Courtesy Adaderana

Sri Lanka has reported 02 more coronavirus-related deaths, the Director-General of Health Services confirmed today (April 11).

As per the Department of Government Information, both victims are male patients, aged 60 and 72 years.

The new deaths bring the number of COVID-19 related deaths witnessed in Sri Lanka to 598 in total.

Courtesy Adaderana

Sri Lanka on Sunday (April 11) confirmed another 55 fresh cases of the novel coronavirus in the country as total infections detected within the day reached 225.

This brought the total number of Covid-19 confirmed in the country thus far to 95,131.

According to the Epidemiology Unit, 2,902 patients infected with the virus are currently under medical care at designated hospitals and treatment centers while total recoveries have reached 91,631. 

The death toll due to the Covid-19 pandemic in the country stands at 598.

Courtesy Adaderana

The coronavirus variant discovered in South Africa may evade the protection provided by Pfizer/BioNTech’s COVID-19 vaccine to some extent, a real-world data study in Israel found, though its prevalence in the country is very low and the research has not been peer-reviewed.

The study, released on Saturday, compared almost 400 people who had tested positive for COVID-19, 14 days or more after they received one or two doses of the vaccine, against the same number of unvaccinated patients with the disease.

It matched age and gender, among other characteristics.

The South African variant, B.1.351, was found to make up about 1% of all the COVID-19 cases across all the people studied, according to the study by Tel Aviv University and Israel’s largest healthcare provider, Clalit.

But among patients who had received two doses of the vaccine, the variant’s prevalence rate was eight times higher than those unvaccinated – 5.4% versus 0.7%.

This suggests the vaccine is less effective against the South African variant, compared with the original coronavirus and a variant first identified in Britain that has come to comprise nearly all COVID-19 cases in Israel, the researchers said.

We found a disproportionately higher rate of the South African variant among people vaccinated with a second dose, compared to the unvaccinated group. This means that the South African variant is able, to some extent, to break through the vaccine’s protection,” said Tel Aviv University’s Adi Stern.

The researchers cautioned, though, that the study only had a small sample size of people infected with the South African variant because of its rarity in Israel.

They also said the research was not intended to deduce overall vaccine effectiveness against any variant, since it only looked at people who had already tested positive for COVID-19, not at overall infection rates.

Pfizer declined to comment on the Israeli study.

Pfizer and BioNTech said on April 1 that their vaccine was around 91% effective at preventing COVID-19, citing updated trial data that included participants inoculated for up to six months.

They have been testing a third dose of their shot as a booster, and have said they could modify the shot to specifically address new variants if needed.

In respect to the South African variant, they said that among a group of 800 study volunteers in South Africa, where B.1.351 is widespread, there were nine cases of COVID-19, all of which occurred among participants who got the placebo. Of those nine cases, six were among individuals infected with the South African variant.

Some previous studies have indicated that the Pfizer/BioNTech shot was less potent against the B.1.351 variant than against other variants of the coronavirus, but still offered a robust defence.

VARIANT IS NOT WIDESPREAD
While the results of the study may cause concern, the low prevalence of the South African strain was encouraging, according to Tel Aviv University’s Stern.

Even if the South African variant does break through the vaccine’s protection, it has not spread widely through the population,” said Stern, adding that the British variant may be blocking” the spread of the South African strain.

Source: Reuters
-Agencies

by Rohana R. Wasala

The report of the ministerial subcommittee appointed by the president on February 19, 2021 to study the Final Report of the PCoI on the Easter Sunday Attacks and to suggest how its recommendations should be carried out was handed over to the president on April 5 by its secretary Harigupta Rohanadheera, the director general of legal affairs at the presidential secretariat. The sectoral oversight committee comprised minister Chamal Rajapaksa (chairman), and ministers Udaya Gammanpila, Prasanne Ranatunga, Romesh Pathirana, Johnston Fernando and Rohitha Abeygunawardane. Two days later (April 7), the media reported that the Attorney General authorized the proscription of some eleven Islamic organizations including all Thawheed groups, Sri Lanka Jamate Islam, and affiliated student movements, of which those directly or indirectly involved in the April attacks held membership.The international organizations ISIS and Al Qaeda are also now banned in Sri Lanka. The government has already initiated implementing the other recommendations of the PCoI as well, such as the regulation of madrasa education. Under the present president the rule of law, which was under stress during the Yahapalanaya, is steadily taking charge, free of political interference. The uproar raised over alleged governmental pussyfooting around the findings and recommendations of the PCoI was premature. Meanwhile the proposed ban on the Bodu Bala Sena, which had taken the public by surprise, seems to have been rightfully set aside. 

The controversial recommendation contained in the Final Report of the Presidential Commission of Inquiry on the Easter Sunday suicide bomb attacks carried out on April 21, 2019 to ban the Bodu Bala Sena (along with some other smaller national organizations) and to subject its general secretary to a form of  ‘shooting the messenger’ type of judgement, as concerned citizens viewed it, outraged the sentiments of the Maha Sangha, the general public, and some junior partners of the SLPP-led ruling alliance, who, obviously have no idea of the genuine reasons (whatever they were) that caused the commissioners to bracket these national organizations with the very Islamist terrorist outfits that they emerged to fight; these extremist Islamist groups are suspected to have worked to facilitate the radicalization of certain young Muslims, that ultimately led to the bombings. The recommendation, if followed through, could result in consigning the BBS leader, and through him the whole Sinhala Buddhist majority community, to a permanent denial of their right to free speech concerning Islamism and even other non-Islamic forms of religious fundamentalism, which pose a distinct threat to the long entrenched peaceful coexistence of diverse racial and religious communities in the country. 

Many, including even His Eminence the Cardinal, scoffed at the idea of appointing a ministerial subcommittee to look at the Final Report and advise the government on how to implement its recommendations. They wondered whether the government was trying to hide some vital information that incriminates an individual or a group to whom it is beholden for something. Were mere MPs eligible to review judicial recommendations? However, minister Gammanpila, a member of the subcommittee,  during the debate on the PCoI in parliament, explained on March 11, why such a subcommittee was deemed necessary. Two types of recommendations have been made by the commissioners, he said. One type consists of recommendations which are only for the attention of the Attorney General; the subcommittee has nothing to do with these. Then, there are a large number of recommendations (e.g., banning of extremist organizations) that need to be carried out by the government as appropriate. The subcommittee was appointed to look into the latter and make suitable suggestions on how to implement them. In the course of his parliamentary speech, Gammanpila mentioned the mysterious recommendation that advocates a ban on the BBS and that seems to subject its leader Ven. Gnanasara to a travesty of justice: He said, “Instead of being punished, Ven. Gnanasara should be co-opted into the national intelligence service!”. The minister is also an outspoken member of a ginger group that is apparently forming within the government ranks (something I see as a positive trend that will help keep the SLPP on the right track, focused on the mandate that the people have given Gotabaya Rajapaksa. 

There is no doubt that there are arguably valid reasons, maybe at least of a technical nature, behind the PCoI’s problematic advocacy of proscribing the BBS (which are probably set out in the Final Report); that is, there must be some rationalization of that recommendation. In spite of this, it is something that was not expected by ordinary citizens who have no legal sophistication. Those nationalist organizations, foremost among them the BBS, have been peacefully demonstrating against the unacceptable, aggressive activities of religious fundamentalists targeting the country’s majority Buddhist establishment (the Buddha Sasanaya) for over three decades (though the activist monks involved in these organizations have been most treacherously demonised in the eyes of the outside world through well funded, long sustained, false propaganda movements). Both monks and lay activists are in possession of concrete evidence to prove their allegations against fundamentalists, as used to be claimed by various social media posts.

Successive governments have to date mollycoddled certain opportunistic politicoes who depend on the votes of radicalized sections of the Muslim polity to get elected to parliament, but who don’t dare confront the handful of extremists who clandestinely brainwash or just terrorise their victim followers. This applies in respect of the Tamil minority as well, in a different way, but perhaps to a lesser degree. Leaders of governments, irrespective of whether they mean well or ill, have had to woo the support of these narrowly communalistic opportunists just to remain in power. Coldly strategic politicking leaves hardly any opportunity for meaningful governance. Meanwhile, most members of parliament elected from among the majority Sinhalese give us the impression that they are fighting among themselves merely to secure their petty personal or party interests, while being oblivious of or indifferent to the emergent threat (of potentially genocidal proportions, according to some) that the latter are now facing. This alarmingly disgusting fact would be obvious to any disinterested observer even now. In short, politicians who have been in power over the years, or even decades, have consistently turned a deaf ear to the monks’ complaints, and simultaneously, they have turned a blind eye on the illegal activities of Islamist extremists such as the indoctrination of the young through illegal madrasas, defacement of Buddha statues, encroachment or vandalizing or desecration of ancient Buddhist places of worship of national archaeological importance including, for example, the Muhudu Maha Viharaya at Pottuvil in the Ampara district in the eastern province, Kuragala in Balangoda (both dated back to the 2nd century BCE), and the Devenagala Raja Maha Viharaya (known from at least the 5th century CE to the Kandyan period, i.e., early 17th to early 19th CE), near Mavanella in the Kegalle district in central Sri Lanka. Had governments got the relevant civil authorities to perform their duties without let or hindrance in terms of the long established laws and traditions, extremist activities would have been nipped in the bud. (Fortunately, though,today, some positive steps are being taken in this connection.) 

When ruling politicians at any time falter due to internal and external pressures, a few government functionaries easily succumb to the lure of the bounties and blandishments that make them look the other way when the laws are violated by extremists.  The vast majority of civil servants, however, execute their functions and fulfill their duties with proper patriotism and professionalism. The public must salute them.

Actually, the question of a ban to be imposed on nationalist organizations would not have arisen, if the problem of religious fundamentalist excesses had been dealt with in earnest and eliminated altogether, because the former came into existence purely in reaction to the latter. The BBS leader has repeatedly stated that his organization would be disbanded immediately after the issues he is raising are resolved. But it is not likely now that he will volunteer to terminate his activism before the criminals responsible for the April 21 attacks are brought to book and the religious fundamentalist threats have completely ceased. However, Ven. Gnanasata was not perturbed by the ban. The Sunday Morning newspaper (February 25) reported: ‘”We would be more than happy to be banned, as long as the rest of the recommendations in the report are implemented properly,” the BBS General Secretary Ven. Galagodaaththe Gnanasara Thero said when contacted by The Morning yesterday (24). He also noted that the BBS should be provided with reasons as to why they should be banned. “We haven’t committed any crime, we only raised our voice,” he claimed.’ 

The fact remains, however, that, had his early warnings been taken seriously and the issues duly investigated, and suitable preemptive actions taken, those monstrous attacks would not have taken place. By the time of the unexpected ouster of war winning UPFA government at the beginning of 2015, meaningful security steps had been initiated under Gotabaya Rajapaksa the then defence secretary to contain the spread of Islamist activities. But the incoming Yahapalanaya completely neglected the national security aspect of governance, and instead launched a witch-hunt against the members of the intelligence establishment that had been set up by the previous UPFA government that it replaced. The rift between the PM and President, which worsened during the latter phase of Yahapalanaya, further eroded national security, and this situation was capitalized on by the Jihadists to mount their attacks with ease, a fact that receives confirmation from the Final Report of The PCoI. We may now breathe a sigh of relief that the anti-nationalist NGO- and media-orchestrated public despair about a possible coverup of the Easter Sunday crime that the opposition politicians fed with ghoulish relish is finally being assuaged. 

H. L. D. Mahindapala

Between  mid-twenties and mid-thirties, Jaffna stood as a shining beacon, showing the path to a future filled with humane and liberal values aimed at bonding a divided nation into one united brotherhood, rising above castes and divisive creeds. Jaffna held the future of the nation  in the palm  of  its hands. Influenced, on the one hand by liberal-democratic values imparted in the schools run by American missionaries and, on the other, by the Gandhain ideals, the English-speaking Tamil youth took to non-violent radical politics with a passionate mission to give new directions to the nation struggling  to be born. This radical movement was led by the Youth Congress of Jaffna, known originally as the Students’ Congress, Jaffna. It was launched  in  mid-twenties and wielded a powerful political clout  in the  peninsular during this decade. That decade proved to be the most glorious period for ethnic harmony not only in Jaffna but the whole of Sri Lanka,.

Jaffna – not Colombo — was the epicentre of dynamic radical politics in the mid-twenties and  early thirties. Long before the Left took up the cry of independence, the English-speaking Tamil youth, influenced by the Gandhi-Nehruvian ideals, were the most powerful and energetic radicals who went all out for swaraj (full independence) without compromising one whit for piecemeal constitutional concessions. The Youth Congress of Jaffna was the  first to daringly reject the two evils that warped the peninsular politics  of the North : communalism and casteism. It was the only time Jaffna had the courage to  resist and run against the ingrained casteist forces that ruled Jaffna during feudal and colonial times.  In fact, under the overwhelming influence of the Jaffna Youth Congress – the leading nationalistic and iconoclastic political force in Sri Lanka in  the twenties and thirties – neither Vellalaism nor communalism had a place in Jaffna. G. G. Ponnambalam, the father of Tamil communalism, had to contest the first elections under the Donoughmore constitution in 1931 in Mannar and not  in Jaffna – and he lost there too.

Jaffna was the magnetic centre that attracted all progressive forces. Colombo became the political capital of radical politics with the coming of the Left in the late thirties. Jaffna was the cosmopolitan centre that attracted iconic international figures like Gandhi (in 1927)  Nehru (in 1931), Sarojini Naidu etc. Jaffna was leading the nation  with visionary and radical values, eschewing  narrow communalism and casteism, in the mid-twenties and early thirties. Political discourses on critical national issue were stirring the Jaffna intellectuals and leading the nation into a new political consciousness. It was time when the conservative elders of Jaffna in the Legislative Council were demanding communal representation as against territorial representation. Territorial representation was democratic but narrow communal representation would  preserve the privileged position of the Tamils in the Legislative Council where they were virtually on par with the Sinhalese. Rising above communalism, the radical Jaffna youth rejected racial representation and demanded territorial representation.

In another bold move, the Jaffna Youth Congress rejected in 1931 the reformed constitution recommended by Donoughmore Commission, which devolved more powers to the elected representatives in the new State Council. They called for a boycott of the first elections under universal  franchise recommended by the Donoughmore Commission. The Sri Lankan reformists (a.k.a. as memorialists” / paper tigers) were content to work within the framework of the new State Council which gave greater powers to the elected representatives, though the overriding powers controlling the state were still in  the hands of the Governor. The radical Tamil youth were not content with a hemin – hemin” (Governor Andrew Caldecott) path to independence. Inspired by Indian ideals they wanted independence without any further  postponement, They demanded instant swaraj  and the movement to the boycott the first elections was successful. It was the first biggest blow to British imperialism. 

Young and restless Philip Gunawardena, the Father of Sri Lankan Marxism, writing from London to the Searchlight (20-27, June 1931) wrote: During  the last few years the Jaffna Students’ Congress was the only organisation  in Ceylon that has been displaying political intelligence….. Jaffna has given the lead. They have forced their leaders to sound the bugle call for the great struggle for freedom – for immediate and complete independence from Imperialist Britain. Will the Sinhalese who always display supreme courage  understand and fall in line? A tremendous struggle faces us. Boycott of the election  was only a signal: It is the duty of  every Sinhalese now to prepare the masses for the great struggle ahead.”

Jaffna is the centre of the Tamil and the aggressive youth leagues,” wrote Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru in a letter to his sister, Krishna Nehru Hutheesingh, in 1931. We had a heavy programme, motored all over the neighbourhood, and had dip in  the sea and swam towards India – she was only 16 miles across” (p. 94 – The Jaffna Youth Congress, Santasilan Kadirgamar.)

The leading light of the Jaffna Youth Congress was S. Handy Perinbanayagam (1899 – 1977), educationist, reformists, radical activist, pioneer of the independence movement and one of the most respected national figures. His national stature was summed up in the following paragraph: When he retired as Principal of Kokuvil Hindu College his total years of contributory service was short by a year to entitle him to a pension. The Parliament of the day resolved by a Special Bill to set aside the pension regulations that prevented his receiving a pension. This was the tribute an overwhelmingly Sinhalese parliament paid to him for his services to education. Such a compliment has been rarely paid to any other public man either before or since” (p. xvii – Ibid).

If the liberal and humanistic values of Perinbanayagam and the overarching spirit of nationalism of the Jaffna Youth Congress triumphed, instead of communalism and  casteism of Jaffna, the history of post-independent Sri Lanka would not have been written in blood. But evolving history, which never moves in a straight line, deemed it otherwise. Whether the Jaffna Youth Congress was an aberration that went against the grain  of the Jaffna political culture and, therefore, had  no chance of survival is another question that needs examining. The reality, however, is that the  Youth Congress faded away in the late thirties and Jaffna was swamped by the rise and rise of Ponnambalamism – the force that turned the North away from the liberal mainstream politics into the narrow peninsular politics of mono-ethnic extremism. Ponnambalamism, as it manifested in its diverse forms in the post-independent period, became  the over-determining force that shattered centuries of communal harmony and peaceful co-existence. In his marathon speech to the State council in 1939 Ponnambalam was the first to define the Tamil ideology that would guide the Jaffna Tamils into mono-ethnic extremism. He was also the first to provoke the first Sinhala-Tamil riots with his incendiary attacks on the Mahavamsa and Sinhala-Buddhist history and culture. His insensitive and provocative attacks demonising the Sinhalese and  their history in Navalapitiya in June 1939 set the entire neighbourhood – Matale, Passara and Nuwara Eliya – on  fire.

The overarching impact of G. G. Ponnambalam in laying the foundations and moulding the mono-ethnic ideology of the peninsular that rules North-South politics to this day has been totally under-reported and under-analysed. In fact, hardly any attention is paid to this factor of Ponnambalamism because the main focus has shifted to blame the Sinhala-Buddhist for the worsening of  the North-South inter-ethnic relations. Besides, those who tend to blame Northern politics focus more on S. J. V.Chelvanayakam because he broke away from his senior partner and established the Illankai Tamil Arasu Kachchi (toned down as Federal Party in English) which had as its hidden  agenda the establishment of a separate state.. It is true that Tamil politics took a sharp turn when  it took to separatism and violence under Chelvanayakam and his Vadukoddai Resolution which declared war on the nation.  But what is overlooked is that the foundations for the incremental swing  to Tamil extremism began with Ponnambalam.  

In short, Ponnamabalam combined the three most critical factors that went to construct an anti-Sinhala-Buddhist  ideology which exacerbated inter-ethnic relations in the post-independent era : 1. Demand for a disproportionate share of  power. 2. The accusation of discrimination against the  minority (in government jobs particularly)  which exploited the basic fears of a minority in a majority community. 3 The provocative denigration  and demonization of  Sinhala-Buddhist history and culture which created the Sinhala-Buddhist bogey-man. This  triad collectively served as the primary tools for Ponnambalam to mould and sustain an anti-Sinhala-Buddhist ideology and, through that, consolidate his leadership as the  sole representative of the Tamils” in Jaffna. Denigrating and downgrading the Sinhala-Buddhist culture of the majority was necessary to create the Sinhala-Buddhist bogeyman and hate politics   –  a political manoeuvre he gathered  from his visits to Hitler’s Germany. The Sinhala intellectuals returning home from Western universities brought in their baggage Marxism and liberalism. Ponnambalam brought racism. Downgrading the Sinhala-Buddhists was his way of  proving the superiority of the Tamil race which, in turn, justified his claim to an equal share of power.  To further boost his extremist demand he threw in the cry of discrimination – an accusation rejected by the British Soulbury Commission which heard his complaints for nine hours.

Combined together these three incendiary factors were explosive enough to justify anti-Sinhala-Buddhist hatred  among any minority group obsessed with the bogey of majoritarianism. As highlighted by The Hindu Organ, the leading publication in English of the Tamils of Jaffna in the British period, there were Tamils who in season and out of season trot out  the bogey of Sinhala domination”. (ibid- p. 56). Even a cursory glance will reveal that the overarching ideological offensive against Sri Lanka has been driven by the bogey of Sinhala-domination. In the main, what developed as Tamil nationalism”, self-determination”, grievances”, aspirations” Eelamism” were various shades of anti-Sinhala-Buddhist  Ponnambalamism which became the catalysing force that sustained and steered peninsular politics in the post-independent period.

Ponnambalam’s triad became the template for all anti-Sinhala-Buddhist politics. Even the intellectual and academic exercises operated within  this  framework. No one from the higher end of S. J. Tambiah’s Buddhism Betrayed ? to the lower end of Dayan Jayatilleka’s diatribes against armed Dharmapala”, deviated from the triad laid down for mono-ethnic extremism by Ponnambalam. Their theories, models and formulas are all derived from the roots of the triad  sown by Ponnambalam. It can be asserted without fear of contradiction  that the entire anti-Sinhala-Buddhist intellectual mob consists of ditto-heads of Ponnambalam, regurgitating one or the other part of the triad raised by Ponnambalam against the Sinhala-Buddhists. They had nothing  original in them. All their intellectual exercises boil down to either justifying or expatiating on anyone of the three factors marketed by Ponnambalam, or a combination of all three. All Tamil politics developed and went wild based on  this three-pronged attack. There is nothing in Tamil politics  outside these three-pronged anti-Sinhala-Buddhist attacks.

Later the intellectuals embellished Ponnambalamism by adding Anagarika Dharmapala, S.W. R. D. Bandaranaike and 1956”, the Sangha, and everything associated with Sinhala-Buddhist culture for the violence generated by militant minorities that had destabilised the nation and retarded its progress. So when Dayan Jayatilleka belittles Dharmapala he is doing exactly what Ponnambalam did  in Navalapitiya – attacking the Sinhala-Buddhist base to reinforce Tamil extremism. He becomes a ditto-head of Ponnambalam. He fancies himself as a cultivated Gramscian when he is nothing but a servile ditto-head of Ponnambalam, serving even as a minister of  a pro-Indian outfit.

The battle lines of coming events in the north and the south were drawn clearly in the thirties. The Navalapitiya riots provoked by Ponnambalam’s attack on Sinhala-Buddhist culture and history in June 1939 was the breaking point. This event and  his marathon speech  in the State Council, defending  50-50”, made him  the new icon of the  Vellala  middle-class in  professions  and the public service. By mid-thirties Ponnambalam had emerged as the leading champion of Tamil communalism in the north. It was Bandaranaike who led the counter-movement against Ponnambalam in the south in the latter half of the thirties. These two key actors in the political arena crossed swords publicly over the provocative hate speech of Ponnambalam targeting the Sinhalese at Nawalapitiya. The Hindu Organ (p. 4 — June 22, 1939), the leading voice of Jaffna Hindus in the first decades of the 20th century, headlined this politically significant story featuring the two key protagonists of the Nawalapitiya incident. The headline said: Mr. Ponnambalam’s N’pitiya speech” followed by the strapline beneath it: Mr. Bandaranaike’s challenge.”

 Ponnambalam’s confrontational, derisive, divisive, communal politics came under heavy fire not only from the Sinhalese but also from Jaffna which, in the twenties and thirties, was constructively promoting national unity by decrying communal politics. In its prophetic editorial titled, THE WRITING ON THE WALL, The Hindu Organ, (Ibid) said: ….A verbal bombshell dropped unwittingly by a Tamil politician at Nawalapitiya appears to have set the South on fire……..A slander against a community by an individual, though unintended, is inexcusable….

 In a preceding paragraph it said: Communal differences, though there existed hardly any during the time of the last generation of leaders, have now been multiplied and intensified, thanks to the hot-heads and irresponsible talkers in the country who care more for the plaudits of the mob than for the welfare of the people. Ceylon today is seething with petty problems which have been created by thoughtless gas-bags, and which threaten to poison the peaceful conditions in the country….” It concluded by saying: Let us hope that wise statesmanship will prevail among leaders who should realize the imperative need for the welding of the communities into a Ceylonese Community for the political and economic salvation of the country. The writing on the wall is too clear to be ignored.”

 This editorial predicted the future accurately. After Ponnambalam launched his hate speeches and anti-Sinhala campaigns, loaded with the insane fury” (Yalpana Vaipa Malai) of communalism, in the thirties, Jaffna politics never regained its balance. Instead it proceeded relentlessly rejecting multi-ethnic co-existence that was the only means for building lasting peace. The responsibility of steering Jaffna into irreversible and intransigent communalism that led to confrontations with the Sinhalese from time to time and finally to the Vadukoddai War should be placed squarely on the communal politics fathered by Ponnambalam. The rise of Ponnambalam on the wave of communalism he whipped up marks the beginning of the end of communal harmony that prevailed in Sri Lanka throughout the preceding centuries.

 Bandaranaike who grasped the hidden realities of Ponnambalam’s racist political agenda said, in inaugurating the branch of the Sinhala Maha Sabaha in Nawalapitiya shortly afterwards, that a statute of Ponnambalam should be erected in Nawalapitiya for helping him to open the branch of the Sinhala Maha Sabha.(ibid). In other words, he was saying that it was the provocative extremism of Ponnambalam that prompted the Sinhala people of Nawalapitiya to rally behind him. Clearly, one communalism was promoting the other. The Sinhala Maha Sabha which was established by Bandaranaike in 1936 did gather momentum in the thirties as a reaction to Ponnambalam’s virulent anti-Sinhala hate speeches.

 Apart from recognizing the legitimacy of the suppressed grass root forces to regain their lost heritage the politics of Bandaranaike was shaped by what he called the more and more rapacious demands of the Tamils” (p.240 — Jane Russell.) Here it should be noted that though the Tamil Mahajana Sabhai was established in 1921 the Sinhala Maha Jana Sabaha was not formed until 1936. This again contradicts the popular notion that it was Bandaranaike who was exploiting Sinhala communalism. On the contrary, his movement was a logical response to the rising waves of anti-Sinhala communalism from the north that was exacerbating the north-south relations. The offensive launched by Ponnambalam was aggressive and virulent. Bandaranaike was the most prominent leader of the southern elite to pick up the challenge of Ponnambalam with a counter Sinhala movement.

Bandaranaike’s response, however, was measured and targeted the historical inaccuracies. He said: It is not my intention to speak against the Tamils. I am only replying to Mr. Ponnamabalam.” Unlike Ponnambalam he was careful not to offend the Tamil community. And proceeded to analyse the hidden agenda of Ponnambalam. He said: There is more in Mr. Ponnampalam’s (sic) speech than an ill-considered and thoughtless insult. It was an attempt to prove that the Tamils had the chief claim to Ceylon, by saying that they (the Tamils) were the original settlers, that there was no pure race, such as the Sinhalese, and the Tamils were responsible for this culture, literature, etc.” Here Bandaranaike has identified, quite succinctly, the tactic  of Ponnambalam to denigrate and  demonise Sinhala-Buddhist history and culture for him to make disproportionate claims.

 He added: Mr. Ponnambalam had said that the Sinhalese could not be trusted and they were unfair. He had forgotten that with the help of the Sinhalese he had obtained a scholarship and gone to England; that the Sinhalese majority had voted him to be an acting Minister and the pan-Sinhalese Board of Ministers had elected him to represent Ceylon at Singapore. Was this gross injustice the Sinhalese had done him?” Bandaranaike’s riposte has exposed the typical tactic of Tamils to exploit all the advantages available in the Sinhala-Buddhist state and accuse them of discrimination.

Ponnambalam’s communalism distorted historical perspectives and dragged peninsula to the extreme point of no return. Ponnambalam’s interpretation of history made them believe that the Jaffna Tamils were the founders, the makers and the breakers of Sri Lankan history. This was leading them into an unwarranted sense of superiority over the other communities. The distorted and arrogant version of history was partly the reason that boosted their mono-ethnic politics demanding 50-50” and finally to a separate state. This also explains why the other two Tamil-speaking communities did not go down this hubristic path of Tamilian history which claimed that Sri Lanka came out of the womb of the pre-historic Tamils settlers. The Muslims and the Indian Tamils did not concoct history to glorify their past with myths.

 Challenging Ponnambalam to point out the nation that was free from mixture (hybrids”) Bandaranaike said: A large part of Sinhalese history had been created in their fight against Tamils.” Bandaranaike was focusing on accuracy compared to the farrago of historical inexactitudes uttered by Ponnambalam’s desperate bid to project himself as the new messiah of the Tamils. In most Western democracies hate speech is banned, particularly if it leads to violence. Ponnambalam got away with his hate speech that led to violence.

 Ponnambalam was bent on pursuing rabid racism and ruthless casteism. He would not hesitate to exploit any issue to further his career with racist politics. For instance, when the thirties and the forties were still under the British colonial regime he never failed to blame everything that happened on the Sinhala government” and not the British masters who were in overall command.

 Example 1: The Marxists who led the General Strike of 1947 — the biggest in colonial times — started marching from Kolonnawa to Colombo on June 5, 1947. Gov. Henry Monck-Mason Moore ( Colvin R. de Silva called him ” Monkey ” Mason Moore at a Galle Face meeting) rushed down from Kandy to deal with the emergency situation. Admiral Sir. Geoffrey Layton, Commander-in-Chief of the island, too was in Colombo. The State Council passed the controversial Public Security Act hurriedly to meet the challenge of the biggest ever strike. The march ended with Police opening fire and killing V. Kandasamy, a clerical servant in the public service. Kandasamy’s body was sent by the night mail to his relatives in Jaffna. When the body arrived at the Jaffna station next morning Ponnambalam was there to denounce it as an act of the Sinhala government killing a Tamil. The Marxists organisers of the strike were blaming the British and their comprador bourgeoisie agents” for the death of Kandasamy. Predictably, Ponnambalam was demonising the Sinhala bogey-man at the Jaffna station.

Example 2: During the World War II the British introduced the cooperative system to control the distribution of food and essentials in the market place. Every suburb in the cities and villages had these cooperatives. The main objective of the cooperative movement was to prevent the black marketeers from cornering the scarce food stocks and exploiting the consumers. People were issued with coupons to collect their rations weekly and it worked effectively in delivering the essentials to the people. Ponnambalam, however, went before the Soulbury Commissioners and complained that it was a plot by the Sinhala government to undercut the Tamil traders.

 Ponnambalam was unrelenting and implacable. Besides, anti-Sinhala politics was a tool he devised and honed to advance his career. With the decline of the Jaffna Tamil Youth leading anti-communal campaigns he had a field day with no opposition in the north. In the south Bandaranaike was reacting to Ponnambalam’s new wave of communal politics. Bandaranaike’s role was to unite the Sinhalese and champion the rights of the oppressed masses who were denied their political and cultural right under centuries of colonialism. He was not going to stop at the transfer of power from the foreign colonial elite to the local elite. The White Sahibs were leaving and the Brown Sahibs were taking over with no meaningful empowerment of the grassroots. There was an urgent need for correcting the historical imbalances left behind by centuries of colonialism. It was for opposing the mono-ethnic extremism of the north and also for empowering the grassroot forces that he was labelled as an opportunistic chauvinist.” Besides, in opposing Ponnambalam he had foreseen the threats of the rabid communal forces that were rising in the peninsular political culture — a violent force that would undermine the unity, sovereignty and territorial integrity of the nation.

Ponnambalamism has  been the main force that initially paved the path to end up in the  current impasse. There is nothing in Tamil politics that is outside Ponnambalamism.

After Ponnambalam came the deluge. S. J. Tambiah, Neelan Tiruchelvam, Jehan Perera, Jayadeva Uyangoda, Dayan  Jayatilleka et all are all  ditto—heads of Ponnambalam. In  their ignorance, they all fancy themselves to be original theorists, analysts and political scientists, refusing to acknowledge that they are merely regurgitating Ponnambalamism – the original source of Tamil extremism that has misled them into a political dead-end. It is not too late even  now to recognise the reality that all anti-Sinhala-Buddhist intellectuals are, in one form  or another, nothing but plain Ponnambalayas”.   

 මතුගම සෙනෙවිරුවන්

         හදිසි මරණ පරීක්ෂකවරු සඳහා තනතුරු බිහි කිරීම සිදු වන්නේ 1979 අංක 15 දරණ අපරාධ නඩු විධාන සංග්‍රහයේ 108 වගන්තිය අනුවයි. සිවිල් පුරවැසියන්ගෙන් තෝරාගත් උගත් බුද්ධිමත් පුද්ගලයන්  සීමිත පොලිස් බලතල සහිතව මෙම තනතුරට  පත්කිරීමට  අධිකරණ ඇමතිවරයාට බලය හිමිවී තිබේ.මෙම තනතුර සඳහා පඩිනඩි සැපයීමක් සිදු නොවන අතර හදිසි මරණයකදී කරන ලද පරීක්ෂණයකින් අනතුරුව ලබා දෙන වාර්තාව උදෙසා යම් දීමනාවක් ගෙවනු ලබයි. ඒ අනුව මෙම තනතුරු ගරු කටයුතුය.බුහුමන් ලබන්නකි.වගකීමක් ඇති බැවින් තනතුර හොබවන පුද්ගලයා සමාජයේ පිළිගත් තැනැත්තෙකු බවට තක්සේරුවක් තිබිය යුතුය. මරණ පරීක්ෂණයකදී යම් තැනැත්තෙකුගෙන් සාක්ෂියක් ලබා ගැනීමට බලය පාවිච්චි කිරීමටද එලෙස සාක්ෂි දීම පැහැර හරින්නකුට විරුද්ධව වරෙන්තුවක් නිකුත් කරලීමටද මෙම මරණ පරීක්ෂක වරයාට හැකිය.

      වර්තමානයේ පවතින කොවිඩ් තත්වය හේතුවෙන් මෙම හදිසි මරණ පරීක්ෂක වරුන්ට කාර්ය බහුල වී තිබේ.මරණයට පත් වූ රෝගියෙකු පරීක්ෂා කොට පී.සී.ආර්. කොට මිනිය නිදහස් කරලීමේ භාරධූර කටයුත්තේ කොටසක් ඔවුන් වෙත පැවරී තිබේ. අධිකරණ අමාත්‍යංශය පවසන පරිදි දිවයිනේ කොට්ඨාශ ගණනාවකම මෙම තනතුර සඳහා පුරප්පාඩු 297 ක් ඇතිව තිබේ. මේ නිසා පුරප්පාඩු පිරවීමට අමාත්‍යංශයේ ලේකම් වරයා‌ගේ අත්සනින් යුතුව 2021 පෙබරවාරි 01 දාතම යටතේ අයැදුම්පත් කැඳවීමක් අන්තර්ජාලය තුළ පළ කර තිබේ.මෙම අයැදුම්පත් කැඳවීම අනුව හදිසි මරණ පරීක්ෂක වරයෙකු වීමට සුදුසුකම් හයක් සම්පූර්ණ කළ යුතුය.ඉන් වගන්ති පහකම කියැවෙන්නේ සාමාන්‍ය වශයෙන් තනතුරක් හෙබවීමට පළ කරන පොදු සුදුසුකම්ය.නමුත් සයවන වගන්තිය තුළ කියැවෙන්නේ හදිසි මරණ පරීක්ෂක (මුස්ලිම් ) තනතුර සඳහා සුදුසුකමක් වශයෙන් දෙමළ භාෂාව කතාකිරීම හා ලිවීම අවශ්‍ය බවයි. මෙම ප්‍රකාශනයෙන් කාරණා දෙකක් ගම්‍ය වෙයි. එකක් නම් පොදුවේ හදිසි මරණ පරීක්ෂක තනතුරු වලට අමතරව මුස්ලිම් ජනතාවට ආවේණික මරණ පරීක්ෂක තනතුරක්ද ඇති බවයි.එසේම මෙම අපේක්ෂකයාට දෙමළ භාෂාව ලිවීම හා කතා කිරීමටද හැකියාව තිබිය  යුතුබව කියැවෙයි.සැබවින්ම මෙම පළ කිරීම තුළින් ආණ්ඩුවේ අමාත්‍යංශයක වර්ගවාදය එළියට පැමිණ තිබේ.පොදුවේ සිංහල ජනතාවට මේ මගින් වෙනස්කමක් සිදු කර ඇති අතර දෙමළ භාෂාව ස්වකීය භාෂාව වශයෙන් භාවිතා කරන දෙමළ පුද්ගලයන්ටද වෙනස් කමක් ඇති කර තිබේ.මරණ පරීක්ෂක (මුස්ලිම් ) තනතුර නිසා ඔවුන්ටද මේ තනතුරට ඉල්ලීම් කල නොහැකිය.මෙලෙස මරණ පරීක්ෂකවරුන් පත්කිරීම සම්බන්ධව ජනතාවගේ බලවත් විරෝධය පසුගිය කාලයේ එල්ල විය. අනතුරුව අධිකරණ අමත්‍යංශයේ මාධ්‍ය ලේකම් වරයා මේ සම්බන්ධව නිවේදනයක් නිකුත් කරන ලද්දේය. එහි සඳහන්ව තිබුණේ 2018  දී එවකට සිටි අධිකරණ අමාත්‍යවරිය විසින් කමිටුවක් පත්කරන ලද අතර එහි නිර්දේශ මත මෙය සිදු කළ බවත්ය.මෙම තනතුර අලුතින් ඇතිකරන ලද්දක් නොවන බවද එහි දක්වා තිබේ.

    1979 න් පසු දිවයින පුරාම පත්කරන ලද හදිසි මරණ පරීක්ෂක වරු සමාජයට පොදු කාර්ය භාරයක් ඉටු කරන ලදහ.මුස්ලිම් ජනගහනය වැඩි පෙදෙස් වල පවා ඔවුහු අගනා කාර්යයක් ඉෂ්ඨ කර ඇත. ඔවුන් ගේ සාමාජිකයන් ගෙන් සැදුම් ලත් මරණ පරීක්ෂක සංගමක් තිබෙන අතර එහි ලේකම්වරයා මුස්ලිම් පුද්ගලයෙකු බව මෙහිදී සඳහන් කළ යුතුය.

සාමාන්‍යයෙන් මුස්ලිම් ජන සමාජය තුළ තිබෙන මත කීපයක් මෙහිදී ගෙනහැර දැක්වීම කාලෝචිතය. පුද්ගලයෙකු මරණයට පත් වූ විට පැය විසිහතරක් ඇතුලත භූමදාන කටයුතු කළ යුතු බවට ඔවුන් ගේ ආගාමික සංස්කෘතික නීතියයි.එසේම මිය ගිය පුද්ගලයා කතා බහ නොකළද ඇසි පිය නොගැසුවද මෘත ශරීරයට සියලු දැනීම් ඇති බවටද විශ්වාසයක් ඇත. මේ තත්වය තුළ මුස්ලිම් පුද්ගලයෙකු හදිසි මරණයකට පත් වූ පසු මරණ පරීක්ෂණ පැවැත්වීමත් මිනිය කැපීමත් නොකළ යුතු බවට දැඩි මතයක සිටී.මේ නිසා යම් මරණ පරීක්ෂකවරයෙකු එලෙස කිරීමට තැත්කළ විට එයට දැඩි විරෝධය පළ කොට කෙසේ හෝ එය වැළැක්වීම ට උත්සාහ දරති.බේරුවල ප්‍රදේශයේ 19 හැවිරිදි මුස්ලිම් ගැහැණ ළමයෙකු හදිසියේ මිය ගියේය. මරණයට ආසන්නම සිද්දිය වූයේ ඇයගේ මාමා විසින් ලබා දුන් තල කැරැල්ලකි.මෙහිදී මෙම මරණය සැක සහිත බැවින් මරණ පරීක්ෂණයක් සිදු කිරීම අනිවාර්යයනේම සිදු විය යුතු විය.එසේ නැතහොත් දැරියගේ මාමා සහ තල කැරලි විකුණූ වෙළෙන්දාද නිෂ්පාදකයාද චූදිතයන් බවට පත් වේ. මෙහි තර්කානූකූල බව එසේ වුවත් දැරියගේ ඥාතීන් මිනිය කැපීමට දැඩි ලෙසට විරුද්ධ විය.නමුත් මරණ පරීක්ෂක වරයාගේ සෘජු තීන්දුව මත මිනිය විවර කොට බැලුණි.එහිදී  අධිකරණ වෛද්‍යවරයා ගේ නිගමනය වූයේ දැරිය හදිසි හෘද්‍යාබාධයකින් මිය ගිය බවයි. මෙහිදී දැරියගේ මාමා මෙන්ම අනෙකුත් චූදිතයන් දෙදෙනාම සැකයකින් තොරව නිදහස් විය.නමුත් මුස්ලිම් සමාජය මෙම තර්කානූකූල බව පිළිගන්නේ නැත. අතැම් මරණ පරීක්ෂක වරු මුස්ලිම් පුද්ගලයන් හදිසි මරණයකට පත් වූ කල්හි අල්ලස් ලබාගෙන මිනිය නිදහස් කරන අවස්ථා නැත්තේ නොවේ. නමුත් බහුතරයක් මරණ පරීක්ෂක වරු එලෙස කරන්නේ නැත. එයට හේතුව මෙම තනතුර වගකීම් සහිත ගෞරවනීය තනතුරක් වීමයි.

           2018 දී හිටපු අධිකරණ අමාත්‍යවරිය විසින් පත් කරන ලද කමිටුව ඉදිරියේ සාකච්ඡා කරන්නට යෙදී ඇත්තේ මෙවැනි ප්‍රායෝගික කරුණුය.හදිසි මරණ පරීක්ෂක සංගමයේ ලේකම් වරයාද මුස්ලිම් පුද්ගලයෙකු බැවින් මුස්ලිම ජන සමාජයේ ඉල්ලීම් වලට වැඩි බරක් ලැබෙන්නට ඇත. නමුත් වගකිව යුතු රජයක් ඇමතිවරයෙකු සහ ලේකම් වරයෙකු ගේ කාර්ය භාරය විය යුත්තේ යම් ජන සමාජයක පවතින පිළිගත නොහැකි අන්තවාදී ඉල්ලීම් වලට ඉඩ දීම නොවේ.මරණ පරීක්ෂකවරු පොදුවේ පත් කරන කල්හි. සියලුම ජන කොටස් වලට ගැලපෙන පරිදි එම තනතුර සකස් කිරීම ඔවුන්ගේ වගකීමයි.මෙලෙස එක් වර්ගයක ජන කොටසකට ආවේණික පුද්ගලයන් පත් කිරීමෙන් සිදු වන අනර්ථය මෙම වගකිව යුත්තන් හට තේරී නොමැත. එකක් නම් මුස්ලිම් පුද්ගලයෙකු අන්‍යජාතික කාන්තාවක් විවාහ කරගෙන ඇති අවස්ථාවක ඔහුගේ අඩන්තේට්ටම නිසා ඇය මිය ගිය හොත් මරණ පරීක්ෂණයක් සිදු නොකරම වළ දැමීමට ක්‍රියාකිරීමට මේ පසුබිම මත හැකිවීමයි.එසේම යම් මුස්ලිම් කාන්තාවක් අන්‍ය ජාතිකයෙකු සමග ප්‍රේම සම්බන්ධතා පවත්වන විට ඇය ශරියා නීතය අනුව මරණයට පත් කොට මරණ පරීක්ෂණයක් සිදු නොකරම වළ දැමීමට තිබෙන ඉඩකඩයි. ලංකාවේ පමණක් නොව ඇමරිකාවේ පවා මුස්ලිම් තරුණියන් අනාරක්ෂිත බව පැවසෙන්නේ මෙම ශරියා නීතියේ බලපුලුවන්කාරකම නිසාය.දැනටමත් කාති උසාවි හරහා මුස්ලිම් කාන්තාවන්ට විශාල අසාධාරණයක් සිදු වේ.ග්‍රාම නිළධාරී කොට්ඨාශයක මුස්ලිම් ජනගහනය 5000 කට වැඩි නම් මුස්ලිම් මරණ පරීක්ෂක වරයෙකු පත් කල යුතු බවට ද යම් යෝජනාවක් පැමිණ තිබෙන බවද දැන ගන්නට ඇත.මෙය  භයානක තත්වයකි. මේ මගින් දිවයින පුරා ම ආවරණය වන පරිදි මුස්ලිම් ජන කොටස් වෙනම අනන්‍යතාවක් සහිත පුද්ගලයන් ලෙසට වර්ග වේ. මෙම පියවර  සහාරාන්ලා බිහි කිරීමට පසුබිම සලසන වර්ග වාදයකි.

 වර්ෂ 1806 සිට මුස්ලිම් විවාහ දේපළ නීතය ස්ථාපිත කොට ගෙන පැමිණි මුස්ලිම් විශේෂ නීති පිළිබඳ ක්‍රියාකාරිත්වය නිදහසින් පසු ස්වදේශික ආණ්ඩු විසින් තවදුරටත් පෝෂණය කර ඇත. මෙරට අධිකරණ පද්ධතියට මුස්ලිම් ඇමතිවරු දෙදෙනෙකුම පත් විය. ඒ අවස්ථා දෙකෙහෙදීම සිදු වූයේ බහුතර සිංහල ජනතාගේ වරප්‍රසාද කප්පාදු කරමින් ඔවුන් ගේ ජන වර්ගයට සාධාරණයක් ඉටු කර ගැනීමයි.නීති විදයාලයේ සිංහල බසින් ඉගෙනීමටත් විභාගයට ලිවීමත් යන දෙකම මෙම ඇමතිවරු දෙපළ විසින් අවලංගු කර ඇත.වර්තමාන අධිකරණ ඇමතිවරයා තමන්ගේ බල පරාසය තුළ ඉතා සූක්ෂමව කටයුතු කරනු පෙනෙන්නට තිබේ.එක් අතකින් මුස්ලිම් පිරිසට රැකියා සපයා දීමට අවස්ථාව සලසන අතර ඒ මගින් මුස්ලිම් වැඩි පිරිසක් සිටින ගම්වල ශරියා නීතිය ක්‍රියාත්මක කිරීමට අනුබල දෙයි.පාස්කු ප්‍රහාරයෙන් සිංහල දේශපාලකයන් ඉගෙන නොගත් පාඩම නම් මුස්ලිම් දේශපාලකයන් හුරතල් කිරීමේ අනර්ථයයි.එය විසින් සමස්ත සමාජයම අනතුරකට පත් කර තිබේ.

 මතුගම සෙනෙවිරුවන්

By Sugeeswara Senadhira* Courtesy Euresia Review

Indian security officials believe the interception of a Sri Lankan boat carrying 300 kilograms of heroin, five AK-47 guns and ammunition off the coast of Vizhinjam in Kerala in South India on March 25 points to a network of narco-terrorism with strong links to a group in Sri Lanka. The Indian officials told the Media the network of narco-terrorism has created sleeper cells in Sri Lanka and other neighbouring countries, and exports drugs to foment trouble. They added that the drug income is then used to fund illegal activities, including extremist activities.

The Indian Coast Guard and the Narcotic Control Bureau (NCB) found heroin worth Rs 3,000 crores (LKR 720 million) stashed in the boat along with AK-47 rifles and 1,000 rounds of 9mm ammunition. A number of incriminating documents were also seized from the occupants of the vessel,” said the NCB, adding that six Sri Lankan nationals were arrested.

The investigations so far have revealed that an unknown vessel carried the heroin and arms consignment from Chabahar Port, Iran, and handed it over to the Sri Lankan fishing boat, Ravihansi, in the high seas near Lakshadweep. Ravihansi then attempted to traffic the consignment to Sri Lanka when the Indian authorities intercepted it. NCB officials said that earlier, Sri Lankan authorities, too, had seized drugs worth Rs 2.5 billion that had been smuggled from the Gwadar port.

Sri Lanka has become a vulnerable transhipment hub for Transnational Organised Crime (TOC) since the Tamil terrorist’s commenced drug trafficking and money laundering in the 1980s. The LTTE smuggled drugs to raise money for arms and ammunition. However, after establishing links with Norway, Canada and few other Western countries the LTTE transferred its drug money into legitimate businesses in the West.

Organised crime and new terrorism

That was the era in which the distinctions between organised crime and new terrorism, as distinguished from old terrorism in cause and effect, have increasingly become blurred. According to A P Wickramasekara, a Sri Lankan researcher at Naval Postgraduate School in California, referring to the convergence of TOC and new terrorism in Sri Lanka proposed three hypotheses.

 First, new terrorism often avails itself of the means and methods of organised crime. Second, increasing TOC and the existing ethnic and religious disharmony pose a national security risk in Sri Lanka, increasing its vulnerability to new terrorism. Third, a lack of national strategies have prevented Sri Lanka from harnessing the instruments of national power to the fullest effect. 

A case study evaluates al Qaeda and the Abu Sayyaf Group as potential examples of a TOC-new terrorism nexus. The thesis statistically proves the increasing TOC trends and provides evidence on the emerging roots of Islamic radicalization that might lead to new terrorism, which could cause serious threats for the national security of Sri Lanka.

Dr Dhrubajyoti Bhattacharjee of the Indian Council of World Affairs pointed out that terrorism stands out to be a method of combat in which random or symbolic victims serve as instrumental targets of violence.

In his research paper, Narco-Terrorism and South Asia, he said Narco-terrorism could be defined as the use of organised terror to secure control over a state by another state or organised criminal networks or by insurgents or by a combination of any or all of them to achieve fixed political, economic or social objectives based on organisational and financial empowerment through drug trafficking”.

The involvement of the LTTE in narcotic transactions in the 1980s included bulk delivery of heroin and cannabis from producing areas in Asia via transit points to destinations in consuming countries, conveying relatively small consignments of heroin concealed in personal baggage from suppliers in Asian countries to intermediary contact persons in the Middle East, North Africa, South Africa and western countries, the operation of drug distribution networks dealing in consuming regions or countries and working as couriers between dealers and distributors.

Contraband trade between India and Sri Lanka

Contraband trade between India and Sri Lanka has, for long, been a lucrative commercial enterprise, controlled, for the most part, by gangs operating from both sides of Palk Strait. While Velvettiturai is considered to have served as the foremost centre of the smugglers from Sri Lanka, on the Indian side, Chennai, Tuticorin, Pattukotai, Rameshwaram, Tiruchendur, Ramnad, Nagapatnam, Cochin and a host of smaller localities inhabited by fishing communities have figured prominently among the smuggler bases and hideouts.

The experts say although terrorism is not a recent phenomenon and has been playing an important role in the world since the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, terrorism since the 1960s is the child of the war created by the imperialist powers. The current Islamic terrorism is by and large a byproduct of the conflicts initiated by Western powers to control countries such as Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya and Iran.

The Indian Coast Guard seizure of the drugs and arms consignment on March 25 was not the first such instance. Early March, there was another seizure. Indian security sources told Media that one Dubai-based smuggler was working for a multi-national drug smuggling racket, and the money from this has been used to create unrest, and fund extremism. They said the money was used for the 2019 Sri Lanka Easter bombings, fuelling the farmer protest in India. According to Rakesh Asthana, the Director-General of the NCB, this network has cells in Sri Lanka, Maldives, Dubai, and East Africa.

In January this year, M.M.M. Nawas, a Sri Lankan national was arrested by the Narcotics Control Bureau along with his compatriot Mohamed Afnas for alleged involvement in an international drug trafficking racket. They had travelled to Gulf nations on a fake Indian passport.

Investigations are underway to determine the facts. Both were living in Chennai under assumed identities after they fled Sri Lanka,” a Customs official said.Nawas is wanted for an attempt to murder the Sri Lankan narcotics control bureau’s inspector, Rangajeeva, on May 9, 2017. He went underground thereafter,” the official added. Nawas is said to be a key associate of Kanjipani Imran, now lodged in jail.

The accused arranged vessels to transport drug consignments from the Gwadar port through maritime routes to transit points in Sri Lanka and the Maldives. Payments were made through the ‘hawala’ channel via Dubai.

Imran worked with Sri Lankan underworld figure Makandure Madhush. Madhush was killed in a crossfire between the police and some drug peddlers in October last year. They had earlier operated from Dubai, where they were arrested in 2019 and extradited to Sri Lanka. In the recent past, some point-men for drug smugglers in Sri Lanka have been found operating from Tamil Nadu,” Indian security officials said, adding that a probe was underway to find out if Nawas had developed links with local criminal gangs for logistics support.

Last year, the drug enforcement agencies found that another Sri Lankan national, Angoda Lokka, a notorious drug trafficker and associate of Madhush, had been living in India since 2017. He died under mysterious circumstances in Coimbatore in July 2020. Lokka had fled Sri Lanka following an attack on a prison bus in February 2017, in which rival gang leader ‘Samayan’ was killed along with five other jail inmates and two prison officials. According to Indian NCB, the drug trafficking network involving Nawas has links in Afghanistan, Iran, the Maldives and Australia.

The Indian Coast Guard and NCB announced that there were 6 Sri Lankans in the boat ‘Ravihansi’ seized with heroin, five AK-47 guns and ammunition had on March 25, off the coast of Vizhinjam in Kerala. The suspects, LY Nandana, HKGB Dassppriya, AHS Gunasekara, SA Senarath, T Ranasingha and D Nissankawere remanded to judicial custody.

*The writer is Director (International Media), Presidential Secretariat, Colombo.

Courtesy Ada Derana

Steps have been taken to provide a cash allowance of Rs. 5,000 to Samurdhi recipients and low-income families, says State Minister of Samurdhi, Household Economy, Micro Finance, Self-Employment and Business Development Shehan Semasinghe.

The decision has been taken in view of the upcoming Sinhala and Tamil New Year.

Samurdhi officers have been instructed to take necessary measures to hand over the cash allowance to relevant families prior to the Sinhala and Tamil New Year.

This is jointly initiated by the Presidential Task Force for Economic Revival and Poverty Eradication and the Department of Samurdhi Development.

UPDATE: Reports revealed that the aforementioned allowance for low-income families is expected to be handed over on the 12th and 13th of April through Samurdhi banks.

Courtesy Adaderana

Director-General of Health Services has confirmed another COVID-related death in Sri Lanka on Saturday (April 10).

This brings the total number of COVID deaths reported in the country since the outbreak of the pandemic to 596.

The deceased was identified as a 56-year-old man from Udahethenna. He was tested positive for the virus while he was undergoing treatment at the Nawalapitiya District General Hospital.

He was then transferred to the Theldeniya Base Hospital where he passed away on Saturday.

The cause of death was recorded as COVID pneumonia, the Government Information Department said.

Courtesy Asda Derana

A total of 160 more persons were tested positive for COVID-19 in Sri Lanka today (April 10) as the confirmed cases count reached 94,724.

Fifty-one of them have been identified from the prison cluster, the Department of Government Information said.

Meanwhile, the recoveries count recorded in the country is currently at 91,456.

According to statistics, 2,673 active cases are still under medical care at designated hospitals and treatment centres.

Sri Lanka has also witnessed 595 fatalities due to the outbreak of the pandemic.

Courtesy Ada Derana

Ministry of Health on Tuesday (April 09) confirmed 116 more new cases of the COVID-19 in Sri Lanka as the daily cases count reached 228.

Among the newly-identified coronavirus patients are 45 individuals who arrived in Sri Lanka from overseas and 03 from the prison cluster, the Department of Government Information said.

The new development has brought the total number of COVID-19 confirmed in the country thus far to 94,564.

According to the Epidemiology Unit, 2,699 patients infected with the virus are currently under medical care at designated hospitals and treatment centres.

Total recoveries from the virus infection have reached 90,708 while the death toll stands at 593.

Courtesy Newin.asia

India, April 9 (Quartz) – As India braces for the second wave of the coronavirus pandemic, some Indians have come up with a jugaad—the colloquial term for a hack—that might prove to be a menace for the country.

On April 1, the government in the western state of Gujarat shut down a couple of labs after it found that they were selling fake Covid-19 negative test results. This is not an isolated event. There have been several incidents where Indians have fudged reports—sometimes on their own—to dodge quarantine rules or travel freely without taking an RT-PCR test that several states have made mandatory.

A fake negative report from a pathological lab costs a mere Rs2,000 ($26.8) in Noida on the outskirts of Delhi, according to a person who enquired for it and did not want to be named.

Fake it till you make it

People are using fake Covid-19 reports for different reasons.

In Haryana’s Rohtak, for instance, several students used fake positive reports to avoid taking exams. Many students cited medical reasons, including Covid, for taking online exams. Some of the Covid-positive reports seemed doubtful. Hence, these were rejected,” Yudhvir Singh, director of the University Institute of Engineering and Technology, told the media on April 5. Strict action will be taken against students who have submitted forged certificates.”

At Mumbai airport, some flyers were found to be using fake negative reports to ensure they were allowed to take flights. We got to know that some passengers take a Covid-19 negative report from a relative. Then with the help of Photoshop, they change the dates, names, and PAN numbers. Within five minutes, they are able to create fake RT-PCR reports,” a Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation official told Hindustan Times in March.

A Mumbai couple was booked by authorities in March for forging Covid-19 test reports. The duo was flying to Jaipur along with their child. All three were infected but had forged their reports, as per officials. The couple could now face up to two years in jail and a hefty fine.

Last year in December, a report by India Today claimed that there was a racket of a group of people providing fake covid results at some of the state-run hospitals across the country.

Covid-19 test results on the dark web

Earlier in March, a report by Check Point Research claimed that forged negative covid test results and fake vaccine certificates were being offered on the darknet and various hacking forums. These fake documents were reportedly being offered for as low as Rs1,800 to people seeking to board flights, cross borders, attend events, or start new jobs.

Multiple vaccine variants are also available for sale: AstraZeneca, Sputnik, Sinopharm, and Johnson & Johnson, with prices ranging between $500 and $1000 per dose,” the report noted.

Courtesy Adaderana

The Ministerial Consultative Committee on Defence has met under the patronage of President Gotabaya Rajapaksa at the Sri Jayewardenepura Parliamentary Complex on Thursday (April 08).

This is the inaugural meeting of the Consultative Committee after the election of the current Parliament. The President chaired the meeting in his capacity as the Minister in charge of the subject who is usually the Chairman of the Committee, the President’s Media Division (PMD) said.

A number of issues such as national security, promotion of law and order, salaries of war heroes, drug eradication and annual reports of institutions under the Ministry of Defense were discussed at the meeting.

Government MPs, Ministers and Opposition MPs were present at the meeting. Parliamentary officials noted that this was the first time in recent times that such large number of Ministers and Parliamentarians has attended the Ministerial Consultative Committee on Defence.

Referring to the proposed measures to ensure and promote law and order, President Rajapaksa added that 196 new police stations have been planned to be established in order to serve citizens in different parts of the country as required. At the same time, 10,000 new recruits, both men and women, are being recruited to increase the police force.

Salaries and allowances paid to the families of disabled and deceased war heroes came under discussion at today’s meeting. The President said that a Cabinet paper has been submitted to the Cabinet of Ministers seeking the approval to pay lifetime salaries and allowances now being paid to disabled war heroes to their dependents for the rest of their lives upon the former’s death.

This will also provide the opportunity for the dependents of the fallen war heroes as well to receive their salaries and allowances for life. He expressed that the requests of the families of war heroes would be met and they do not need to resort to demonstrations adding that the true motive behind the protests is something else. Both the President and the Defense Secretary reminded that the current government did not harass the protesters contrary to the practice in the past.

Responding to a proposal made during the exchange of views on drug prevention, the President said that a new National Policy on Drug Prevention has already been formulated. It is expected to be made available to the public soon. The president also pointed out the importance of using religious counselling in the rehabilitation process of drug addicts.

With reference to a question which arose on banning books containing ideas of religious extremism, the President said that the decision was not aimed at a specific religion but aimed at eradicating all forms of religious extremism in general.

President Rajapaksa emphasized the need to cultivate coconut or other suitable crops on unused lands belonging to the security forces and instructed the Heads of Security Forces to identify lands that could be used for this purpose.

State Minister of Defence Chamal Rajapaksa, Defense Secretary General (Retired) Kamal Gunaratne, Commanders of the Tri- Forces, IGP and Several high-ranking officials of the Security Forces were also present at the discussion, the PMD said.

Sugath Kulatunga 

It is a consolation that the Government has decided to defer the resurrection of the Provincial Councils, until after a new law is approved by the Parliament. Meanwhile, 10 leading Venerable monks have strongly protested on the very idea of bringing back the Provincial Councils. It is noted that these same Venerable monks played a lead role in bringing this government to power. They have given five very cogent reasons why it should not be done. It is not necessary to elaborate on each reason adduced by the leading Buddhist clergy. But there are many more reasons why this white elephant should not be given a new life. Since the introduction of the 13th Amendment to the Constitution, there had been an abundance of arguments against the Provincial Councils. At present, it is important to consider why it should not be done now and even in the future.

The contemporary pressing argument is pollical. In the recent past the government has had to face heavy flak on a number of slipups which the opposition has taken advantage of to hurt the popularity of the government. The non-identification of the ‘brains’ behind the Easter Bombing is harped on and is given a vicious twist and is made use of to swing the Catholic votes. Sugar scam has been taken to courts. Deforestation has accelerated despite action by the government. Now, a coconut oil fiddle is making ripples. Cost of living has affected the majority of the population. If there is no issue the opposition will create one. Even Viyathmaga which is facing ridicule for bad policies of the government has signaled alarm at the rapid loss of popularity by the government. People do not take a balanced view of problems against the global crisis of Corvid 19 and the achievements of the government in managing the pandemic. The government does not have an effective publicity system to counter misinformation and provide positive information. The legal system is not geared to tackle fake news. It is a truism in Sri Lanka that oppositions do not win elections, but the governments lose them.

It would be politically disastrous to hold Provincial Council Elections now, when the popularity of the government is not rosy at all. If the objective is to please the former SLPP PC members, it is not an astute decision as they are only the second-string leaders. The better candidates would have already contested the Parliamentary elections. There will also be a tussle for seats from the now desperate SLFP.

In relation to Provincial Councils, what is of paramount importance now is to recognize the heightened inflexible stance of India. One must not forget that Indian stance has always been narcissistic and self-centered. In his Discovery of India, Nehru had written that ‘the small national State is doomed’, and envisaged that Sri Lanka would inevitably be drawn into a closer union with India ‘presumably as an autonomous unit of the Indian Federation’; and Panikkar, also writing before independence, had averred that ‘the internal organization of India on a firm and stable basis with Burma and Nepal was the classic instance of the ‘buffer state’ from British times, buttressing the defense of India on its northern flank; Sri Lanka, on its southern flank, had long been considered by naval strategists to be an essential link in India’s security. Not surprisingly, the proclamation of the strategic unity of India and her regional smaller neighbors became the recurrent theme of Indian pronunciations on relations with these States. These prognoses were later discarded by Nehru and Panikkar, but they reappeared in some guise or another in Indian writings and pronouncements. Even after the modern South Asian states system had become a reality Ceylon was the essential pre-requisite to ‘a realistic policy of Indian defense’.

(https://openresearch-repository.anu.edu.au/…/019_sdsc…)

The failure of SAARC to progress as a regional bloc – the only regional bloc to stagnate so far — is due solely to India’s pursuit of self-interest at the expense of its neighbors. India was a leader in the Non-Aligned Movement. In the recent past India has veered away from non-alignment. India’s External Affairs Minister, S. Jaishankar, said recently that non-alignment was a concept of relevance in a specific era and a particular context, though the independence of action enshrined in it remains a factor of continuity in India’s foreign policy”. The Hindu interprets this statement as” explicit an assertion as one is likely to get from our political leadership of an obvious post-Cold War fact: that non-alignment, as a foreign policy concept, is dead. Today India is more interested in the QUAD due to a shared threat perception with the USA, Japan, and Australia towards China and the objectives in the Indo- Pacific region.

The Big Brother attitude of India has been depreciated by all its neighbors. India has pressurized its smaller neighbors at all times to tow the Indian line. Nepal and Bhutan in the North are India Locked” and have to depend on transit access through India for international trade. In September 2015, Nepal’s popularly elected Constituent Assembly passed a new constitution by an overwhelming majority (more than 90% of the CA members), but some socio-political groups protested against some aspects of the new constitution in the southern region of the country. India supported these disgruntled groups of the south because it was not in favour of Nepal’s new constitution, India’s Foreign Secretary S. Jaishankar visited Nepal to pressure the Nepali political leadership and prevent its promulgation. This was when Such a direct interference in the internal affairs of an independent and sovereign country like Nepal can be argued as motivated by India’s hegemonic arrogance. By imposing the economic blockade, India wanted Nepal to forcefully amend the new Constitution. Historically, India has continued its interventionist and hegemonic policies vis-à-vis its neighbors through its intelligence agencies, most notable Research and Analysis Wing (RAW). (https://www.nepjol.info/index.php/joia/article/view/29085. India can apply similar pressure on Sri Lanka if and when disgruntled minority elements protest on the proposed new Constitution of Sri Lanka.

India has been lording over the tiny Buddhist country of Bhutan from the time of Indian independence. India considers Bhutan to be a buffer between hostile China and India. It was India that decided the foreign policy of Bhutan until the time of Man Mohan Sing when the restriction was relaxed, but even today India retains a high level of influence over the Kingdom’s decision-making processes.

There is the presence of the Indian Army inside Bhutan in the guise of a training school for the Bhutanese Army and as a unit of construction engineers.

Through a tripartite agreement and the Government of Sikkim Act, 1974, a dictatorial constitution was imposed on the ‘protectorate’ by the Government of India. The resolution, drafted by an Indian ‘legal expert’ and in hardly comprehensible legal terminology.

The modalities of Sikkim’s absorption certainly lacked the finesse and diplomatic sheen. It was a sneaky and cynical act of consummation of a process that had been going on ever since independence, a process marked by twists and turns and periods of lying low and edging forward.

The Government of India claims that the absorption of Sikkim ‘reflects the true aspirations of the Sikkim people’ as expressed through the Assembly. Certainly, this is a cruel joke played on the people of Sikkim. Like every regime that carries on its anti-democratic designs on another people, the Government of India does so in the name of ‘protecting and extending democracy’.

(http://www.darjeeling-unlimited.com/absorption.html)

In late 1980s this writer was a member of an ESCAP delegation, led by Minister Lalith Athulathmudali to China where the delegation had an audience with the then President of China, where he very nonchalantly said,’ we used to hear about a country called Sikkim, of which we do not hear any more.” He continued to say that the duty of big countries is to protect small countries and not swallow them. He warned Lalith that Sri Lanka had to be careful of its sovereignty.

The role of India towards Sri Lanka is derived from the perspective of India on its concept of lebensraum, that South Asia has a distinctive personality, and that India is not only the single successor of the British Raj, but also of this civilizational heritage has important repercussions for the way how Indian governments deal with India’s neighbors, particularly with Pakistan that also claims to be the successor state of the British Raj and the heir of this civilizational heritage. The narrative of Indian Greatness treats South Asia as a confined geopolitical and civilizational space with India at its core. India is the pre-eminent power, leader, and hegemon in South Asia and the Indian Ocean – a status that is given by geographical, historical, and cultural facts, and what happens in this geopolitical and civilizational space is of crucial importance to India (Mohan 2004a, Singh 2004b, 2009, Mukherjee 2005, Rao 2010c) (https://d-nb.info/1114735116/34)

It is in this background that India browbeat Ceylon on the citizenship issue, where despite the findings of the Donoughmore Commission and the Privy Council India drove a hard bargain to give citizenship rights to a large number of Indian workers. India went further and created a category of Stateless people without actively absorbing under Article 8 of the Indian Constitution, the Indian workers who did not qualify for Ceylon citizenship.

From mid-1983, on the instructions of Indira Gandhi, RAW began funding, arming, and training several Tamil insurgent groups. There was suspicion that RAW had a hand in the 1983 communal riots and the attacks on Sri Mahabodhi and Dalada Maligawa to provoke a Sinhalese backlash. Indian government support to the LTTE was not just to give a message to J.R. Jayewardene but to subvert Sri Lanka.

Indira Gandhi had even asked her British counterpart Margaret Thatcher to stop helping Sri Lanka with military advice (SAS help) to crush the separatist Tamil Eelam movement in the 1980s, according to newly declassified documents.

The role of R&AW is well described in the Indian Defense Review as Covert action capability is an indispensable tool for any State having external adversaries. Its purpose is not just the collection of intelligence, but the protection of national interests and the safeguarding of national security through deniable actions of a political, economic, para-diplomatic, or para-military nature. A State resorts to covert action if it finds that its national interests cannot be protected or its national security cannot be safeguarded through conventional political, economic, diplomatic or military means or if it concludes that such conventional means are not feasible.”

In the use of R&AW in Sri Lanka there was no national interest of India to be safeguarded or national security to be protected. It was more the reaction of a show of power by a power-drunk dictator to teach a lesson to a tactless small nation leader. Hariharan a former Commander of IPKF has said that Her strong-willed leadership bordered on autocracy, and she focused on ends rather than the means to achieve them”.

https://www.thehindu.com/…/a-tale-of…/article3693348.ece

Both leaders had similar qualities and mindsets and their imperious actions had negative consequences in both countries.

An Indian political journalist of the Asian Research commented on Indian foreign relations in an article published in (https://theasiadialogue.com/…/india-and-the-mantle-of…/ ) an excerpt of which is as follows:

Since its independence in 1947, India has held its smaller neighbors, with the exception of Pakistan and Afghanistan, in a tight embrace. Not only has New Delhi exercised enormous levels of unilateral political influence in these countries, with a few it maintained lopsided treaty relations for many decades and still enjoys many one-sided economic and political arrangements. In the last seventy years, it has annexed one such neighbor (Sikkim); carried out military interventions in Sri Lanka, Maldives, Bangladesh, and Bhutan; coerced all of the neighbors with open threats of war at one point or another; and ham-fistedly interfered in their domestic affairs and civil wars. Almost all of these actions have gone without any notable pushback from other major powers. This geopolitical equation is a historical anomaly. Almost no other regional power has been allowed to exercise such a level of regional domination for so long on such a large scale. What makes the case more puzzling is the proximity of China. Logically, the smaller countries should have begun balancing against India long ago by developing evenhanded relations with Beijing and New Delhi.”

The present predicament of the 13th Amendment to the Constitution and the Provincial Councils is a direct outcome of the Indo-Sri Lanka Accord. The pathetic tale of the arrogance of the Indian HC Dixit, the abject surrender of the President and the Cabinet to the Indian proposals are well known. The 13the Amendment drafted by the two Indian Ministers Chidambaram and Natwar Singh had the same trademark of the resolution drafted by the Indian experts to absorb Sikkim. Dixit outmaneuvered the Cabinet and Parliament of Sri Lanka by getting Jayawardhane to cede the sovereignty of the country by an exchange of letters. This included the employment of foreign military and intelligence personnel, the use of the Trincomalee Harbor and any other port or the oil tanks, and even broadcasting, that were purely in the realm of domestic jurisdiction. India (the malicious fox Dixit) played on the quandary faced by Jayawardhane in confronting two insurgencies in the North and the South at the same time. He was more concerned with the JVP threat and wanted to shift the military from the North to the South and found a willing partner in Rajiv Gandhi who was also looking for an excuse for a show of force in Sri Lanka. But for the destructive JVP insurrection in the South, the conduct of JR would have been different.

Indian regional hegemonic doctrine was first enunciated by Prime Minister Indira Gandhi and followed by Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi. Gandhian foreign and security policies in the neighborhood are characterized by rigid adherence to realpolitik, aggrandizement of power, the assertion of hegemonic status and aggressive pursuit of self-interest with open defiance to established norms of global order.”

https://www.etd.ceu.edu shanmugasundaram sasikumar.pdf

This doctrine has been faithfully followed by every successive Indian government. The presence of China in Sri Lanka has given more resolve and urgency to this doctrine.

A leopard never changes its spots”

In the recent past the statement of the Indian Minister Jaishankar, that ‘India still sees the 1987 amendment — the constitutional basis for the provincial councils — as central to addressing Tamil political aspirations,” is significant. This stand was confirmed by the Indian representative at the UNHRC at the last session. He called for the full implementation of the 13th amendment to the Constitution of Sri Lanka”

The implication of these statements cannot be ignored. They also infer the amalgamation of the Northern and the Eastern Provinces. In both the strategic interests of the Tamil separatists and India, the Eastern Province with the Trincomalee Harbor becomes crucial. There lies the future threat to the National Security of Sri Lanka.

In the domestic scenario, the threat to the security of the island has not abated with the defeat of the LTTE. The measured statements of the elder statesman TNA leader R.Sampanthan’s speech at the 14th Annual ITAK convention ( May 2012) are significant. He does not hide the intentions of the Tamils. He said that The softening of our stance concerning certain issues, and the compromise we show in other issues, are diplomatic strategies to ensure that we do not alienate the international community. They are not indications that we have abandoned our fundamental objectives.” His statement made in 2012 that In the past, the United States and India stood against us. However, in the favorable circumstances that have now come about, the United States and India are to a great extent supporting our position” applies more to the current situation. He rejected the 13th Amendment and uttered the oft-repeated untruth that a national ethnic group has lived here for several tens of thousands of years, is now on the cusp of extermination.” He stressed that their expectation for a solution to the ethnic problem of the sovereignty of the Tamil people is based on a political structure outside that of a unitary government. Sampanthan mentioned unequivocally that devolution should go beyond the 13th Amendment to the Constitution. The new spokesman of the TNA Sumanthiran has repeatedly claimed for a federal solution. Now there is another champion of separatism in former PC Chief Minister Vigneswaram who distorts history and says A federal system is the only way out. The details can be worked out. But the fact that the Tamils, with over 2,000 years of continued history, [are] occupying definite areas of residence in the North and East needs to be accepted.”

The Provincial Council system is the Trojan Horse introduced by India. The powers given to Provincial Councils exceed the powers devolved to State governments in India. With the Provincial Councils, India has placed an enemy within. The issues are very clear. Sri Lanka has to be ingenious and dismantle this Trojan Horse before the hidden forces inside are released.

Decentralization and delegation of powers are essential management techniques universally practiced. The unit of decentralization has to be democratic and result-oriented. In this, national security has to be given the highest priority. It is a topic that needs to be examined in depth.

KAMALIKA PIERIS

Philip Gunawardene accomplished much in food and agriculture during his short stay of three years in the MEP government. These are described at length in other essays in this series. This essay looks at certain aspects of Philip’s vision.

Philip studied the rural sector carefully. Philip said that the   peasantry had many problems, poverty, indebtedness, need for credit, lack of scientific techniques of production, and marketing facilities. Two main obstacles to agricultural progress were the backwardness of the agricultural techniques used which result in poor yields and the fact that villagers were landless or had insufficient quantity of land.

There was also the need for cheap power, cheap transport, managerial knowledge and above all the lack of a home market for industry.  The home market in an agricultural country is the rural market. It is only a prosperous peasantry that can provide this home market for our industry, said Philip.

The way to break the cycle of village under development was to introduce new agents of change. Philip saw the cooperatives as the executor and initiator of change in the rural sector. He wanted the existing cooperative movement rejuvenated, and given a new approach, where the state intervened and supported it. Philip wanted to develop a state supported cooperative movement.

 There were successful coops in the island already. There was a successful cooperative hospital at Sandalankawa run by private individuals. There were a few well run producers and marketing coops that were supported by wealthy patrons.  In Chilaw the residents had formed three cooperatives, Paddy Pounders Society, Poultry Breeders Society and Rice Sellers society. The Rice Sellers was a great success, selling to Marketing Department as well. Vincent Subasinghe, who had run a successful cooperative project, was made Chairman of CWE. Philip found all this very encouraging.

The     villagers badly needed money. The main avenues for borrowing money in the rural sector are the private loan agencies, individual money lenders, landlords and merchants. Debts from these private sources amount to nearly 66%. Almost 50% of the debt accrues to ‘undesirable sources’, where rates of interests are usurious, affording no scope for economic development, said Philip. It was therefore extremely important to establish a   lending institution that catered to the rural sector.

Philip focused on the need for medium and long term credit for the rural population. The rural sector   lacked provision for medium and long term credit. There was no institution that was prepared to lend medium or long term to the rural sector.

Bank of Ceylon was not interested, it ignored the farmer and peasant and served only   the commercial community and the prosperous landed gentry.  The other two banks, Agriculture and Industrial Credit Corporation and the Cooperative Federal Bank were not interested either.

Philip wanted the co-op to be the channel through which credit would be provided for village economic activity.  ‘Philip thought up a Cooperative Development Bank that would lend money to the smaller cooperative banks, which in turn provided supervised credit to the villager. The Cooperative Development Bank, as planned by Philip, was to have branches in the principal towns and important rural centers.  He planned to open 100 branches in the first year. The bank would be cooperative bank as well as a development bank.

The Cooperative Development Bank as planned by Philip would have the power to grant loans co co-ops and individuals   for building and for financing small agricultural industries and business undertaking and for small loans. It would also have the power to carry on business as a normal commercial bank and the right to do business as a pawn broker.

The functions of a commercial bank were necessary because banks needed funds to cater to medium and long term loans.  It took time to recover the loans. The bank had to be liquid, it had to earn money. The commercial side would earn money and the risk of giving credit to the rural sector would be    undertaken by the development side.

The Central Bank was very encouraging. They were very keen that this Bank should be set up.   Arthur Ranasinha, Governor of the Central Bank, had written to Philip to say that he wished to see a Bank that would attract deposits of the rural population and also serve their credit needs.

Central Bank officials would help draw up the constitution for the new Bank. The new Bank should take over the provincial and district cooperative banks and   the Cooperative Federal Bank. The Central Bank had inspected the Cooperative Federal   Bank on many occasions and found it to be utterly inefficient.

But the Cooperative Bank Bill met with strong opposition. At every point we met opposition, from Finance Minister, Stanley de Zoysa and Minister of land and land development, CP de Silva, said Philip. CP de Silva wanted the Cooperative Federal Bank strengthened, by giving it Rs 10 million more. That should be sufficient said CP.

Minister of Finance had submitted a memorandum questioning Philip’s right to prepare a Bill of this nature. Banking came within his Ministry not Philip’s. This Bank was to be set up under its own Act of Parliament, not by registration under the Cooperative Ordinance like the other cooperative banks. Further, this Bank would have the powers of a normal commercial bank, he complained.

To soothe his MPs, Bandaranaike took over the Bill and said he would see it through Parliament but that did not happen  and the Bank did not become a reality. Instead the Bill became the precipitating factor in Philip’s departure from the MEP government. The Cooperative Bank Bill was the  trigger, said analysts.  

Philip’s Cooperative Development Bank was not a Communist ploy, observed Meegama. If successful it would have strengthened both the agricultural small holder and the rural industries. It would have helped the village cultivator, the craftsmen and fishermen. Philip’s Cooperative Development Bank predated the Grameen Bank set up with much acclaim in Bangladesh in 1970. The local cooperative banks were later absorbed into the Peoples Bank, but that Bank was a normal bank. It played no role in village development.

Philip was concerned about the health of the estates. Pile wanted to rehabilitate run down estates and for this purpose brought a Bill for  the creation of a Tea Subsidy Fund through a cess of 4 cents a pound on exports.  This was to be used for rehabilitating the estate and replanting tea.  He also introduced a Tea Replanting Subsidy Scheme where a generous subsidy would be paid for replacing old tea bushes with new clones.

Philip was concerned about fragmentation of estates.  There are Ceylonese who buy up highly developed plantations and pull down the factories, sell the scrap to Pettah, break up the land and sell to various speculators. Since 1945, 62 rubber estates and 20 tea estates have been fragmented. Also estates are acquired by government for village expansion. The Agricultural and Industrial Credit Corporation was giving credit for the purchase of estates which would then get fragmented  Workers were thrown out of these fragmented estates.

Philip had appointed a committee to inquire into the fragmentation of tea and rubber plantations. The Treasury, under Stanley de Zoysa refused to send a representative to the committee. In December 1957 he presented the Anti Fragmentation Bill to Parliament. Anti Fragmentation Bill was an act to protect plantations from getting broken into pieces. It also stopped factories being stripped for scrap. This will apply more to tea than rubber since rubber is to a great extent a small holders crop.

The Anti Fragmentation Bill was carried though despite opposition.  It was passed in 1957. It faced many obstacles, Philip charged that CP de Silva delayed presenting the Bill for months and Philip sent six letters about it.  But for me that legislation would never have been passed, Philip said later when he resigned.  I had to write more than one cabinet paper to get the consent of the cabinet. Even after everything was ready, CP de Silva sat on it for months.  

Philip had offered a painless nationalization scheme of tea plantations. He said that compensation if Land acquisition Act was followed would have been prohibitive.  Payment on quoted share price would be cheaper. The other way we would have to pay Rs 3000 or so per acre of tea. This way we can get away with Rs 80 million or so. Cabinet was divided and decided not to go ahead with this, though it was in the manifesto.   ( CONTINUED)

BY AAZAM AMEEN courtesy The Morning.lk

In his address to the audience at the virtual event inaugurating Sri Lanka Internet Day 2021 held on the 6th and 7th of April, President Gotabaya Rajapaksa pledged to set up a Citizen Centric Digital Government for the convenience of Sri Lanka’s citizens.

Stressing on the fact that a technology based society pillar cannot be overlooked, the president stated that Citizen Service Centres will soon adopt new technology for public service delivery.

A digital payment system to pay traffic fines and a e-procurement system to eliminate bribery and corruption are envisaged under the plans to further digitalise Sri Lanka via the internet.

The president also remarked that substantial work has been done with regard to the introduction of a unique digital identity card with state-of-the-art technology which will soon be available for every citizen.

He also highlighted how the country will benefit from a system of e-governance, A well implemented e-governance framework will not only ensure the well-being of the people in their day-to-day activities, but will also make the government work efficiently and effectively. This will drastically reduce corruption in transactions,” he said.

Accordingly, the President stated that harnessing the power of Sri Lanka’s internet connectivity will result in an efficient e-governance programme which will in turn save the time of the public when they need to get essential tasks done via the Government.

Courtesy NewsIn.Asia

Colombo, April 8 (Daily News) – Sri Lanka will build South Asia’s first Disneyland in the proposed Bopitiya leisure Park which will be created by Korea Cavitation Co. a company with Investments from Malaysia and Korea.

President of Korea Cavitation Co. Baekgeum Kim and the representative of Sri Lanka Dr. Parimala Rajo Isa Michael said that they are negotiating with the government to obtain a 150 acre land on a lease basis for this project.

We hope to raise around USD 400 million to construct this project through international funding mainly from Korea and Malaysia and we had successes in obtaining around 30% from this prior to the COVID-19 pandemic. With the Sri Lankan improving of C-19 health management, decreasing number of patients and the vaccinating process happening we see bigger opportunities to attract more investors to this project even from other countries like India.

He said the proposed park will be similar to Genting Highlands in Malaysia and they also hope to have a special rail link to it. In addition we will have several other leisure attractions attached to it.

When the C-19 pandemic settles we see demand especially from India and other neighboring countries since this will be the only Disneyland operating in the region.

In a bid to accommodate travelers we will also have a 300 room hotel which we will lease out to an international operator to manage.”

Our company, based in Sri Lanka, is a firm that specializes in structuring Turn-Key projects and mega projects including a range of PPP models in emerging countries with focus on Asia Pacific. We will use the technical know-how and equipment from our well-established South Korean and Malaysian companies with the most cutting edge technologies for the park.”

Join NewsIn.Asia’s WhatsApp group for the latest news updates – click here

Courtesy NewsIn.Asia

Colombo, April 8: The High Commission of Pakistan, in collaboration with Ministry of Commerce and Trade Development Authority of Pakistan (TDAP), organized a promotional event for Pakistani dates in Sri Lanka, at the High Commission in Colombo on Thursday.  

In his remarks, the High Commissioner of Pakistan,  Maj. Gen (Retd.) Muhammad Saad Khattak highlighted the Government of Pakistan’s policy of introducing non-traditional products such as dates through a diversified marketing approach.

While underscoring the importance of consuming dates due to their innumerable health benefits, the High Commissioner urged Sri Lankan importers and businesspersons to choose Pakistan as their primary destination for sourcing high-quality dates at competitive prices.

Asmma Kamal, Trade & Investment Attaché made a detailed presentation on Pakistan’s dates sector and its export potential. She highlighted the fact that Pakistan is ranked 6th position in dates production with an annual production of around 540,000 and is ranked 8th in dates exports in the world. She underlined the ongoing efforts for promotion of Pakistani dates by the TDAP and the High Commission in Colombo, which has resulted in a sharp uptick in export volume to Sri Lanka in the year 2020.

The event saw active participation from leading importers of dates, as well as officials from Department of Commerce and Export Development Board in Sri Lanka.

The High Commissioner presented Pakistani dates samples to the participants, who were also served with a variety of delicacies made with Pakistani dates, including milk shakes, vermicelli pudding (Sheer Khurma), date energy balls with nuts and date cakes. The participants greatly admired the taste and quality of dates from Pakistan and the traditional hospitality of the High Commission.

By Gabriele Steinhauser in Johannesburg, Saeed Shah in Islamabad, Pakistan, and Ryan Dube in Lima, Peru Courtesy NewsIn.Asia

Johannesburg, April 8 (Wall Street Journal):  Powered by the U.S. and China, the global economy is set to make a stunning comeback this year from its deepest contraction since the Great Depression, economists say. For many developing countries, though, 2021 is shaping up to look a lot like 2020, with the pandemic still raging and poverty deepening.

Here in Washington, D.C., people are literally talking about the Roaring 20s and, you know, letting the doors fly off the U.S. economy,” said Geoffrey Okamoto, the International Monetary Fund’s first deputy managing director. But the harsh reality is for the poorest countries, they’re not looking at vaccines being delivered to them until well into next year,” which means slower economic recoveries and more pain for the poor.

José Luís Rosas, a guide at Peru’s Machu Picchu ruins, survived 2020 by drawing down his pension and transferring his two young daughters from private to public school. Now, with foreign tourists unlikely to return this year, a slow vaccination drive and surging Covid-19 infections, Mr. Rosas said he may have no choice but to move his family to his parents’ remote village to farm avocados, mangos and limes.

I work only to eat, to buy cooking gas, a little bit of meat,” he said. There isn’t anything to save—the only thing I’m working for is to survive.”

The IMF on Tuesday raised its global gross domestic product growth forecast to 6% this year, citing unprecedented government fiscal stimulus and an accelerating vaccination drive in the U.S. Some investment banks are forecasting 7% global growth for 2021, while the Federal Reserve expects the U.S. economy to expand by 6.5%, its highest rate since 1984.

Most developing countries are also seeing growth resume. But in many places, it isn’t nearly enough to make up for the economic damage caused last year. Many people who managed to hang on in 2020 by depleting savings or with limited government help have nothing to fall back on now.

Emerging markets are on track to vaccinate just 28% of their populations by year-end, versus 72% for developed nations, according to UBS. And while advanced economies were able to increase government spending by more than 13% of their GDPs in 2020, unleashing billions of stimulus dollars, low-income countries mustered increases worth less than 2% of GDP, according to the IMF, and now have little left to spend.

As a result, the IMF expects Covid-19 to leave longer-lasting economic scars in developing countries than in advanced economies, which were more deeply affected by the 2008 financial crisis.

The number of people living in extreme poverty, or on less than $1.90 a day, is expected to rise by as many as 39 million individuals this year after climbing by 124 million in 2020—which was the first increase since the 1990s and by far the biggest on record, the World Bank says. By the end of the decade, the United Nations warns, the number of people in extreme poverty could rise above one billion, an increase of around 250 million, due to the pandemic.

Mr. Rosas, the Peruvian guide, said a move to his parents’ village in one of the country’s poorest provinces would deprive his daughters not only of the private-school education they enjoyed, but also of the security, local library and educational workshops provided by the tourist town of Aguas Calientes.

People have been compelled to take steps that are going to hurt their prospective recovery,” said Ambar Narayan, the World Bank’s lead economist researching poverty. They’re cutting down their food consumption. In some cases they’re late in paying back loans or selling assets.”

Because people in poor countries traded down from higher-priced meals, the pandemic increased demand and prices for staples such as corn, dairy products and sugar. The cost of vegetable oil, a key source of calories in many poor countries, rose 89% between May and February, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, even though its supply largely held up.

Azmat Ali, a government clerk and father of four in eastern Pakistan, said his household’s monthly food bill has increased 40%, with staples such as lentils, rice and cooking oil shooting up. Even with a second job making shoes in a local workshop after-hours he said he no longer is making ends meet.

When I get home in the evenings and I hear my children crying, all I can think of is how can I get more for them?” said Mr. Ali. I pray a lot.”

By the end of 2022, the IMF projects that per-capita income in emerging and developing countries, excluding China, will be 20% lower than it would have been had the pandemic never happened. For advanced economies, per-capita GDP loss is projected to be about 11%.

Developing-world governments are also facing a debt reckoning. An international program that gives low-income governments a break on some debt payments was extended Wednesday until the end of 2021, but it postponed just $5.7 billion last year.

The 72 developing countries considered most vulnerable on the debt front are due to repay $598 billion between now and the end of 2025, the U.N. said. More than half of low-income and more than a third of emerging-market economies are at risk of fiscal crises, according to the IMF and World Bank.

The public debt accumulated last year—totaling 9.7% of GDP for emerging markets and 5.2% of GDP for low-income countries—also makes them more vulnerable to rising interest rates in the West. Servicing debt, taken out at much higher interest rates than those enjoyed by advanced economies, will eat up revenue that then can’t be spent on health, education and other essential services.

To be sure, emerging economies are recovering at different speeds. The World Bank expects GDP in India, which has its own vaccine production but is now seeing record Covid-19 infections, to grow 10% in the fiscal year that started this month, following an 8.5% contraction in the previous 12 months. South Africa’s economy, which shrank 7% last year, is forecast to grow just 3%.

Small, tourism-dependent island states, such as St. Lucia, whose GDP collapsed by 20% last year and is expected to grow just 1.1% in 2021, will face some of the toughest recoveries. Tourism directly and indirectly contributes more than one-third of GDP in some islands in the Caribbean and off Africa, and between 7% and 20% for larger countries like South Africa, Kenya and Thailand, with few signs of a recovery this year.

While higher commodity prices are helping lift GDP projections for some developing countries that produce oil, copper or other natural resources, those gains often don’t trickle down to the general population as much as would a revival of more labor-intensive sectors, such as tourism.

In Nigeria, where the World Bank expects economic growth of just 1.4% this year following a 1.8% contraction in 2020, government coffers will benefit from higher oil prices. But an impending phaseout of fuel subsidies is compounding the impact on consumers of a local currency that has plunged against the dollar on the black market.

Doyin Adeyeme used to fly to China, Vietnam and Turkey at least five times a year to source clothes and accessories for her boutique in Nigeria’s capital of Abuja. Travel bans have made these trips impossible, raising her costs, while many of her customers frown at price increases caused by the weakening naira currency.

I’m still earning far less than what I used to make before the pandemic,” said Ms. Adeyeme, a single mother of two who is also supporting two of her sisters. I don’t see a recovery before the end of the year.”

(Gbenga Akingbule in Abuja, Nigeria, contributed to this

Courtesy Adaderana

India and Sri Lanka on Thursday agreed to work jointly against terrorist groups and fugitives wherever they are present and active, and emphasised on sharing real time intelligence.

In the first delegation level virtual police chiefs’ dialogue, India and Sri Lanka also decided to strengthen the existing cooperation mechanisms, as also designate nodal points” for timely and effective handling of existing as well as emerging security challenges.

The Indian delegation was led by Director of Intelligence Bureau Arvind Kumar and the Sri Lankan team was led by C. D. Wickramaratne, Inspector General of Police.

Both sides agreed to work jointly against the terrorist entities including the global terrorist groups and fugitives, wherever they are present and active, a home ministry statement said.

While appreciating each other’s ongoing action against drug traffickers and other organised criminals exploiting the narrow sea route between the two countries, the two sides emphasised on the need for sharing of real time intelligence and feedback.

The institution of police chiefs’ dialogue, assisted by the members of other security agencies on both the sides, will further enhance the existing cooperation between the police forces of both the countries, the statement said.

The first delegation level virtual meeting was held in an environment of positivity and trust, it added. 

Source: PTI

-Agencies

Courtesy Adaderana

The Ministry of Health says that another 49 persons have tested positive for the novel coronavirus.

Three of the new cases from the Prisons Covid-19 cluster while the remaining 46 are close associates of the Peliyagoda Covid-19 cluster.

This brings the tally of fresh cases reported within today to 309 while the total number of cases affiliated with the Minuwangoda, Peliyagoda and prisons clusters climbs to 89,341.

Courtesy Adaderana

The Director General of Health Services has confirmed two more Covid-19 related deaths today while this brings the death toll due to the virus in Sri Lanka to 593.

One of the deceased is a 70-year-old male from Dehiwala who had been transferred from the South Colombo Teaching Hospital to IDH after being diagnosed as Covid-19 positive. 

He had passed away on April 08 due to acute heart disease, septic shock, high blood pressure and Covid-19 pneumonia.

The other victim is a 79-year-old woman from Kondavil who had passed away at the Jaffna Teaching Hospital on April 08 while receiving treatment.

The cause of death is mentioned as Urosepsis with acute kidney injury on chronic kidney disease complicated with COVID–19, Pneumonia, Urinary Tract Infection and Diabetes Mellitus.

Courtesy Adaderana

Denmark lineage of COVID-19 has been identified in virus samples collected from 03 persons in the community in Colombo, says Dr Chandima Jeewandara, Director of Allergy, Immunity and Cell Biology Unit of the University of Sri Jayewardenepura.

Sri Lanka has carried out monthly genetic sequencing of the COVID-19 virus variants since the virus first entered the country in March 2020.

Accordingly, a total of 55 samples have been subjected to genetic sequencing for the month of March 2021, Said Dr. Chandima Jeewandara.

He says that 36 of the sequenced samples belong to the Sri Lankan lineage (B1.411) variant.  This variant is endemic to Sri Lanka and nearly 94 percent of the cases of this lineage found in the world have been reported from Sri Lanka.

The thirty-six B1.411 samples identified in March have been identified from the Sapugaskanda, Battaramulla, Jaffna, Mannar, Colombo, and Kegalle.

Dr. Jeewandara stated that the mutations of the Sri Lankan variant should be monitored and observed by Sri Lanka alone as the majority of the cases are reported from the island.

He added that they have identified certain mutations of the Sri Lankan variant detected in the March 2021 samples.

Meanwhile, a total of 07 infections have been of the UK variant (B 117). Six of them have been detected from the quarantine centers while the other is a person arrested while smuggling illegal goods from India.

Genetic sequencing of 02 samples obtained this month compared with the South African variant (B1.351), said Dr. Jeewandara. Both samples are persons who arrived from Qatar and currently in quarantine centers.

Another UK-endemic variant (B11.365) has been identified from a quarantine center, in a person who arrived from Kuwait.

Meanwhile, the Denmark variant (B1.428) has been identified in 03 samples identified from several places in Colombo. However, the Denmark variant has not spread severely within the community, Dr. Jewandara claimed.

The Colombo Municipal Council (CMC) has been notified of the emergence of the Denmark variant and necessary investigations will be carried out in the future, he added.

Dr. Chandima Jeewandara says that almost all coronavirus infections reported within the country are of the Sri Lankan lineage variant while infections of other variants are mainly reported from quarantine centers.

He noted that none of the foreign variants have leaked from quarantine centers into the community to create new clusters.

However, the emergence of mutations in the Sri Lankan variant cannot be prevented as mutations occur with the spread of the virus, he further said.

In order to control the mutations in the country, the spread of the virus must be halted by following health safety guidelines, Dr. Jeewandara added.

Courtesy Adaderana

The Extraordinary Gazette notification announcing the appointment of Mr. Ajith Mannapperuma to the parliamentary seat vacated by Ranjan Ramanayake, has been published a short while ago. 

The gazette notice states that the Secretary General of Parliament has informed the Election Commission, under Section 64(1) of the Parliamentary Elections Act, No. 1 of 1981, that a vacancy has occurred in the membership of the Ninth Parliament by reason of Mr. Ranjan Ramanayake ceasing to be a Member of Parliament.

The Returning Officer, for the electoral district which returned the said member was directed by the Election Commission under Section 64(1) of the aforesaid Act to fill this vacancy as provided for under paragraph 13(b) of Article 99 of the Constitution.”

The Returning Officer has made a return to the effect that Mr. A. Ajith Kumara Mannapperuma was declared elected as a Member of Parliament for the said electoral district, it states.

The Elections Commission of Sri Lanka today said that former State Minister Ajith Mannapperuma’s name will be gazette to fill the parliamentary seat vacated by Ranjan Ramanayake, who is currently incarcerated.

Mannapperuma contested the 2020 general election from Samagi Jana Balawegaya (SJB) and came in fifth among the SJB contestants from Gampaha District, securing a total of 47,212 preferential votes.

It was informed to the parliament, yesterday (April 07), that the Secretary-General of the Parliament had notified the Chairman of the Elections Commission of a vacancy which occurred in the membership of the 9th parliament as MP Ranjan Ramanyake ceased to be a member of parliament due to his incarceration.

Thereby, Mannapperuma’s name was set to be gazetted after the District Returning Officer submits it to the Election Commission.

Subsequently, the Chairman of the Elections Commission, today (April 08), stated that the relevant gazette will be issued with Mannapperuma’s name.

Courtesy Adaderana

Reigning Mrs. World Caroline Jurie and model Chula Padmendra, who were arrested by the Cinnamon Gardens Police, have been granted police bail.

They were taken into custody this afternoon over the recent controversy at the Mrs. Sri Lanka beauty pageant held at the Nelum Pokuna Theatre on Sunday (April 04).

The arrests have been made on the offenses of simple hurt and criminal force, according to Police Media Spokesperson DIG Ajith Rohana.

The Cinnamon Gardens Police have recorded statements from Jurie and Padmendra before releasing them on police bail.

They have also been informed to appear before the court on April 19, the DIG added.

Mrs. Sri Lanka Pushpika de Silva had lodged a complaint with the Police citing injuries and trauma caused to her during the melee that took place during her crowning.

Accordingly, on April 06, Mrs. World Caroline Julie recorded a statement with the Cinnamon Gardens Police on the incident. 

The Mrs. Sri Lanka 2021 National Pageant held at the Nelum Pokuna Theatre on April 04 came to a chaotic conclusion as the contestant initially crowned as Mrs. Sri Lanka 2021 was de-crowned by the reigning Mrs. World claiming that the winning contestant was not eligible to hold the title.

Pushpika de Silva was crowned as the new Mrs. Sri Lanka at the pageant only for the crown to be snatched from her and passed on to the first runner-up over allegations of divorce.

She had later lodged a complaint with the Police that she had to be hospitalized for head injuries from her crown being ripped off.

On Monday (April 05), it was announced that Pushpika de Silva would retain her title as Mrs. Sri Lanka for the year 2021.

The following day, Pushpika de Silva addressed the claims concerning her marital status during a press briefing held in Colombo and stressed that she is not a divorcee.

Meanwhile, Mrs. World Inc, issuing a statement, expressed their regret regarding the behaviour of their current titleholder, Caroline Jurie, and stated that action will be taken on her based on an assessment of the incident at the pageant.

Courtesy Adaderana

Tests carried out on samples from the two bowser trucks containing coconut oil – which were recently taken into custody at Dankotuwa – have indicated the presence of Aflatoxin, says the spokesperson of Sri Lanka Customs.

The two bowser trucks were seized by Dankotuwa Police on the 30th of March, on suspicion of containing carcinogenic substances.

A total of 27,500 liters of coconut oil had been taken into custody from the two bowser trucks which were parked at a mill in the Dankotuwa area.

Samples from seized coconut oil stock were directed to the Government Analyst for testing.

On March 30, Marawila Magistrate called for a report from the Government Analyst on the samples from the coconut oil stocks in question and to keep the two container trucks in the custody of the court.

However, the two container trucks had been handed over to the Customs on March 31 under police security.

Marawila Magistrate had accordingly ordered the Inspector-General of Police (IGP) to conduct an investigation into handing over two container trucks to the Customs.

KAMALIKA PIERIS

Philip Gunawardene returned to Sri Lanka in 1932 after ten hectic years abroad. Of all the socialist politicians in the island, Philip Gunawardene is the only politician to have had close contact with socialist movements abroad, observed Ananda Meegama.   He had met with revolutionaries and freedom fighters in four continents. Philip said he has associated with socialists of different brands from pale pink to dark red in various parts of the world. 

His father got to know something of his son’s activities when Queen’s Counsel R.L. Pereira returned from New York. Pereira had watched a massive demonstration by the Hotel Workers Union in New York.  The hotel staff had told him that the leader was Philip Gunewardene from your country.”  On his return, Pereira    reported the matter to my grandfather, recalled Dinesh Gunawardena.

Philip Gunawardene claimed that he was the first informed socialist to arrive in Sri Lanka. There was not a single socialist when I returned. I had to teach most of them the elements of Socialism and Marxism.” he said.

Philip was the first to disseminate the idea of socialism in Sri Lanka said analysts. Philip was the most powerful exponent of Marxist ideas in the country, said Wiswa Warnapala. People were attracted by his firebrand speeches that mesmerized the audience. Philip   wanted to adjust and adapt Marxism to suit the political culture of the country, said Wiswa.

Philip on his return home immediately joined the South Colombo Youth League  started by   by AE Goonesinha, in the 1920s. NM recalled that Philip split the   Youth movement into a Left and a Right and while the Right decayed, the left developed in his hand.

Philip then   launched on his fiery political career which   spanned 1932-1972.  Philip was selected to lead the Wellawatte Spinning and Weaving Mills strike in 1932.   The strike failed but Philip and his party got an important base of support in the Mills. They published a paper, ‘Kamkaruwa’, opened reading rooms for the workers, and started a Workers education League. Erwin observed,’ the experience Philip had got in London was paying off.’

Philip opposed Goonesinha on the matter of the settlement of for the workers at Wellawatte Spinning and Weaving Mills  In 1933, at a meeting at St. Peters College, Philip and Lesley Goonewardene were physically attacked by harbor workers attached to Goonesinghe’s union. They were saved by the arrival of the police. Philip oozing blood had got on the platform and defended the attackers saying they were not to blame, it was Goonesinghe. He urged the police to release those arrested. He was cheered and had won over the workers, said Meegama.

The Goonesinghe unions were slowly supplanted by the LSSP workers unions. A series of Goonesinghe strikes failed.  His unions were less militant, and tried to come to terms with the employers. Goonesinghe was pushed out as a leader and his historical role forgotten.

This was the start of the most enduring, nevertheless ugly characteristic of the Left movement in Sri Lanka. Its readiness to engage in power struggles among themselves, forgetting workers and capitalists alike.  Most of the time they were busy setting the workers against each other in their rival unions. The rest of the time, they were splintering into rival Marxist parties, to the delight of the watching public. The Left movement eventually   splintered itself out of existence.

But before any of this happened, Philip together with other leading Leftists started the Lanka Sama Samaja Pakshaya, LSSP. During his idealist communist days, Philip had envisioned forming a Leninist party in Sri Lanka with an iron discipline and a crystal clear ideology, said Ervin  But after he returned home, he realized that the conditions for this did not exist.

The LSSP started as a radical populist party based on a network of local branches, youth leagues, Suriya mal organizations, and other groups. The work of Leftist leaders, including Philip, in social welfare and humanitarian activities during the depression and the Malaria epidemic which followed brought them rewards. With Philip at the helm the LSSP sharpened its programme and tightened its organization over the years, concluded Ervin.  

Philip pushed Colvin R de Silva to be first president of LSSP, but all were aware that the real leader was Philip, said WTA Leslie Fernando. Colvin was the president but ‘Philip was the undisputed leader’, said CW Ervin. 

The LSSP made its debut in Parliamentary politics in the 1936 State Council elections. Philip was elected to Avissawella defeating the sitting member Forrester Obeyesekera. NM Perera was elected from Ruwanwella and this was a turning point in the country’s politics, said Bandu de Silva.

NM said in a moving tribute to Philip on the day of Philip’s funeral said that he contested only because of Philip and Philip was the leader of the movement.  If not for Philip he would not have contested and if not for Philip he would not have won.  At this time NM took his lead from Philip whom he admired, said WTA Leslie Fernando.

In State Council Philip had the consistent support of several progressives, the chief being DM Rajapakse of Hambantota who was from a leading family in Giruwa Pattu and was known as the Lion of Ruhuna. DM formed a front of peasant and parties consisting of viridhu singers and raban players for the   1936 elections. He had come to fore as a radical and a peasant leader. He worked in the Suriya mal campaign and was a firm friend of the two LSSP leaders.  His brother DA Rajapakse, father of Mahinda, crossed with SWRD when he left the UNP in 1951 to form the SLFP. 

Philip and NM made their presence felt in the State Council.  They were relentless in their criticism of British rule and commented on a wide range of subjects.  They studied a subject thoroughly before they spoke. They raised the standard of debate to a high level.  They commented on health, unemployment, labor legislation, flood control etc, said Meegama.

Both Philip and NM introduced high debating principles and skill into the State Council and Parliamentary debate, said Bandu de Silva. Philip and NM had always come fully prepared for State Council debates. They studied in-depth any subject they spoke on.  They had also gained much valuable practical knowledge through their journeys to every nook and corner of the country and by their association with the common people. They spoke on a range of subjects and over five years the State Council received a comprehensive education in the problems facing the country, concluded Bandu de Silva.    There was far reaching legislation in the State Council, in health, education, land settlements, banking and welfare of workers, said Meegama.

LSSP had links with the Congress Socialist Party in India started by Jayaprakash Narayan. In 1936 the LSSP sent delegates to the CSP annual session. These visits helped the Sri Lanka group establish links with the Indian group. 

S Piyasena, who was a student at Calcutta University, recalled that Philip went on a whirlwind of meetings at the Indian National Congress meeting at Ramgarh, in 1940. He met Aung San and Subhas Chandra Bose there.

Philip made it clear that LSSP did not take orders from Moscow.  He steered the LSSP on an independent course said Ervin.  LSSP took note of the Spanish Civil War of 1936. Philip visited Spain in 1937 and returned with an eye witness report.

The Leftists in Sri Lanka now had to decide between Stalin and Trotsky. The Stalinists formed a party which later became the Ceylon Communist Party in 1943.  LSSP was for Trotsky.  LSSP was one of the few Trotskyite parties to  achieve a mass following that lasted for a long period of time, said Ervin.

On June 18, 1940, the LSSP was banned and its four leaders, Philip Gunawardena, N.M. Perera, Colvin R. de Silva and Edmund Samarakkody, were arrested and jailed in Kandy. My father, Dr.S.D. de Silva, had formal access to them as their doctor. He had known Colvin and NM in London. I think he knew what this lot were up to, including the jail break, but we never asked. D.M. Rajapakse moved a motion in State Council to get give leave of absence from SC for Philip and NM.    

In May 1940, the LSSP, which continued to function in Sri Lanka throughout the war, sent members to India to contact Trotskyite sympathizers and lay the groundwork for an all-India party. The LSSP convened two secret meetings in Kandy in December 1940 and March 1941 to lay the basis for a single Trotskyite party of India, Burma and Ceylon. Both meetings were attended by the jailed LSSP leaders. The second was attended by delegates from India. Philip and NM   authored a document ‘The India struggle, the next phase ‘and smuggled it out to India.

On April 7 1942, the four LSSP leaders including Philip, broke jail and escaped to India. Philip went to Bombay.  In May 1942 these Ceylonese set up a new party in Bombay, the Bolshevik Leninist Party of India.

They arranged for funds to come in to Madras from their assets in Sri Lanka, said Vernon Botejue. They had taken money for the purpose hidden in their sarongs, said Ervin.. Philip had valuable contacts in India, in Congress, Socialist and Communist circles, many going back to his days in London, Ervin added.

Philip played a significant role in the Indian Trotskyite movement. This is not widely known, commented Ervin. When he was arrested and brought before the Magistrate’s court of Kandy in 1944 Philip said, We timed our escape to be in India at a critical time, to help the   Fourth International in India to build a party.

When the BLPI was being formed in Bombay, some wanted to form a committee of young people with no trade union experience to carry out mass work. The Ceylonese who actually had experience in mass work recommended, not committees but smaller branch executive to direct the work, said Ervin.

Philip was impatient and contemptuous. At a time when we needed to find a base in Bombay, these people are discussing the organization best suited to twenty odd members, he said. He fell out with  Chandravadan Shukla , the Bombay leader of the BLPI.  He grabbed Shukla by the shoulders and shook him. He had apologized later. Shukla was furious, reported Ervin.

Philip and NM thought that the Bolshevik Leninist Party of India, BLPI alone could not manufacture a revolution in India and wanted a broad force created with the other revolutionary groups in India. Philip urged the BLPI in India to join the Socialist party without delay. Leslie Goonewardene said that the problem with Philip’s various proposals for regrouping was that he was the master of the big bold move, but  he never spelled out how the BLPI should execute these  risky maneuvers.

The Bolshevik–Leninist Party of India, Ceylon and Burma” was a revolutionary Trotskyite party which campaigned for independence and socialism in South Asia. The party was formed as a unification of two Indian groups, with the Lanka Sama Samaja Party of Ceylon.  The BLPI had groups in Madras, Bombay and Calcutta, but it did not last long.

Philip and Co did not last long in India either.  The Communist Party of India was only too ready to track them down and hand them over.  They had a spy in Bombay, a student named Kulkarni. Philip and Co were arrested and jailed, said Vernon Botejue.  The others hated the jail, where they were 14 were packed into a cell 18 feet by 15, with lepers, TB patients, and VD victims.  The cell was crawling with bugs. But Philip took it in his stride. He fraternized with the pimps, taunted the guards and remained feisty, said Vernon.

Philip and Co were sent back to Ceylon and put in prison again and kept there from 1944-45. They were sentenced to six months rigorous imprisonment. Philip had husked coconut and learned to rattan chairs in prison.

In 1945 the British government transferred them to jail at Badulla. The LSSP staged a huge show and they went via Colombo in a motorcade, passing crowd after crowd of waving villagers, who had been mobilized for the event. In Colombo thousands turned out to wildly cheer the two leaders, Philip and NM.  When war ended they were unconditionally released.

The partnership between the two founders of the LSSP, Philip and NM broke up in 1950, when the party split on various theoretical issues. However NM had a great affection and regard for Philip, and wrote a moving and generous tribute when Philip died in1972. 

In 1950 Philip left the LSSP with his supporters, who were mainly harbor workers, peasants and Swabhasha teachers, and started a new party, Viplavakari Lanka Sama Samaja Pakshaya, VLSSP.  The VLSSP  was a  component of the MEP, which won the 1956 election .

Philip was forced to resign from the MEP coalition in 1959 and the MEP alliance fell apart. Philip  took   the name of the coalition,  Mahajana Eksath Peramuna  with him and founded a new political party called Mahajana Eksath Peramuna in 1959 .  He  probably did so hoping to continue the 1956 momentum. Otherwise why take the name of  another party.

In 1963  this MEP formed the United Left front with the LSSP and CP but this did not last long.  Philip joined the Dudley Senanayake  government in 1965 and was Minister for Industries in the 1965-70 cabinet.  He  set up the Plywood factory as Avissawella.  ( continued)

Palitha Senanayake

Britain, no longer Great, and75 years after it was forced to renounce its colonies with imperialism  identified to be the cause of World Wars, and increasingly finding itself in a rather insignificant role in world  affairs,  appear to indulge in some nostalgic glory turning a coveted eye at its former colony Ceylon, at the recent UNHRC sessions. Well, Ceylon could well be the get- away to the South Asian continent, which was once the ‘jewel of the Imperial crown’. Many centuries ago Britain did it then, to ‘civilize’ these countries and profited enormously, and today, in a more sophisticated world scenario, it may well try its hand so subtly, to impose ‘Human Rights’ on these very same countries!

Yes, Britain love these small Asian nations more than the citizens of those countries love their own nations, just as a wolf would a rabbit. For Sri Lanka is a democracy with a Government overwhelmingly elected by its people with the right to depose same if needs be. Yet Britain and its ‘core’ partners know better, ‘Hey listen, the Government you elected is violating your Human Rights and hence we are moving a resolution to apply international pressure on your country’. This ‘pretext’ would appear more appropriate  when Sri Lanka had only 6 % literacy among its citizens at the time Britain washed its hands off Ceylon back in 1947 in the face of world communist onslaught. But now with the country’s literacy rate at 90%, the present day Sri Lankan’s, in Britain’s perspective, are not good enough to know what is good for them. Hence Britain has assumed the role of an arbiter to ‘sought them out’.

This reminds us of similar European colonial acts of ‘charity’ towards small nations in the history of human kind; as they offered to educate Aborigine children in Australia, to civilize Maoris in New Zealand and to provide accommodation to Inuit people in Canada. However, it was the offer to distribute blankets to the Red Indians ‘to save them from the extreme climatic conditions’ that take the cake, and they all were infected with the small pox virus! Today, all these communities, having availed this charity of Britain and its ‘core’ group’, belong to world history. Therefore, just as Tony Blair opined that there were ‘Weapons of Mass Destruction’ in Iraq, Britain today opines that there are ‘Human Rights violations’ in Sri Lanka.

This is mainly because they are concerned about the minority Tamils in Sri Lanka, the same Tamils they brought to Sri Lanka as indentured labor to Ceylon, en mass in shiploads under conditions akin to transport of cattle. These indentured cargo, once unloaded  in Ceylon’s coast, were made to travel to the country’s highlands, a distance exceeding 400 miles, through the jungle by foot and those who die of exhaustion and ill health in the process were thrown to the wolves. Then their new aboard in Ceylon was a line room of 10 feet by 20 feet for each family with a common toilet for 20 families.

This import of mass labor was the result of Britain’s failure to convert the indigenous population of Ceylon in to slave labor for the estates they started in Ceylon. Having destroyed the indigenous cultivations and the livelihood of the native Sinhalese they imposed Pol tax and Dog tax on the natives. The brutal atrocities committed on the Sinhalese by the British, led by Brownrig and Torrington in the 19^th century is well documented even in the US archives. They deprived the natives of their staple diet, rice, and ordered ‘every tree that bore fruit’ in populated areas such as ‘Welllassa’, be chopped down. That is not all, and they lynched the death sentence on every able male in those rebel areas. The colonial masters also realized the threat of Ceylon’s traditional irrigation system of water tanks and irrigation and dumped dead bodies in to tanks to poison those while also converting those to be sources of malaria to contain the rebelling Sinhalese.  

Gun powder was first discovered by the Chinese in the 9^th century but it was not called ‘gun powder’ then as the Chinese used it only to make fire crackers. The moment it was brought to the West by Arab traders, the fire cracker powder was made in to ‘Gun powder’ by the west and that was the beginning of colonial inquisition in to peaceful and idyllic small nations by the western powers. Thereafter, the West obeyed the ‘Bulls’ from the Catholic Church to ‘civilize’ all nations that did not believe in the GOD of their Church. Thus they not only ‘civilized’ those nations but converted their lands to be sources of raw materials for the West’s industrial revolution.  

‘Divide & Rule’ is not a policy to administer colonial properties only but it will just as well suit in the maintenance of the post war status quo in world affairs. There are very few homogenous countries in the world and hence the best way to keep these ‘up and coming’ nations at bay is to decimate them. Inveigle the minorities in every country with ‘human rights violations’ and prevent their nation building and that way you can continue to make their development only a dream thereby preserving the post- colonial status quo. The challenge today is to prevent the ushering of the Asian century as predicted by many experts on world evolution. What would be the status of Europe and its access to world raw materials, if the middle classes in China, India and the rest of Asia achieve similar standards of living? Therefore, exacerbate their differences and create new ones where needed and ‘violations of human rights’ is just the modus operandi for all that. Bifurcating Sri Lanka could be a water shed event that will disintegrate India and with that there will be no more Asian century to usher in.

Thus NATO’s humanitarian wars across Yugoslavia, Libya, Syria and Ukraine are just designed in decimating nations. Keep them small and manageable as against threatening mega nations like China and Russia! That is why a few hundred Uighur Muslims in China is more important than millions of Muslims killed in Iraq, a few thousand privileged Tamils in Sri Lanka deserves attention over thousands of women and Children killed in Yemen.

Britain’s economy today, devoid of its ‘commonwealth’ plunder, no longer enjoy the manufacturing status it ones did.  80 % 0f the British economy is of the service sector and that is thanks to tourism. There are still people who like to see the splendor of their once colonial nerve center. However, British economy leaped frogged the Indian economy this year and that is mainly due to its war supplies to Saudi Arabia to kill Yemeni women and children. Britain is the chief armament supplier in the war against Yemen. No, the human rights of Yemenis will not be violated because they will be no longer among the living!

To use the term ‘free world’ to describe the victors of WW11 is an euphemism. Germany and Japan fought against the colonizers in Asia and Africa. The true characters of the victors were that they were ex-Slave traders and ex- Imperialists. Thus the world today is run according to the wishes of the ex-slave traders and ex- imperialists. Once an imperialist, always an imperialist!

Sri Lanka is a country that suffered from terrorism for 33years with civilians of all communities being subjected to the jack boot of the world’s most ruthless terror outfit. The death rate then was approximately 14 people every day. That however, did not bother Britain as the ‘divide and rule’ status quo in its former colony was triggering all that killings in a process to establish its post independent communal hierarchy.  But now this hierarchy has been established and now there is peace and development in its former colony. This certainly is a cause of concern for Britain now. They are not fighting anymore and if the Tamils eventually get assimilated as Sri Lankans that should mean a birth of a nation. This certainly is a threat to the current world status quo, and hence demands that Britain should step in, to inveigle the minorities. Dangle ‘human Rights’ before them and it should work to create chaos again!  

KAMALIKA PIERIS

Garvin Karunaratne observed that it was one thing to make hair raising speeches, another thing to be an efficient minister in a government. Philip was very efficient as a Minister, he said.  I worked in his ministry throughout the MEP  government period and I can say that the forceful ideas that he uttered in his fiery speeches at last got channeled into action.

 Ananda Meegama agreed. He pointed out that revolutionaries do not normally do well in office. Philip was different. He did well as a Minister. His ministry did the work of about twenty ministries of today, said Garvin.    

 Philip was one of the ablest minister seen in independent Sri Lanka, said Ananda Meegama.   He showed a disciplined attitude towards work. This was rare. It was not normally seen in a minister.  Very few other ministers can match up to Philip.

Philip impressed everyone by his performance as Minister. His clarity of thinking, his immersion and absorption in the intricate details of legislation, his dynamism in formulating and implementing programmes inspired all around him, continued Meegama.   News of his ability and dedication soon spread to the periphery and he was able to inspire the normally slumbering creaking bureaucratic machinery to rise to the task, concluded Meegama.

BP Pieris of the Ceylon Civil Service,   who had worked with many Ministers, made special mention of Philip. BP Pieris said Philip was the only minister who came for cabinet meetings fully prepared. He would bring with him Sessional Papers, Administration reports and other official documents.  He came prepared on papers submitted by others as well.

Philip Gunawardena as minister had a very firm and close grasp of what was going on not only in his own ministry but in the government as a whole, said Sarath Amunugama. He had a lot of detailed information on matters outside his ministerial portfolio. In a speech he made on 28 September 1960, more than a year after he had left office, he related what went wrong with Kantalai sugar factory and the   Gal Oya factory. .

 His breadth of knowledge was without parallel among Sri Lanka politicians, agreed Meegama. 

In State Council, Philip spoke on agriculture, industries, irrigation, land settlement and colonization. He was able to pronounce a progressive point of view on all these. He spoke with a thorough understanding of the subject, said Wiswa Warnapala. Whenever he spoke, he never failed to make a useful contribution to the discussion said Meegama.

To a social scientist, an endearing feature of many of Philip’s speeches is the copious use of statistics to establish a point, said Sarath Amunugama. Witness for example his speeches on the Insurance Corporation Bill (9 December 1960), the Petroleum Corporation Bill – where the statistics extend to the global oil industry (21 April 1961), the Agricultural Products (Guaranteed Prices) and Control of Hulling and Milling Bill (9 May 1961) and the Tea Research (Amendment) Bill (7 June 1961).

The student of politics who reads these will not find    rambling speeches, petty slogans and cheap invective. He will find political, economic and social analysis supported by a wealth of facts, coming from a highly intelligent, well-read and acutely observant master of trade. The language and the style will be well-crafted and never dull, continued Amunugama.

Philip took his Parliamentary business seriously. To him, Parliament was quite a different from the public political platform. His Parliamentary role was not that a slogan peddling rabble rouser. It was serious business. It required research and preparation. Opposite points of view had to be countered with solid facts and logical argument and not just by trying to shout down your opponent. Therefore, reading his speeches is an educational experience, whether you finally agree with his point of view or not. In either case your horizon of knowledge would have expanded concluded Amunugama.

Philip was certainly the master of the spoken word, the telling phrase and the almost poetic style, said Amunugama. Philip was the master of epigram, satire and invective both in and out of Parliament. He never minced his words – for praise or abuse. A spade was a spade. I have no doubt he would have been, even better, the master of the written word as well.  In the cut and thrust of debate Philip was equally effective and witty in Sinhala as well said Amunugama.

 In State Council Philip, was a passionate impetuous, fiery figure, creating great excitement but also very erudite and a great debater, said Meegama. So much so that even thirty years later when it was known that Philip was scheduled to speak the Parliament would fill up with members. 

Philip was equally effective on the popular front. My father held the contract to supply the public address system for LSSP meetings and often I had to go along with the equipment, said Garvin Karunaratne. I have listened to Philip, NM and Colvin a few hundred times. They were very factual and could convince anyone with ease that the downtrodden masses must have their day.

The workers union at Tripoli Market, Colombo, where Garvin worked had invited him for a meeting, a pin drop silence could be heard when Philip took the floor. After a few quiet sentences   he started roaring like a lion and we felt the entire stage with all of us, shaking. The poetic words he used, the force with which each word was pronounced, the forceful move of his forearm, the stern look on his face with his disheveled, the manner he dashed his fist on the table, all activate the audience. Many times I have seen his spectacles dashed on the table, never have I seen it break, continued Garvin.

In Philip we had the most fiery speaker that one could ever imagine. NM, Colvin and SA Wickremasinghe were forceful speakers but they did not have the pungent force of Philip. Each word was uttered with venomous force which took possession of those who listened concluded Garvin.

Philip was very popular with the general public. Meegama had campaigned with him in 1963.       Travelling with him to many parts of the country off the main roads and well into the interior on by ways, Meegama noticed that no sooner Philip got down from the car, people recognized him, whether they were villagers in the depth of Sammanthurai and the Wewagama pattu in the Ampara district or farmers in Yatinuwara, or the Magama pattu, for he was a famous figure. People gathered round him and looked at him with awe and admiration. 

Once Philip was late for a meeting at Medawachchiya and arrived there at midnight to find that a small group of people including an aged farmer were waiting patiently to see the legendary figure. Such was his charisma and the confidence, loyalty and love he aroused in people, recalled Meegama.   (continued)

Rohan Abeygunawardena

“These Sri Lankans are giving the Aussies a real hiding.” This was how Tony Greig described his favourite ‘’little Sri Lankans’’ when their captain Ranatunga’s six cleared the fence at World Cup 1996. Yes, 17^th March 1996 was the ‘’Red Letter Day’’ of Sri Lanka cricket. Sri Lanka beat mighty Aussies at 1996 final in Lahore, Pakistan.

The story of how a proud island nation overcame bombings, boycotts and near-bankruptcy at its cricket board to reach the top of the world 25 years ago was vividly described in an article published by Sam Sheringham and Matt Davies of BBC Sport on 27th of 2021 under the caption ‘’Sri Lanka’s 1996 Cricket World Cup success – the inside story.’’ The silver jubilee of this victory was celebrated with much fanfare few weeks ago by the cricketers and the cricket lovers of Sri Lanka.

Today, cricket has become second religion of all Sri Lankans irrespective of sex, caste, creed, race or economic status.

History of Cricket in General

It was said that cricket was started by the children living in the Weald during Saxon or Norman times. At the beginning cricket was played with a hockey stick type of a bat and then introduced a straight bat after 1860. A dictionary published in 1611 defined cricket as a boys’ game. In the same year the cricket became an adult’s game and it was mostly confined to the royals in Lords, Earl and the Dukes in England. However by middle of eighteenth century cricket was the most popular sport in London and the south-eastern counties of England. Cricket became so popular and a women’s Cricket match was played in Surrey in 1745. A documented set of cricket rules was established in 1744 and subsequently amended in 1774. Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC) at Lord’s was formed by Thomas Lord and some enthusiasts in 1787. MCC built the Lord’s cricket grounds in 1814 and named after Thomas Lord.

First official test match was played between England and Australia on 15 March 1877   at the famous Melbourne Cricket Ground (MCG). Aussis won the game by 45 runs in front of a large crowd of 12,000 spectators on 19th March. England won the second Test and leveled the series. Later this rivalry between England and Australia came to be known as the Ashes with the competition beginning in 1882.

Cricket was introduced to North America and West Indies via the English colonies as early as the 17th century and in the 18th century it arrived in other parts of the globe.  British East India Company mariners introduced cricket to the most influential cricketing nation today, India, in the 18th century.

MCC became the governing body and custodian of the Laws and has made revisions ever since then till a world governing body for cricket, Imperial Cricket Conference (ImpCC) was formed by Australia, England and South Africa in 1909 as they were the only recognized test playing nations at the time. Later West Indies, India, New Zealand and Pakistan were admitted as test playing nations. ImpCC took over making and revision of cricket laws but the copyrights are still with MCC. ImpCC agreed to introduce a category call ‘’Associate Members.’’ In 1965 USA, Ceylon and Fiji were admitted under the new category and renamed the governing body as International Cricket Conference (ICC).

History of Cricket in Sri Lanka

British introduced cricket to their crown colony Ceylon (Sri Lanka now) and first match supposed to have been played in 1800, but the first recorded match was in 1832 according to a report published in the Colombo Journal of 5th September 1832. Cricket was initially played by the British officials in Ceylon, both in the government and armed forces, and the British businessmen. The first cricket club to be formed in Ceylon was the Colombo Cricket Club (CCC) in 1863. CCC was exclusively for the British and the other Europeans. Nine years later with the blessings of the British, the Malay Cricket Club (now Colombo Malay Cricket Club-CMCC) was formed in 1872 by the Malay troops of the Dutch Colonial Army who were absorbed into the Rifle Regiment formed by the British. CMCC could be considered as the oldest Ceylonese cricket club.

The game began to attract the attention and fascination of the Ceylonese who were often called up to augment the numbers in the teams when the British played afternoon cricket during weekends. It became popular among local folks mainly after Royal-Thomian annual cricket match was introduced in 1879 between Royal College, Colombo and S.Thomas’ College, Mount Lavinia. Thereafter several big matches commenced among the schools throughout the island.

By the latter part of 19^th century Cricket was the most popular sport among the islanders and many a club were formed mainly on ethnic basis. The Singhalese Sports Club (SSC) and Tamil Union Cricket & Athletic Club were formed in 1899. Burgher Recreation Club (BRC) was established in 1896 with the membership restricted to the Burgher community and Moors Sports Club in 1908 for the Moors. Colts Cricket Club (1873), Nondescripts Cricket Club (1888) and Bloomfield Cricket and Athletic Club (1892) were established and membership was opened to all irrespective of ethnicity. Teams consisted of young school leavers who had played cricket at school.

In 1882, an English team en route to Australia played a game in Colombo against an all European team. An English team led by George Vernon toured Ceylon and India in 1888/89, and played an 11-a-side game against All-Ceylon at Kandy. An Australian team en route to England played in Colombo in 1890. As a practice, English and Australian teams en route to each other’s country for ‘’Ashes” started playing a warm-up game in Ceylon. Colombo became a popular place for stopover games for test playing nations during travel by sea days.  As a result Ceylonese were exposed to international cricket.

Dr John Rajathurai Rockwood, one time commanding officer of Ceylon Medical Corps and a leading administrator and a patron of Ceylonese cricket since 1914 instrumental in founding Ceylon Cricket Association (CCA) in July 1922. Ceylon won the inaugural first-class match played on 12–13 February 1926 between Rockwood’s Ceylon XI and W. E. Lucas’ Bombay XI. This match was played at the Nondescripts Cricket Club grounds in Colombo. In 1931 a CCA team easily defeated a touring European team proving that Ceylonese players were equal or if not better than their counterparts from Europe. Cricket lover Rockwood organised 47 cricket matches in Ceylon, including five of Ceylon’s first nine first-class matches. He gained nothing but donated the proceeds to charity or to the CCA. Due to the efforts of Rockwood and other cricket lovers the game formally took root in Ceylon by first half of twentieth century.

The name of the CCA was changed to Board of Control for Cricket in Ceylon (BCCC) in 1948 when the island nation got independence. In 1972 it was changed as Board of Control for Cricket in Sri Lanka (BCCS) when the country became a republic and changed the name to Sri Lanka. During the tenure of Thilanga Sumathipala as the President of BCCS, name was again changed as Sri Lanka Cricket (SLC) in 2003.

Robert Senanayake (President of BCCC from 1956 to 1972) worked hard to obtain associate membership for Ceylon in 1965.

Gamini Disanayake (GD) was elected President of BCCS in 1981 and due to his unstinting efforts the country received ‘’Test status’’ in 1982. His first move was to bring most popular and greatest all-rounder in cricket in sixties, Sir Garry Sobers to coach the team before Sri Lanka played its inaugural test match against England at the P Sara Oval in February 1982. Arjuna Ranatunga who was a 15 year old school boy from Ananda College was discovered by Garry, and GD protected him against socio-political environment prevailing in the country at that time. One of the greatest cricketers Sri Lanka has ever produced Kumar Sangakkara vividly presented the socio-political culture prevailed in cricket at that time when he delivered his famous 2011 Cowdrey Lecture. The famous former cricket captain of Ceylon who called Arjuna a ‘sarong Johnny’ didn’t realise that this young man was the much awaited messiah to change the entire history of Sri Lankan cricketing heritage. 

According to Kumar Sangakkara rightly said, it was Arjuna who understood most clearly why we needed to break free from the shackles of our colonial past and forge a new identity, an identity forged exclusively from Sri Lankan values, an identity that fed from the passion, vibrancy and emotion of normal Sri Lankans. 

It is rather unfortunate that GD, who laid the foundation for a transformation of cricket from an elite sport to a game for the masses, could not live to watch Sri Lankan cricketers reaching its point of culmination in 1996 when Sri Lanka became World Champions under the leadership of Arjuna. However returning grateful members of the champion team led by its captain went straight away to GD’s residence and presented the world cup trophy to Mrs. Srima Disanayake (wife of GD) as a mark of respect to the statesmen.

During pre-champion era only the dedicated cricket lovers came forward to hold positions in the BCCS. Some of them have to be persuaded to be an office-bearer and provide their expertise to run the board. They did that for the love of cricket and sometime pocketed out their own money for the benefit of the game.   In fact when Ana Punchihewa became the president in 1995 his main problem was the poor financial situation. The board had only three lakhs of rupees. He had to appeal to many Sri Lankans abroad for help and Cricket Australia supported with funds to pay the International Coach Dave Watmore.

Tony Greig’s little Sri Lankans also had a tough time. Some members from outstation were accommodated by the senior players living in and around Colombo at their residences, to enable them to attend practices on time.

The Post champion period was a different story. With the success at the World Cup 1996 entire population became cricket fans overnight. BCCS started earning good money through TV and other media rights, match grants etc. Some years its income surpassed the turnover of some of the blue-chip companies in Sri Lanka.

As a result chronic capitalism set in and the matches started to be governed by commerce.  Many accusation of match fixing, corruption, bribery tarnished the sport. A sex scandal was also reported few months ago. Our cricket is at a low ebb right now, and ICC ranking wise we were at 7^th, 8^th and 9^th position under test, ODI and T20 respectively.

Many former cricketers, administrators and Sri Lankan cricket lovers feel that cricket in Sri Lanka deteriorated in the recent past due to the weakness of the constitution of Sri Lanka Cricket (SLC).

A writ petition was filed by 12 civil activist and former cricketers seeking the creation of a new constitution for Sri Lanka Cricket before the next SLC election.

Petitioners were Muttiah Muralitharan, Sidath Wettimuny, Michael Tissera, Vijaya Malalasekera, Kushil Gunasekera, Somasundaram Skandakumar, Ana Punchihewa, Rienzie Wijetilleke, Dinal Phillips PC, Hon Justice (Retd) Saleem Marsoof PC, Dr. Palitha Kohona, and Thilan Wijesinghe.

They have mentioned that they would like the Sri Lankan judiciary to order the Government of Sri Lanka to invoke provisions in the Sports Act of Sri Lanka to form an independent committee of governance experts to draft a brand new Constitution for SLC with input from the International Cricket Council (ICC). They have also requested that the new Constitution passed as an Act of Parliament to avoid any dilution or compromises at the hands of those who have vested interest.

 The respondents named in the petition were Minister of Sports Namal Rajapaksa, Chairman of SLC Shammi Silva, Deputy Chairman Ravin Wickramaratne, Jayantha Dharmadasa, Thilak Wattuhewa and Secretary Mohan De Silva.

Few days ago young sports minister Namal Rajapaksa appointed a five-member Management Committee (MC) presided by Prof. Arjuna de Silva to carry out the administration activities at Sri Lanka Cricket (SLC) until elections are conducted on May 20. However if the court decide in favour of the petitioners, term of the MC may have to be extended or an interim committee to be appointed to take over the administration, of course with the blessings of ICC till a new constitution is drawn up and established.

 Cricket lovers of Sri Lanka all over the world are awaiting the outcome of this court case and to cue the sick patient ‘’SLC.’’

Rohan Abeygunawardena