makers understand the worth of such bodies?  

My friend Sugath Kulathunga raised an interesting point recently with regard to the fertiliser policy of President Gotabhaya Rajapaksa: ‘One is baffled why a risk analysis of the overnight, island-wide implementation of the decision on organic cultivation was not done.’

The truth is that such an analysis was done by the Hector Kobbekaduwa Agrarian Research and Training Institute (HARTI). The entire research team, immediately following the announcement, assessed all relevant social, economic, political and environmental factors. A document was produced within a month, detailing the issues, obstacles and strategies. This was followed by an 18-month roadmap which essentially listed the non-negotiable measures that need to be taken to rationalise the implementation of the policy. A preliminary audit of biomass availability was also done in view of the proposed shift to organic fertiliser.

The documents was duly forwarded to the policy-makers including the relevant ministers. In addition, on each and every occasion that a relevant minister requested information or sought an informed response to broad questions related to this issue, HARTI researchers responded promptly and comprehensively.

This is a problem that is not limited to a sudden policy decision which was to be immediately implemented. A perusal of all research reports, policy briefs and such produced by any of the many state-run research institutes would reveal at least two things: a) the enormous volume of knowledge-production, and b) a strange reluctance to incorporate such knowledge into the policy-making framework through a formal mechanism. 

Of course it must be mentioned that it is quite possible that policy-makers do make use of such information and knowledge. For example, a review of the draft national agriculture policy put together by a team of experts in 2021 revealed that the findings of research conducted by HARTI over several decades have not gone unnoticed. 

Consider the state universities, to add another dimension to this problem. There are thousands of dissertations and theses produced each year on a wide range of subjects. A significant portion of these have policy implications. However, there is no formal mechanism to ensure that the findings and recommendations reach the policy-making apparatus and that policy makers in turn are required to take into account the same. Instead, typically, policy makers depend on their own  and often ill-informed and poorly analysed understanding of the particular issue, confidantes/advisors whose principal qualification is personal acquaintance and who at best represent a limited and limiting version of things or the dictates of ‘experts’ from dodgy outfits such as the World Bank, IMF or USAID. 

Given that policy makers seldom seek information and knowledge produced by research institutes  the question arises whether such institutes serve any purpose. Indeed ministerial pundits often talk about shutting down research institutes, thereby demonstrating ignorance, arrogance and absolute idiocy. What is required is in fact a strengthening of research institutes coupled with a mechanism that compels policy-makers to take serious note of research findings.   

One of the biggest problems that plague research institutes that are part of the state apparatus is that of human resources. There was a time when research institutes attracted the most qualified graduates who preferred employment in these bodies over teaching posts in universities, partly due to better salaries and also because they accorded more attractive opportunities for academic advancement. 

The situation is reversed now. The salary scales of universities are considerably higher. Researchers in such institutes are therefore forced to consider a shift back to universities following acquisition of postgraduate certification. As the Sri Lanka Council for Agriculture Research Policy knows, the entire sector is plagued by numbers that fall scandalously short of the cadre requirement with regard to research expertise. The blanket freeze on recruitment imposed on account of the economic crisis has made things worse.  

Clearly the government needs to do a re-think on research and research institutes. The current thinking articulated by certain policy makers that research is useless needs to be called out for what it is: myopic, astigmatic, idiotic and indicative of a scandalous disregard for truth and its implications. Consequently, it is important to reconsider the entire structure of knowledge-production and its bearing upon policy making. The knowledge producers and knowledge producing institutions should be empowered. It is imperative, in this, to put research institutes on par with universities in terms of remuneration structures. In a country where ill-investment abounds, such a move would certainly be a much needed corrective that makes for more wholesome and effective policy formulation. 

Mechanisms set up so that policy recommendations obtained from findings are duly recognised and taken into account when decisions are made. This can be done. HARTI, for example, has signed MoUs with almost all state universities with regard to collaborative work. The potential to mobilise the best minds in the universities needs to be recognised. 

Sri Lanka is not poor when it comes to science and scientists. The problem is one of creating conduits and forums so that policy is a) not dependent on politically suspect ‘advice’ of external ‘experts’ with little or no knowledge of Sri Lankan realities and absolutely uninterested in furthering Sri Lankan interests, and b) not formulated on the whims and fancies of ill-informed politicians driven by self interest and little else. 

malindadocs@gmail.com

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Sufian Siddique

New Horizons for Profitable Investments Manufacturing an essential adjunct to healthcare is important in any case. Because people’s lives are directly related to this wonderful product. Medicines play a direct or indirect role in ensuring the well-being and well-being of people by getting rid of human diseases and alleviating anxiety and restlessness. Therefore, medicine is one of the largest and most profitable industries in the world today. The pharmaceutical industry of Bangladesh is known as an emerging industry with great potential. Which is playing a major role in the country’s economy. Despite many crises, this industry has gained enough reputation for its healthy development and quality productivity, and has been able to achieve international standards. Bangladesh continues to thrive in expanding the life-saving industry. It is very important for this sector to play a significant role in strengthening the economic base of the country.

Currently, Bangladesh has gained the glory of an exporting country instead of an importing country in the pharmaceutical industry. Bangladesh is the only country which is becoming known as an exporting country after meeting its domestic needs. Currently, 97 percent of the country’s total demand for drugs is being produced in the country.

However, after independence, 96 percent of medicines had to be imported from abroad. Medicines are being exported to about 80 countries including Europe, America, Middle East, Central Asia. Currently, this industry is in the third position in terms of exports in Bangladesh. The day is not far when this industry will surpass the revenue of the garment industry.

In this era of globalization, the pharmaceutical industry is in a strong position in the context of our country. Therefore, the highest quality control of products is a prerequisite for exporting to join the international market of drugs across the borders of the country. Therefore, in product quality and meaning, Bangladesh will be at the forefront of promotion and expansion. To increase the acceptance of this country’s medicine abroad, its quality testing system must be made to international standards. Many developing countries including neighboring Myanmar, Nepal, Bhutan still import most of the drugs.

A significant development in Bangladesh’s health sector is the National Drug Policy, a global indicator for measuring health human development. This policy, which came into effect in 1982, aims to remove harmful and unnecessary drugs from the market and ensure access to essential drugs at fair prices in all cases. As a result of this policy, the pharmaceutical industry of Bangladesh has flourished. Bangladesh Exports of pharmaceutical products to Myanmar was US$11.77 Million during 2015, according to the United Nations COMTRADE database on international trade.

 Medicines worth 188.7 million dollars or one thousand 982 million takas (Taka 105 per dollar) were exported from Bangladesh in the last financial year. Although this medicine is exported to 140 countries of the world, the largest shipment has gone to the neighboring country of Myanmar. The country exported drugs worth 2.76 million dollars or 289 million rupees in the last financial year, which is about 15 percent of the total drug exports. However, Bangladesh accounts for only 5 percent of Myanmar’s total demand for pharmaceuticals, which is almost entirely dependent on imports.

Bangladesh sent medicines and medical equipment worth one crore takas as relief to Myanmar flood victims in 2015.

We believe that there is a very good possibility of increasing Bangladesh’s share in Myanmar’s pharmaceutical sector if it gets government support.

Despite the Rohingya issue, crackdown on insurgents in the border areas under the junta government, drug exports to Myanmar increased by more than 24 percent compared to the previous fiscal year ($22.4 million). But Bangladesh’s share is only 5 percent compared to Myanmar’s demand for medicine every year. According to UN Comtrade data, Myanmar imported about $550 million worth of medicines in 2021. Of this, India imported 298.5 million dollars, which is about 55 percent of the total imports.

Analysis of data from Bangladesh Export Development Bureau (EPB) shows that 34 items of goods were exported from Bangladesh to the neighboring country Myanmar in the last financial year. The income from this product is three million 88 million dollars. Out of this, only medicine has been exported worth 27.6 million dollars, which is about 71 percent of the total exports to Myanmar.

Again, in the fiscal year 2021-22, medicines worth 188.7 million dollars have been exported from Bangladesh to 140 countries of the world. Among them, most of the medicines were exported to Myanmar. It is followed by Sri Lanka, the Philippines and the United States in terms of drug exports. In the last financial year, medicines were exported to the countries worth two crore 32 lakh, two crore 26 lakh and one crore 34 lakh dollars respectively. Myanmar was the top country in the export of drugs from Bangladesh in the previous financial year as well. During this time, drugs worth 2.2 million dollars were exported to the country.

However, Bangladesh is gradually increasing its share. Many export-oriented pharmaceutical companies are now establishing themselves in Myanmar. Chittagong’s Elbion Group is going to add a new name to the list of pharmaceutical exports to Myanmar. Chittagong’s ‘s only drug exporting company is going to export a 20-foot container of omeprazole group drugs to Myanmar next month, worth about 30,000 US dollars. But this is the beginning. According to the information of Elbion group, applications have been made to the Myanmar Medicines Administration for the registration of 40 drugs of different groups. Next month, a shipment of trial basis medicine will go to Myanmar.” The container will go directly to Yangon port in Myanmar via Chittagong sea port. Last June, 40 more drugs were applied for registration. It will take a year to get approval. Elbion will export large scale in the future to the potential market of Bangladeshi drugs if approved. However, in this case, the restrictions imposed by Myanmar’s junta government on foreign currency transactions last April are causing some obstacles.

However, the government should be proactive. In 2014, a 15-member delegation from Myanmar, mostly doctors or pharmacy-related, visited Bangladesh and visited several pharmaceutical factories. After the team returned to Myanmar, there was a positive impact on Bangladesh’s pharmaceutical exports there. In 2010, Myanmar’s domestic demand for medicine was about three billion dollars. Coming there in 2021, we exported medicine to the neighboring country only 27 to 28 million dollars, which is very less. The government should bring the first-line specialist doctors there, who will mainly prescribe the drugs, to Bangladesh and inspect several compliance drug factories here. Presenting the entire process of drug production to them. Then it will definitely have a positive impact.

This business leader believes that the restrictions imposed by the Myanmar junta on foreign exchange transactions will not cause much problem for Bangladeshi businessmen. Because eight countries including Bangladesh and Myanmar are members of the Asian Clearance Agency or ACUR, transactions in their own currency are possible.

Sufian Siddique

Courtesy The Island

ECONOMYNEXT – Sri Lanka leader Ranil Wickremesinghe is likely to hold presidential election before any other polls after November 16 2023, three sources close to him said, as he seeks a $2.9 billion IMF loan to consolidate the economy which is on a slow recovery path from a crisis.

Wickremesinghe was elected as the president in the 225-member parliament on July 19, days after former president Gotabaya Rajapaksa fled the country fearing for his life following tens of thousands of protesters stormed into the presidential palace, demanding his resignation after his failed economic policies. He quit after reaching Singapore.

Sri Lanka’s opposition parties and many protestors who led the ousting of Rajapaksa are now demanding both local government and parliamentary polls citing that the current government has no mandate to be in power as its failed economic policies have forced the people to oust them.Presidency of Wickremesinghe, a six-time prime minister, has been criticized by the opposition and protestors as he was not elected by the public.

Wickremesinghe became the president when he entered the parliament through a national list after his center-right United National Party (UNP) failed to win a single parliament seat in the 2020 parliamentary polls.

The president is considering the presidential poll first and it will give him a legitimate mandate to push for reforms that are now formulated,” a source close to Wickremesinghe told EconomyNext.

He can be the president for two more years. But the reforms need more time to see the country economically recovered and is on a strong foot.”

Another source close to Wickremesinghe said there could be division among the current parliament composition if he goes for any other elections other than presidential.

We see a slight recovery though the worst is yet to come after the implementation of tax policies and IMF reforms. Doing party politics in the next one year will reverse all the reforms,” the second source said.

Focus is on crisis

The President’s office did not comment on a possible presidential poll before both local government and parliamentary elections. However, an official at the president’s office said Wickremesinghe has not been focusing on any election” now.

Election is not his priority right now. He has never said anything in any election so far. He is busy with the economic policies to get the country out of the current mess,” the source, a senior official at the presidential secretariat told EconomyNext.

He has categorically told internal officials that the country’s private sector, civil society organizations, all political parties, and the people should get together to face the current crisis and if we don’t unite, there won’t be a country to do politics after one year.”

The island nation’s political parties are now gearing up for an election. The former ruling center-left nationalist Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna (SLPP), main opposition Samagi Jana Balawegaya (SJB), and Marxist opposition Janatha Vimukthi Peremuna have already started campaigns at village level.The parliament election should be held after August 5, 2025, five years after it was held. But President Wickremesinghe can dissolve the parliament and call for an early election after February 2023,

The tenure of the current presidency ends in November 2024. However, the incumbent president can call for an early election if the leader wants. This means Wickremesinghe can call for early election after November 16, 2023.

උපුටා ගැන්ම  හිරු පුවත්

රට මුහුණ දී ඇති ණය අර්බුදයට ප්‍රධාන සාධකයක් වන්නේ ස්වෛරීත්ව බැඳුම්කර මත ලබාගත් ණය බව කොළඹ විශ්වවිද්‍යාලයේ ආර්ථික විද්‍යා අධ්‍යයනාංශයේ මහාචාර්ය ලලිතසිරි ගුණරුවන් පවසනවා.

අර්බුදය, අයවැය සහ අනාගතය යන මැයෙන් මහවැලි කේන්ද්‍රයේ පැවති සම්මන්ත්‍රණයකට එක්වෙමින් ඔහු මේ අදහස් පළ කළා.

මෙම සම්මන්ත්‍රණය පැවැත්වුණේ හිටපු ජනාධිපති මෛත්‍රීපාල සිරිසේනගේ ප්‍රධානත්වයෙන්.<br /><br />අර්බුදය, අයවැය සහ අනාගතය යන මැයෙන් මෙම සංවාදශීලී සම්මන්ත්‍රණය සංවිධානය කර තිබුණේ ශ්‍රි ලංකා වෘත්තීයවේදීන්ගේ සංවිධානය විසින්.

එම අවස්ථාවට එක් වූ මහාචාර්ය ලලිතසිරි ගුණරුවන් මහතා පැවසුවේ ස්වෛරීත්ව බැඳුම්කර මත අසීමාන්තික ලෙස ලබාගත් ණය හේතුවෙන් රට දැඩි අර්බුදයකට මුහුණ දී ඇති බවයි.”මද්දුමබණ්ඩාරට ධුරය අහිමි වුණේ මේ නිසයි – බැසිල් – මෛත්‍රී කෝන්තරයට හේතුව හෙළිවෙයි –

Courtesy Adaderana

Two women have been arrested by the Criminal Investigations Department (CID) for forging bank documents and defrauding Rs. 120 million from a Sri Lankan living in Norway. 

The suspects, who are sisters aged 30 and 34 years, have been arrested in Jaffna by the CID, police said.

They had allegedly defrauded the Sri Lankan by forging bank documents and using 23 bank accounts.

It has been uncovered during the investigations that the two women have defrauded the money from the concerned person through 23 bank accounts from time to time between January and June 2021, by claiming that the necessary activities were to be carried out for the legal release of gold and money they had deposited in their father’s name, who was a businessman.

The arrest has been carried out in line with the investigations conducted regarding a complaint made to the Financial Crimes Investigation Department by the concerned individual.

The two suspects have been ordered to be remanded in custody until December 01, after they were produced before the Jaffna Magistrate’s Court on November 18, following their arrest.

Courtesy Adaderana

The gazette notification pertaining to the lifting of the ban imposed on the import of the herbicide Glyphosate has been sent to the Government Printer, says the Secretary of the Ministry of Agriculture, Gunadasa Samarasinghe.

The Minister of Agriculture had decided to lift the ban on Glyphosate following inquiries made from various sectors including the representatives from farmers, agricultural experts, and agronomists as to whether the ban should be continued further or not, according to the Ministry of Agriculture.

Further continuation of the Glyphosate ban had become futile as some people had illegally imported substanded Glyphosate via sea routes and were sold across the country at exorbitant prices, the Ministry said.

Accordingly, steps were taken to lift the Glyphosate ban that had been in place for 07 years since 2015, since there was no alternative method for weed control in the agricultural sector, that situation also led to a decrease in harvests, the secretary of the Ministry emphasized.

 He said the gazette has been signed by the Minister of Agriculture Mahinda Amaraweera and sent to the Government Printer to be published. 

In September, the Cabinet of Ministers had approved a proposal to import Glyphosate for a period of 06 months for all agricultural activities during the 2022/23 Maha Season.

The government had said the decision to ban/restrict the importation of Glyphosate has affected all types of agricultural activities, leading to a decrease in agricultural production and a surge in prices of essential food items.

Taking into this account, permission is granted to import Glyphosate for a period of six months to allow farmers to carry out their agricultural activities more productively during 2022/23 Maha Season.

The relevant proposal had been tabled by President Ranil Wickremesinghe.

Former President Maithripala Sirisena, in 2015, banned the importation of Glyphosate as some studies had linked the use of the agrochemical to the chronic kidney disease affecting Sri Lankan farmers. The imports and use of the herbicide was accordingly prohibited under the Import and Export (Control) Act, No. 01 of 1969.

The ban was imposed without introducing any alternative for the purpose of weed control.

However, in 2018, the import ban was temporarily lifted for tea and rubber sectors for a period of 36 months, and the move was subsequently green-lighted by the then-Cabinet of Ministers.

In November 2021, an Extraordinary Gazette was published by then-Registrar of Pesticides Dr. J. A. Sumith, revoking the gazette notification issued in 2014 prohibiting the use and sale of five agrochemicals including Glyphosate. Mr. Sumith was later removed from the post pending a disciplinary inquiry into the rescinding of the said gazette notification and it was announced that the ban on five agrochemicals was still in effect.

The following month, the then-government decided to allow the imports of organic and inorganic compounds, and phosphorous derivatives of fertilizers, however, the ban on importing Glyphosate remained effective.

KAMALIKA PIERIS

‘Maname made its first appearance, not in Peradeniya but at the Lionel Wendt Theatre in Colombo. ‘I selected Lionel Wendt as it had a good stage and auditorium, also the facilities needed for the actors.  Its chairman, Harold Pieris gave me the hall free and it was shown for four days running,’ Sarachchandra said in an interview.

 However, Sarachchandra had to be persuaded to present   Maname at the Lionel Wendt.  We insisted that Maname must be shown at the Lionel Wendt, Ralph Pieris told me. ‘Sarath was hesitant, but we insisted.’  That  was how it came to Colombo.

Sarachchandra  knew the Colombo audience and he  was not sure that this was a good move. He   wrote to Harold Pieris asking him to reserve the theatre for four nights but said he  had doubts whether people would come. Harold Pieris had replied that there was no reason why they should not come to see a Sinhala play and offered the hall for four nights charging only for two.

The Natya Mandalaya members and a host of volunteers went to Colombo to plaster the walls with posters announcing Maname.  The play was advertised in English as well as Sinhala and the posters were pasted side by side on walls. The English posters said that Maname was an operetta in traditional style. Slides were projected in cinema halls which were popular with   Sinhala film goers.  K.T Wimalasekera of Horana, a  well known photographer  did the slides.

 When the undergraduates went to sell ticket in the high society areas of Colombo 7 , they were told   by the residents  that they did not go to see  Sinhala plays and the students  were asked to go away.  Since the ticket sales were unsatisfactory, Sarachchandra again wrote to Harold Pieris, who wrote back offering the hall free for all four nights.

So the cast arrived at the Lionel Wendt theatre. Lionel Wendt authorities received us warmly recalled Shyamon and provided all facilities and freedom for the final rehearsals.  The women performers were accomodated  in the bungalow which is now the Medical clinic of the University of Colombo ,  the men at College House.

 Maname was first shown on 3rd  November 1956 at the Lionel Wendt Hall in Colombo. We paid two rupees for a ticket which was given in a nicely designed envelope. On opening night there were only about fifty, mostly invitees and press, said D.C Ranatunga. Sarath Amunugama was at the first performance of ‘Maname’ in Colombo. The Lionel Wendt was half empty[1]  he said, but those who saw the play liked it.

Ranjini Obeyesekera recalls the first night of ‘Maname’.  ‘As the curtain rose, the rich chant of the Potegura filled the auditorium in what seemed to me a theatrical miracle.  Here was something new and exciting, different from anything seen in Sinhala theatre before. Sarachchandra had created from a traditional source a sophisticated modern drama, breaking way from the western influenced fourth wall proscenium drama.’

Shyamon Jayasinghe as Potegura had contributed greatly to the impact of Maname in its first performance. He dazzled at the first performance, making a ‘near miraculous transformation’ of the role from humdrum narrator to an actor of extraordinary power. It was he who most captivated the audient on the first night and had it in his grip, said HL.

 As each   sequence tapered off, the audience waited eagerly for the appearance of the Potegura. He had not shown this ability at the rehearsals. But at the first performance Shyamon gave the role an animation beyond all expectations.  Shyamon confirmed this. He     said as Potegura I opened the performance on 3 Nov 1956. Until then I had no clue about my role but the power of the script, the music, and the audience stimulated me.  Sarachchandra later said that no narrator who came after Shyamon could excel him.

Before the performance Sarachchandra had told the cast that the press will attack the play and to be prepared and not to get discouraged. But the newspapers gave it rave reviews. The first performance of ‘Maname’ in Colombo was on a Saturday  and the first review was by Regie Siriwardene in Daily News on Monday.

Regi praised it extravagantly, writing in English.  His review appeared in the Ceylon Daily News on 5^th November 1959.He said he had gone to most Sinhala plays hoping that someday something would turn up which could give him hope for Sinhala theatre and this was it. ‘Maname’ had a finish and style which raises it far above the traditional nadagama.

Maname was very impressive, continued Regi. There is song and stylized movement. the intelligent Sinhala playgoer who had been dissatisfied with nrutya hotch potch will find in Maname that Sinhala drama did have an indigenous dramatic form which as immensely superior to the hybrid which has be foisted on us as national art.  There was considerable dramatic variety, the formalized chant of potegura, the love duet, the veddah king.

The performance called for a most exacting combination of talent, singing, time movement and character acting. it was astonishing that a student cast should reach such a consistently high standard in all these aspects of drama   concluded Regi. Regi  observed that Charles Gurunanse had joined in the singing at the end of the play.

 Later, Regie Siriwardena recalled  in 2006 that when he first saw ‘Maname’, what struck him most forcefully was the breakthrough in theatrical form. This was the reaction of several other early critics of the play as well.

Regi’s review was followed by an equally laudatory Sinhala review by Charles Abeysekera, in  Dinamina. Never before had a Sinhala play been received so jubilantly by critics. These rhapsodic reviews gave the play an excellent boost, encouraging the upper class audience who read Regi, to go and see it, said HL

Gunasena Galappaththy    got pupils from nearby schools to come and fill up the hall for the  performances that followed at the Lionel Wendt theatre. J.B. Disanayake recalled that his teachers at Ananda took them to see the play. Maname had a second run at   the Wendt about three months later, tickets fared better word having got round that the Nadagama was worth seeing.

It was only after ‘Maname’ was shown at YMBA hall at Borella several months later,  that the other Sinhala newspapers responded.  Sri Chandraratne Manawasinghe, who regularly disparaged the work of the Sinhala department at Peradeniya, went out of his way to praise this new play in his popular Vaga Tuga column in Lankadipa.

He called it an abhiranganaya, a super drama.  He said the interpretation of characters in the play had given the Maname story a new robustness. One is encouraged to explore the events in a critical way rather than at face value. Other critics took notice said Sarachchandra.

When Maname played at YMBA, the men stayed where ever they could, but mostly at YMBA. For this they were  helped by YMBA residents, HM Gunasekera and Madawela Ratnayake who were friends of  Sarachchandra and Siri Gunasinghe. They  slept on the floor. They were treated to sumptuous dinners  by  friends  of Sarachchandra who supported his work. But there were times when they had to get by with much less. HL recalls sharing a thosay dinner with two orchestra members at    the exorbitant cost of ten cents each, which was all they could afford.

‘Maname’ expanded the audience for Sinhala theatre, in all directions. Firstly, it appealed to those in major towns, who were caught up in the resurgence of cultural nationalism.  Even Colombo 7 types who used to wait patiently for the annual Dramsoc offering now went to the Borella YMBA, said Amunugama..Others pointed out that Sarachchandra found his initial and most ardent support, in the western educated elite and it was this which enabled the play to make its first forceful impression in the public. But this support was confined to those who were bi-lingual and bi-cultural. However, Sarachchandra said that it was only when ‘Maname’ was shown at YMBA hall at Borella that ‘we got the audience that could actually appreciate the play’.

Another commentator said ‘from my impression of the audience at Borella, YMBA and Lumbini, I would say the new audience of 1956 and thereafter, was predominantly Sinhala speaking urban lower middle class.  Sinhala theatre was not able in those years to reach out to any group beyond the middle class. However the broadening of the theatre audience in 1956 was significant.

The real breakthrough was in the provinces, Amunugama said. The play went outstation, helped by young graduates who had fanned out into the country as school principals, DROs and social service officers. ‘Maname’ was taken to towns which had never seen ‘serious’ theatre before, with the local cinema hall or school hall used for the show. To accommodate the growing demand for the play from towns that could barely provide a school hall, the cyclorama  was abandoned. Siri Gunasinghe’s set which depicted a ‘nadagam maduwa’ was also abandoned as it was difficult to transport. Getting the cast, who were by now employed, together in some outlandish town was also difficult. 

‘Maname’ was taken over by Jana Ranga Sabha in 1957, they  took it round the Island. ‘Maname’ went everywhere, Ambalangoda,     Anuradhapura, Bandarawela,   Galle, Gampaha, Gampola, Kalutara, Kandy, Kegalle, Kurunegala, Matale, Matara. Moratuwa,   Panadura,   Ratnapura. Several towns were visited more than once. Ralph Pieris arranged for a performance at the Bogala Mines .He knew the owners. In Colombo ‘Maname’ played at YMBA, Lumbini and Lionel Wendt. 

Sarachchandra had expected ‘Maname’ to be followed by several plays in the same style. ‘Before long we would possess body of plays that would reflect our national genius like the Kabuki and Noh of Japan.’ A.J. Gunawardene (Jayadeva) said that though ‘Maname’ did not succeed in generating a new dramatic tradition as the dramatist had hoped, it had released trapped energies.

it was triumphantly asserted years later  that modern urban Sinhala theatre owed its very existence to Tamil culture, since the nadagama style on which it was based came from the Terukuttu performed in Jaffna by the Roman Catholics. This was brushed aside. The Sinhala play was no longer trying to modernize by imitation. It had passed that stage. ‘Maname’ was to be an experiment in form using the nadagama style. Critics also pointed out that some of  the melodies  used  were not original to nadagama  . Music of ‘premayen mana rangita’ is from a Christian hymn in Tamil and ‘lapa noma van sanda’ and ‘dula nethupula’ are North Indian. Admirers of Maname ignored this too. It was not considered important.

 ‘Maname’ is still very popular and much admired .Sarachchandra’s language and music, its sheer poetry still enthralls, said  Ranjini Obeyesekera (2014).   ‘Maname’ was shown years later at Peradeniya, to a packed audience, of students, teachers, monks, workers, villagers from the surrounding areas. When the actress started to sing ‘premayen’, a student voice spontaneously joined in and instantly the entire audience burst into song. It was an unforgettable magical moment, she said.

I intended ‘Maname’ originally to be an experiment in form but the fact that it has survived for thirty years when the form is no more a novelty must have some explanation other than its external attraction, said Sarachchandra. ‘Maname’ was an outstanding combination of theatrical craft, poetic sophistication and dramatic concentration, in which the folk theatrical tradition was [successfully] adapted to the modern stage, observed K.N.O. Dharmadasa (1992).  [2]Its success led to  Sinhabahu, which remains the high point of Sinhala urban theatre today. ( continued)  

[1]Sarath Amunugama.  Notes on Sinhala culture.Ist ed. 1980. P 43.

[2]KNO Dharmadasa.The Peradeniya School.In ‘More open than usual.’ 1992 p 129

KAMALIKA PIERIS

This essay is a revised version of the earlier essay titled EDIRIWEERA SARACHCHANDRA’S ‘MANAME’ (2015)

‘Maname’ was a landmark event in   Sinhala theatre. But the events leading up to it have received little attention. The emergence of ‘Maname’ at Peradeniya was no accident. The Arts faculty of the University of Ceylon was exposed to a new atmosphere when they moved to Peradeniya in 1953. Peradeniya was secluded, residential and ‘outstation.’ it was safely   away from Colombo and Colombo’s preference for imitative, half-baked western culture. 

There was a change also in the undergraduate population. For the first time students drawn from rural schools were arriving in the university.[1] Many were bilingual. They were very enthusiastic about Sinhala theatre  and were determined to   make a contribution to   it, while in university.

 In Colombo, the university had formed a Ranga Sabhava which had   produced plays for Colombo.  In Peradeniya this Association   got   a new lease of life.  It abandoned its Indian sounding name and became   Sinhala Natya Mandalaya, a significant change of name.  This Sinhala Natya Mandalaya became a robust organization with P.E.E. Fernando, senior lecturer in Sinhala as patron and W. Arthur Silva, an undergraduate   as president, said H.L. Seneviratne.

When Sarachchandra returned in 1956 after a year abroad, studying theatre, the Natya Mandalaya embarked on a series of ‘play reading’ sessions but what they really wanted was a new play from Sarachchandra. Sarachchandra had meanwhile realized that naturalistic Sinhala theatre had not gone down well with audiences. Something else was needed.

H.L. Seneviratne says that at this time, Sarachchandra was influenced by the Noh plays he saw in Japan. Sarachchandra would surely have known about Noh theatre before he arrived in Japan. My guess is that in Japan he   found   that   that   the traditional Noh, resuscitated and probably heavily doctored to suit modern  taste, was   going down well with modern audiences. This would have encouraged him to look afresh at traditional theatre in Sri Lanka.

Sarachchandra inspected the local folk plays and decided ‘the most suitable for modern theater was the Nadagama. Kolam and Sokari could not be used’ he said in an interview. The advantage of Nadagama, though Sarachchandra did not say so, was that it could be manipulated for artistic entertainment without creating a mighty rumpus. It was alien anyway, and had no ritual implications.

It was the insistent persuasion of a small group of enthusiastic Natya Mandalaya members, led by its president W. Arthur Silva which led to Maname said H.L. Persuading Sarachchandra was no easy task,  he said. Sarachchandra was not keen on doing a new play since his previous plays had not met with public approval. The university authorities did not respond to his requests for assistance either.  He had known the bitter experience of repeatedly asking the university authorities for help with no response, said HL.  So   he   hesitated, but the students kept on pressing him  and   one day he said ‘api ehenam nadagamak natamu’.

In a ‘Nadagama ‘the story is told through song. There was also an element of dance, because each character had set movements which were performed on entry. Certain events were also depicted through stylized movement.[2]There was a narrator. The play was acted on a raised semi-circular platform adjacent to a shed, and the sloping roof of the shed became its roof as well.

‘I did not try to reproduce the old Nadagama style intact, but used its essence and certain aspects only ‘, said Sarachchandra.  He selected Chulla Dhanuddara Jatakaya for the story. This jataka had been performed as Maname’ in kolam and kavi nadagam,  [3]but not as a sindu nadagama. Sindu nadagama went on all night for about 7 days and the ‘Maname’ story had been too short for this. ‘But I realized that I could create a good dramatic presentation of ‘Maname’, said Sarachchandra. ’ He knew that he had got the right idea’, said HL Seneviratne

When creating ‘Maname’, Sarachchandra first wrote the songs. For this Sarachchandra obtained the services of Charles Silva Gunasinghe. Charles knew nadagama songs   including kavi nadagama  and he could sing them without a break.  He sang away, Sarachchandra listened, selected what he wanted and composed the lyrics. ‘I used the most musical nadagama tunes that Charles knew’. Sarachchandra had included nadagama songs earlier in ‘Pabavati’ too.

‘Maname’ adopted the nadagama style for movement as well. In a nadagama, characters come in dancing, as they are introduced. Each character had a different beat and different movement. They went round and round in a circle. ‘Maname’ performers did the same. Charles Silva Gunasinghe created the movements,   using the dance steps of nadagama, selecting those which suited each ‘Maname’ character. Vasanta Kumar created two highly original Veddah dances also the combat dance between Veddah king and ‘Maname’.[4] The orchestra consisted of harmonium, flute, esraj and violin with only one nadagama instrument, the Tamil maddala drum.

The greatest contribution in Maname was from Charles Silva Gunasinghe, who knew the nadagama tradition well. He knew Kolam and Tovil too. Charles was an outstanding performer, talented and versatile, he could sing, dance and play the maddala. Charles had provided the music for the two nadagama songs in ‘Pabavati’and had acted as Poteguru in it. Sarachchandra admired his singing which he considered far superior to any Sinhala singer he had ever heard.

‘Charles was with me at every stage of the writing of ‘Maname’,’ said Sarachchandra. He provided the music, he advised on dance and song movements and participated in discussions about the content of the play. Sarachchandra recalled, ‘when I started rehearsing the play Charles demonstrated the traditional nadagama style but was agreeable to changes.’ Charles also trained the performers .He was a good teacher, said Sarachchandra.

Sarachchandra was not sure whether the talent he needed for ‘Maname’ was available and whether the students had the necessary staying power. The public auditions were unsuccessful and the students had to find promising actors through personal contact and networks. This placed a heavy burden on    Arthur Silva and the other student enthusiasts of the Natya Sangamaya.

The actual process of recruiting candidates  was  laborious and time consuming, said HL. Candidates would be brought to Sarachchandra’s house,  where they sang and  were usually rejected. Many years later,  Natya Mandalay members  nostalgically  recalled how they had  dragged their  reluctant friends to audition.

The students persevered and eventually came up with a stellar cast. For Prince Maname they found Ben Sirimanne, a school teacher  who had come to do a two year diploma in Sinhala at the university . He had a rich and full throated voice, and a keen musical sense.

To play the princess they found two excellent candidates, Hemamali Goonasekera and Tricilia Abeykoon, where even one was rare. Tricilia had sung on radio in Lama Peetaya and had seen folk plays. She would have been an obvious choice. Trilicia continued to perform in Maname  over the years and the role of Maname   princess came to be associated  with her.

Hemamali  did  not  continue in Maname,  because her parents did not want her to perform outstation. Hemamali is forgotten now, but she should not be, said HL, for it was with her formidable acting talent and her powerful stage presence that the play opened to an enraptured audience on the night of Nov 3. 1956. She was only 18 then but was able rival her two world class male co-players.

The Veddha king was a problem. Every candidate brought for role of Veddha was rejected by Sarachchandra. Edmund Wijesinghewas discovered by the students during an undergraduate ‘sarong strike’ where he was heard singing songs during the  demonstration. Wijesinghe was a mature student who had been a school teacher before he entered university. He  vanished from the university  soon after the ‘Dhoby strike’ and could not be found. He was not living in a hall of residence.

Sometime later, Arthur Silva  and his friends had    gone to a  carnival at Bogambara, and had  found Wijinghe there, intoxicated. They  captured him,  and brought him to  Peradeniya . Arthur  kept him in his room at Arunachalam Hall and delivered him to Sarachchandra the next day. The delighted Sarachchandra, ‘accommodated the precious find’ in his own home, where Charles Gurunanse was also staying.

Maname needed music. Musicians were available and an orchestra  was formed. The entire orchestra   consisted of students from rural schools. The harmonium performer, Kitsiri Amaratunga and flautist Somaratne Edirisinghe were found without difficulty, both were  talented. A maddala drummer was needed. Arthur Silva  brought in his batch mate and fellow A” Hall resident, G.D. Hemapala  Wijayawardhana who  had studied  the  tabla and found the Maddala easy. L.R . Mudalihamy played the violin. He was a school teacher attending the Sinhala diploma course. The esraj was played by Ramya Tumpala. A horanava player could not be found.

We rehearsed  in the old military building   wih a  corrugated metal roof that housed the  Economics Department. We  moved the furniture and sat in a circle and practiced singing. When it came to rehearsals proper we  moved to the Junior Common Room where the play gradually took form,  said HL.

Charles Silva Gunasinghe trained the performers. He taught them to sing nadagama style. The early rehearsals were in fact singing classes. He then   trained     them in nadagama movement, how to go round and round in a circle, using specific   steps.   Tissa Kariyawasam observed that Tricilia did not exactly follow the style given to her by Charles. She made the steps gentler. Most of the performers, had not seen a nadagama and knew nothing about   them, but were very cooperative. Hemamali said it was a privilege to have been trained by Charles.

The stage set designed by Siri Gunasinghe  was a  significant piece of work in itself and one that could have contributed to the diversity of an emerging theatre . This was a stage set       that represented in abstract the  arena of the nadagama, which was its stage. The design primarily consisted of a triangular board representing the thatched roof that sheltered the ‘stage ‘ of the nadagama . It was an imaginative and colorful piece of décor but it was unwieldy and difficult to transport and setting it up demanded  much skill and labor.  It had to  be set up the day before in outstation. it had to be securely done to prevent it from falling on the heads of the actors.  It was soon abandoned as it was difficult to transport and set up.

The production side of ‘Maname’ was a ‘very primitive affair amateur affair’ which depended  a great deal on personal and small group contactsaid HL When the play was to be shown at YMBA, stage lights were needed and the only spotlights in the entire country were at the Lionel Wendt.    Prof MB Ariyapala knew Mahinda Dias, and Arthur Silva took him along to meet Mahinda at the Colombo Commercial Company office where Mahinda was employed as an electrical engineer. Dias agreed to loan the equipment not only for YMBA performances but  for outstation as well .  He also sent along  an assistant  who became a permanent member of the troupe.

Siri Gunasinghe  made a substantial contribution to ‘Maname’. Siri was the art director for ‘Maname’. He designed the stage set, giving it a triangular board representing the thatched roof that sheltered the stage of a real nadagama.  He designed the costumes as well. Their striking use of green and orange showed his exquisite color sense, said Sarath Amunugama. [5]The costumes were part of the total color scheme of the stage. This was an unprecedented visual integration of different components of the performance.[6]

Siri was a great support to Sarachchandra, said Amunugama. He was ‘constantly behind’ Sarachchandra, who consulted him on many matters. Siri  saw to the repairs to Sarachchandra’s Volkswagen car as well.

H.L.Seneviratne observed that Aileen Sarachchandra would also have made a contribution behind the scenes, to the success of ‘Maname and her contribution should be recognized. She was a talented actress and very musical. Aileen had made the costumes assisted by her niece, Indrani. The two had also done the striking make up.

Other dons in the Sinhala Department, such as Ananda Kulasuriya, and D.E. Hettiarachchi also showed interest. M.B. Ariyapala had  helped to solve the spotlight  problem. He had later sponsored ‘Maname’ performances in the south and ‘hosted us warmly and lavishly accommodating us in an estate mansion owned by his family’, recalled HL.

I am told that Ralph Pieris had also taken an interest in the production. ‘ Professor Pieris was also   there at the  rehearsals, encouraging us’ ,  I was told. He had  made his car available.  Ralph’s interest in the play, would   have come from his friendship with Sarachchandra. He   admired the costumes  designed by Siri Gunasinghe ( personal communication). I am sure that  other members of University would also have helped though their names are not  on record.

An American student at Peradeniya , Peter La Sha  was  staying at Ramanathan from where a substantial contingent of  the cast  came. He had shown great interest in Sinhala culture. Peter learnt Sinhala, and could sing the Maname songs with musical perfection, said HL.  

Peter knew  stage lighting and was easily persuaded to help. It was Peter  who managed the stage lighting in Colombo, said HL.  Mahinda Dias whose  name is given in the programme  was an absentee lighting expert.  La Sha is also mentioned  By Shyamon Jayasinghe, as one of the persons helping  in the Colombo performance.[7] Peter La Sha spoke Sinhala very well, he said.

HL is definite that the success of ‘Maname’ was due to the support given by the rural students. This group understood what Sarachchandra was trying to achieve. Many of the  performers, the orchestra, the helpers and organizers of ‘Maname’  as well as the office bearers of the Drama circle , who were responsible for the hard background and organization work that went into making ‘Maname’ into a  landmark play, were drawn from this new rural group. Dedicated and hard working   they assisted in creating the ‘new’ Sinhala theatre.  I think that  they would have enjoyed the experience as well.

These supporters  took on  multiple taslks. HL was prepared to play the esraj if needed and provided the calligraphy for the programme in addition to performing in the  original cast. Hemapala Ratnasuriya  was interested in painting and helped Siri with the art work. Hedesigned the program for the play’s  first   run at the Lionel Wendt. He was also stage manager.

HL  stated that without the backing and enthusiastic response of the Natya Sabhava led by its  President Arthur Silva, Sarachchandra  would not have launched ‘Maname’ at the time he did. If ‘Maname’ had appeared later, the impact may not have been the same.

HL makes special mention of W. Arthur Silva. ‘Maname’ owes much to W. Arthur Silva said HL. ‘Maname’ would not have become a reality if not for Silva’s relentless effort in dealing with the people involved, including    Sarachchandra, who demanded very high standards from not only the actors but all associated with the play, including punctuality. Shyamon Jayasinghe corroborates this. The stalwarts of the   Sinhala Drama Society deserve special mention said Shyamon Jayasinghe.  They were Arthur Silva,  KDP Perera and Wimal Nawagamuwa.

As the rehearsals progressed, the indications were that the play was going to be a success. The poetic excellence of the play, the allure of the songs, the music, the visual impact, the excellence of the acting, the perfection of its artistic unity, could be seen at the later       rehearsals, especially the final dress rehearsal. But no one anticipated the impact it would have on the first night audience as indeed it did on all later audiences, said HL. ( continued)

[1]  HL Seneviratne Towards a national art in  Home and world. Essays in honour of  Sarath Amunugama.

[2]Sarachchandra, the folk drama of Ceylon.

[3]T KuruwitaBandara and H Ranasinghe.Charles Silva Gurunanse.

[4]Island 12.12.11. p 9.

[5]SarathAmunugama. Island  Mid week review. 18.2.15 p 2 .

[6]  HL Seneviratne. Island Mid week rev. 18.2.15 p 1

[7] Applause at the Wendt

Chanaka Bandarage

One – person, One – vote is a cardinal principle of representative democracy. This means every citizen is entitled to elect their own representative. It personifies that all people are equal.

Casting the vote at an election is how the citizens participate in government. The MPs who get elected by the majority vote represent the citizens’ ideas and concerns in the parliament.

The National List MPs are unelected. The voter has absolutely nothing to do with them.  Basically, they do not know them.

Prior to an election, the proposed National List Mps do not engage in any discourse with voters.

Universally, the most important criterion to become an MP is that they are elected at an election by the popular vote.  The National List MPs are unelected. Thus, they have no legitimacy to sit in the parliament claiming that they represent people.

The National List system is contrary to every democratic principle and value.

Put simply, currently there is nothing more undemocratic than the National List MP system.

Based on the number of votes obtained by a political party, they are allocated National List MP slots. This is contrary to the One – person, One – vote principle. This is why it is argued that the scheme is undemocratic.

Currently out of the 225 MPs in the parliament, 29 are National List MPs – about 13% of the total parliamentarians.

The political party that has secured a National List MP slot can appoint any ‘Tom, Dick and Harry’ as the National List MP. This is how the system has operated thus far. Since recently even defeated candidates (candidates that were rejected by the people at an election) have been brought in to the parliament thanks to the National List system. They are ‘back door entrants’.  The sad irony is that it is the JVP, who portray themselves as ‘saviours of democracy’ that introduced this in 2015.

Appointing defeated candidates as National List MPs is making the representative democracy a mockery.

Again, the party hierarchy has the absolute liberty and freedom to appoint anyone they wish as a National List MP. Mostly, they appoint persons whom they know that would fit-in well with the corrupt parliamentary culture and process.   

Because they are unelected, these National List MPs are not accountable to the people. They only show allegiance to their party leadership who handed them the position. It is rumored that a certain National List MP who was in the parliament only for few days collected a duty free car permit before leaving it. A car permit is worth millions of rupees. This loss must be borne by the taxpayer.

One noteworthy feature is that these National List MPs are often given plum cabinet positions.  They have held such high cabinet positions as Finance, Education, Foreign Affairs, Public Administration and Justice.

Sometimes National List positions are given to people who had spent lots of money for the party, personal friends of the party leader and media owners who freely promote the party. It is immaterial for the party leadership whether or not the National List nominees are people friendly or that they understand the pulse of the people.

The National List MP scheme was introduced by JR Jayawardane on 24 May 1988 when he was the President. He introduced the 14^th Amendment to the Constitution in this regard.

On that occasion he elaborated that intellectuals, professionals, academics etc should be allowed to be brought into the parliament to run the government. He made a fine case to stress his point.

But, he failed to admit that what he was introducing was a totally undemocratic system.

By looking at those who have served as National List MPs since 1988 to date one cannot say that they have contributed to the betterment of the country. Some may have been well educated, but their contributions to the country’s development and prosperity have been dismal.

Some have been well known crooks. Even thugs, vagabonds and former terrorist leaders have sat in the parliament as National List MPs.

Like the elected 196 MPs, these 29 National List MPs have also contributed in taking Sri Lanka to its present position – we are a bankrupt country.

It is well known that an enormous amount of taxpayer funds are spent to maintain and upkeep the 225 parliamentarians. We do not need such a large number of MPs.  We are only 22 million of people. Australia has the same population; it is about 120 times bigger than us in size. Australia has only 151 elected MPs (true, they have a 71 member Senate, who are also elected).

India, South Africa, Australia, New Zealand, UK, Canada are all Commonwealth countries; like Sri Lanka none of them have unelected representatives of the people in their parliaments. The situation in the USA is also the same.

Again, the National List is a useless concept. It has not served the country of any purpose. It is also a White Elephant.

Sri Lanka should be ashamed of having such an undemocratic, corrupt system in place.

It is high time that we abolish this system entirely. Keeping it further will not be in the best interests of the future generations.

More things that need to be abolished:

1. The Manapaya System (Preferential Voting). 

Manapaya has made our electoral system very corrupt and violent.

This has caused serious conflicts between candidates within the same political party.

Enormous amounts of money are needed for a successful political campaign as candidates are required to canvass a whole district. Those who have the money and power always win ahead of the less wealthy and powerful. Thus, it is possible to argue that Manapaya is an undemocratic process.

• The Proportional Representation System.

We must bring back the Westminster style election system where people elect an MP for their constituency.  This is the pre -1978 system. The UK, Australia, Canada, India and New Zealand still have it.

We have 160 parliamentary constituencies (electorates) in Sri Lanka. People should vote for their own MP. Then, the MP is also responsible and accountable to its electorate.

By this way, the One person – One vote concept is strictly adhered to.

It is thanks to this system that Mr AsenKhudoos won the Puttalam seat by a mere 103 votes in 1970.

It is due to this that independents like Mudiyanse Thennakoon (Nikaweratiya), RG Senanayake (Dambadeniya) and Wijayananda Dahanayake (Galle) were able to enter the parliament.

Today, it is impossible for an independent to contest an election alone and enter the parliament. This is contrary to the basic democratic principles.

In the UK, Australia and Canada swaths of people win elections and enter the parliament as Independents. This is real democracy.

In those countries sometimes it is the Independents who determine who will form a government.

• MPs should not be allowed to switch political parties.

People call our MPs ‘frogs’ as often they jump from one party to another. Most of the time these cross-overs take place in exchange of very large sums of money – this is corruption at very high end.

There are some MPs in the current parliament who have done cross-overs 3/4 times during their sejour. It is rumored that some of them are gearing up for a leap yet again.

In India, Bangladesh and Maldives an MP can be removed (dismissed) from the parliament due to floor-crossing. 

• Abolish the system of appointing the next in line person of that party’s preferential votes list in the event of an MP quits or dies.

We must re-introduce the old style by-election system. It is the best way to test the public will of the time.

It is the 1976 Jaela by- election where the UNP’s Joseph Michael Perera recorded a resounding win that sent the signal that Mrs Sirima Bandaranaike’s strong government was doomed to collapse.

In Mahara by election (1983) Vijaya Kumaranathunga lost by 45 votes. But, this loss enabled him to establish as a leading political figure of the country.

Courtesy Outlook

Sri Lankan President Ranil Wickremesinghe on Saturday said that he is keen to solve all issues, including land and housing, pertaining to the Tamil minority community in the country’s Northern Province by next year when the island nation celebrates its 75th anniversary of Independence.

Sri Lankan President Ranil Wickremesinghe on Saturday said that he is keen to solve all issues, including land and housing, pertaining to the Tamil minority community in the country’s Northern Province by next year when the island nation celebrates its 75th anniversary of Independence.

Speaking in Vavuniya, a Tamil-dominated district in the Northern Province of Sri Lanka where he opened up the president office’s northern co-ordination sub-office, the president said the move would help in expeditiously dealing with the outstanding issues such as lands, housing, and agriculture-relating to the community.

First we must dispel the people’s mistrust. Once we all start working together this mistrust will fade away,” Wickremesinghe said, commenting on the conflict with a protracted history.

Wickremesinghe said that eight committees would be appointed at the provincial level to resolve the land issues, the Colombo Page reported.

The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) ran a military campaign for a separate Tamil homeland in the Northern and Eastern provinces for nearly 30 years before its collapse in 2009 after the Sri Lankan Army killed its supreme leader Velupillai Prabhakaran.

According to the Lankan government figures, over 20,000 people are missing due to various conflicts including the three-decade brutal war with Lankan Tamils in the north and east which claimed at least 100,000 lives.

International rights groups claim at least 40,000 ethnic Tamil civilians were killed in the final stages of the war, but the Sri Lankan government has disputed the figures.

During Saturday’s visit, Wickremesinghe said that the government must provide solutions to the problems caused by terrorism.

We must provide solutions to the problems caused by terrorism and the problems of the Northern people. Muslims too have questions about their rights in Sri Lankan society. The upcountry people also have various problems. There is a social opinion that all these problems should be solved. So this is the best time to solve all these problems,” he said, adding that the matter needs to be solved strategically.

These issues must be systematically resolved. I intend to discuss these matters with the Sinhala, Tamil, and Muslim communities. I intend to provide solutions to resolve these issues without dividing the country,” Wickremesinghe added.

During the visit, special attention was focused on the housing problem of the people in the Northern Province, and the officials present with Wickremesinghe pointed out that the housing projects initiated to address the issue in the three districts have reached different stages of construction and an additional sum of Rs 3,000 million is required for its completion.

The president pointed out that many housing projects have commenced across the island and he expected to provide quick solutions to the housing problem of the people in the North.

Wickremesinghe said people who suffered due to war will get solace.

Recalling the anti-Tamil riots in 1983, Wickremesinghe said the country had moved on from that as well as from the time the military conflict ended in 2009.

We have come a long way since 1983. We have also come a long way since 2009. It brings to mind a line from the national anthem which states ‘living as children of one mother. My wish is that we can live as children of one mother at least by the 75th Independence Anniversary,” he said.

Sri Lanka’s efforts to solve the Tamil minority issue through negotiations had historically failed due to political opposition from the majority Sinhala community parties.

Wickremesinghe as prime minister of Sri Lanka between 2015 and 2019 tried a brand new Constitution to incorporate Tamil demands for political autonomy but met with resistance.

Recently, Wickremesinghe also announced the appointment of a committee to find ways to integrate Indian-origin workers in the plantation sector into society.

In 2019, the Sri Lankan government released about 90 percent of the military-acquired land belonging to the minority Tamil community held during the brutal civil war with the LTTE.

At the end of the military conflict 13 years ago, some 84,675 acres of Tamil civilian land were under military control and by the end of March 2019, some 71,178 acres of land were released, according to the Sri Lankan government.

(Inputs from PTI)