{"id":63929,"date":"2017-03-05T22:36:51","date_gmt":"2017-03-06T04:36:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=63929"},"modified":"2017-03-05T14:44:32","modified_gmt":"2017-03-05T21:44:32","slug":"a-love-bite-release-is-hardly-a-palliative","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2017\/03\/05\/a-love-bite-release-is-hardly-a-palliative\/","title":{"rendered":"A love-bite release is hardly a palliative"},"content":{"rendered":"

BY MALINDA SENEVIRATNE<\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n
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What\u2019s the difference between this government and the previous one?\u00a0 Ask some random person on the street and the most likely answer would be \u2018nothing\u2019.\u00a0 That\u2019s a perception of felt benefits.\u00a0 In fact some might even say \u2018this lot is worse\u2019 and if pushed might explain, \u2018they said they would be different and that means they wanted us to hold them to higher standards\u2019.<\/div>\n
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Put the question to a Sinhalese flagging reconciliation and \u2018worse\u2019 is what you are likely to get.\u00a0 And that\u2019s not only because the government has been a poor communicator on thinking, strategies and on-the-ground implementation.\u00a0 It\u2019s more about pandering to Eelamists, over and above the reality of being no different to the previous regime on things like nepotism, corruption, abuse of state resources, wastage and the use of force to quell protests.<\/div>\n
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Things are not all rosy when it comes to media freedom.\u00a0 The independence of the judiciary has been a frequent brag, but recent events makes one wonder.\u00a0 Just 18 months after the General Election, it\u2019s still early days.\u00a0 It\u2019s scary if one were to indulge in extrapolation.<\/div>\n
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The word in the street (or all the streets of all the relevant economic territories) is that nothing is getting done\u00a0 Small wonder, considering that the appointers have essentially been clueless about the competence and integrity of the appointees to the top posts in the cabinet.\u00a0 In short, then there\u2019s rank incompetence when it comes to both word and deed. \u00a0<\/span><\/div>\n
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If the questions is should they be thrown out then and the old lot brought back?\u201d the response would be \u2018Is it so bad that this is the best you can come up with?\u201d\u00a0 What it means that no one seems to know what needs to be done or else there\u2019s no one around who can get it done.<\/div>\n
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Talking of words and deeds, the government\u2019s international friends who heaped praise have come up short when it comes to delivery.\u00a0 It\u2019s the \u2018bad guys\u2019, the Chinese, that the government is looking to these days.\u00a0Clearly the government couldn\u2019t figure out the simple truth that one has to borrow from those who have the bucks and not those in chronic debt.\u00a0 Foreign investors are not looking our way despite the President and the Prime Minister meeting with world leaders and being assured of support.\u00a0 It\u2019s simple, really.\u00a0 The particular head of state can ask the relevant business community to \u2018explore the possibility of investing in Sri Lanka\u2019 and they will do what any reasonable person would \u2014 conduct a risk assessment.\u00a0 Naturally they will be told of incompetence, corruption and most important political instability.\u00a0 And they stay away.<\/div>\n
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The best indication that the government is in dire straits politically is the \u2018go easy\u2019 approach of the international community.\u00a0 Tung-Lai Margue, the Ambassador for the European Union in Sri Lanka says \u2018even in Europe elections are postponed\u2019 referring to the local government elections not being held.\u00a0 He doesn\u2019t or maybe cannot say the obvious \u2014 the government is scared to go before the people.\u00a0 If elections are important elements of democracy, then those who ranted and raved against the previous regime for being undemocratic should be rapping the knuckles of the President and the Prime Minister.\u00a0 That\u2019s not happening. \u00a0<\/span><\/div>\n
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Shivshanka Menon, India\u2019s former Foreign Secretary opines \u2018it is not for outsiders to say how this (reconciliation and healing) should be done.\u2019\u00a0 He has to say this too: \u2018we did not see the same drive and energy in pursuit of reconciliation as we saw in the post-war rehabilitation work which proceeded fast and well.\u2019 \u00a0 Maybe India, he country that has contributed most to the social, economic and political troubles of Sri Lanka and has fueled ethnic strife at every turn, is also on \u2018go easy\u2019 mode. \u00a0<\/span><\/div>\n
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Prince Zeid of the UNHRC seems to disagree.\u00a0 He believes there\u2019s been progress.\u00a0 He\u2019s disappointed at the pace and about the substance, and want Sri Lanka to adopt new laws (for hybrid courts).\u00a0 But homilies, knuckle-taps and rank interference (which he would dare not demand new laws from say, Israel or the USA) aside the UNHRC has essentially allowed the government to purchase some time.\u00a0 Two years.\u00a0 Naturally the human rights industry is upset.\u00a0 So too the pro-LTTE and Eelamist groups here and abroad.\u00a0 They should understand that reconciliation or rather helping Tamil chauvinists to even hobble towards Eelam is less important to the \u2018international community\u2019 or rather its white and Western masters than to have a pliant government in place. \u00a0<\/span><\/div>\n
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They simply don\u2019t want to even nudge a badly leaking boat that is struggling to navigate unfriendly waters. Rocking it might be disastrous they probably feel. \u00a0<\/span><\/div>\n
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What does all this boil down to?\u00a0 The vocal boys and girls of the international community is hopeful that this government will prevail.\u00a0 Hope is all they can do, though.\u00a0 Apart from holding back on stick and keeping silent on non-existing carrots.\u00a0 One could call it love or rather affection.\u00a0 Maybe it\u2019s nothing more than ambivalence, but there\u2019s no harm in calling it \u2018love\u2019 given current poverties in the affection department or a \u2018love bite\u2019. \u00a0 It is not insurance however from other, less affectionate, bites that are probably on the cards. \u00a0 Anyway, it\u2019s still one headache less for the Government.\u00a0 What it does with the breathing space is of course left to be seen.<\/div>\n
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Malinda Seneviratne is a freelance writer.\u00a0 Email: <\/i>malindasenevi@gmail.com<\/i><\/span><\/a>.<\/i><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

BY MALINDA SENEVIRATNE What\u2019s the difference between this government and the previous one?\u00a0 Ask some random person on the street and the most likely answer would be \u2018nothing\u2019.\u00a0 That\u2019s a perception of felt benefits.\u00a0 In fact some might even say \u2018this lot is worse\u2019 and if pushed might explain, \u2018they said they would be different […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[75],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-63929","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-malinda-seneviratne"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63929","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=63929"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63929\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=63929"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=63929"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=63929"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}