NGO Icebergs in Sri Lanka:
Can TISL be a different NGO?
Chand Wije Texas, USA
Mr. J. C. Weliamuna, Executive Director,
Transparency International Sri Lanka
Colombo, Sri Lanka
Dear Executive Director:
I refer to your e-mail reply. Your approach to the factual issues raised
by me is surprisingly similar to the approach taken by Kumar Rupasinghe
of the defamed International Alert in responding to the factual essay
of Susantha Goonatilake titled ‘NGO, INGO moles’ (see Ceylon
Daily News, Jan 9, 11, 17, 19, 25 of 2006). Rather than answering the
questions raised Rupasinghe went on talking about Goonatilalake asking
a job from him in 1973. Similarly, you are trying to label me as a racist
for my mentioning that Mr. Paikiasothy had to be extra-careful because
he has a Tamil name.
The NGO mudalalis in Sri Lanka invented the phrase Sinhala Buddhist
Chauvinists (SBC) to attack those who exposed the game jointly played
by corrupt political families in Colombo of UNP and SLFP and the NGO
agents to thrive on a beggar’s wound called the ethnic war in Sri
Lanka. The Black Whites use the term SBC to get dollar mileage from
mostly innocent foreign institutions. When NGOs talk of this human right
or that human need they know they can be in lucrative business in Colombo
only by showing an escape goat, the SBCs. Are you denying the fact that
the Sinhala Buddhist majority in SL never discriminated against the
minorities and that about 200 or so Colombo black white families created
a rift between ethnic groups to stay in power? They began this around
1922-24.
You have not answered the clear factual issues raised by me. How can
you talk of mega cabinets when the system under which the mega cabinets
become a necessity is not discussed? Are you in agreement with what
CBK the former president said about the 1978 constitutional system as
a bahubootha vivastava? You cannot be transparent unless you make it
clear to the world that you are to demolish this death trap constitution.
You cannot be transparent unless you tell us whether you are for a federal
state or supporting the homeland theory.
Rather than getting into a highly political mega cabinet issue why didn’t
you think of what I have suggested? What wastage of funds and what a
racket is going on with at least 3 full-time government employees at
each GSN level? Why did it increased from 4000 to 14000 during Premadasa
time? Why each AGA division has 300-400 full-time government servants?
This is excluding teachers! Do you think TISL has nothing to in this
area but a big role about the budget control under Article 151? Please
answer direct instead of a shot gun attempt to confusion and collateral
attack.
In my essay I suggested three projects for TISL and I wish you tell
us why you think my suggestions are inappropriate. The TI cannot know
how the country branches should behave. But it is my conviction that
TI should intervene and enforce strict guidelines so that TI comes out
as a different NGO and not branded as other NGO in the mud in so many
third world countries as anti-local, anti-national and pro-colonial.
I hope you will take my spending time as a positive contribution to
look inward to improve your image in SL. I do not know if you ever received
a letter like what I sent.
I am responding below item by item to your e-mail.
Based on the content and the tone of your reply I do not think you really
wanted to thank me for my e-mail or the essay.
Ref your item 1, please send the copies of previous documents or dates
of them appearing on the SL newspapers so that I can verify your statement.
For example, what you sent as an e-mail attachment was a letter you
sent to Ranil W, the defeated candidate. Did you send a similar letter
to MahindaR at that time? Were they published in newspapers? Did you
send one to CBK when she was in power? Please send copies or post them
on your website for us to see.
Ref your item 2, I regret your cheap approach. You and I may have Tamil
blood in us despite our Sinhala names. It was alleged that CBK and JRJ
came from direct Tamil and Muslim ancestry. CBK and JRJ relatives were
in fact present at the scene in 1815 when the Tamil king of Kandy was
captured by the British. The king lost support of the Sinhala not because
he was a Tamil but he was so cruel. He ordered a mother to crush her
infant son in a vangediya.
I never object to a person because he is a Tamil or Muslim. There are
Sinhalayas much worse than a Tamil or a Muslim when it comes to their
betrayal of the Mahavamsa heritage of our motherland. No one knows that
Vishaka Kumari Jayawardena, who supplied the devil-like picture of Ven.
Maduluwave Sobitha to the cover of Buddhism Betrayed book of Stanley
Thambiah is a daughter of an English woman and that she grew up in London.
Vishaka as you know was the number one female devotee of the Buddha
in the 5th Century B.C. India.
So when I mentioned that Mr. Paikiasothy had to be extra-careful I said
so because he has a Tamil name. When I was working in SL in the 1970s
I had to be careful because my parents happened to be from the govigama
caste. Among the karaves and durawes in the office it was a real problem.
These are real human problems and Paikiasothy and Wije both are in the
same boat.
Hence, your attempt to turn the subject to an issue of racial discrimination
and thus try to spoil the mind of others would not help the noble goals
of TI.
I am subject to correction. I saw news reports that CBK has appointed
Mr. Paikiasothy to the three-person Tsunami fund allocation committee
and there was another news item that he was given it because he was
a friend of CBK’s sister. As you know TISL as lot of work before
it with regard to how the newsmen behave in SL. Some newsmen are paid
by corrupt NGOs.
Ref your item 3, I am sure you are reading the debate going on in the
Ceylon Daily News between Susantha Goonatilake and Kumar Rupasinghe
about the NGO INGO moles. Are you telling me that 99% of NGOs are not
working against the Mahinda Chintanaya program? Are you telling me that
your civil society, the new caste of NGOs is not a minute group of people
from Colombo with vested interests and hidden agendas and getting paid
by foreign agencies? I do not agree with your comparing NGOs as civil
society. NGOs are agents of a class of Colombo people.
You speak of utmost transparency, but I could not see any financial
information on your website. How much you are paid by NGOs?
Ref your item 4, it is dishonest to talk of mega cabinets without getting
at the reasons for them. You know that the 1978 death trap constitution
caused it and you should work on that front, to change the constitution.
Otherwise you are just making noise so that you get the funding lines
running and no real contribution at the local scene. On the other hand,
it damages the president in power who is trying to change the system.
JVP is also taking about the dumping the 1978 constitution to garbage
bin. Are you supporting a move to remove that constitution to history?
When the 1978 bahubootha vivastava (CBK’s words) does not have
the rule of law or separation of powers recognized in action how can
you talk of mega cabinets? Have you read the two books, Prof. Sarachchandra’s
Just Society and Sarvodaya’s Power Pyramid?
Ref your item 5, I do not see how you can maintain objectivity in a
position paper when you have asked the wrong question in the first place.
You are hammering the deer skin at home for other deers eating your
paddy field that you could not kill.
A group of enterprising people are thriving using the NGO concept and
using the human rights and democratic rights mantra to draw INGO attention.
You should consider making TISL different from other NGOs. You should
make it mandatory that those in other NGOs do not become members of
your NGO. Let me show you how it damages the purpose of TI.
Mr. Paikiasothy, wrote a paper with Asanga Weilkala on the subject Parliament
and Conflict as director of Center for Policy Alternatives. Things that
he said in that paper cannot allow him to be an impartial TISL director.
He deliberately started his saga in this paper from 1956 or 1948. Like
his predecessors, A.J. Wilson and Stanley Thambiah who were academically
biased writers, Mr. Paikiasothy did not report how Tamils started the
separatist movement in the 1920s and 1930s and formed a Tamil state
party in 1949. He omitted to mention the link between Tamilnadu separatist
movement and Tamil politicians both before and after the Indian govt.
proscribed secessionist talk in Tamilnadu in 1963. Since 1917 Tamil
politicians in South India advocated a Dravidasthan and when you read
today (January 28, 2006) that a boat with tons of bomb detonators came
from South India was captured by the Navy you see that there has been
an unbroken chain from 1917 to 2006.
So Mr. P writing with one hand on highly political partisan subjects
and Mr. P working for TISL as a saint on the other hand creates a conflict
of interest. Multiply this factor by the finding that most NGO people
are an interconnected network of Colombo people. Does TI know this?
Because you are an attorney I wish to end this with two hypotheses:
1. What is history of human society?
It is the story of a small group of people (1-2%?) controlling the rest
(98-99%?). This was so in the Roman times or today in the world or Asia
or in a country such as USA or Sri Lanka or in a city or a village.
NGOs are a sub-class within the 1-2% group.
2. What is law?
It is the weapon used by that small ruling group to control the rest.
Thus in Germany today it is criminal to deny the holocaust. In Ceylon
during Dutch rule the punishment for cutting a cinnamon tree was death.
In USA until 1954 it was legal to have separate schools for blacks and
white.
Because these two hypotheses, I want to let you know that fruits of
democracy does not come from Diasporas. Democracy is suffering all over
the world because of the two hypotheses above. A group of ruling family
crooks are in control all over the world.
I therefore, request you again to consider the suggestions I made originally
and make TISL a true agent of TI.
Please note that as an attorney if you write again with sarcastic words
and phrases embedded in your reply I will not respond anymore. I wrote
my pieces with a moral conviction and with the transparency of what
my personal position on the present Sri Lankan mess. I think you ought
to be able to say whether you are for a federal SL or a unified SL (no
homelands for anybody).
The Island newspaper did not publish my essay but the Lankaweb which
has a world-wide circulation decided that my concerns were important.
Hence I am sending this reply to it for consideration.
Chand Wije
Texas, USA
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