Nittewa

Explosion In Pannipitiya

2006-06-25T20:03:00.000-07:00

There's been a explosion in Pannipitiya at about 0745 this morning (almost one hour ago).

The explosion was targeting a military vehicle, which is now lying in a melted heap at an intersection on the High Level Road near the Moraketiya Junction. Even the army is not yet able to identify if the vehicle was a truck, pickup or a van. That's how bad the damage is.

According to the military the vehicle was carrying a senior military commander.

Despite the apparently complete destruction of the vehicle, at least one of the persons travelling in it at the time of the explosion have survived. There is no information yet as to whether the bomb was planted on the roadside, or if it had been attached to the vehicle itself. There is also no information about how many civilians were injured or killed.

UPDATE
The senior army official killed in the blast today is Major General Parami Kulatunge. According to Army sources, the attach was carried out using a suicide bomber on a motorcycle.

We're Better!

2006-06-03T22:16:00.000-07:00

The JVP has gone back to saying that we should only negotiate with the LTTE if they lay down their weapons. Very '80s. Not really progressive. And what's even worse is that those warmongers might take up posts in the Government soon.

So we know the LTTE is a bad lot. The abduct children and put them in the battlefield. They kill Tamil and Sinhala civilians just because. They blow important people up, or snipe them.

But really, can the Government and it's supporters adopt this holier than thou attitude? We'll go to sittingnut, one who believe's in the present's Government's peace-with-honor policy.
to accuse the government of same oppressions is besides the point. rest of sri lanka enjoy most fundamental rights and when they are taken away citizens have recourse to courts, there is an active political opposition, a large proportion of population belong to various minorities and are politically influential, children's rights are legally protected, and political leadership is democratically elected. atrocities committed are investigated and as practically possible under limitation imposed by law of evidence and proper procedure perpetrators convicted. all this is not perfect but vastly better than anything under ltte

Try telling that to all the dead (sometimes decapitated) Tamil people showing up in various locations in Colombo and the suburbs, to all the people arbitrarily executed by the Army and the Navy in the Jaffna peninsula over the past 20 years, to all the people in Mannar, Trincomalee, Batticaloa and Ampara districts who have vansihed because they stood up to Army and Police brutality.

Anyways, the Government is better than the LTTE, a terrorist organization. Wow. Big Deal.

Next Stop: Vavuniya.

2006-06-02T04:35:00.000-07:00

Sittingnut says:

...take a strong defensive stand, and make ltte realize that there is no appeaser on this side. we should persist in this even though this may mean full scale meaningless war in the short term, because peace by appeasing is worse and will only postpone the inevitable.

So sittingnut here has been personally appeasing the LTTE and is sick and tired of it. Each night the LTTE visits him and sits on his chest while he sleeps and gives him nightmares. Suddenly that boy who used to beat him up in school begins to look like Prabhakaran. The one who stole his lunch looks like Tamilselvan. But he's fed up now. He's going to have his turn! He's going to show them who he his!

So sittingnut, I invite you to take this strong defensive stand. Preferably somewhere between Omantai and Muhamalai. You'll find Wimal and Athuruliye and Mahinda standing by you, ready to take this defensive stand. Together you will rid this country of these terrorists! Oh, I forgot, Indi, who's also fed up of the Tigers, and has been taking his stand on the internet is going to join you...once he's sober.

Come on boy! Time to defend your motherland from those mo*fo* Tigers! Time to put your life where your mouth is and show us that you're not like those NGO types who talk and talk and do nothing.

This bus goes as far as Vavuniya, to the Vanni command of the Sri Lanka Army. From there you're going to have to do a trek to Omantai, or maybe get a ride.

Go forth oh vailent son of Lanka, and show 'em sucky Tigers what yer made of!

Nihal De Silva Among Eight Killed In Wilpattu

2006-05-28T05:54:00.000-07:00

According to sources, Nihal De Silva, author of 'The Road From Elephant Pass', 'The Far Spent Day' and 'The Ginirella Conspiracy' was among eight people killed yesterday in a landmine explosion in the Wilpattu National Park.

'The Road From Elephant Pass' which won De Silva the Gratiaen award in 2003, is largely about the Wilpattu National Park. The author's love for wildlife is clear in both 'The Road From Elephant Pass' and the 'Ginirella Conspiracy'.

In 'The Road From Elephant Pass' follows Captain Wasantha Ratnayake of the Sri Lanka Army and female LTTE cadre Kamala Velaithan as they journey from Elephant Pass to Colombo. The LTTE's 1999/2000 attack on the Elephant Pass base forces the two to make their journey on foot across the Wilpattu National Park.

The location of the blast, about 50km from the main gates to the Park, is in close proximity to the northern border of the park, the geographical beginning of LTTE held Vanni. The area saw intense fighting before the 2002 Ceasefire Agreement. The park which had been closed for much of the war, has been open for the past three years. It is not clear if this explosion is related to the recent increase in confrontations between the LTTE and the Sri Lanka Army, or if the landmine predated the Ceasefire Agreement.

Today's 'Sunday Times' states that a Colombo 07 family were among those killed in the the blast. According to the source De Silva had accompanied the family.

Wildlife officials entered the park this morning to recover the bodies.

The movie 'The Road From Elephant Pass', based on the book, is in pre-production. As the locations available in Sri Lanka are either unsafe or inadequate, much of the shooting is scheduled to be carried out in Malaysia.

Here's Your Chance

2006-05-28T04:00:00.000-07:00

So the JHU has already jumped on the bandwagon we talked about in the post before this. They put out a press release yesterday saying they support the banning of the 'Da Vinci Code' as it may hurt the sensitivities of certain groups. Brilliant. The statement goes on to say that they don't believe that artists have unlimited freedom and if they do something that hurts the setsitivities of someone else then that should be stopped.

So the JHU now has the Catholic Bishops of this country by their side in the fight to turn this country into a Theocracy. Yipee!

All that was missing in this country was a vocal group of Christian Fundamentalists (imp: vocal). We have Jihadis and the Allah-Hu-Akbar-BANG-BANG crowd in Puttlam and in Ampara. Can we please ask Karunanidhi to arm the Swamis who run the Hindu temples? Then at least there'll be some equality.

But what happens when the Sinhala Buddhist Right Wing gets where it's going? Do the Catholic Bishops really think that they're going to be tolerated anymore? Once the JHU and the likes get powerful enough the Catholics, Anglicans, AoGs, JWs, Seventh Day Adventists, Pents and Tom Dick and Rev. Fr. Harry are all going to have to walk the plank.

Anyways the Bishops are not going to be persecuted in their lifetimes, being the old men they are. So they're just fucking it up for everyone else. Hope they're happy.

So here's a thought, why doesn't someone in the Catholic community speak up and start some petition saying you want to allow the 'Da Vinci Code'. We know how everyone whines and whines about how the moderate Muslims don't criticise the extremist Imams. In my opinion that's a very good reason to whine about.

Well, so here's your chance. Prove yourselves. Do all of you believe that it was correct for the Bishops to call for the banning of the film? If no, speak out against the banning.

Show us what moderate Christians of Sri Lanka are made of.

Partners In Crime

2006-05-26T09:51:00.000-07:00

The President's decision to ban 'Da Vinci Code' shows that when we thought the Three Kings (Mahinda, Ghotabhaya and Basil) were ruling this country, we were wrong. There can be little doubt that it was the President's wife Shiranthi Rajapakse, a devout Catholic, who made up his mind for him. So now it's Three Kings + a Queen.

However, the Catholic Church in Sri Lanka did ask the President to ban the movie. It's sad that they don't understand the full extent of the damage they have caused to the personal freedoms of the people of this country.

Let us look at this banning in the present context, where the Sarth Silva, Somarathna Balasuriya, Kusala Sarojini and a handful of others are trying to ban Ashoka Handagama's film 'Aksharaya'. So far, the mad monks of the JHU have not jumped on the anti-Aksharaya bandwagon. They have been secretly cheering the attempts to ban the movie, but they have not directly spoke about it yet.

By banning 'Da Vinci Code', the president has sent a clear message to other religious groups that the movies that they want banned, will also be banned. By giving into a little bit of pressure from the catholic Church, (and a lot of pressure from his wife) the President has set a very scary precedent. Now, if the JHU or even three random monks say they want 'Aksharaya' banned, then it will be banned by the President, and there will be no way to challenge that decision.

By playing right into the hands of the President, the Catholic Church in Sri Lanka has made themselves partners in the present Government's efforts to curtail personal freedoms, particularly the freedom of expression. But then, the Catholic Church has never had any problems supporting and financing oppressive, dictatorial Governments.

With Shiranthi as their live-in representative to the President the Catholic Church now has a way to save it's own bacon. But do they worry about the other children of their god? Me thinks not. When Sinhala nationalist, Buddhist extremist groups attack fringe Christian groups and missionaries the Catholic Church stays silent. Why? Because it serves their purpose. The fringe groups attempt to bring under their wing Catholics disgusted with the present Church in addition to new converts. In fact when attacks on the Churches of fringe groups started the Catholic Church of Sri Lanka did not even bother to issue a condemnation, stating instead that if these fringe maniacs are trying to convert people, they deserve what they're getting.

But I digress...

And before I end, if the Prsident decides what we watch and don't watch, then why do we have a Public Performances Board which normally hands out the 'ok' certificates? Does the President watch all the movies that are shown in this country? Should he waste his time this way?

JVP Terrorists

2006-05-25T21:04:00.000-07:00

Here's a story...

On the 24th of May, two Tamil youth and one Muslim youth who were filming a protest organised by the JVP youth group Inter-University Students Federation (IUSF), were apprehended by the protesters, manhandled and handed over to the Fort Police Station. These students were carrying national identification and student identification cards, but the IUSF mob had already decided that these students were LTTE members.

The Fort Police soon informed IUSF convenor Duminda Nagamuwa that they had no case against the trainee journalists as the Fort Railway station area was a public space and the demonstration was for the public and anyone had the right to film it. Nagamuwa's requests to erase the tapes were denied.

Nagamuwa then called JVP Propaganda Secretary Wimal Weerawansa who in turn called the Senior Superintendent of Police. Weerawansa ordered the arrest of the three students. The OIC of the Fort Police was humbled by Weerawansa's call and despite his previous acceptance of the fact that there was no case against the students, he offered them an ultimatum: Hand over the tapes or get arrested.

lankatruth reports this story differerently. Tells us a lot about how lankatruth.com operates. The only truth for the them is that anyone Tamil is a terrorist.

What does this mean?

The JVP, IUSF, JHU or any one of the right wing Sinhala extremist groups can haul off anyone they like to the police station, and the police will then arrest that person.

If they don't like a journalist, they can haul him off to the police and ask for his tapes to be erased, or his film to be exposed or his notebook to be destroyed.

The law of the land is Wimal Weerawansa and the JVP and their goons. Not the police or the courts. The police and the courts do what Wimal and the boys want.

Aksharaya Trailers

2006-05-18T05:00:00.000-07:00

Not a lot of people have seen Asoka Handagama's movie Aksharaya (A Letter of Fire) and if the Minister of Culture has his way then not many more people are going to see the movie.

If you Google Aksharaya you can fine out enough about the debate surrounding the movie. Personally I think the movie should be screened and the Minister for Culture should go screw himself. We have enough people trying to do moral policing in this country, the last thing we need is for some illiterate Minister who's incapable of stringing two words together trying to decide what we should abnd shouldn't see.

You can read more about the debate on the Aksharaya website.

Meanwhile, here are the trailers.

| Trailer 01 | Trailer 02 | Trailer 03 | Trailer 04 |

Restraint? What Restraint?

2006-04-28T23:05:00.000-07:00

Let's think about this whole 'we congratulate the Army for showing restraint' business.

Now if we were to think that the Army did not show this amazing retraint, what would they be doing? Would they be out there killing the LTTE because the LTTE tried to kill their commander? Would they launch assaults on LTTE camps? There are several possible scenarios.

Spontaneous

For the Sri Lankan Army, acting spontaneously and without a strategy or plan, means
a) killing anyone Tamil who crosses their path
b) killing anyone who tires to stop them
c) setting fire to Tamil shops and homes
d) confusing Muslims with Tamils (goes with the general xenophobic mood)

So, this is apparently what we need to congratulate the Army for not doing. But wait, the Army did do this in Mannar! They haven't done it anywhere else, but they most certainly assisted Sinhala-JVP groups in Trincomalee in attacking Tamil shops.

Yes, thanks boy for all the restrain you've been showing.

Planned

Going out on a limb, let's assume that all this restrain that the Army is being praised for is actually about not carrying out a tactical strike on the LTTE.

The Army follows orders. If they were ordered to carry out a retaliatory attack against the LTTE they would. And they were asked to and they did (killed a whole bunch of civilians too, tactical my ass!). And this attack was only carried out because Mahinda Rajapakse ordered and approved it and his brother Gotabhaya made it happen. It was the political command in Colombo who did not order an attack to be carried out earlier.

So, any congratulation for restraint on that level should go to Mahinda, because the army does, or doesn't do, what he askes them to do or not to do. Capiche?

*****

So, the Army's doing nothing but not behaving like barbarians. If you want to congratulate them for that, then go ahead.

I hate having to make sense of the arguments of idiots.

Why is the Army Killing Auto Drivers?

2006-04-28T22:07:00.000-07:00

Really, why is the Army and Military Intelligence killing auto-rickshaw (three-wheeler) drivers in Jaffna? Do they charge too much for an auto ride? They have killed four so far with the one in Kayts today.

Sources in military intelligence in the peninsula say that the auto drivers are messengers for the LTTE and they are being targeted to put a hole in the LTTE's communications network in the Peninsula. But military intelligence admits that these guys are not LTTE members, just civilians who have been pressured and coerced to do the LTTE's bidding. If these guys don't do what the LTTE asks them to do, then the LTTE is probably going to burn their house down and kill their family. Would anyone really gamble with those things at stake?

Therefore, is their arbitrary execution acceptable?

If military intelligence has proof that these auto drivers are LTTE messengers then arrest them and put them on trail. That's what 'civilized' security and law enforcemen agencies do. But no, particularly in the Jaffna peninsula, the police, military and military intelligence have shown that justice is something that only Sinhala people have a right to. For the Tamils, well, a beating or a bullet in the head will have to do.

All those who talk about the LTTE's murder of civilians, I ask you to think for a moment about what the Army is doing in Jaffna. I'm not saying the LTTE is right to kill civilians, or that violence justifies more violence. I'm only saying that the Army don't have a squeaky clean rap sheet either. Infact their reputation in the North and East has been worse in terms of the disregard for human life than the LTTE.

And each single time the Army executes someone in the peninsula, they create enemies for themselves. By engaging in such activities they are feeding the LTTE and furthering it's cause.

Where are the unidentified corpses from?

2006-04-28T00:06:00.000-07:00

There's fear that the unidentified corpses that have been found in Avissawella and Mulleriyawa might be the bodies of Tamil youth taken in by the Army for questioning in Colombo. The Mulleriyawa body was only found today. There may be more. The Upcountry People's Front has gone to the extent of sending a letter to the President about it.

Do I think the Army did it? I don't know. Do I think they could have done it? Of course they're capable of it. They've done it before.

The timing of the appearence of the bodies is what is most intriguing. Just days after the explosion in Colombo, this could prove to be a potent warning. But it would be a warning not to thje LTTE, but to the Tamil people living in Colombo, or those who want to ever come to Colombo: You're not safe. We can hack you, chop your head off and dump your body and no one's going to say anything.

And if they were Tamil youth, were they LTTE members? Probably not. Any LTTE member who is captured by the military is bled for information. Military intelligence is stupid, but not so stupid as to kill potential informants. And if the Army had proven their terrorist status, then we'd have heard about it in the news. The military makes few successful arrests, when they do, they let it be known.

And even if they were LTTE members, do they deserve this? No. No one deserves to be hacked and decapitated and dumped. Particularly not for being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Other People's Lives

2006-04-28T00:00:00.000-07:00

(First posted on Nittewa on the 22nd of August. Republished here in light of the recent warmongering statements made by Sittingnut, Sophist, Indi etc)

There's a cold war era saying about the work of the CIA which was very popular among the US military. They used to joke that the CIA's motto should be 'We bet your life'. This was because the decisions that the US Government made based on the information provided by the CIA would directly impact the lives of those serving in combat zones.

What Indi, the JVP, the PNM, the JHU and other war-mongering pseudo-intellectuals in Colombo do not realise, or do not care about, is the fact that if Sri Lanka were to return to war they would not be the ones who would pay the price.

Let us for a moment forget about the people living in the North and East, because as far as the war-mongers are concerned the protection of their lives or their rights is secondary to militarily defeating the LTTE, a bloodthirsty terrorist group. Remember when Albright said that the death of Iraqi children was the price they had to pay for defeating Saddam? Sounds pretty much the same.

Let us for a moment forget about the LTTE members who would die in a war, because as far as the war-mongers are concerned they're terrorists and anyone who throws in his lot with a terrorist group should be killed.

(I will explain why I have done this leaving out later)

Let us think only of our valient, brave, patriotic Sri Lankan Military (dare I call it the Sinhala Army?). If those who shout for war finally get what they want, then it's going to be the soldiers in the front lines who have to do the actual fighting. Indi, Wimal Weerawanse, Athuruliye Rathna and the others will sit at home watching the day's news on TV and notching the score like it was a cricket match.

"Twenty two LTTE terrorists killed in an ambush. Ten SLA soldiers also gave their lives for the motherland in this encounter"

Whao! 22 - 10. What's that come to? That's 12 up for us! Time to go out and have a drink to celebrate this victory boys! Molly's or Clancy's? Or does anyone want to do some karaoke?

That's all it is to them. Those ten soldiers who died mean nothing to them. They are merely statistics. Not real human beings. They did not have mothers/fathers/brothers/sisters/wives/sons/daughters/friends/neighbours. They did not have a home. They did not have a family to feed. They did not have younger siblings or children to keep in school.

The biggest misconception among these people is that the people in the Sri Lankan military have joined it out of patriotism. These soldiers are young men from poor familes in the South who have been forced into service because of the lack of employment opportunities. A consistently failing economy (brought on by massive defense expenditure over 20 years) drives these sons of farmers to join the only sort of employment which requires nothing more than the ability to close your eyes and pull a trigger.

They do not hate the LTTE, they do not love Sri Lanka any more than the average Sri Lankan, but they have to keep their families from starving.

So they join the military and die at the hands of the LTTE or the incompetence of their own leaders so that Indi, Wimal, Athuruliye and the bunch can teach the LTTE a lesson. They will not see their siblings or loved ones die because they live in Colombo, far far away from the war. To them it is an abstract game that must be won at any cost.

I live in Colombo, far far away from the the. I am not willing to join the army. I am not willing to die to defeat the LTTE. I want to live the good life as much as any of these "patriots" do. But that takes away from me the right to gamble with other people's lives, and the right to ask them to die for me.

If I think the LTTE needs to be defeated militarily then I should be willing to do it. How can I live with the knowledge that out there young men who don't want to die, who don't have issues with the LTTE are dying because I shout my ass off online? I don't think I would be able to live with something like that running through my head. If there is a return to war, I should shout out 'not in my name'.

Indi will never join the army. Wimal Weerawanse will never have the balls to pull a trigger. The monks shouldn't be screaming for war anyway!, well at least if they understand anything about Buddhism.

These people who scream for the destruction of the LTTE have not met the women of the Mothers and Daughters of Lanka. They have not met Visaka Dharmadasa, mother of a soldier missing in action, who would easily explain to them what the war can take away from you. They have not met Margret Hewage, the mother of a PoW, who could explain to them how there are some things worse than death. They have not met the Martenstynes who could explain to them how war can leave an entire family in limbo.

They do not care about these people, they care about the politics. Much like the leaders of the USSR sacrificed millions of people to protect their politics, so do these war-mongers try to yell louder than each other that the LTTE needs to be defeated, to protect their politics. Only their lives and their politics have any value to them.

Will these people who do not attach any value to the lives of the soldiers of the Sri Lankan military give any thought to the death of innocent Tamil civilians in the Vanni or LTTE cadres?

Ultimately, they gamble with other people's lives. Because other people lives mean nothing to them.

Is Killing Civilians OK?

2006-04-27T21:31:00.000-07:00

In my opinion killing civilians is wrong, regardless of if the LTTE does it or the Army does it.

But I think it's more wrong for the Army to kill civilians than it is for the LTTE to kill civilians.

The LTTE

The LTTE are terrorists who have stated that they are the sole representatives of the Tamil people. And their goal is a Tamil homeland they plan on calling Eelam. They will work to that end and they will kill civilians because they are terrorists. No stupid blogger complaining about it is going to make the LTTE see what's wrong with killing a few civilians. As long as they continue to be a terrorist outfit with a political wing controlled by a military wing, they will do whatever they have to do to get to their goals. As the Sri Lankan military has at great cost demonstrated that it is incapable of defeating the LTTE in the battlefield, the only remaining option is to push forward with the peace process and force the LTTE to mutate into a political organisation, with military support.

Statistically, the attack on the Bandaranayake International Airport in 2001 showed a change in LTTE policy towards indiscriminately killing civilians. Sinhala Racist websites have the number of civilians killed by the LTTE. Study them. The BIA attack, while being the most damaging to the country overall, did not result in the death of a single civilian. While they have not gone out of their way to keep civilians from being in killed in crossfires in the North and East, they have changed their image. They have consistently attacked military, political and economic targets, and kept civilian deaths to a figure much lower previously. Even in the attack on the Army Commander, this is visible. The most heinous attack on civilians by the LTTE since this shift was the killing of six farmers in Gomarankadawala last week.

So... Sittingnut, Indi, Janapathi, and other bloggers (and attachments like Sophist) who complain about the LTTE killing civilians really need to stop just bitching, and start offering solutions. It's easy to bitch and the call the LTTE cold blooded civilian-killers. It's a lot harder to really apply your mind to it and think of what can be done (I would not suggest this for Janapathi, as 'thinking' may overload his single lonely braincell).

The Sri Lankan military

Quite a few people are amazed by how they Army is showing restraint in the face of LTTE provocation. Am I missing something? Isn't that what they're supposed to do?

Or wait... we're so used to the Army going on rampage and killing civilians and setting fire to houses and shops at the slightest provocation, that when they don't do that, we're amazed and feel a need to congratulate them. When random violence on the part of the becomes the norm, as it has in Sri Lanka over the past decade, then I guess they really do need to be congratulated for the present 'restraint'.

But the Army, (later joined by their proxy the Karuna Faction), have been carrying out strikes against the LTTE for the entire duration of the ceasefire agreement too. From the assassination of Kaushalyan, to the cold blooded murder of Joeseph Pararajasngham, the Army has been dishing out to the LTTE as much as it's been getting. Nimalarajan and Sivaram and the other journalists killed by the government forces were civilians. The refugees burnt to death in the camps by the Navy were civilians. The SLA in Jaffna killed several civiliand who the 'suspected' were LTTE messengers. And now they have been bombing known civilian targets in Trinco. These are just recent examples.

Now some people think the murder of civilians by the Army is equal to the killing of civilians by the LTTE. Wrong! The killing of civilians by the Army is much much more of a terrorist act. The Army is called the Sri Lanka Army for a reason. It is supposed to protect Sri Lanka. But it no longer protects Sri Lanka, it protects the Government, frequently at the expense of the people. When the Army begins killing the very people that it is pledged to protect, and calls it collateral damage, then there has to be a serious flaw in the system.

To say that the military doesn't kill civilians is plain stupid, and indicates ignorance. Just because you donh't read about it in the newspapers in Colombo or see it on the TV, that doesn't mean the military hasn't been killing civilians in the North and East.

And a little bit of history...

There's a lot of info on the number of civilians killed by the LTTE on any one of the racist Sinhala websites. For someone who wants to count, and weigh one figure against the other, I suggest you also include the number of Sinhala civilians killed by the Army in 88-89. As you may realise when digging into the Army's role in quelling the JVP insurrection, it has no qualms about killing civilians.

And my point is...

Killing civilians is wrong, and it must end. Using your enemies disregard for civilian lives as a license to kill civilians is not only dangerous but also moronic. The LTTE kills civilians because they are an terrorist unit. When the Sri Lankn military also kills civilians it becomes a terrorist unit, protecting a terrorist state.

The Truth About The Sri Lanka Military

2006-04-27T20:57:00.000-07:00

Sittingnut writes about how proud he is of his army. Wonder if he even knows who Gamini Kularathne is. How many of you out there know who Gamini Kularathne is? Leave comments if you have a clue.

Munching on that, let's think about the Sri Lankan Military a little bit.

The military is largely composed of the sons of peasants, and landless farmers. They join the Army because that's the only way to get a decent salary without any qualifications. They join the army not out of pride, but out of need. They are the fringe in an increasingly rurul-person-unfriendly economy. They are pushed into the army by socio-economic circumstances. When they have no skills to sell, they sell thier lives. You join the Army if you're a boy. You hook if you're a girl. Same thing.

Despite all the hollering, almost 3 of 4 military people are not from the Southern, Central or Western Provinces. A disproportionate number of soldiers are from the Wayamba, North Central and Uva provinces. The youth of a South and Central Province have much better access to education than the youth in these provinces.

Among the officers however the breakdown is hugely different. A disproportionate number of officers are from the Southern, Western and Central Provinces.

Makes you wonder about who's out there 'dying for you', and who gets the comfortable officer posting far away from the frontlines.

Call the ministry of defence. Ask them.

So this is what Sittingnut is proud of. The fact that thousands of young Sri Lankans, are forced to put their lives on the line to protect those who would seek to further oppress them and their families. Bravo!

Bomb At Army HQ

2006-04-25T16:02:00.000-07:00

Apparently there's been a bomb explosion outside the Army HQ in Colombo. Priliminary reports say one important commander has been killed, but the military spokeperson was unavailable for comment right now.

More on this later.

Update: The explosion occured outside the Army Hospital. Army Commander Lt. Gen. Sarath Fonseka is among the injured. Hospital sources say one person dead and the Commander is being taken in for surgery. Ten people have so far been admitted to the Colombo General Hospital.

Update: Slave Island Police says the explosions apppears to have been carried out by a suicide bomber. Military sources say a female suicide bomber carried out the attack. Journalists are not being allowed access to the site now.

Update: Hospital says the number of dead has gone upto 6.

Humor: The King Of Trincomalee

2006-04-25T11:42:00.000-07:00

There's some real bad shit hitting the fan right now that I'm glad Sittingnut is providing us with some entertainment. Let's have some humor.

A follow up to my post on how uninformed and ignorant and generally silly Sittingnut is being:

Sittingnut thinks having some property in Trinco makes him the sole representative of the people of Trinco! All hail the Monarch of Thirikunamale! He doesn't even claim to have travelled there anytime in the past 6 months, instead just points out to the fact that we don't know if he did. I'm willing to bet he didn't go to Trinco. He just sat in his armchair and his servant couriers ran all the way down with messages. Attaboy Sittingnut!

The fact is Sittingnut, we don't care. Whether you went to Trinco after the recent trouble or not, what matters is that you did not write about it, nor did you care to report on what you saw and heard and experienced. And then, when some people who did go write something about it, all you can do is trash them.

And what exactly do you plan on proving by hollering that you won the argument, and that I conceded defeat, even after I had posted this? Are you trying to prove that you're retarded? I didn't say it. You did :)

Why don't you do something constructive? Be nice. It might save you from that popularity blackhole you're in :)

War, Love It or Hate It, It's Here!

2006-04-25T09:01:00.000-07:00

Yipee! We're bombing the shit out of the LTTE in Trinco district. Hopefully our aim will be as bad as it was when we were last at war and we'll get a few civilians too.

The LTTE wanted this.
The JVP wanted this.
Mahinda didn't know what he wanted, but he'll settle for this.
The UNP, well, they don't really care (or matter!).

Sittingnut, Sophist and the lot, you boys wanted to teach the big bad LTTE a lesson. Here's your chance. Get out of your armchairs and go join the army. Come on, if you think they're so bad then go fight them yourself.

We're tired of hearing your anit-LTTE bullshit. Now you have the war you wanted. So go out there, and put your life where your mouth is.

Well, hope everyone's happy :) I'm throwing a party.

Army Commander Dead?

2006-04-25T02:49:00.000-07:00

Official Army sources say Lt. Gen. Sarath Fonseka who was injured in an explosion today, is out of danger. However one source at the hospital says he is not out of danger and he has been taken in for surgery. An unconfirmed report from the Command office of the Army HQ says he's dead.

Regardless of whether the Army Commander is alive or dead, the explosion today remains the biggest attack carried out by the LTTE since the ceasefire agreement.

How is the Government going to repsond to it?

Now What?

2006-04-25T02:11:00.000-07:00

The explosion today outside the Army Hospital in Colombo is the biggest explosion in Colombo since the ceasefire agreement. Barring the explosion at the Colpetty Police Station that killed four policemen and a few gangland and mysterious minor explosions around the city, this is the only explosion in Colombo since the ceasefire agreement.

It would be easy to assume that the LTTE is behind this, and that their aim was to assassinate Lt. Gen. Sarath Fonseka. The suicide bomber certainly points to this being of their doing. At the time of writing this, it's not very clear as to if they managed to achieve their aim. A few years ago (not mnay), as the Commander in charge of the forces in the Jaffna Peninsula Sarath Foneska came down hard on the LTTE, and on anyone who showed any sympathy for the LTTE.

So when new President Mahinda Rajapakse posted Sarath Fonseka as the Commander of the Army, it was very clear what it meant. Mahinda was not interested in being cute with the LTTE. Fonseka was also a accomplished (if brutal) military commander, and would be a key person in a war that seems more and more real each passing day.

So what is the LTTE saying now by trying to kill him?

They are not just marking him as a military target. His death would of course be beneficial to the LTTE in the battlefield, but this seems to also have a political statement somewhere in it.

And the statement seems to be: Prabhakaran, not Mahinda makes the decisions in this country.
.

Arguing Online

2006-04-25T00:37:00.000-07:00

As insensitive as this image may be, I'm putting it up here to in memory of all those online arguments past, present and future. Special thanks to Indi, Sittingnut, Dextr and all the Anons.

If anyone is offended, I apologize.

Uninformed and Ignorant

2006-04-24T23:51:00.000-07:00

Those two words best describe what Sittingnut has to say about the 'Trinco Report' that the CPA published in it's website.

Here's a summery of what's been said. Sittingnut has called the Trinco report biased, and he claims the report was plagiarised from something D B S Jeyaraj wrote. Perhaps the report is biased, but all Sittingnut has done is make his anti-NGO bias as clear.

If Sittingnut had gone to Trinco, and had inquired into the situation there, then put forward his own report, and then called the CPA report biased, we would have had an argument on our hands. But being the armchair critic that he is, he trashes the report without ever bothering to find out what happened in Trinco.

Instead sittingnut chooses do a few things that are solely indicative of his ignorance, his inability to analyse a situation, and paint in vivid colors his own bias.

He attacks the individuals who took part in preparing the report. He wonders if other people were invited to be a part of the team. Well Sittingnut, you could have gone to Trinco and done your own report. You didn't bother. The situation in Trinco didn't affect you enough. But if you wanted to, you could have. Why wait for the CPA or anyone to send you an invitation?

More than the CPA has shown an anti-military bias in the report, Sittingnut has shown and anti-NGO bias in his analysis of the report. He begins with the assumption that all the individuals are pro-LTTE and anti-government. Beyond this an argument with Sittingnut becomes as productive as an argument with Maduluwawe Sobitha.

But the stupidest thing that Sittingnut did is accuse the report of plagiarism. D B S's story came out on the 21st of April (23rd in some places). The report in question was drafted before the 19th and the first draft was circulated and discussed on the 19th. If Sittingnut had bothered to write and emal to CPA he would have found this out, but he didn't.

In the end, Sittingnut's arguments are nothing but hot air.

Yes there are many things in the report that should be criticised. There are many omissions that need to be noted. But Sittingnut is not interested in analysing the report. He just wants to bash the NGOs. That's all he's doing.

New Year

2006-04-14T18:15:00.000-07:00

For once, I feel sorry for the Army.

On the 10th the claymore explosion in Mirusuvil that claimed the lives of 5 soldiers (and also 2 civilians) put an end to what might have been a nice quiet new year celebration in the peninsula.

Just for the record, yes, the SLA in the peninsula were trying to do some getting-pally-with-the-locals activities for the new year season. Yes it would have been a PR exercise, but at least it would've given the people of Jaffna a break. It was nothing big, and whatever the SLA had planned was not going to win them the hearts and minds of the people of Jaffna, but at this point, any small step would have been welcome.

Obviously the LTTE was not too happy with this. And boy did they put an end to whatever peace and calm the peninsula would have over new year. I really do feel sorry for the army. Everyone deserves a break for new year.

Everything's Back

2006-04-14T03:58:00.000-07:00

Today on my way to work, near the Nawala bridge there was a new police post being constructed. There had been one there many years ago, but it was taken down. But this morning the police were there piling sand bags one on top of another and making a little bunker for themselves. Trust me, this was no ordinary police post. It was akin to the ones found in Vavuniya.

This has been happening in Colombo quite a bit. Checkpoints that went away have now been brought back.

And the raids are back.

Since January, regular raids, or at the very least a visit from a not-so-friendly-neighbourhood-policeman have been plauging the lives of the people living in Colombo.

And what's with the way the cops have been naming these 'search operationg'?

'Strangers Night'? What the F*** does that mean anyway? Who in the Colombo police has suddenly developed a taste for the dramatic? Anyways, it's really scaring the Tamil people in the city, and also the people who would seek to come into the city for work.

At the office we had an entrance exam scheduled for those who wanted to be a part of our new batch. There were 24 people who were supposed to show up for the Tamil medium test. Only 7 people arrived. They were all from Colombo. The ones who didn't show up were the ones from the East and from the estate sectors. When we asked why they didn't show up even after having confirmed that they would take part in the test, they said that they did not want to come to Colombo because it would not be safe for them. They would rather skip an entrance exam into a college they had tried hard to get into, that stay overnight in Colombo and end up in prison.

So is that the message the Colombo police want to send with these raids? Tamil people should stay out of the bloody city. Why? Because it belongs to us. Who's us? The upper class Colombo elite who do not want bombs going off and disturbing them when the war starts.

There was even a raid in town on New Year's Eve. They couldn't even leave the people alone for New Year's eve. How many more 'Strangers Night's are there going to be before the Colombo police realise that they're not going to stamp out LTTE presence in the city by busting all the innocent Tamil people in town.

So while the country prepares to return to war, the Colombo police prepare to return to what they do during war: harassing the Tamil population of Colombo.

Messy Election, Messy Result.

2006-03-29T16:10:00.000-08:00

local elections will be held today.
from the first it has been a violent mess. all indications are that the result will be a mess too.

that would be unfortunate. it would certainly be better for everyone if a clear winner emerges.

this is not because i have any hope that newly elected local councils (even when the ruling party has a majority) will be any different from present ones. that always is a lucky bonus. (on a personal note i have been living under what could be one of the best run local councils in the country, too bad that my luck will probably run out today.)

no, a clear winner will clarify the future course of sri lankan politics.

sri lankans are known to vote for the party in power in central government when voting for lesser government bodies. this is the most intelligent option given that most councils are totally dependent on central government (one i am living under is good because it is largely financially independent. due to a long established and prospering industrial estate and recent influx of several residential housing estates. which in turn came in partly because the council was able to provide basic services expected of it. its a virtuous cycle others would be hard put to replicate )

anyway to get back to topic, given past record upfa should get most votes.

question is how much of the vote will go jvp's way.

on that question will the future depend. there are 2 possible scenarios,

jvp vote percentage will go down and upfa will either win outright majorities or get pluralities just under 50%, unp getting most of the rest
jvp will get a bigger share of votes than heretofore, which will result in roughly 3 way equal split of votes and seats between upfa, jvp and unp of 25% to 40% each, with both unp and jvp winning pluralities in some councils.

there are also other far less likely outcomes, which i have not considered here. i also ignored those local councils where regional political parties such as cwc will get most seats. this is about councils in majority sinhala areas only.

two scenarios above can result in dramatically different realignment of political forces in future.

in the first case,
a) jvp will try to distance itself from both mahinda buffalo and upfa in order to recapture its lost appeal. which will mean more cooperation between upfa and unp, and more likelihood of a national government, and jvp and upfa contesting the expected general election separately, or
b) jvp deciding to sellout whatever is left of its fake principles and going the way of old left and becoming just another appendage of slfp.

in the second case,
jvp and upfa will get closer, since similar three way split in a general election will mean unp will get a plurality of seats in parliament given the peculiarities of our proportional representation system with its bonus seats etc. with a good chance of forming the next government. their common fear of such an outcome will unite them again in order deny unp that chance and jvp's power within upfa will grow.

given the above speculations i would rather prefer the first outcome. so should anybody else who does not like jvp's extremism. even unp supporters will be better off in the long run if their party finishes a distance second to a triumphant upfa in this election, because they will be able to divide and conquer in the future.

-
btw where is morquendi? i posted this here instead of in my own blog since nobody else seems to post here anymore.

Aksharaya Trailer 04

2006-01-18T05:06:00.003-08:00

Aksharaya Trailer 02

2006-01-18T05:06:00.002-08:00

Aksharaya Trailer 03

2006-01-18T05:06:00.001-08:00

Aksharaya Trailer 01

2006-01-18T05:06:00.000-08:00

More Bullshit

2005-11-27T00:45:00.000-08:00

Has anyone heard the story that the lone voter from Kilinochchi had his hands chopped off? Ivap posted the link to the Asian Tribune story on this.

Both the Island and the Daily News have run this story over the past few days, but they have both taken the story from the Asian Tribue website and have not done any investigating on their own. It's a simple copy paste job.

Ivap asked, is this true. Well, to the best of my knowledge this story is not true. I met someone who just returned from Kilinochchi, and they said that on the day when this alleged chopping off was supposed to have happened, they did not notice anything of the sort in the town. I am certain that is something like this had happened, there would have been a bit of a commotion about Kilinochchi considering the fact that it is a really really small town. People who have never been there would not understand what I'm talking about.

What I can confirm is that two days after the elections a poster came up in Jaffna town, in Tamil, big bold red letters, saying 'What shall we do to those who voted?'. I have seen a copy of this poster because someone who was coming to Colombo took one off a wall and brought it with them. This is a very clear warning to all those people in the Jaffna peninsula who voted, but the LTTE, or whoever put up the poster, has not taken any action to this regard. It's increasingly clear that the poster was a threat, and that there was no serious intention to follow up and deliver. However, considering the tense situation in the Peninsula and other regions in the North and East, I would assume that a poster like that would have the desired effect of keeping even more people away from a future poll if the LTTE were to call for a boycott. This raises real questions about if the LTTE is capable of showing any committment to democracy.

Going back to the hand chopping story, as I have written about on many occasions prior ot this, stories like this are attributed to unidentified sources, and their credibility is seriously questionable. The LTTE Dress Code for Jaffna story was very similar to this. It too first appeared in a foreign source (The Dawn, Pakistan). It was only after it appeared in The Dawn that both the Island and the Daily News picked it up. The Dawn Correspondent in Sri Lanka did not follow up on that story and see if the people in Jaffna actually obeyed the dress code. In this case too the Asian Tribune is only interested in saying that the man had his hands chopped off and does not investigate the outcome.

Here's a random sampling of Sri Lankan news on Asian Tribune.

Prabhakaran set to reject Mahinda's road map to peace in tomorrow's annual speech
New road map to peace outlined by President Mahinda Rajapakse
LTTE killed journalist Sivaram, Kumar Ponnambalam and Kadirgamar -- Col. Karuna reveals in an exclusive to "Asian Tribune"
LTTE‘s olive branch due on November 27 will have more grenades than olives --- Douglas Devananda
We place the country first and not the portfolios - Somawansa Amarasinghe
So far 17,903 LTTE cadres have died

The very first article is written by H L D Mahindapala, a warmonger claiming to be a journalist. I would really question his ability comment on Sri Lanka issues as he does not live here. Perhaps he could write general commentry, but to go so far as to think that he can gauge the LTTE leaders intentions based on a few interviews is rather silly. And to give prominence to such speculation-based removed-from-reality article clearly shows which way the Asian Tribune leans. You can judge for yourself whether you want to believe their 'sources'.

As for the Island and the Daily News;

The Island takes a very clera pro-Sinhala pro-Unitary state stance and they spin their news to match their agenda. The Daily News is the Government mouthpiece and will sya whatever the Government at that moment want them to say. The word 'independent' is not in their vocabulary.

And as long as these people and these papers and 'news' sources exist, we're going to hear stories like this.

Mangala 'Goebbels' Samaraweera

2005-11-21T19:11:00.000-08:00

Joseph Goebbels (1897-1945) the father of propaganda and Mangala Samaraweera

What makes Mangala Samaraweera, a.k.a. Mangy the most dangerous person in the UPFA government?

Remember Sudu Nelum (White Lotus)? 1995?

President Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunge, at the inauguration ceremony for the Sudu Nelum movement. (08/07/95)

Let us resolve to work with determination to keep the Sudu Nelum Movement that blooms today, without fading for a long time to come. If the people of all of our communities - Sinhala, Tamil, Muslim and Burgher and of all religions join hands with a sense of brotherhood, "White Lotuses" of peace will bloom in tens of thousands in their hearts. Peace is the prerequisite for our prosperity. Our fervent appeal to the people on this occasion is to come together bound by a deep sense of brotherhood and create a durable peace which is the foundation for our development and prosperity.

Wasn't it Mangy who designed and ran the Sudu Nelum campaign all those years? He let Nimal Siripala De Silva run it for some time, but everyone knew that the Sudu Nelum campaign was Mangy's baby.

The Sudu Nelum campaign at that point (even with all it's flaws and inherent corruption) was at that point the most progressive move in the country towards mainstreaming multiculturalism and pluralism. With several Non-Governmental Organisations supporting their effort the Sudu Nelum movement was able to do a fair bit of work. It is responsible to a great extent for raising rural people's understanding of the complexities of multiculturalism, and life in a multiethnic society. The level at which the PA Government coordinated with civil society groups and sought their support to reach the masses was astounding. They had a very clear understanding that in order to achieve peace, everyone had to be on board.

Unfortunately at that time the UNP openly sabotaged Chadrika's peace plans and the LTTE played along and broke the ceasefire and ensured a return to war.

Through the movement the Chadrika Government sought to use the massive mandate they had received to take peace to the people, to mainstream multiculturalism. Even when there was a war going on in the North and East, the Government insisted on keeping the Sudu Nelum movement and the Thavalama Peace Caravans and the National Integration Policy Unit funded.

Mangala Samaraweera, formerly a fashion designer, who went to to design school with Boy George and Sade, worked with Buddhi Keerthisena (Snr) on the Buddhi Batiks line of clothing, then Minister of Information and Media, used his understanding of the importance of symbols and icons to design a campaign that really made an impact. A lot of people thought he was working for peace because he had a genuine belief in making it work.

But over the past few years what we have seen is that Mangala has no committment to peace. He has no committment to anyone or anything.

By moving from working closely with civil society groups to stating at a press conference that even if the Free Media Movement and Sunanda Deshapriya stood on their heads the Government would not care, Mangala Samaraweera did not degenarate. He merely shifted his position to the stance that would most benefit him, and then engineered the environment.

Goebbels with Hitler, Mangala with Mahinda

Mangy was one of the main players in the engineering of the allaince between the PA and the JVP to form the UPFA two years ago

What was the logo of the Mahinda for President campaign? A white lotus. And was not the Mahinda campaign run on symbols and icons? It was amazing how the UPFA used the same icons and themes for the Mahinda campaign that they used in 1995. To go back to the same flower, and the words that they had spun for pro-peace propaganda, and to use them 10 years later to spin for a pro-Sinhala nationalist Presidential campaign is in my opinion, terrifying.

Goebbels at a Nazi rally. Mangala at a Sinhala Chauvinist Patrotic National Movement rally.

The UNP too has some skilled spindoctors, and they have more of them, but what is apparent is that none of them is as tuned into what will sell an idea to the people as Mangala is. He is a salesman of ideology. He has none of his own, but if you have one you want to sell, he's the man you want. And he sold Mahinda to the people well. He took the JVP's ultra Sinhala natonalist ideology, and the JHU's Sinhala Buddhist primacy ideology, and meshed it in with the followings of the SLFP/PA. Something that many people thought could not be done. To date he remains the most skilled spindoctor Sri Lanka has ever seen.

So here's to Mangala 'Goebbels' Samaraweera.

Pseudo-Academic

2005-11-21T18:39:00.000-08:00

I bet everyone who comes to this blog at one point or the other have been the site of The Lanka Academic.

Even thought LAcnet has been running for quite some time and has gained a reputation as a fairly decent news site, I think there are serious flaws in the way they work.

Recently they started a forum where people are allowed to discuss things. If you go there you will notice the moderators coming down rather hard on people who are critical of the right-wing fundamentalists in Sri Lanka. A majority of the commentors in the forum are very clearly Sinhala chauvinists living abroad, and they have little tolerance for anything even remotely LTTE-friendly or peace-process friendly. Overall there is little space for anyone, Tamil or otherwise, to say anything about the LTTE without calling the terrorists.

When the Sinhala chauvinist commentors trash the others the moderators remain silent and when one of the others decides to retaliate with trash (not more spiteful than that which was aimed at them) the moderators shut them down. Several of my friends who have tried to have intelligent discussions on a TLA forum have quit out of exasperation because the moderators have made it very clear as to their stand on things.

I do not know if this is the policy of TLA. Perhaps the people who are moderating their forum have started to push their individual political agendas without the knowledge of the TLA people, but that is highly unlikely. Even when people have complained to the TLA admin, they have been asked to respect the rules set down by the moderator and shut up.

But increasingly they have also begun to openly express their right wing pro-war stance through reports in news, such as the one I reproduce below.

LTTE begins aggressive fund raising in Europe. Demands large
Special Correspondent in London, Mon Oct 31 14:58:58 EST 2005

During the last few weeks, LTTE operatives in major European cities have commenced an aggressive fund raising campaign demanding large sums of money from the Tamil expatriate community. In London, LTTE operatives are reported to be demanding 5000 pounds from individuals and 50 thousand pounds from businessmen. Despite the fact that the LTTE is a banned terrorist group and contributing or collecting money for the group is a punishable offense in the UK LTTE operatives are openly visiting business premises and demanding large sums from the shop owners. The operatives visiting Tamil residents at their homes are reported to be saying that 'After the elections, we are going for the war. This is the final and decisive attack to get our homeland. We need large sums of money urgently. We will return the money with interest in 3 years".

This article has the potential to be a huge story and TLA knows that. But there is no reporter credited with the story, and the details are very very vague. Special Correspondent in London? My ass. TLA doesn't have paid reporters anywhere. One of their friends probably called them up and told them this story.

I do not deny that this story is probably true. I have heard stories from people in Australia and Canada about the LTTE engaging in similar activities over there after the election. But the reason TLA put this story out is not because it wants to tell the truth, but because it wants to further it's own agenda (or the agenda of those who run it). They've become just another one of those groups who are always looking out for a big stick with which to beat the LTTE.

It's sad that these people call themselves academics, do little but steal news stories from other sources and republish them. They do no reporting of their own, and only publish rumors they have heard when it suits their need or is in keeping with their agenda.

But then, Sri Lankans are used to people like this calling themselves 'academics'.

Wickramaniac

2005-11-21T17:42:00.000-08:00

So, that cattle thief (harak hora) is our PM again. Yes, that's what he's called in Horana, which is his constituency.

The accidental president and the cattle thief (on the right)

By appointing Rathnasiri Wickramanayake as the Prime Minister, Mahinda Rajapakse has made a very clear indication as to where he wants to take this country. First, back to war, then with the help of that and with help from his friends, back to the stone age.

For those of you who don't know who the harak hora really is, here's a tiny bit of background.

He's a petty thug from Horana (to the South East of Colombo) who fought his way to the top. He was Prime Minister for a little while at the turn of the century, replacing old lady B. Chadrika replaced her mother with this guy.

For starters, he's the one who tried to bring in the anti-conversion bill last year. He was the Minister of Buddha Sasana who was hand in glove with the right-wing extremist Buddhist groups. So we know that's going to be brought back into the Parliament soon. Halleluja!

Once upon a time he used to be the Minister of Public Administration. Made a royal mess of things back then. Got shifted around. Never stuck with one ministry. Why? Because he was never any good as a minister of anything! And now he's the Prime Minister. Well, at least that'll keep him away from the ministries.

Though the newspapers have all called him a staunch Chandrika loyalist, he's never been too happy being under her thumb. He always felt that he should have been given a more prominent role in the party. But he stuck around, and now Mahinda's given him what he wants. Now he can steal all the cattle in the world!

What Our Trolls Teach Us

2005-11-20T07:10:00.000-08:00

Let's start talking about non-election-related things.

This is something I've been wondering about for quite some time now. Sittingnut (I think) brought this up during one of his ceaseless arguments with one of the trolls (Just give it up man! No point wasting your time going down to their level. That goes for you too Ashanthi).

A lot of the trolls we here have gotten used to like our ol' pal Dextr, j5, Jini and now Kesbewa and T4011, are most probably Sri Lankans who live abroad. Most of them I would assume to be Sinhala and also probably Buddhist considering the kind of things they say here. Taking the places where Sri Lankans generally move to, they probably live in Australia, England, Canada or the US. We know Dextr lives in Australia.

Any Sinhala Buddhist living in a foreign country would be a part of the minority community there. Sinhala Buddhists in Sri Lanka have come to take for granted the fact that they are a majority and do not even bother to think of what it would feel like to be a minority community. But for the large numbers of Sinhalese living abraod I would assume the realities of being a minority community, and being treated as one, would have sunk in.

And we know how minority communities are treated in those countries. Perhaps they are not openly discriminated againt like we find in Sri Lanka, but there's just a thin veil of tolerance covering deep rooted anti-immigrant sentiment.

I can't even pretend to know what it feels like to be a minority as I have never been one so I will not attempt to articulate what it feels like to be one. But what I say about Sinhalese learning about the other side of the story comes from many conversations with friends who have lived abroad for many years.

From my interactions with them, particularly a few members of my family, it is very clear that even though they do not face any direct discrimination, they have very understood what it feels like to be a minortiy in someone else's country. Upon their return to Sri Lanka many of them have begun to put themselves into the shoes of a Tamil person who belongs to a minority community in their own country. But it's only possible if the person who is living abroad is open actively investigating the dynamics of minority mentality. I'm not saying write an academic paper on it. Just sit back and think about what it feels like to be a minority.

As we have found with our trolls and with groups like SPUR, many of these people are not even aware of the fact that they are minorities living amidst a people who don't really like them too much. They don't see their minority status as an opportunity to (to a certain degree) put themselves in the shoes of the Tamil people in Sri Lanka.

Dextr for one is unable to grasp his situation. He is living the life of a beggar in a country that doesn't really like immigrants when he could live a good life here in Sri Lanka. I would expect him to explore the socio-political dynamics that have made him a beggar in Australia, but apparently like many Sinhalese living abroad, he fails to come to terms with his minority status. In this particular case perhaps he just lacks the analytical skills to explore his context.

A Sinhalese living Australia, or England, or the US, or in Canada or anywhere should be able to identify what it means to be completely powerless politically, what it means to accept the fact that a person from your community will never have significant political power, what it means to be treated like you're a disease, what it feels like to be pulled over all the time, what it feels like to be an utomatic suspect whenever something goes wrong, to be tolerated and left alone yet never really liked and accepted.

I would expect these people to have some kind of sympathy for the life that the Tamil people of Sri Lanka have been subjected to for the past 49 years, (Yes it's 50 years since 1956 next year) but the sad truth is many of them don't. They remain minority-hating, Sinhala racist bigots. Though they move thousands of miles away, and change their socio-econo-political context completely, the I'm-a-majortiy-so-f***-you mentality never leaves them.

The Sri Lankan diaspora have such potential to be a part of the solution, instead they insist on making themselves a part of the problem.

Sad.

Taking A Page From The GOP Book

2005-11-20T01:59:00.000-08:00

Has anyone noticed how Mahinda has become President in pretty much the same way George W Bush won his first term? Here's the George W Bush DIY Guide to Winning A Presidential Election:

**********

Step One: Disenfranchisement
Bush Jnr. used his brother in Florida to take people off the voter lists. They systematically removed people who would vote Democrat. In Colombo and in many urban regions in the South the UPFA Government has done the same thing. In Colombo alone there are over a 20,000 people who were taken of the voter registration lists. The UPFA knows that Colombo always votes UNP, and that there was a afir chance that by taking all these people off the lists they would put a serious dent in the number of votes the UNP would get in the capital city.

While ballot box stuffing, impersonation and rigging are the most common polls violations in Sri Lanka, this time systematic disenfranchisement may have played a bigger role. Several observers say that even though not too many people were taken off the lists in each electorate, throughout the country this figure adds up. While all the other forms of election fraud and election related violence are monitored by several independent monitoring groups to a large extent, no one really keeps an eye on the voter lists.

The elections commissioner Dayananda Dishanayake admitted that many people all over the island had not received their polling cards but that they could go to the polling centre with their ID and cast their vote. This move was suspicious from the beggining but no one really questioned it because it has happened before. The postal deparment in Sri Lanka which has the responsibility of distributing the polling cards isn't really dependable. But what no one noticed was that this time it happened on a massive scale and affected all parts of the island.

Step Two: Making The Other Guy Believe He Lost.
By declaring himself the fifth President of Sri Lanka even when the results of 35 electorates were to be announced was a very cold and calculated move by the Mahinda camp. By shouting about their victory early they prepared the UNP to accept defeat, even before they had really lost. With Bush's first term we saw how the GOP began to party hard before the Florida results came in.

If they believe they have won, and if they believe in loud enough and strong enough then the other guys are going to believe they have lost. This was the biggest mistake made by the Democrats back then and now by the UNP here.

The UPFA took maximum advantage of the fact that there were people within the UNP who expected Ranil to lose and knew that power struggles would begin within the party the moment they figured they lost. Feeding this fear they orchestrated a massive mixup within the UNP and they could not get their act together to demand for a repoll in the North and East, in pretty much the same way the Democrats couldn't get their act together to ask for a repoll in Florida.

**********

Perhaps this is a sign of the way Mahinda plans to rule this country for the next 6 years. The sad thing is that going by how Sri Lankans vote he's probably going to be President for the next 12 years. Two terms is the standard. Premadasa had only one term, but then he didn't really lose a re-election campaign did he?

So, is Mahinda also going to read the George W DIY Guide Books on Invading Other Countries, The Theory of the Pre-emptive Strike, Lying To The Whole World etc?

Maybe we could invade the Maldives. I don't like Gayoom. I don't think Mahinda likes him either (Does Mahinda know who Gayoom is?). And they are Islamic State. And Gayoom is a ruthless dictator. And we know they have secret underwater nuclear facilities with warheads pointed at the Peradeniya Gardens, Sinharaja, Yala, Wilpattu and Uda Walawe (they envy our biodiversity, they have only coconut trees). And not many people would care too much.

What The F*** Do They Want?

2005-11-20T01:18:00.000-08:00

One of the LTTE's main complaints against the Government(s) in the South have been that there's been no political stability, and that there's no point in them negotiating with a Government that has a slim hold of the Parliament and might not even be there in a few months. All the past few Governments have had this problem and even now we have a UPFA Government that does not have a clear majority in Parliament.

Thamilchelvam himself on many occasions has raised many concerns about the political stability in the South. The LTTE have a very valid point there. If I were them I would not want to negotiate with the Government in the South that does not have a very stable future. Even if it were not for the LTTE pointing this out, it clear to everyone that there cannot under any circumstance be a permanent solution to the peace process without a Parliament in Colombo that can make it happen and back it. With the debates on the LTTE's ISGA demand and the establishment of P-TOMS it was very clear that no one leader (or group) in the South could do anything lasting as long as the Parliament remained divided and shaky.

But the entire country knew that if Ranil won a lot would have changed. He would have dissolved the Parliament and called for a General Election that the UNP would have won with a big majortiy. Going by voter patterns over the past decades this is assured. With the UNP controlling the Parliament and Ranil as the President we could have hoped for a level of political stability in the South that we have not seen for many many years. This was possible.

This would have given the LTTE a stable partner with whom to negotiate, and perhaps if Ranil had been president we would have seen a lasting solution to the conflict reached within his first term. But by ensuring Mahinda's victory the LTTE has taken political instability in the country to a whole new level. Now we have an accidental President who barely scraped through, and in the Parliament the UPFA is still on thin ice. Mahinda cannot go for a General Election because he knows that as it stands the UNP could really beat them soundly at it and gain control of the Parliament. If that was to happen then they would easily be able to manipulate the votes needed to push through a bill to take away the executive powers of the President and essentially cut Mahinda's balls off. He will not risk that so he will not go for a General Election till they are absolutely sure they can win it with even a mini landslide.

The entire country knew what would happen if Mahinda won with a slim majortiy. The LTTE knew it too, which is what makes me wonder what drove them to engineer this result. What interest do they have in keeping the Government in the South weak and unstable? What gain do they have in ensuring that the JVP and the Sinhala Buddhist extremists are able to control and shape Government policy?

The very fact that the UPFA is on thin ice in the Parliament makes them more dependent on the JVP and the JHU for their votes in the house. I do not dislike Mahinda as a person and believe that he would have been a good leader if he had not allowed the JVP control him like they now do. But now he is completely dependent on them to keep his party in control of the Parliament. And with the power they now hold over him they will manipulate him like they manipulated the UPFA Government till they quit it. Back then they had Chandrika to go up against and she was never comfortable with allying with them. But now they have her out of the way and they have a President who is more open to being manipulated by them. Mahinda will give them key ministries (I predict the Ministry of Cultural Affairs and the Ministry of Agriculture for starters) which they will use to further establish their power in the country and slowly eat at the SLFP from within.

But the problem is, if they do not want a stable Government in the South, what does the LTTE want? Do they not want to negotiate any further? Do they want to go back to war? To me it seems like their main intention is to install a unstable Governemt in the South and keep it unstable so they can show the rest of the world what a bunch of f***-ups the Sri Lankan Government is.

What happens to all the people in the South who believed in peace and believed that the LTTE would show some kind of committment to a lasting solution?

Is the LTTE no longer comitted to trying to find a lasting solution to the conflict?

What the f*** do they want?

Will Ranil Resign?

2005-11-19T21:16:00.000-08:00

The gossip about Sirikotha is that Ranil is going to hand in his papers on Monday. What remains to be seen is if the UNP accepts his resignation. Plans are being made for a press conference on Monday by the office of the Opposition Leader.

Though a lot of people have said that Ranil should quit as the leader of the UNP now that he has lost two consecutive Presidential elections, the main problem is that there is no clear person within the UNP who could replace Ranil as the leader of the party. If the UNP does decide to accept Ranil's resignation then there is going to be a serious power struggle as to who is going to lead the party.

While many believe that Karu Jayasuriya should be the one to lead the party, Karu has shown no clear intention of taking the party into his hands. KAru Jayasuriya is generally seen as one of the most expemplery leaders of the UNP having won elections in Colombo consecutively without ever having resorted to violence, or even massive poster campaigns. I'm not saying that the UNP is thug-free. They do have their fair share of people who believe wholeheartedly in ballot stuffing and opponent beating, but Karu, so far, has not been one of them.

1. Karu and Ranil at a rally
2. Karu as Mayor of Colombo

But if not Karu then who is it going to be?

Both Naveen Dissanayake and Sajith Premadasa, thought bright young leaders with relatively clean records (particularly Sajith, who ran a very clean campaign against Mahinda's thugs in Hambantota) but they are both too young and inexperienced to give leadership to a party like the UNP.

Ravi Karunanayake, Bandula Gunawardene, Tissa Attanayake and several others also perhaps harbor hopes of becoming the next leader of the UNP, but I don't think any one of them are going to get it. But maybe the UNP does decide to do something stupid. The UNP is known to do stupid push-the-self-destruct-button kinda things.

Free and Fair Election?

2005-11-18T11:14:00.000-08:00

This is for our new resident troll Kesbewa and anyone else who believes that Mahinda won the South fair and square.

Despite whatever PAFFREL and CMEV says he did not. We all know why PAFFREL's been saying that the election was free and fair. Let's see if PAFFREL is one of those NGO groups that the JVP comes down on. I bet not. Why? Because the leadership of PAFFREL has always been pro-SLFP/PA/UPFA and it's been a good tool for the blues to use whenever an election comes around. All you have to do is look at PAFFREL statements over the past few elections to see which way they lean in the political spectrum.

Mahinda did win the South. There's no question about that. But just how much did vote rigging effect the result? Well, not much really. But then, the margin between the two candidates is not much either is it? So did the vote rigging in the South have an impact on the result of the election?

I think it did.

So what evidence do I have? I personally witnessed large scale impersonation and ballot box stuffing in several areas in the Beliatta electorate. Particularly in the Aranwela MV polling booth. This was carried out by Southern Provincial Council member D V Upul and his gang. This same gang were responsible for beating up an independent monitor near Beliatta junction later. A few miles from Beliatta, in Getamanna too large scale impersonation and intimidation of voters was taking place in both the polling centers in the area. The UPFA supporters all gathered outside the Getamanna Vijaya MV.

In Tangalle vehicles without license plates bearing stickers of Mahinda were crusing around. There were many reports of polling booths in Tangalle town and in the interior having their ballot boxes stuffed. Mahinda Rajapakse's son Namal who had earlier brought his gang to Tangalle for the election was primarily responsible for this. Namal is only 19 years old, but is already turning out to be quite a thug. We saw that when he gathered thugs from Mt Lavinia in the vicinity of his school St Thomas' College. He's already got his own crew and no longer needs daddy's bodyguards. So much for everyone who says Mahinda's boys are nice guys.

There were similar reports sent in by election observers from Kalmunai, from Hanguranketha, from Kuliyapitiya. There are several reports that have been put out by the various groups that were monitoring the elections and if you compile all of them you can get a good idea of exactly how the UPFA engaged in election violence and ballot box stuffing. The violence and intimidation perpetrated by the PA+JVP+Allies was widespread, and was seen in all parts of the island.

If the margin between the two candidates had been larger by maybe another two or three hundred thousand then maybe all this rigging would not really have changed anything because Mahinda would have won anyway. But the margin is only 186,000 votes. And even if they stuffed a few ballots into each ballot box they could make that figure. And I believe that if this election had been truely free and fair, even if we don't count the votes in the Jaffna, Vanni, Trincomalee and Batticaloa districts, Ranil would still have won.

So think again before you claim that Mahinda won fair and square.

Go on, bark and say he won. Yes he did win, and you may shout that out from the rooftops. But don't claim he won fair and square, because he did not. But know who you are electing into power. He is a man who blatantly encourages election violence in his own electorate. His own son has been seen stuffing ballot boxes there. Election monitors get beaten up there.

This is a man who has shown no committment to democracy or democratic principles. This is a man who over the past few months has shown that he is willing to sacrifice anything to become the president of this country. This is a man whose personality now reeks of a powerhungry dictator.

If this is the guy you're going to trust to run your country then there's something seriously wrong with you, and maybe you deserve a leader like that.

Mahinda Wins, But Sri Lanka Loses

2005-11-18T01:56:00.000-08:00

Morquendi officially recognizes Mahinda Rajapakse as the President of the Sinhala people of Sri Lanka.

He defeated the other candidate Ranil Wickramasinghe by a huge majority in the South (where it mattered) and for the first time we have a president elected solely trough the vote of the Sinhala Buddhist masses. He didn't even bother to campaign for the votes of the Tamil people. He did do a meeting in Vavuniya, but that only for the Sinhala people who live in the Vavuniya area and not for the Tamil people. Mahinda's campaign was driven by the extremist JVP who spoke on each one of his campaign platforms and have shown a committment to returning to war.

Now that he knows that he can become president even without the support of the Tamil people of the North and East he no longer needs them. And the Tamil people of the North and East have every right to not look upon Mahinda Rajapakse as their President. They didn't really vote him in did they?

And the LTTE too no longer needs to take him seriously because he is very clearly not a leader elected with the help of the Tamil people.

While this has been a huge victory for Mahinda, it has dealt a crushing blow to the notion that a united, not unitary, Sri Lanka is possible. We now have a President in the South elected solely by voters from the South and we have the LTTE led by Prabhakaran. The LTTE wants it's Eelam and the orange robed cronies who haunt Mahinda want their Dhramarajya, or Helabima or whatever they chose to call is.

With both the JVP and the JHU being against Norwegian mediation, it doesn't look like Mahinda is going to be able to talk to the LTTE even if he wants to. By bringing back onto the table demands that were there in the mid 80s Mahina has taken the peace process back almost 20 years. Asking the LTTE to completely disarm, etc were ideas that were abandoned after Thimpu. But now the JVP and the JHU want them back on the table, and it's very very clear that peace talks are not going to happen for the next few years.

So, Mahinda Rajapakse is very clearly not the President of Sri Lanka, but the President of the Sinhala people. He did not need any Tamil votes to get there, and he does not owe the Tamil people anything. As far as he is concerned, he is not their president. And to him, the Tamil people of Sri Lanka do not exist, their problems do not exist. The only thing that exists is a pest seperatist group in the North who wants to carve a little bit out of his Helabima and call it something else.

Aah... Sri Lanka, it was a nice idea while it lasted. Too bad we're going to have to forget about it.

And you thought Chandrika was bad?

Swearing In

2005-11-17T22:00:00.000-08:00

CONFIRMED
Mahinda is swearing in as the new president today at 6.

Let's see if the UNP can stop it so they can ask for their repoll.

CHANGE: Because of a shift in the nekatha (auspicious time) Mahinda's swearing in has been scheduled for tomorrow (19th November 2005)

More Complications. A Repoll? or a Hurried Swearing In?

2005-11-17T21:02:00.000-08:00

So here’s the gossip.

The UNP is having a meeting at Sirikotha right now. According to what we have heard they are trying to ask for a repoll in the North and the East because the LTTE hampered polling in the region. This was a region where the UNP was planning on getting a solid block vote. But all their plans were foiled when when the LTTE said they would not support anyone, and did their best to stop people from going to the polling stations there.

Before the election the Commissioner of Elections Dayananda Dishanayake had stated that he would repoll any electorates where election related violence was reported. But we saw that he did not repoll Hanguranketha, Weligama and Beliatta where serious incidents of election related violence were reported.

If he has to keep to his word then he has to repoll many areas in the East. The UNP would have a very valid point to ask for a repoll over there, and they know that if they swing it properly they can push Mahinda off the map. All they need right now is 186,238 more votes in the North and East and they know they have a free ride to the presidency.

But here’s where things get complicated.

The UPFA camp knows this, and they are trying to figure out a way to stop the UNP from pulling this last stunt. So, Mahinda is right now talking to the President to see if she will hand over power to him today, so that even before the UNP can officially ask for a repoll, and way before the Elections Commissioner can think about a repoll, Mahinda has been sworn in as the President and there’s not a damn thing anyone can do about it.

But even if the Elections Commissioner does call for a repoll and stops Mahinda from swearing in, will the LTTE actually play along with the UNP now? If they didn't play along with them and support them all this while who in the UNP can change their minds? Is it going to work? Or is the UNP just going to lose again?

Oh what tangled webs we weave...

Mahinda Wins

2005-11-17T20:25:00.000-08:00

The final tally is out. Mahinda Rajapakse has beaten Ranil Wickramasinghe by 186,327 votes. A percentage of 50.33.

This makes him the fifth President of the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka.

Four Questions

2005-11-17T19:52:00.000-08:00

So let's say Mahinda becomes the next President. That seems to be the sad truth that many of us have to deal with right now.

There is mosr definetely going to be another general election because Mahinda is going to want to consolidate his power in the Parliament.

Four questions.

What happens to Ranil? Who's going to lead the party if he steps down (like we have heard he will) from the party leadership.

If the UPFA and Mahinda manage to scrape through at the Presidential election then are they going to stand a chance at a general election? isn't the UNP much better set to deal with a general election than a presidential one?

But let's say the UPFA does manage to consolidate power in the parliament. Who's going to be the Prime Minister? Who's going to Mahinda's right hand guy? Will it be Wimal? Or might it even be Anura?

And what if the UNP wins the new Parliament? Then what happens to Mahinda? Do we go back to how things were with Ranil and Chandrika? What a royal mess that was! But who's it going to be on the UNP side this time? Is there anyone?

NOTE: To our new resident troll Kesbewa. Say what you want man. You have the space for that. But don't expect people here to respond to your inane questions. We have better things to talk about, and not enough time to waste on people like you.

Who Said WHAT?

2005-11-17T19:30:00.000-08:00

After all the bullshit and the rantings here's some real news.

The UNP has not officially conceded defeat. This is from the UNP office. They have not yet conceded defeat.

So where did Mahinda's campaign secretary Dulles Alahapperuma get the balls to make that statement announcing that Mahinda Rajapakse is going to be the fifth President of Sri Lanka? I don't know. All we know is that he did make that statement. The statement said that Mahinda had beaten Ranil by over 125,000 votes. All the other people that we have spoken to over the past few minutes have also told me that Mahinda has won, but it seems to be by a margin of about 60,000 to 70,000 votes.

So right now all we know is that the office of the PM and his campaign secretary Dulles made that statement without knowing what they were doing. This is the first time that a presidential candidate has declared themselves president before over 20 electorates are yet to be declared.

So we all have to sit around and wait and watch.

I don't think Ranil is going to win. But it's damn strange what the Mahinda camp is trying to do. Are they actually afraid of losing? So much so that they want to pull this trick now and hope no one counts the last bit of the votes? Are they trying to do a Bush?

So What?

2005-11-17T18:28:00.000-08:00

Mahinda won.

But doesn't it really stink that the PM's office should release a statement saying that they are pleased to announce that the fifth president of the country is going to be Mahinda? Maybe they should have noted that thet only reason they could make such a statement is because Ranil conceded defeat. Ranil's not perfect, but at least he was nice enough to concede defeat. But it was really nasty of the PM and the PM's office to make a statement saying they won, without saying that the only reason they could say they won was that the other guy had thrown in the towel.

But heck, we're going to have to get used to a lot more of this shit if this guy is going to be in power for another 6 years. And the worst thing is he is going to be even worse than Chandrika. Much much worse. We're going to be missing Chadrika when she's gone and this guy is in her place.

Well, I don't have a problem with Mahinda himself, but the fact that he signed those pacts with the JVP and the JHU are really scary. I was actually quite amazed to see him stoop to that level. But he did stoop. And the only thing he proved by doing that was that winning was more important to him than his principles.

But then, like a lot of people have been asking, did he ever have any principles at all? Well, we'll have to hang around and find out.

And yup, if the JVP have it their way we're going back to war. Bloody good if you ask me. Some of the morons out there have just forgotten what it was like. Teach them a bloody lesson to vote a bunch of racist warmongers like this. They get what they voted for. As for me, and as for Nittewa, at least now that this bloody election is over we can go back to talking about real issues.

Why Prabha Likes The PA

2005-11-17T17:36:00.000-08:00

It looks like I was wrong. Mahinda is going to win by maybe 50,000. So sue me.

But if Mahinda wins this time it's going to be because Prabhakarn screwed Ranil over. If the LTTE had allowed the people of the North and east to vote peacefully then there is little doubt that Ranil would have got most of those votes that were not polled. So if Ranil loses then it's going to be Prabhakaran's fault.

But hasn't the LTTE always helped the SLFP/PA/UPFA win?

Way back in the Premadasa days they got rid of him so Chandrika could come to power. Then they killed Gamini so she could become President. Then during her re-election campaign they killed some people at her rally and gave her a bad eye to win her second term on the sympathy vote. And now the LTTE's screwed Ranil and given the win to Mahinda.

So, instead of going to the temple to worship some stupid monks who did nothing to make him win, he should take a trip over to Kilinochchi and fall on his knees before Prabhakaran. It's a fact that the LTTE did more to make Mahinda win that either the JVP or the JHU could have ever done. He owes his win to them.

And the winner is...

2005-11-17T16:30:00.000-08:00

I hate to do this, but Ranil is going to win. Not that it's a problem. I'd rather have him win than Mahinda.

It's dawn and there's no clear winner. Sri Lankans are not used to shit. We vote, then we stay up all night glued to the TV or the radio trying to see if the horse we backed is going to win and we usually know that before dawn. Not all the results have always come in, but things are pretty clear. By dawn we know if we should be grinning or crying. And then we go to sleep with no intention of going to work the next day. So much the better if the next day is a holiday anyway.

But not this time. It looks like a real tight race. But nothing from Kurunegala or Kegalle or Nuwara Eliya Districts have been announced yet. And when these results are released, there's little chance of them going any way but Ranil's.

The first clue came when the election commissioner was delaying results without any reason. At about 1.45 SL time he held a press conference and gave a lame reason for the delay but promised that things would be up to speed soon. What I think is that by that time much of the counting was already underway and the Government knew that they were in trouble. Not like they could really mess with the elections commissioner, but maybe they were trying to think up something creative.

But the moment the commissioner Dayananda Dissanayake started stalling for time it was very clear that Ranil was going to win. And about an hour ago the UNP agents in the counting centers confirmed that there were confident of a win.

But the results keep trickling out, and there's still no clear winner. But I think Ranil's going to win.

But here's a funny story. Out of some 83'000 registered voters in Kilinochchi, only one person voted. That one person voted for Ranil. So Ranil won Kilinochchi 100%. But that's not even remotely funny. What's really funny is that it took them till 5.13 a.m. to count it. I wonder how many people they had to count that one vote.

Election Day Media Communique No. 1

2005-11-17T11:20:00.000-08:00

Here is the Election Day Media Communique No. 1 released by the Center for Monitoring Elction Violence. You can find it on their website along with some other useful material too, but I'm reproducing the entire thing here:

Media Communiqué on Election-related Violence
Presidential Election - 2005

17th November 2005 - Election Day Media Communique No. 1

CMEV has received an initial set of 122 reports of incidents of election violence today, polling day 17th November 2005. The bulk of the major incidents including murder and causing grievous hurt were recorded in the North and East. The general environment and context that prevailed in these areas was one of intimidation, tension and violence. This is directly attributable to the LTTE call for a boycott of the presidential election by the Tamil people which translated into negligible polling by the people in the areas directly under their control, negligible polling in the north and low polling amongst the Tamil community in the east.

The LTTE as a political actor has the right to call for a boycott of the election. In its statement to this effect it also pledged that it would not prevent or obstruct the exercise of the franchise by those who chose to vote. The reports received by CMEV clearly indicate the contrary. The actions of front organizations of the LTTE ranging from the burning of tyres, barring access to polling stations and the intimidatory presence of LTTErs including their surveillance of voters clearly indicate that the call for a boycott apart, the LTTE actively engaged in preventing and obstructing people from voting. In addition the grenade attacks on EPDP offices in Jaffna and on polling stations in the Batticaloa District alleged to have been perpetrated by the LTTE on November 16th, the day before polling, and on November 17, election day.

The CMEV unequivocally condemns the actions of the LTTE in this respect. The exercise of the franchise is the basic mechanism of choice and change in a democracy and the choice of the chief executive of the country has clear implications for a process of democratic political change that will enable a just and sustainable peace in Sri Lanka. The use of violence and intimidation in the context of the presidential election is the most recent measure of the LTTE’s commitment to a negotiated political settlement of the ethnic conflict and of its willingness and ability to participate in a democratic process. This in turn compounds the challenge to all processes of democratic transformation throughout Sri Lanka.

Following is a summary of major incidents that have been reported to CMEV as of 8 p.m. 17th November 2005.

Weligama: Weligama Polling Division – No. 48 & 49 Welipitiya Zahira Collage
04 JVP supporters including JVP MP Premasiri Maannage were assaulted by supporters of UNP MP Mahinda Wijesekera, in the vicinity of the polling center at around 1400hrs. Following the assault, a complaint has been lodged with the Weligama Police. A double cab [reg. no.51-4913] belonging to Premasiri Maannage has also been damaged by the UNP supporters.

Weligama: Weligama Polling Division
UNP MP Mahinda Wijesekera and a group of his supporters have damaged a van [reg. no. 60-4252] approximately at 1345hrs in the vicinity of Galbokka junction in Weligama. It is also alleged that the said UNP MP had been traveling around the Weligama polling division in a convoy of 15 vehicles. Furthermore, MP Mahinda Wijesekera had threatened officers of the Weligama Police subsequent to which, police officers in the area have refrained from taking any action against the activities of MP Mahinda Wijesekera.

Digamadulla: Kalmunai Polling Division – No. 52 Pandirippu Nawalar Vidyalaya
Two youth were killed in Pandirippu following a bomb blast inside a bakery approximately at 1330hrs, close to the No. 52 Pandirippu Nawalar Vidyalaya polling centre. 05 other occupants sustained injuries and were admitted to hospital. When contacted by CMEV, the Kalmunai Police stated that the bomb blast may have been an accident due to the victims mishandling an explosive device, and ruled out the possibility of an outside attack.

Digamadulla: Kalmunai Polling Division - No.24/25/26 Kalmunai Al-Bahiriya Vidyalaya
Tensions has prevailed through out polling time due to UPFA and UNP supporters congregating outside No.24/25/26 Kalmunaikudi Al-Bahiriya Vidyalaya hall no. 1,2,3 from approximately 1100hrs to close of polling. Both groups were actively involved in distributing propaganda material.

Digamadulla: Kalmunai Polling Division
Mr.Falleel, the Moulavi of Al Hamiya Madarasa was shot at around 1130hrs by a group of unidentified persons. Mr.Falleel sustained gunshot wounds and was later admitted to Kalmunai Hospital.

Digamadulla: Sammanturai Polling Division - No. 16 ST/Darul-uloom Vidyalam
There was an attempted impersonation by a UPFA supporter at No.16 ST/Darul-uloom Vidyalam in Sammanthurai, which was foiled due to the intervention of the UNP polling agent resulting with the arrest of the impersonator. Subsequent to this incident, UPFA Deputy Minister Anwer Ismail, along with his armed bodyguards had entered the polling center and assaulted the UNP polling agent, forcing a 30 minute temporary closure of the polling center.

Batticaloa: Batticaloa Polling Division - No. 117 Kattankudi Maha Vidyalaya
Police petrol has come under fire following an attempt by the Police to disperse a group of approximately 100 people who was congregating in front of No.117, Kattankudi Maha Vidyalaya Hall 01. SI Sivanathan, a Police officer attached to Kattankudi Police has sustained gun shot injuries following this incident.

Batticoloa: Kalkuda Polling Division - No. 01 & 02 Chenkaladi Maha Vidyalaya
CMEV monitors report that a hand grenade was lobbed by unidentified persons who came on a motorcycle, resulting in two police officers and three voters sustaining injuries and being admitted to the Eravur Hospital. This incident took place in front of the No.01/02 Chenkaladi Maha Vidyalaya, at approximately 1210hrs.

Badulla: Hali-Ela Polling Division - No. 25 Kirinda Vidyalaya
Polling centre No.25, Kirinda Vidyalaya was forced to close for approximately 2 hours subsequent to armed UPFA supporters entering and chasing away UNP polling agents.

Kegalle: Dedigama Polling Division - No. 12 & 13, Mangedara Primary School
Systematic impersonation has been reported from No. 12/13, Maagedara Primary School Hall 02. CMEV monitor from the Dedigama electorate has observed approximately 15 – 20 voters being provided with forged ballot papers for voting.

Nuwara Eliya: Hanguranketha Polling Division
UPFA Central Provincial Council Minister Jayarathne Dissanayake was assaulted by a group of UNP supporters at approximately 1340hrs in the vicinity of the Hewaheta town, Rathungoda junction. CMEV monitors report that Mr. Jayarathne Dissanayake, who was traveling towards Hanguranketha along with a group of his supporters, encountered a group of UNP supporters led by Mr. Jayalath Dissanayake and Mr.Ranjith Dissanayake when the skirmish took place.

Kurunegala: Kuliyapitiya Polling Division – No. 40 Ennoruwa Maha Vidyalaya
UPFA Chief Minister for North Western Province, Athula Wijesinghe, had threatened and assaulted a UNP supporter in the vicinity of No. 40 Annoruwa Vidyalaya using a handgun. This incident took place approximately at 1200hrs

Dr. P. Saravanamuttu Co-Convenor
Sunila Abeysekera Co-Convenor
Seetha Ranjani Co-Convenor

Effects of LTTE's Unofficial Boycott

2005-11-13T16:19:00.000-08:00

though i am part of the nittewa 'team', i realized i have not posted anything here except comments. so here goes.

there can be no doubt about it, ltte has concluded that a victory for mahinda is in their best interest and are promoting an unofficial boycott of the election in order to achieve that. how did ltte arrive at this seemingly illogical and definitely stupid conclusion?

are they counting on mahinda when elected on back of sinhala buddhist chauvinists, to start a war and thus inadvertently allow ltte to strengthen it's loosening grip on the tamil population? or failing that (government is more less broke so can't start a war even if it wanted to) to thrive on the resulting political uncertainty and economic collapse in the south? are they on either case expecting to get the sympathy of the international community back towards them? they are certainly gambling the future of tamils on rather dicey outcomes in any case.

in the first place it is not certain that mahinda will win, even with a boycott. i have posted some election result scenarios in my own blog. from them i am confident that ranil will stay ahead even with only 25% of tamils voting. if minority votes are to affect the outcome, all the minorities must be united and all are more or less behind ranil this time. whether north east tamils will join the others will only have a marginal effect on the final result. more significant is the expected swing of sinhala buddhists from upfa to unp. even a 2.5% swing from 2004 result there will give ranil the victory.

so one effect of the boycott will be to reduce the north east tamils ability to influence any future administration. it will also dent the confidence politicians will place on northeast votes in future elections. thondamans and hakeems are powerful because they deliver the votes in return for getting what they want, by this boycott north east tamils failed to deliver.

another effect will be the loss of sympathy from the peace camp in the south. by this action ltte has shown that it prefers war and it's own power than the welfare of the tamils. already the ngo types are expressing a panicky disappointment with the ltte. nobody will be fooled by the unofficial nature of the boycott and everybody will be more skeptical of the ltte's motives in the future.

nor will the international community be fooled. however stupid and obnoxious a jvp backed mahinda government will be, international community will prefer it to ltte terrorists in the present climate of worldwide war against terrorism. so expect the ltte fronts in the diaspora to get it in the face if it comes to war. and in case of a ranil administration ltte will definitely be in a very weak position when the negotiations start.

there are serious doubt about the ltte's military strength in any case after the karuna's defection. are they willing to lose east completely if it comes to war?

let us hope that ordinary tamils have more sense than the ltte and vote (emulating the ppl in the south in 1988 election who voted in spite of jvp threats to kill those who voted first) .

if not, they have only themselves to blame for whatever crappy deal they will get, whoever gets elected.

Transparency International - PPPR - Report 02

2005-11-11T08:21:00.000-08:00

The report released by the PPPR of Transparency International Sri Lanka on the 10th of November 2005. You can download the pdf here.

REPORT –NO 2

The Programme for Protection of Public Resources (PPPR) monitoring
and investigating misuse of public resources in the Presidential election 2005, held its first press briefing on 3rd November 2005.

Report No 1 of PPPR was released on this occasion. When politicians elected by the people for good governance, and State officials entrusted with safe custody of State resources continue to betray that trust and misuse these resources for private advantages in the election, quite apart from the massive loss to the State, the election ceases to be free and fair and thereby distorts the result of the election. It is ironical that while on the one hand the State spends over 900 million in order to ensure a free and fair election, on the other hand that very purpose is defeated by politicians and State officials who misuse State resources for private advantages. It has to be borne in mind that in such a scenario the cost of the election too is rendered a loss.

General observations:

With the tempo of the election campaign mounting, it is gratifying to note that the public outcry to desist from misusing State resources is also mounting. The media is reflecting this mood quite appropriately. The misuse however continues and a trend is observed where many politicians and State officials are using subterfuges to conceal the losses to the State.

State resources continue to be misused at Temple Trees, inter alia, for treating participants attending political propaganda meetings.

Specific Abuses:

We give below some of the typical abuses verified and confirmed by our investigators since our last report.

01) Official Residence of Leader of the Opposition

State owned building at No. 30 Sir Marcus Fernando Mawatha, which is allocated to the leader of the opposition for his residence, is being used exclusively for his election propaganda work- Media meetings etc promoting his election are held in this building using all facilities such as electricity, and Police security, all at State cost, although the election campaign is a private matter.

02) Sri Lanka Ports Authority (SLPA)
PPPR has reliable information about the hiring of 10 vehicles for the use in the Presidential Election campaign of the P.A Candidate. This information is supported with documentary evidence.

Confidential inquiries made by PPPR investigators have revealed the following facts:

A quotation has been called and a decision taken to hire 10 vehicles on monthly basis with fuel and drivers from M/S Wiranga Travels and Tours at the rate of Rs 70,000/- per month for 3000 km and Rs 20/- for every additional k.m and to release the advance of 50% (Rs 350,000/-). All this has taken place on 21-10-2005 and a cheque drawn in favor of Wiranga Travels & Tours also on the same day pending SLPA Board approval, on
the orders of the newly appointed Chairman SLPA through a Management Committee appointed by him. As there was no current account in the name of Wiranga Travels & Tours, a cheque has been drawn in favor of its proprietor MASC Ranaweera on 24-10-2005.

Although the payment is for the hire of ten vehicles on a monthly rental basis, confidential inquiries made by PPPR revealed that the 10 vehicles in fact have not been supplied by Mr Ranaweera to the SLPA. High secrecy is maintained in connection with this transaction for no bona fide reasons, giving credence to the information that this is an exercise to utilize State Resources for the PA election campaign by devious means

03) Prime Minister’s Media Unit.
Vehicle NoWP GE-3621 hired for official use of the Prime Minister’s media unit was being used for the election campaign of the P.A. candidate. On the night of 03-11-2005, on its way to an election propaganda meeting at Nawelepitiya scheduled for the next day, this vehicle went off the road and rolled into an ravine at Ruwanwella with about 08 persons of the Media Unit and a Police constable attached to the Prime Minister’s security division. The vehicle is extensively damaged and the occupants seriously injured.

The vehicle was found to contain stocks of campaign materials (Mahinda Chintanaya in Tamil) and a stock of large photographs of the PA candidate promoting his election.

04) Mathugama Crematorium
The Crematorium belonging to the U.C. Mathugama is being used by UNP supporters for their election campaign. Printing machines, welding plants etc are stealthily brought in to this place by night and posters, cutouts etc promoting the election of the UNP candidate, and mud slinging posters against the PA candidate have been printed, prepared at this place using its facilities including electricity.

05) Social Services Ministry
Vehicle No 65-2675 belonging to the Social Services Dept. is being extensively used by Mr S.M. Chandrasena, MP for Anuradhapura District Deputy Minister Social Services and his Supporters for the election campaign of the PA candidate and to intimidate and threaten supporters of the UNP candidate.

06) MILCO
Vehicles bearing nos. WP-GU-5003 and WP-GU-5005 belonging to the Milco have been seen used for the election campaign in Nildandahinna in Walapone electorate.

07)
(a)Gampaha Municipal Council
On 02.11.2005 the Prime Minister who is the PA candidate in the Presidential election, attended a function at Yakkela to declare open a Water Scheme. Elaborate arrangements were made for this ceremonial opening which was given an official status. But the function turned out to be a political propaganda meeting.

Fire brigade vehicle No 227-0959 belonging to the Gampaha Municipal Council, with the crew of fire fighters, was in attendance at the venue of this meeting. No payments have been made to the Municipality.

(b) C.T.B. Depot Gampaha
C.T.B breakdown vehicle No 22 Sri 9659 was also in attendance at the venue of the above mentioned function.

(c)Road Construction and Development Authority (Maga Naguma) Truck No 26 Sri 8664 belonging to the RCDA Ratmalana was used to transport material for the stage and seating accommodation at this meeting.

08) Department of Agriculture
Vehicle No 58-3694 belonging to the Department of Agriculture Peradeniya was used to transport organizers to an election propaganda meeting of the PA in Kandy Town on 31-10-2005.

09) Sri Lanka Foreign Employment Bureau
Sri Lanka Foreign Employment Bureau building at No. 234 Denzil Kobbakadu Mawath Koswatta, Battaramulla, had been in existence and third occupied since 17 January 2005. On 3 November 2005 there was a much publicized function at State expense where the Prime Minister ceremonially declared open this same building. As it turned out to be, this function was really another front for the election campaign of the PA
candidate at State expense.

10) Gampaha Police Division
Police truck No 42 Sri 9591 belonging to the Gampaha police Division was used to transport components of the platform for the election propaganda meeting of the PA at Teldeniya on 05-11-2005.

11) Advertisment Suppliment of Lake House Newspapers
A special supplement which was published in the Daily News on Monday the O7th November 2005 carried wishes for the success of Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapakse in the Presidential election. 08 Public Cooperation’s have advertised in this supplement.

1. Development Lotteries Board
2. Sri Lanka Export Credit Insurance Corporation
3. State Pharmaceuticals Corporation of Sri Lanka
4. Urban Development Authority
5. “Maga Naguma”
6. Ceylon Shipping Corporation Limited
7. National Equipment and Machinery Organization
8. STC General Trading Company Limited

PPPR inquiries revealed that the advertisements were paid for by the relevant advertisers costing approximately Rs 947,600/-. These Corporations are funded partly by Government and partly by their own business ventures. Therefore it is clear that these Institutions have used Public funds to promote the election of the PA candidate, to the detritus of Public Resources.

Conclusions:
PPPR is greatly encouraged by the Public response and media support.It is now appropriate to canvas the appointment of a Commission of Inquiry to identify the patterns of misuse of State Resources and to assess the extent and also quantify the losses

Acknowledgments:
We acknowledge the benevolent gesture of the Canadian International Development Agency in supporting the efforts of the PPPR. This illustrates Canada’s commitment to the promotion of good governance and democracy in Sri Lanka.

We also acknowledge the support of MTV, SIRASA, and Shakthi.

Sgd/Tassie Senviratne
Director of Investigation

C.S. Jayadeva
Spokesman

10th November 2005

Transparency International - PPPR - Report 01

2005-11-11T07:56:00.000-08:00

Here is the report put together by Transparency International Sri Lanka on the misuse of state resources during campaigning for the presidential elections, 2005. This first report came out on the 3rd of November 2005.

I earlier posted a link to the downloadable pdf of this report. For those of you who want to read it online I have reporoduced the complete document here. You can still download the pdf too.

REPORT –NO 1

Introduction

Although Article 28(d) of the Constitution of Sri Lanka states that “it is the duty of every person in Sri Lanka to preserve and protect public property, and combat misuse and wastage of public property”. Sri Lankan elections have always been marred by the abuse of public resources. No one can individually discharge one’s constitutional duty of protecting public resources. In fact, the public should make a concerted effort in this direction as it is not only a right but also the duty of civil society to monitor the abuse of State Resources during elections.

The Programme for Protection of Public Resources was designed and implemented by civil society organizations with the objective of protecting Public Resources from the various types of abuse, and invoking legal mechanisms action against public officials responsible for such abuse.

PPPR, which is now a special project under the Transparency International Sri Lanka (TISL), commenced the monitoring of state resources with the date of nomination. It has already written to the candidates and The Secretaries of the Ministries to take appropriate steps to protect public resources during the forthcoming elections. TISL has also made representations to the Commission to Investigate Bribery and Corruption (Bribery Commission) seeking their
intervention within their mandate to curb the abuses that fall within the definition of “corruption”. PPPR has independently deployed a strong contingent of detectives throughout the country to investigate the information received from various sources.

The Common Observations on abuses

(a) Credit facilities are given for election propaganda work to the People’s Alliance by state media institutions, without any security or indemnity and there is a likelihood of the debts not being recovered, causing severe losses to Public resources.

(b) There is a trend of vehicles being temporarily procured on lease/rent basis for election propaganda work with a view to conceal state ownership.

(c) State buildings and facilities (e.g. Temple Trees & Helicopter facilities) are utilized by the P.A. candidate but there doesn’t seem to be a clearly laid out method to recover the losses/expenditure incurred by the State.

(d) There are also positive trends such as the Bribery Commission and Auditor General’s Department taking positive action to curb misuse of state resources.

(e) The Election Commissioner has issued guidelines to prohibit abuse of State Resources and the Inspector General of Police has also passed down specific instructions to give effect to the Election Commissioner’s guidelines.

(f) The media too is playing an important role in condemning and bringing to light the abuses of state resources, with a view to minimizing them.

(g) There is now a positive build up for some of the senior state officials not to release state assets for political activities.

Specific Abuses

We give below some of the main abuses detected by PPPR to date.

01. Temple Trees
“Temple Trees” is being utilized for political meetings. If the selection of this venue is for High Security reasons considering the official status of the candidate, then the expenditure (inclusive of the cost of the facilities and the space) should be fully paid by the candidate. It appears that no such payments are being made to cover the expenditure incurred by the State.

02. Sri Lanka Air Force
Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapakse is indulging in extensive use of Air Force helicopters in his election campaign resulting in a massive cost to the State. His use of these helicopters for security reasons is understandable, but his election campaign being a private matter, he should make full payment of the cost to the State. But the atrocious fact is that he and his entourage are taking these flights free, under the cover of Air Force “operations”.

Apart from the enormous cost to the State, the other candidates are severely handicapped as they do not have the same facility.

02. Gramodaya Center
State owned Building at No. 152, Galle Road, Colombo 03 known as the “Gramodaya Center” is being exclusively used to stock and distribute election propaganda material promoting the election of the PA Candidate. A senior state official is full time in charge of the distribution operation. Vehicles belonging to the state are being used to transport the propaganda material. These abuses of State Resources are carried on with State facilities including High Security as provided for the Prime Minister.

03. Ceylon Petroleum Storage Terminals Ltd. (CPSTL)
CPSTL is a public company which comes under the purview of the Ministry of Power and Energy.

CPSTL branch of the “Nidahas Sevaka Sangamaya” has taken away two collapsible stages/platforms on wheels, from the CPSTL without due payments and is using same for political campaign supporting the PA Candidate. A decision had been taken to sell this stage to the said Union for Rs. 217,000/-, but prior to making any payment the stage has been taken away and used.

Although the Board of Directors by decision dated 22-09-2005 prohibits personnel from the CPSTL from engaging in activities outside the purview of the CPSTL, 23 employees have been released for work connected with transporting, assembling and dismantling the stage. These employees are engaged exclusively on work connected to the PA election campaign.

Vehicles 47-0580 & 47-0361 belonging to Road Development Authority are being used to transport the stage and chairs etc that go with it.

Removal of the stage/ platform, the release of the personnel and the use of State vehicles, as stated above, are gross abuses of Public Resources.

04. Rupavahini Corporation
Chief Election Coordinator of the People’s Alliance election campaign, a Senior Minister, has requested SLRC to provide advertisements on credit offering a relatively small advance of only Rs. 500,000.

The SLRC has clearly stated on its’ Rate Card that all payments must be done on cash basis in advance. The terms and conditions do not provide for part payment by political parties for advertisements without indemnity. Notwithstanding this condition, the Chairman SLRC has by order dated 26/10/2005 granted credit facilities to the P.A. for advertisements.

It is also revealed that the Minister has used the facility of his official letterhead as the Minister of Ports & Aviation, for election propaganda work.

05. Health Department
Vehicle No- 43-0343 belonging to the Health Department is being used for the transportation and decoration with election propaganda material in Hangurankatha area in support of the P.A. candidate.

06. Municipal Council- Kurunegala
a) A fire engine and a water bowser belonging to the Kurunegala Municipality, with Municipal staff in attendance, is taken to all P.A. election propaganda meetings attended by the P.A. candidate in Kurunegala area without payments to the Municipality. So far it has been taken to about 10 such meetings in N.W.P – Vehicle numbers are GC-8437 and 43-7051. The release of these vehicles and staff is authorized by the Mayor, the Municipal Commissioner and the Municipal Engineer, as demanded by Senior Police Officers.

Heavy losses are incurred by the Municipality on account of these election propaganda meetings.

b) 10-15 Municipal Council workers are engaged for the purpose of decorations etc at P.A. election meeting venues in Kurunegala area during working hours. The release of these workers for election propaganda work is authorized by the Mayor, the Municipal Commissioner and the Municipal Engineer.

07. Ministry of State Plantations
Vehicle No 58-2186 belonging to the State Plantations Ministry, and issued to it’s Legal Officer Mr. R. Harischandra, was used for P.A. election propaganda work in the Weligama area (pasting posters with photograph of P.A. candidate and announcing through loudspeakers calling on voters to vote for the P.A. candidate).

08. Ministry of Vocational Training
Vehicle No 23-1586 belonging to the Vocational Training Ministry was used for the election campaign of the P.A. candidate in Neluwa Town. This Vehicle exhibiting photograph of PA candidate was used to announce through loudspeakers calling on voters to vote for the P.A. candidate.

09. MILCO
Vehicle No 32-2558 belonging to MILCO, a Public Company, is being used by members of the National Association of Artistes in their campaign promoting the election of the P.A. candidate. The Prime Minister’s Media Unit is also participating in these campaign meetings using State vehicles.

Urgent Request of the PPPR

(a) Public to cooperate with Bribery Commission, Auditor General’s Department, Police and PPPR by giving detailed information of abuses immediately.

(b) Media to popularize the complaint mechanism so that people will cooperate with the authorities by making accurate complaints of abuses.

(c) Public sector employees not to allow public assets to be utilized for political activities, directly or indirectly.

(d) Commissioner of Elections, Auditor General, Bribery Commission and Police to act together to curb the abuses of state resources during the elections by prohibiting, investigating and prosecuting those who are responsible for the abuses, without delay.

Tassie Seneviratne
Director Investigations (PPPR)

Joel Fernando
Spokesman (PPPR)

3rd November 2005

A Few Resources

2005-11-11T06:46:00.000-08:00

I haven't been blogging about the elections because it's bloody frustrating. The way I see it we get screwed either way. This is how I see it. It's really this f**king simple.

If Ranil's the new President he's going to liberalize his ass, screw the poor people and turn this into a police state like Singapore. If Mahinda's the one we vote in then the JVP and the JHU are going to be in power and we're going to return to war and become a Buddhist fundamentalist state.

Sad innit?

But there are a lot of resources available online. Much of them are quite partisan, but there are a few sources that have a genuine interest in trying to speak about democracy (or the lack thereof). Here are two of them:

slelections.info

Speaking of election related violence here's a good resource: slelections.info. It's being run by infoshare. The information seems to get updated daily. 321 incidents of election related violence by yesterday (9/11/2005). 146 incidents of violence allegedly perpetrated by the UPFA and 104 by the UNP.

Transparency International Sri Lanka

Another good site I found a few days ago (because of a certain report I was Googling for) was Transparency International Sri Lanka (www.tisrilanka.org). It has the report of the Programme for Protection of Public Resources (PPPR). A detailed and comprehensive look at how state resources have been misused during this campaign.

Did you know that the UNP has been using the Mathugama Crematorium for as their base of operations in the area? Did you know that Mahinda hasn't been paying a cent for the helicopter rides he's been taking around the country to appear at different meetings every day? Just a few of the rather intersting things i found in the PPPR reports :)

You can go to their site but I'll give you direct links too:

TISL Report 01 (03rd November 2005)
TISL Report 02 (10th November 2005)

That's all for now. When I find anything more I will post links here.

Does it Matter?

2005-11-11T06:20:00.000-08:00

A lot of people are saying that this election campaign has so far been a lot less violent than a lot of people would have expected it to be. There have already been a few deaths this election season, but it’s been relatively peaceful. But do people believe that things are going to stay this way? I don’t think so. Everyone always says ‘so far’ when they talk about the lack of violence.

Let’s face it. We’re all expecting the number of violent incidents to rise drastically as the polling day draws closer. (Post election violence of course depends on who wins.) We’re used to our politicians being very very violent when it comes to elections. We take it for granted that they are going to stuff ballot boxes on polling day. And we take it for granted that supporters from either side are going to kill each other when they run into each other on the streets.

In areas where one political party is stronger than the other, the stronger party stuffs ballot boxes unchallenged. Whichever party has control of the center breaks election laws with utter impunity because they know the police will do nothing against them. They own the police dammit! How could the police ever do anything to hurt their campaign? And it’s also damn handy to have a few khaki clad baboons in hand to make some trouble for the opposition.

Oh hell, it gives us an excuse to stay at home on the day of the election. We take a walk to the polling station in the morning and cast our ballot and then go home and sit tight to wait for the results to come overnight. It’s a bloody good holiday. And since in all probability your boss is also doing the same you’re not going to get into trouble for skipping a day.

And then when person X wins over person Y because person X and his goons managed to a) stuff more ballot boxes than Y b) beat the shit out of Y’s supporters c) threatened more people than Y, we applaud our democracy.

‘ip ‘ip ‘ooray assholes, you have your new elected official, just as corrupt and undemocratic as the one you got rid of. Now suffer.

Where do we stand?

2005-11-05T22:11:00.000-08:00

I know this is going to open the floor for everyone to kill each other again, but that's alright - what do you (personally) think is going to happen in the upcoming Presidential Election? This a question I've been asking everyone for the past month or so, and nobody really seems to have an answer.

Guess correctly and walk away with twinkies courtesy of Nittewa.*

Note : I'm not asking you who you would like to see in power. I'm just asking you to analyze the current political situation and predict who will come to power. Is the election really too close to call?

*Offer valid while stocks last.

Father Figure

2005-11-05T00:32:00.000-08:00

The campaing for Mahinda has never moved very far beyond mudslinging. They chose not to win votes from the people through their promises, but to make Ranil so hated that people would vote for Mahinda as the alternative. The Mahinda campaign, I believe has been focusing a bit too much on the fact that the UNP candidate Ranil has no children. Their rhetoric behind this has progressed and evolved quite a bit in the past few months. Certain mistakes made by the UNP have helped the UPFA further capitalise on this but the way in which this campaign has appropriated and spun parenthood for their political purposes remains disgusting.

It started way back about a month before the nominations. The UPFA put up a series of hoardings all around the country carrying pictures of Mahinda with kids saying things like 'Daru Senehasa Mata Dene' and other inane shit like that. There were literally hunderds of these all over the place. Of course they came down on the day the nominations were handed over because hoardings are not allowed during election camaigning, but by that time it had become very clear what the Mahinda campaign was going to be about. Since Mahinda cannot really attack Ranil on this directly they have been using their righteous brigade, the JHU, to bring this up during TV and radio debates and keep it fresh in the minds of the people. At least the UPFA and the JVP have the political maturity to understand that making this attack less subtle than it is might just backfire. Wimal occasionally calling Ranil a 'ponnaya' is more than enough for them.

Initially the campaign focused on the idea that Ranil was impotent, which is why he did not have any children, and the idea that an impotent person would not make a good leader. Then the focus began to shift to the idea that since Ranil had no children, he did not understand what it was like to love a child and to want to provide for their future. Therefore he did not make a good leader because he did not care about the future.

Now thise whole argument has sprung up to a whole new level with the film director Inoka Sathyangani being reported to the National Child Protection Authority.

Here's the story: There's a TV spot which is a part of the Ranil campaign which shows a child crying because the mother has no milk in the house. It's in sepia all this while. The mother goes out and buys a little bit of powdered milk from the shop and brings it back home and makes some milk for the kid, and then it cuts to color, and there's a child drinking a full glass of milk smiling and all that. This is about that insane Ranil promise to give free milk to children below the age of 5.

God knows what the the UPFA goons did, or how they pressurised the mother of the child, but she has now come forward and stated that the director said the child was going to be used to a powdered milk advertisement and not a political ad and that the child was mistreated and tortured to make him cry for the shots. Abusing a child for any reason is wrong, and if Inoka Sathyanganee did abuse the child she needs to be severely punished for it. But why do I find this story a little hard to believe?

Inoka did not make this ad on her own. She would at least have had a crew of 20. And I don't think I could find 20 people in a crew who would stand around and watch a child being tortured to make it cry. And why hurt the child to make it cry when you can just use some glycerine to fake the tears? That's what everyone in the industry does. Duh! It would be a serious crime indeed if Inoka did lie to the mother of the child and say that it was going to be for a powdered milk commercial, but I doubt it. One of the main reasons I say this is because if the mother had been on the set then she would have known exactly hat was being shot and she would not have allowed her child to be abused.

So anyways, whether Inoka tortured this child during the production of the ad is not the issue, how it is being played out in the media is. A leading Sinhala daily ran an editorial on this a few days ago. They referred back to an old interview with Inoka where she had said she has no time to be a parent because of her career and that's why she doesn't have children. They're nailing her to the wall with this and calling her a heartless child-hating bitch.

The only conclusion that I can come to is that in all probability the mother of the child has been forced to make these allegations against Inoka Sathyanganee and the UNP by UPFA goons who see this as a good way to elaborate and sharpen an argument they've been using against Ranil for quite some time. I believe that the UPFA's use of the child as a political tool is as disgusting as what the UNP is supposed to have done.

But what they're really hoping is that some of this image will rub off on Ranil. They're actulally trying to take the rhetoric from 'he doesn't love children' to 'he hates children'. He hates political dissent and is willing to use force to crush it. He hates people who ask too many questions about his past.But I don't think he hates children.

Sad innit? How we all get distracted from the issues?

Read the Inoka story on the Daily News (A state owned newspaper that has a very clear pro-Mahinda stand).

Hysterical Hudson?

2005-10-25T06:46:00.000-07:00

The Story

Sri Lanka Broadcasting Corporation (SLBC) News Director Raja Katugampola is in hospital. He says Chairman of the SLBC Hudson Samarasinghe and two security personnel assualted him.

The Background

Raja Katugampola is the same News Director who got into trouble over the SLBC report about LTTE leader Prabhakaran's death in the Tsunami. The SLBC ran the story on an anonymous tip, without waiting for any confirmation. It turned out to be a very big mistake. He was fired for that and replaced but he managed to save his ass, and get his job back, because he was in Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapakse's good books.

A few days ago there was a story online that said the Chairman of the SLBC, Hudson Samarasinghe was again firing News Director Katugampola. Apparently Samarasinghe was not happy with the way SLBC News was being handled. As had been expected, since the Presidential elections were announced, the political players inside all the state media had been manipulating thier news to make it favourable to the UPFA candidate Mahinda Rajapakse.

News Director Katugampola is a known Mahinda supporter and had been seen as following a openly pro-Mahinda and anti-Ranil agenda in his work in the past month or so. LankaPage reported Samarasinghe as having said 'I don’t need pro-Mahinda director here at SLBC'. It seemed Samarasinghe was no longer willing to toe the UPFA line and make a heavy pull for Mahinda in their newscasts.

But people at SLBC stated that this story was completely wrong, and that though Samarasinghe had warned Katugampola about his conduct, but had not removed him from his post or threatened to do so.

A few days ago SLBC News ran a story about a fight between UNP candidate Ranil Wickramasinghe and Ceylon Workers Congress leader Thondaman. The SLBC was criticized because the story had no substance and no backing and was seen simply as an attempt to discredit the UNP CWC alliance.

When Chairman Samarasinghe questioned Katugampola about why he ran this story, Katugampola refused to take the Chairman's calls and avoided him in the SLBC building. Sources within SLBC also alledge that Katugampola had been missing a lot of his work and neglecting his duties for reasons unknown, and that Samarasinghe had been quite annoyed about how things were being run in general.

The Fight

All we know for sure is that there was a SLBC Directors meeting this morning. Chairman Samarasinghe called this meeting to discuss a letter sent to him from the Commissioner of Elections regarding 38 specific occasions in which the SLBC had behaved in violation of election regulations during their broadcasts. Someone who was present at the meeting states that Samarasinghe was not happy about this, and wanted to question Katugampola. The News Director was the only person who was absent at the meeting.

Samarasinghe then discovered that Katugampola was in the building and sent a peon to search for him, and to get him to attend the meeting. Sources at SLBC say that when the peon found Katugampola the News Director asked the peon to inform Samarasinghe that he was not in the building. After the meeting Samarasinghe personally went to the News Division to look for Katugampola, who had made himself scarce by then.

Later in the day Katugampola had finally gone into the Chairman's office. He just couldn't dodge the Chairman anymore.

This is where things get interesting, and murky. We have 4 versions.

Katugampola's Story:
The News Director says that when he went into the Chairman's office Samarasinghe began shouting at him without any explanation. Responding to allegations of neglect the News Director then defended himself saying his wife was ill and that his father was in hospital, and yet he had not neglected his duties. Katugampola says that then the Chairman stood up and assualted him, and called for the security personnel outside to also assault him. According to a interview given to Sirasa TV the News Director says the security personnell held him from behind and he was not sure who assaulted him as his spectacles were smashed and his vision was blurred. He also claims one of the security personnel picked him up and threw him against the wall twice.

Hudson's Story:
The Chairman says that he was displeased with the way the News Director had been acting with regard to the upcoming Presidential elections. He says he had sent several messages to the News Director asking him to explain himself, and that Katugampola had just avoided them without reply. Samarasinghe says that today when Katugampola came into his office there were heated words exchanged, and that Katugampola got into a fight with his security personnel upon exiting the Chairman's office. He says he did not witness the incident. But has taken action to suspend the duties of the security personnel.

SLBC Source 1's Story:
When Katugampola did not arrive for the morning meeting and dodged the Chairman during the day Samarasinghe gave orders to have the News Director removed from his post and from the premises of the SLBC. The source says Samarasinghe is known to say things like 'Get this guy out of the building' (Dapan Okawa Eliyata). He generally expects his orders to be followed. According to the source Katugampola came into Hudson's office to find out why he was being thrown out and then he kicked one of the security personnel. At this point the two security personnel assaulted him.

SLBC Source 2's Story:
Inside the Chairman's office Samarasinghe criticized Katugampola both for his political agenda being reflected in their newscasts and for his neglection of duties. When Katugampola said that his wife was ill Samarasinghe had said that Katugampola's problems with his wife were of no concern to the SLBC. At this point Katugampola has stated that his wife is important to him while Samarasinghe has many women, and is not concerned about his wife. The source says that at this point the Chairman assaulted Katugampola.

So, those are four of the stories that I have heard so far, including the two official statements made by Samarasinghe and Katugampola. The News Director (ex?) is now in the Colombo General Hospital, but the doctors say he was never in any danger and was not seriously hurt at all.

We don't how political or personal this fight was, but it's just ugly.

Flase alarm or scary trend?

2005-10-20T00:38:00.000-07:00

So who's heard the gossip about the LTTE issuing a dress code for the people of Jaffna? Here's about all I've been able to gather:

The growth of beard and long hair have been forbidden for young men.

For girls, close-fitting shirts and skirts have been banned along with the wearing of trousers. Instead girls have been asked to wear the Tamil costume of Shalwar Kameez.

This came out in the Dawn, the Pakistani newspaper on the 18th. The online edition just says 'from our correspondent'. It doesn't give the correspondent's name so we could call them and check them for the authenticity of the story. Apparently 'sources in Jaffna' told the correspondent that the LTTE had imposed these restrictions. Even the Dawn correspondent didn't have direct confirmation of this story. He heard it from someone else.

The story ends with:

The dress directive was preceded by posters asking Tamils not to interact with members of the Sri Lankan military.

I don't know about you guys, but I didn't hear about this in Colombo. Is this true? Wouldn't a story like this hit the front pages in Colombo? Even if no one was interested in the story wouldn't at least a rag like 'The Island' pick it up and bash the LTTE with it? Online, wouldn't our friend Indi snap it up and do on another LTTE bashing spree with it? But the funny thing is, no one heard about these things. There would have to be some serious breakdown in communication between Jaffna and the rest of the country for something like this to have happened without Colombo buzzing about it.

So far the only source that I have been able to find online for this story is Dawn's report on the 18th. No Sri Lankan media outlet has covered this story at all. And even the online ones have just ripped the story from Dawn without bothering to authenticate it. The Lanka Academic, LankaPage.com, LankaWeb, Infolanka and Go2Lanka all run this story based on what the Dawn says. They don't bother to check for authenticity either. Don't they know any people in Jaffna that they can call and check something like this with? I guess they don't.

History

I wouldn't find it hard to believe that this story is true considering how the LTTE have behaved with regard to such things in the past. They tried and failed to impose similar restrictions in Batticaloa last year. There it was mainly to do with the way the women dressed.

They also stopped the transmission of (Maharaja Broadcasting Corporation's) Shakti FM in Jaffna because they didn't agree to the music that Shakti was playing. The said it was too loud and too fast and not appropriate. By this time they had appointed themselves the judges of Tamil culture. They had asked Shakti to discontinue broadcasts and when the station didn't back down their transmission was bombed. Of course the LTTE did not claim responsibility for this but there is little doubt that they were behind it.

They also banned the Tamil film 'Boys' in the region saying it was against Tamil culture. The movie which proved to be a semi-hit in South India is a story about five Tamil boys and their dreams and aspirations.

Misinformation

This last story about the dress code in Jaffna could be true, but it's annoying that all the people who're shouting about it don't seem to realise that the only source we have is a Pakistani newspaper. However respected the Dawn may be in Pakistan, it's not a Sri Lankan newspaper, and when they cover a story that a lot of Sri Lankan's haven't even heard of we have to be a little suspicious, and try to confirm the story for ourselves before we put it on our sites.

It's very easy to copy and paste a story from another source and call it news simply because the people you got it from calls it news. We saw something similar like this happen about 6 months ago when a journalist from the Times of India picked up a story from spoof.com and published it on the Times site as news. So it's a little silly to not really think about where you're getting your story from.

Maybe it's news. Maybe the Dawn correspondent is being duped. Maybe someone maliciously planted the story to create anti-LTTE sentiment. Whatever the authenticity of the story it's just plain stupid and unprofessional on the the part of the news-editors on these sited to republish this information without any confirmation.

Right now, the only thing that these online news sites (even the pseudointellectual Lanka Academic) are doing is spreading unverified rumors. Exactly the opposite of what they're supposed to be doing.

Sometimes dogs bark because other dogs are barking.

Note: I've just been on the phone with someone in Jaffna who didn't notice anything like this. He's out right now checking to see if anyone there's heard about this. Updates will come as soon as I have the information.

The Missing Manifesto

2005-10-15T11:15:00.000-07:00

It's Saturday. The release of the UPFA/Mahinda Rajapakse manifesto for the Presidential Election of 2005 was supposed to come out tomorrow (Sunday). This is already after one delay from last week. But now it seems they have pushed it back another two days to Tuesday. The news on the State Broadcasters has been dodging this fact and making it sound like it's the most normal thing for a candidate to not have put forward a manifesto this far out from nominations.

But this makes some people question, is a manifesto important to the Mahinda for President Campaign? And do they even have one?

Do they have a manifesto?

Everyone is starting to say, and they're probably right, that the UPFA and Mahinda Rajapakse do not have a manifesto! If that were to be true, and if they're in the process of cooking one up in a hurry, then it's not going to have much committment behind it. It's going to be a mere vote-getting, promise-making document that's going to be forgotten about soon after the election. (Not that the UNP manifesto is much more than that itself).

It seems the problem is that Mahinda's manifesto was written mainly by the JVP and it didn't contain any committment to a federal solution to the ethnic conflict. So it seems CBK wasn't very happy with it. We may see her as a crazy woman now, but she has had a genuine desire to resolve the conflict, and she has very clearly displayed this through her actions in the past and I don't think she's going to let go of that now.

If she gets her way then the JVP aren't going to be very happy with the manifesto. Mahinda's going to have to pick very very soon which way he's going to swing. Mahinda's never had a solid stand on what he thinks should be the solution to the conflict. He hasn't really shown a committment to a political settlement and his pacts with the JVP and JHU have made a lot of people wonder if he really wants to settle the problem the way CBK has wanted to for the past decade.

The fact that they haven't yet decided on anything is indicative of the big struggle going on within the UPFA government right now. Is there going to be a split before the election? That's where things look like they're going. What is that going to do to Mahinda? Hmmm.

Do they need a manifesto?

Quite a few people I know seem to think that the Mahinda camp doesn't need a manifesto because people are going to vote him in not because they like him, but because they want to defeat Ranil and the UNP. Personally I think that's a pathetic way to become the President (if he wins).

This is probably why the fact that they have not yet put forward their manifesto has not become an issue. The JVP and JHU crowd who're going to vote for Mahinda are going to do it because their party is backing him. They're not really concerned about what Mahinda is going to do if he becomes President. All they know is that if he does become President, their party is going to have a lot more of a say in what goes on, and that's good. They're not in this to make a President who can lead the country, but to make a puppet for their leaders to control.

The fact that Mahinda might actually become President without having to tell the country what he stands for, and what he plans to do for the country, is really really sad.

Tugging on the Rug

2005-10-11T21:07:00.000-07:00

Is Chadrika going to screw Mahinda? Is she going to do something to pull the rug out from under him at the last moment? Is she willing to sink Mahinda, and deny the SFLP power for six years simply to keep the Bandaranaike family at the helm of the SLFP?

That seems to be what much of Colombo is contemplating right now.

But she can't really do much to him after he has handed in his nomination as their candidate for the Presidential Election. Is she crazy enough to pull some wild stunt just pre-election that can destabilize Mahinda's platform? Isn't Anura already doing that? With all the statements he's been making on public platforms stating that it was Mahinda himself who brought the P-TOMS to the Parliament, even though he is now saying he will abolish it if he becomes the President, and statements expressing disgust at the JVPs approach to the peace process, Anura has already been slowly tugging at the rug beneath Mahinda. Is he just setting things up for his sister to step in and take the final KO punch?

She really has little to lose. She can sink Mahinda now with no risk to herself. Even if the punch does backfire and the SLFP as a whole does go with Mahinda disregarding the Bandaranaikes I don't think she's going to be too worried.

But what if she releases S B? According to little bits of gossip going around the UNP camp she's trying to make a deal with S B. She'll release him and let him do whatever the UNP wants him to do for this election, if he gives her the book he's been writing and promises never to write it again. Now now, don't we all want to know what's in the bloody book if she wants it so badly. This is all just unverified gossip but I wouldn't be too surprised if it was true.

Has S B really put down on paper all the dirty little secrets about their Government? Will she release him? And even if she does, when impact, if any, is that going to have on the election?

UNPspeak

2005-10-09T01:40:00.000-07:00

Is the UNP 'blog' a private space and are they free to moderate (edit and delete) comments as they please? Indi, who runs the UNP 'blog' seems to think so. Several people who left comments to the earlier post on censorship at unpsrilanka.org also thought that they can keep or delete what they want.

But let's see why I think they're all missing the point...

Is it a blog?

First of all whether the UNP 'blog' is a blog is a big question. A post on the site calls it the 'Official website for Ranil for President Campaign'.

The same post goes on to say

[the] facility to interact with anyone visiting the site is known as a web log, or blog.

The person who wrote this has no idea of what a blog is, or what blogging is all about. He or she also has a serious problem with their command of the English language.

Wikipedia has this to say about a blog.

Many weblogs enable visitors to leave public comments, which can lead to a community of readers centered around the blog; others are non-interactive.

We also know there are many sites where people can leave comments which are not blogs. So the ability to interact with anyone visiting the site does not make unpsrilanka.org a blog.

The homepage does not call it a blog. It is the party's official website for the Ranil for President campaign. Does the UNP have another another 'offical website' for the party? No it does not. Indi, who designed it might think of it as a blog, but I don't see why the rest of the world should do so. If you want it to be considered a blog then say so somewhere on the site. If not, don't act like a official website and then demand all the freedom of a blog.

So, as the UNP's primary presence online, unpsrilanka.org is the de facto official website of the UNP. And as the primary website of one of the people who seek to be the president of Sri Lanka, I would assume it to indicative of his attitude towards all kinds of issues.

Disclaimer

unpsrilanka.org does not have a disclaimer anywhere saying it is going to only keep comments favaourable to the UNP and Ranil Wickramasinghe. Instead it says

For the first time in election campaigns in Sri Lanka, www.unpsrilanka.org will provide an opportunity for the public to make comments, offer suggestions or ask questions in keeping with Ranil Wickremesinghe’s strong belief of inclusion.

The post about abusive language which I quoted in the previous post on Nittewa also says

As you know the UNP is the first and still the only party to have an interactive website to invite peoples views on current issues.

Personal Space

If it were the Ranil's Official website then it would be a personal website, and he would have been able to delete whatever comments he wanted to.

But it's the UNP's blog. Individual bloggers have the right to moderate their comments, and that shows us what kinds of people they are. Even group blogs sometimes do this. What they leave on, and what they delete are indicative of their bias and their agenda. Indi for one, has no problem deleting comments which show his weaknesses (as he done to several of my comments), and here at Nittewa we delete nothing (with that one single exception where the reasons were made very clear and comments belonging to everyone, including me, were deleted).

unpsrilanka.org is the website of the UNP. The webmasters cannot make decisions about what the UNP wants to keep or delete on their site, unless they have been given that right by the UNP's leadership/governing body. Does the UNP allow guys with foreign degrees and accents to moderate it's primary presence online and decide what the UNP should look like to the online community? If the governing council, politbureau or whatever of the UNP has givena chosen few this right then that is an indication of what kind of people the UNP top rankers trust.

And if they have been asked to only keep comments favourable to the UNP and to delete comments which are even slightly critical of the UNP, then that tells us about the attitude of the UNP's leadership with regard to the issue of free speech. The fact that they are willing to let a bunch of intolerant nerds run their website is scary, but expected, given the party's history of brutally crushing the free media.

The Point Is?

The official Ranil for President website of the UNP tries very hard to say that in keeping with Ranil Wickramasinghe's strong belief of inclusion they have made this website so that all people online who are interested in visiting it can say what they want to (within certain limits of decency of course). It is trumpted as a democratic space.

But we know it is not a democratic space. All of the three comments I left in the past week have been messed with. Two have been deleted and one has been edited. None of them contained any foul language, or any personal attack on anyone. All three of them were slightly critical of the UNP's campaign. They were not even slightly anti-Ranil or anti-UNP. Only comments which call Ranil the great leader are allowed to stay on. Going by that, everyone who's ever visited the unpsrilanka.org and left a comment has been a die hard UNP supporter. A bit hard to believe isn't it?

Indi tries hard to say that it is a blog and that they can do what they want on it, but he's in denial about the fact that it's the only official UNP presence online, and that it is infact it's official website, as stated by Karu Jayasuriya himself! And as a political party in Sri Lanka which is trying to get their leader elected as the President of this country, unpsrilanka.org is the online mouthpeice of the UNP. It never was the UNP's private space to do what they want online, and it still isn't. It is the place where the UNP meets the online community.

They should realise that the cyberworld isn't just filled with geeks and nerds who think politics is a parrot who swollowed a watch, but also has many people who have some sense of the Sri Lankan political scene and expect the UNP to maintain their website with some level of responsibility.

Go ahead, delete what you want while calling yourselves inclusive and democratic. It's your site and you can put pictures of giant multicolored pigs with wings on it. You're just letting the online community know who you really are.

Old Tricks Don't Work

The other webmasters of the UNP do not seem have to realised that the online media is not like the broadcast or print media where they can fake inclusion and democratic practices easily. Anyone who's worked in the media for long enough, under both UNP and SLFP regimes knows how well these people bullshit about freedom of the media while they keep a tight leash on the state media and use it to trash their opponents each time election time comes around. Pulling the plug during an interview, putting some hiss on the tape when someone you don't like is speaking, pushing stories favourable to the oppositing to the back of the news bulletin or the back pages of the newspaper is something that has been done by both the UNP and the SLFP. Let's not even mention the times when there's been direct Government censorship of all news and broadcasts and publications. (At least the JVP media isn't fake. They don't even pretend to be inclusive!)

When Ranil became PM in 2001, while on a tour of the USA he spoke to the Washington Press Club about how he was the champion of the free media in Sri Lanka and how they were going to stick to established principles of free media and all that. Meanwhile, back home, his party was busy consolidating their control of the state media by firing people friendly to the SLFP/PA, and by strengthening their relationships with the private media by offering them big fat carrots. For the first time in Sri Lankan history, one party controlled both the state media and a huge chunk of the private media. All this while Ranil was harping about media freedom.

They maybe able to hide their lies in the print and broadcast media but unfortunately (for them), these tricks are not possible online. The sooner they realise this, the better it is. Trying to play these silly games online only exposes their intolerance and the fundamentally undemocratic nature.

Clues to What's to Come?

2005-10-01T05:14:00.000-07:00

I'm assuming all you lot have been to the UNP website (unpsrilanka.org), I heard that our ol' pal Indi's the one who set it up for them. I don't know if he does any admin work on it now, but I have some serious issues with the way it's being run.

This is taken from a post on the UNP site:

As you know the UNP is the first and still the only party to have an interactive website to invite peoples views on current issues. The response so far has been overwhelming! We are receiving hundreds of comments and emails daily, with views, comments and even specific recommendations. We have already sent the important ones to Mr Ranil Wickremesinghe’s senior aides for necessary action. So help us continue this good work in the spirit of fairness and decency.

Maybe if you count all the comments left for all the posts on the UNP site you'd make a hundred. Go to the site and check it out. Maybe they've hit 100 today, but they were on 90 something last night. So this statement is an outright lie. I don't like people who fudge their numbers and cook their books. If the UNP wants to play fair like they say their trying to do, then they should stop doing things like this.

Moving on to the bigger issue-

If you read some of the posts on the site, particularly this one, you'll be amazed by how all the people who leave comments are people who are very pro-UNP and call Ranil the great leader, and wish him luck and all sorts of such things.

Some golden lines:

I wish you a grand victory.

You are the only One, have a Vision about our Economy & the ethnic problem of Sri Lanka. Good Luck….

The country badly needs a honest, patriotic leader with a vision. You posses those qualities and hope after 17th November the golden era will be back in Sri Lanka.

You are the only honest leader, telling the truth and the reality to the people, with hiding nothing, proving the real meaning of the word “LEADER”.

I'll stop before I choke on my own puke...

Now let me be clear about one thing, I have nothing major against the UNP and/or Ranil Wickramasinghe. (Personally I guess I'd like to see him win, though I won't vote for him myself as I seem to be out of the voter list!). I do disagree with them on certain economic policies of theirs but I admire the party for taking the peace process forward (even if it was only to watch it stall) and or having the balls to bring about the ceasefire.

I do however have a big problem with curtailing the freedom of expression.

Seriously, if the UNP site allows space for people to comment, then it's bound to have a few resident trolls like our buddies dextr and astrocyte. Sometimes people like that (who seriously need to get away from their PCs and get a life) are mildly annoying, but they're quite entertaining. Allowing for anyone and everyone to say what they want, when they want to is what freedom of expression is all about. In standard practice hatespeech and such stuff is not tolerated but over here we've decided to let them be.

Getting to the point, I wanted to see why the UNP website didn't have any anti-UNP comments. The way I saw it, it could be one of several things.

1) Everyone online liked the UNP and thought Ranil was the great leader.
2) The site admin were deleting comments unfavourable to the UNP.

So I decided to test it. Using the name Morquendi, I made a comment on a post about not using abusive language in the comments made on the UNP site. The post has a rant about how the UNP does not engage in mudslinging. (I quoted that part at the start of this post).

This is how my comment went:

In my opinion it would be incorrect to say that the UNP does not engage in mudslinging. While they do resort to personal attacks much less than many of the other groups do, by giving stories like 'PM-CBK Heated Exchange at Cabinet Meeting'' undue prominence on this site the UNP too is resorting to a certain kind of subtle mudslinging. As far as the public is concerned giving prominence to stories that bring out the weaknesses of your opponents is equal to mudslinging.

Also when UNP members make statements like 'Mahinda Missed Opportunity to Clear Name', again they are resorting to subtle mudslinging. They are not accusing their opponent of anything, but they are insinuating it, and in terms of the impact this has on the audience, there's little difference.

This is why I believe the UNP's attempt to conduct themselves in a proper manner during this election campaign has failed so far, and needs to be a more genuine effort.

Many of you may believe that this is a lot milder than the stuff I normally write. But that was the point. I just wanted to see what level of criticism the UNP website's admin were prepared to tolerate. So I thought I'd start at the bottom by being mildly critical yet friendly.

When I was done writing, and had hit publish, I got a message saying 'Your comment is awaiting moderation'. So would the moderators make it vanish? Luckily I had made a notepad copy of it so I would know what I wrote (which is why I was able to reproduce it here DUH).

Today when I went online the comment was there on the post, almost. There was a slight hitch. A teeny weeny bit, but perhaps the most important bit, was missing. It had been edited out of the comment.

This was what was missing:

This is why I believe the UNP's attempt to conduct themselves in a proper manner during this election campaign has failed so far, and needs to be a more genuine effort.

The admin chose to remove this part. This is the level of critisism that the UNP website won't tolerate. What does this say about their attitude towards the freedom of expression? Does anyone here think they should have removed this? Was this offensive? Was this abuse? Was this hatespeech? If the UNP were to come to power would their media people treat the entire media like this? Would this kind of control expand to cover the print and electronic media as well? Would people who are critical of the UNP be 'deleted'?

The UNP just fell quite a few notches in my standing. What does the future hold for journalists and the free media if people such as those who run the UNP website were to manage the media in Sri Lanka?

Things do promise to get better if Ranil wins, but some things like the freedom enjoyed by the media, just might vanish.

Destination: Bihar, North India

2005-09-29T23:52:00.000-07:00

Who owns this island and where do we come from anyway?

I think if anyone can actually say this island belongs to them, it's the Veddhas. But all us invaders have treated them pretty much like the 'Australians' have treated their natives. We've turned them into semi-animal being who have been denied the right to hunt in the forests, and to continue to live their lives as they have for for thousands of years. They have been forced to turn into showpeices who perform tricks for tourists who come to Sri Lanka with unassailable notions of orientalism.

Despite our collective attempts to stamp out the fact that both the Sinhala and Tamil people are as alien to this country as the British and the rest of the colonials were, the truth still subconsciously nags every Sri Lankan.

So, for all the Sinhalese who say that the Tamils should go back to where they came from, I'd say that's a damn good option considering the fact that the Sinhalese wouldn't really want to go back to where we came from. Bihar and Jharkand in North India aren't really the best places to live, if you can call survival in a lawless barbarian state life.

My favourite joke about Bihar is a one liner that goes like this:

The last intelligent man to come from Bihar was the Gautama Buddha, and that was over 2,500 years ago.

I suggest the Sinhala right wingers google Bihar and Jharkand and find out how things are back home. If we were all to get kicked out of this country by the Veddhas I'd throw in my lot with the Tamils and go to South India. At least I wouldn't have to hunt my own food there like I'd have to if I went back to North India with the Sinhalese :)

Lissen up y'all my Tamil brothas and sistahs! I'm catching your boat!

Note: Apologies for this slightly confused post. I'm a little out of sorts today.

A Question of Faith

2005-09-29T23:25:00.000-07:00

A few thoughts on conversion, inspired by Ashanthi.

There's a family down our road who converted (were converted as some say) a few years ago. They live in a small slum-like area.

So let's for a moment think I'm a slum-dweller who has a wife and four kids to feed. (Many of us might end up there the way this country is going!)

I make a little bit of money doing odd-jobs for people but that's not really enough to keep the 6 of us fed, let alone putting four kids through school. I don't get any help from anyone, least of all from the monk in the local temple. He sometimes eats into my income because I have to go to the temple and help them out with things and give up a days wage I could have earned somewhere else. My wife insists we go to the temple each full moon night and listen to his sermons.

Let's look at the life the monk leads. He wakes up at god only knows when. Drinks his tea, takes a crap and then sits on his ass till about 11 a.m. when someone comes along and takes him for an alms giving. He comes back to the temple and sits on his ass all afternoon till it's time to do a bana deshanawa (sermon). He's very rich because the temple has some rich dayakayas (patrons, sorta). All this money goes into keeping the mons in the temple in the style to which they are accustomed, and to make completely uselss, yet ridiculously expensive additions to the temple architecture, like a new budu ge (shrine room) or a ran weta (golden fence) for the Bo tree. Most of the time the monk doesn't even have time for the poor man from the slum. But he's always got more than enough time to impart words of wisdom to the richer dayakayas who happen to drop by at any time. It's a business, you get spiritual healing for money. The average Buddhist monk is a salesman. He sells peace of mind. And to buy it, you have to pay.

But even with all this money, the monk does not think about making life easier for the people of the area by helping out those most in need. Many of these people cannot get a bank loan because they do not have an income, so the local temple would be ideally placed to help them. But no, the temple is not there to give people money, or food, or clothes it's there to give them spiritual healing.

Spiritual healing for the hungry? Yeah right.

So then along comes an evangelical team moving about the neighbourhood and telling people that if we come to the church on Sunday (or whenever) that the church will help us out. Other people who have already been to the church tell me that they get free lunch there. If one of them go do some work for the church they get paid! The priests actually take time to talk to the people regardless of how rich they are, or how high up they stand in the social structure. So I go to the church. I take my wife and kids along because they're going to need a good meal too. There's a light atmosphere about the place. It's not like the stifling discipline that a Buddhist temple inspires. I feel more free in the churchyard.

Then one day the priest asks me if I'm willing to convert. The rumble in my stomach makes that decision for me.

**********

If a man converts at gunpoint that is wrong I guess, but I fail to see what is wrong with a man who converts to another faith because it's a way to keep his family fed and clothed. If my god/faith/religion refuses to look after me and support me when they are capable of doing it, and some other god/faith/religion will look after me then what use is my god/faith/religion to me? Am I to die hungry to keep my faith? Am I to let my children die hungry to keep my faith?

Being Sri Lankan

2005-09-29T02:45:00.000-07:00

A Comment left on Nittewa by one of our not-so-friendly neighborhood bigots said ‘I'm not Sri Lankan. Sri Lanka is a myth. I'm a Sinhalese.’. Personally I think it's a bit rich coming from someone who's trying very hard to become an 'Australian'. But we'll let that go for now.

This actually identical to what the LTTE has been saying for over 20 years.

'Sri Lanka is a myth. There are Sinhalese and Tamils, and the Sinhalese proved for over 5 decades that they don't want to share their space with the Tamils and therefore the only solution is to have a Sinhala state and a Tamil state and say to to hell with this whole thing about trying to be Sri Lankan, and trying to look for a Sri Lankan identity.'

Following on from this logic, the best friends of the LTTE are the the two new biggest fans of Nittewa (Astrocyte and Dextr), the Patriotic National Movement, the JVP and all the other ragtag right wing groups.

As long as they claim that this island is the homeland of the Sinhalese and the Sinhalese alone, they do nothing but strengthen the case made in the international arena by the LTTE, and bring the whole country closer to a bloody partition.

If you're a Sinhalese and not a Sri Lankan, and you want Sri Lanka to be the Sinhala-dveepaya (The Island of the Sinhalese), then you're going to have to also give some part of it to the Tamils. Unless of course you want to pack them all into boats and send them back to South India, which is supposed to be where they came from (we'll come back to this issue of origins later) or send them all to concentration camps and gas chambers like our 'aryan' brothers did 60 years ago. So if this island is going to become a Sinhala-dveepaya, then it's also going to become an Eelam. The louder you should that this is the homeland solely of the Sinhala people then stronger becomes the case for Eelam.

It is this ideology that the LTTE tells the international community about, and as long as the Sinhala right wing continues to be a dominating force in Souther politics, and their extremist ideologies remain in the mainstream, the LTTE's concerns, their extremist ideology and their demand for an Eelam will be justified.

The LTTE's Eelamist ideology and the Sinhala right wing's Sinhala supremacy ideology are like two sides to the coin. They form the ying and yang of the greatest threat to the idea of Sri Lanka. The notion that the Sinhalese and the Tamils cannot live together as equals, as Sri Lankans.

If the Sinhala right wing were to vanish, then the LTTE would have no leg to stand on. They would have no threat to the Tamil people that they could use to justify their demands for an Eelam. If the Tamil people of Sri Lanka did not have a Sinhala right wing to be afraid of, to be oppressed by, they would no longer support the LTTE, even secretly. The LTTE exists only because of its 'other'. If that 'other' were to cease to exist, then so would they. So too would the Sinhala right wing cease to exist if the LTTE were to vanish. They would no longer have someone from whom the 'Sinhala motherland' needed to be defended.

Meanwhile, neutral, sane, non-racist Sri Lankans who believe that Sri Lanka is very much a reality and not a myth watch our country fall apart.

The only way to seek a permanent solution to the conflict in Sri Lanka, with any hope of success, is to seek the construction of a solid Sri Lankan identity, which become our primary identity, over-riding our Sinhala-ness or Tamil-ness. Yes, many people have said this. It is not in any way a new idea, but it remains the only idea that can give anyone any hope for a better future.

The question is, how do we do it?

It's the Seafood

2005-09-23T22:56:00.000-07:00

A lot of Sri Lankans who live abroad, as well as some who live in the South of Sri Lanka are under the impression that Sinhala persons cannot live in Jaffna.

First let us look at where this idea comes from. It's something that the Sihala Urumaya and other groups led by the likes of Maduluwawe Sobitha have been shouting about for years. None of these people have ever been to Jaffna, and have no intention of doing so. So they have no proof on which to make the statements they make. But they make them anyway, because they know it provides good argument material for all the Sinhala racists who hang on every word they say and salivate when the speakers at these meeting justify their hatred against the Tamil people.

Now, reality check. Sinhala people cannot own land in Jaffna, or anywhere else the Thesavalamai property and inheritance laws are applied. Not only Sinhala people, but also low caste Tamil people, and Tamil christians etc are also not able to own land under these laws. Atv the moment, to the best of my knowledge the laws apply only to the Jaffna peninsula. This custon has nothing to do with race, and everything to do with the upper caste Tamils protecting their turf. It has not been a contributing factor to the ethnic conflict in any way, and though it is a system that encourages inequality and discrimination based on caste, it is no worse than the Kandyan property and inheritence laws that apply to all the people who live in the Kandyan region, and the Islamic laws that apply to all Muslims in Sri Lanka, particularly those living on the East Coast.

But quite a few Sinhala people do live in Jaffna and they have not been hunted down and killed by the LTTE, nor have they been discriminated against by the Tamil people living in the peninsula. If the pro-war groups were to go to jaffna they would see this with their own eyes.

Performances and exhibitions by Sinhala artists are welcomed in Jaffna. Even if the LTTE does not like it they can't do anything about it because the people of Jaffna flock to the scene. In 2002 Prof Sarathchandra's Maname was performed in Jaffna and half an hour before the show there was not a single seat free. I find Maname boring, but the people of Jaffna (being more cultured than me and open to new experiences) obviously didn't.

But that wasn't the biggest hit in the fest. It was a short play directed by Jerome De Silva about a Sinhala soldier who is killed by the LTTE and in his dying moments shows compassion to a LTTE cadre. When preparations were being made for this everyone was worried that the crowd would react badly to the story and we would all be chased out of town, or worse. Some people even suggested against performing it at all, even after having brought the performers all the way from Colombo. But we were very very wrong. During the play the crowd remained silent and no one was able to gauge their response. As the curtains dropped the crowd erupted and gave the performers and the director a standing ovation. I don't think Jerome has ever got such a response in Colombo.

Last year a group of artists from Colombo and the South who went and displayed their work together with artists from Jaffna also received an above-expected response from the people of the region. The purpose of the show was to see how artists from the South and artists from the North viewed the war and the impact of war differently through their work.

So, all you have to do is go to Jaffna, to see that the people there are not hostile to the Sinhalese. But the people who do not need solid proof before shouting about things they don't understand will continue to say what they say, and there's little we can do to counter the misinformation spread by them.

Moving on, there's also a story going around about how Sinhala students were chased away from the Jaffna university. The real story is that in the intake of 2004, there were 10 students who refuse to take the University of Jaffna. They never even went to Jaffna. They just refused to go to the University of Jaffna stating security concerns. Only one of them was Sinhalese. The rest were all Muslim.

The people who were most puzzled by this were the Sinhala students who were already studying at the University of Jaffna. They're still there, and have been there for over 3 years. They did make a press release saying that they faced no security threat in Jaffna and that they were wondering why those 10 students wanted to stay away. The only explanation for th actions of those 10 is that it was a carefully calculated political play encouraged by a group who wanted to create the image that Jaffna is hostile to Sinhala people. Too bad they could find only one Sinhala student to volunteer for their little gimmick.

Actually the only person who would have a problem living in Jaffna would be someone who has issues with an abundence of good, cheap seafood!

The Biggest Gamble

2005-09-23T10:35:00.000-07:00

Was watching Sirasa TV last night and saw an ad that said I could win 100,000 Rupees if I sent an SMS predicting which candidate the Ceylon Workers Congress is going to back in the upcoming elections. All you gotta do is type STV M (for Mahinda) or STV R (for Ranil) and send it to some number and if when the decision is made there's going to be a draw and someone's going to win 100,000 Rupees!

There's also a competition to predict the date of the election. But now that it's been decided the competition's over and they say they're going to hold the draw next week. Someone's going to win a lot of money on that as well.

When Sirasa did this with the JVP's decision to leave the Government we should have known that all of this would be in the future. There's something really sad about the way in which Sirasa has exposed elections in Sri Lanka for what they really are. Messed up games of chance where you know the house (not you) is going to win eventually whichever way you vote. It's not really democracy. It's all about wheeling and dealing and trying to get people from the other side to cross over onto your side and trying to keep your people from corssing over onto the other side.

It's never really on the issues, or the future of the country. So, I say if Sirasa wants to have some making a competition out of the whole sad joke, let them. They're not really making a mockery of democracy. One couldn't possibly make a mockery of democracy greater than the Sri Lankan parliament has in the past.

A sad sad state of events.

Will there be a 'Who Will Win the Election?' competition? The prize better be good :)

Drunken Monk

2005-09-22T13:00:00.000-07:00

I'm coming home a little late one night and at the top of the road the van has to stop because people are putting up Buddhist flags for some ceremony or the other at the temple. Well, at least they're being a little considerate and waiting till the traffic drops to do these things.

What really bugs me is the fact that all the people putting up the flags are drunk. These guys could hardly walk straight.

These were the kind of guys I would not want to mess with. If they want my vehicle to stop so they can put some flags up, I stop. If they want my vehicle to stop so they can pee on the road, I stop. You know the type I'm talking about.

But, why is that it's the same bunch of people in the town who get contacted for all the little odd jobs?

When a politician wants some posters put up it's these guys who're called. They're given a hundred rupees and one meal per person and a bottle of arrack to share. They do their job. It's also the same guys who do the politician's dirty work in terms of pulling down banners and hoardings of rival party people.

In times of elections, when extra muscle is needed then these guys are even used to intimidate people on polling day or do whatever it is that the local politician wants done. Again, they get a hundred rupees, one meal and a bottle of arrack. Sometime they even settle for a bottle of Kasippu (moonshine).

It's the same bunch of guys that the monk in the local temple calls when he wants some flags put up. Doesn't anyone find this objectionable? That the so-called Buddhist monks in our temples also obtain the services of the same thugs and lowlifes that the politicians use for their dirty work? These guys are most certainly not putting up flags out of love for the religion or for the temple. They're doing it because they're getting paid. The monk doesn't pay them with a sermon.

I wonder if the monk gives them a bottle too? I think the guy in our temple might because I have seen him walking about town drunk in the night. One of the biggest jokes in the small town outside Colombo where I live is that the head monk in the temple can drink more than anyone else in the area. But he doesn't look like the drunken monks in the Chinese martial arts movies :) But that is not the story here.

Actualy there's no story. Just a gut feeling that drunk people putting up Buddhist flags is wrong. Maybe I'm the one who's wrong.

What do we do when the lines between our politicians and our clergy begin to vanish?

Guess Who's Back?

2005-09-21T23:11:00.000-07:00

A few nights ago I was watching TV and who do I see on a Patriotic National Movement stage, shouting about the links between Ranil and the LTTE and defending Mahinda Rajapakse? None other than our old friend S L Gunasekera.

Who?

No one remembers him? That founding member of the Sihala Urumaya. That hero of the Sinhalaya who thought 'there are enough racist Tamil and Muslim parties in the country so let us try to even things out by starting a Sinhala one!'.

Take a trip down memory lane. Remember how he was later kicked out of the Sihala Urumaya because even though he was Sinhala, he wasn't a proper Sinhalaya because he was not a Buddhist? That defining moment in the Sinhala Buddhist ideology? When Champika and Tilak hid their little powergrab behind the statement that to be a proper Sinhalaya one had to be a Buddhist.

S L Gunasekera cried at the press conference. Sihala Urumaya was a party he had helped found and as far as he was concerned he was a proper Sinhalaya. He was not a Buddhist. So what? He'd occasionally have a scotch and soda in the evening. So what? These were the two things he cried about. I'm talking real tears here. Streaming down his face.

But now he's back out of hiding! He's standing on an PNM stage and defending Mahinda. Stranger things than this have been few. One good look at his face and you know the shot in the evening has turned into a bottle by now. I guess being a political exile can do that to a man. But let us not judge him on that. It's very clear that's he's but a shell of the 'hero of the Sinhala people' that he used to be. Another washed up has-been, being dragged out so that Ranil and Mahinda can put them on a stage and squeeze them dry.

Wonder who else is going to crawl out of the woodwork to stand by the two candidates as the elections get closer.

Bloggers' Peace Plan

2005-09-07T02:16:00.000-07:00

As Morq seems to be busy, I thought I'd create the new post. I haven't made any changes to Ashanthi's text. They are a direct copy and paste from the comment she left in the last post. It would be good if Kevin and Ananthan left their posts here again. Alternatively, I could copy and paste them here if that's alright with you guys.

So here goes. . .

I'd like to propose a new topic for us to participate in...I would like us to propose a 10 point peace plan for Sri Lanka. I invite 10 Bloggers to participate...

Morq (of course), IVAP, Sittingnut, Ananthan, Ian, Yaroo, Kev Lomax, myself ...hmmm, alright Indi's allowed to & 1 other person - I said person - not a nutter ...I'll go first ....this is just a draft ...so bear with me ...

1. Trial seperation - Both parties break of any further contact immediately. Withdrawal of troops from Jaffna. Re-signing of commitment to stop picking of potential foes.

2. Seperation to be enforced by a Peace-keeping force administered by the UN - no more rampaging Sikhs please !!!

3. At the end of a 5 year seperation - ALL associated parties must lay down their arms.

4. A referendum to be held in the North & East whereby electorates can decide if they wish to remain within the Sri Lankan framework or set up an Independent state.

5. Based on the above a constituion is drawn up for the North & East.That's a start. Please add in other points.

Now - if you disagree with a point. Name the author of the point & state W H Y. No need for mud-slinging just say Why you think it is inappropriate/does not work/is not fair/or whatever.So - at the end of this excersice we will have our 10 point plan for Peace & be able to submitt it in the upcomming elections via the Bloggers for Peace Party :-) - I reckon it will be better than anything that those rotten Politicians come up with!!!

Again I say - Peace Brothers!!!
-ASHANTHI

Note from Morq: First, apologies to Yaaro for putting this on her post. Nothing else in the post has been changed.

I would like this post to be an exception to the no-comment-is-deleted policy which has been followed so far. By removing ALL* comments which have nothing to do with the argument (including one I put up an hour ago) I hope to improve clarity in the argument[s], to some degree. I hope you agree with me.

*Fred stays for being nice :)

From Buddhaputra to Bhoomiputra

2005-09-01T04:14:00.000-07:00

A look at the role that the sangha play in the ethnic conflict and the peace process in Sri Lanka, and a questioning of my belief in an increasingly hostile and intolerant faith that I call Sri Lankan Buddhism.

I was born a Buddhist, into a fairly religious Buddhist family. I studied Buddhism as my religion in school. I wasn't a very religious person anyway, but I never had a problem respecting monks or going to the temple on Poya days with my Grandmother.

But then, one day, while on an assignment, I was beaten up by monks. Why? Because I was a journalist. They didn't ask me for my religion or what institution I work for. I had a camera, and that was enough for them to hit me and kick me when I was down. This came as a shock to me and I didn't fight back. I ran. But it led me to question the future of the sangha and of Buddhism in Sri Lanka, and where I stand in the spectrum.

By the next such confrontation I was over my shock. I fought back. I had lost all respect for the sangha and I had no problems throwing a punch and catching one of them squarely across the jaw, to protect myself and my footage. They would never shock me again.

According to the scriptures the 'Sangha' are the Buddhaputhra, the 'children' of the Buddha, the sons of the faith. They are the guardians of the faith, the protectors of the Dhamma. They are supposed to be teachers, mentors and guides.

But in Sri Lanka this is no longer so. The addition of the sangha to the formula of the ethnic conflict in Sri Lanka has led to a further complication of our identities. Earlier, one a very basic level, one could say the conflict was between the 'Tamils' and the 'Sinhalese'. But now these identities no longer exist in that form. There are now 'Sinhala Buddhists' and 'Tamil Hindus', and the conflict has spilled over the boundries of ethnicity. It is the sangha in Sri Lanka who are to blame for this.

I put the rise of the most brutal form of Sinhala nationalism to the creation of the Sinhala Veera Vidhana (SVV). This association of Colombo based Sinhala traders who sought to use ethnic sensitivities to put a dent in the profits of their Tamil and Muslim counterparts, was even at its very inception inextricably intertwined with the radical nationalist Sangha in Colombo who had been seeking for an outlet to express their political opinions. As they marched up and down the streets of Colombo asking the people not to patronise Tamil and Muslims shops, the traders of the SVV rallied the monks behind them to gain legitimacy among the Sinhala people.

'We are the Aarakshaka Devathavas (guardian angels) of this island and of the Sinhala people' says Maduluwawe Sobitha, and a new identity, the Sinhala Buddhist is born. One is no longer able to be a Sinhala Hindu or a Tamil Buddhist. This new ideology states that only Sinhala Buddhists have any right to call this island their homeland and scores of monks, heads filled with dreams of what this new-found political ideology can bring them, rally behind it.

But thier causes are purely selfish. In a society swiftly moving away from religion and from the constant patronage that the monks depend upon for their lavish lifestyles, they are afraid that soon they will have to resort to walking from house to house with a bowl as the Buddha did. They will no longer be able to sit in their temples like Vito Corleone and demand money and tribute from the faithful as an experssion of their belief. This attitude had begun to eat away at the core of Sri Lankan Buddhism long before they joined Hate-Mongers Inc. To bring the faithful back to the temples and to keep themselves and their sexually-abused temple-boys fed they needed something to revive the faith. Something with which to embed Buddhism so deeply in an institution that it would keep them alive and living like kings for generations.

The time was ripe for the birth of the Sinhala Buddhist identity, and it was born.

The Buddha never dappled in statecraft. Matters of kings and nations were of no consequence to him. His followers who saw the sense behind this fought hard to divorce the philosophy from the state, so that no one state or no one king may lay claim to it as their own. Buddhism, fundamentally, cannot be married to a state, or to governance. Even in the time of the Buddha it was the 'other' personified into the character Devadatta who constantly sought state patronage. This was one of the fundamental differences between the followers of the Buddha and the followers of Devadatta.

Unlike in many other religions, where there are clear cut guidelines for the governance of a people, Buddhism does not set guidelines for nations, governments or even communities, but for individuals. This is the undeniable form of the Dhamma. Any old upasaka will tell you that the philosophy is not to be followed by people, but by a person.

The identification of the philosophy of the Buddha as something belonging only to the Sinhala people, was the greatest perversion of one of the greatest philosophies the world has ever seen. An unprecedented crime against humanity.

It has been many years now and the Sinhala Buddhist ideology has turned many from Buddhaputhras to Bhoomiputras, sons of the soil. Athuruliye Rathna, Uduwe Dhammaloka, Alle Gunawansa and even Gangodawila Soma echo(ed) the very same idea.

These monks frequently resort to violence and abuse to get closer to their aims and they openly advocate a return to war. I don't need to explain why I see this as being fundamentally contradictory to the very core teachings of the Buddha. The Sinhala half of the identity has overpowerd the Buddhist half and has taken away from the monks and their 'Buddhist' followers the ability to understand even the most simple principles of the Dhamma.

Almost all other religions and faiths have long histories of wars against each other, and have examples with which to justify the violent expression and protection of their own. Buddhist history, very strangely, lacks of bloodbaths and great wars by those who sought to protect it from the infidel. The only real mention of a great war in Buddhist history is the one that inspired the Chandashoka-Dharmashoka transformation!

It is no longer possible for me to call myself a Buddhist in Sri Lanka. I hated the sangha, and by extension, the Buddha and Dhamma.

But there is still hope. My recent trip to Leh brought me into contact with another form of Buddhism. The same philosophy, put into practice by a different people, with a very very different result.

Let's look at who these people are. In Ladakh, the district of which Leh is the capital , a vast majortiy of the people are of Tibetan origin. They come from a country that no longer exists. Having lost their homeland to the Chinese, these Tibetan Buddhists have only their faith. Yet they abstain from ANY insurgent activity, or anything that could be remotely associated with violence. The most violent expression I have ever seen by a Tibetan is a poster saying 'CHINA! GET OUT OF TIBET!'

At present, they have as the leader of their people the Dalai Lama, unelected, but loved and respected by each and every one of them. But he does not resort to statecraft. He does travel the world speaking of the Tibetan cause and attempting to apply pressure on Chine to let them have thier homes back, but he does not resort to the corrupt, conniving statecraft that we see the monks in Sri Lanka gleefully taking part in.

They are Tibetan Buddhists. Again and ethnic and religious identity tagged together, but their priorities are different from the Sinhala Buddhist. For them being the Buddhaputra comes first. And I mean this not only of the monks, but of the entire Tibetan people in Ladakh. Each one of them, from the man who sells vegetables in the market to the police officer who watches the streets, is more a Buddhaputra than the very Mahanayakes of the Malwathu and Asgiri temples in Kandy.

I was deeply ashamed of Sri Lankan Buddhism. I did not have the courage to tell anyone that I come from Sri Lanka, because many of these people know of Sri Lanka only as another Buddhist country, where they assume the philosophy is followed in the same way it is followed in Ladakh. I would have been forced to burst their bubble and explain to them the nature of the rot in the faith in Sri Lanka and that would have been a rather depressing experience both for them and for me.

In at present the Buddhists of Ladakh are threatened by outside forces. The Indian Army build Shiv Mandirs and the Muslims of Kashmir build mosques and madrassas. But they remain tolerant, because that is what they must do in order to seek Nirvana. They do not burn Hindu and Muslim places of worship, and they do not loot Hindu and Muslim homes when they feel threatened, but neither do they blindly convert. In a playing field where the other kids are fighting for space they sit quietly in a corner and play their own game by themselves and smile to themselves at the absurdity of it all.

For the Buddhists of Ladakh, tolerance is not something they hear about in a monthly poya day sermon from the monk at the temple, it something that each single individual pratices each day of their lives. They live and breathe the philosophy. But they do not follow it as a mob, as Sri Lankans do. For them it is a deeply individual experience.

Leh made me think. I'm still thinking, trying to understand the very nature of my beliefs. I do not yet consider myself a Buddhist, but a little seed of the faith that remained inside seems to have begun to grow. Now I have an idea, albeit minute, of what is possible. How and when still remain questions.

All Sri Lankan Buddhists, I beg of you. Go to Ladakh, and try to understand thew difference between the Bhoomiputra and Buddhaputra.

***

NOTE ON TOOTHACHE: Coming to the issue of relics, Buddhism has never been about the worship of relics. If those who follow this corrupted perverted form of the great philospohy want to prostrate themselves before something that doesn't really exist, then go ahead. But do not expect me to respect your perversion of something I hold to be sacred, which is the Dhamma.

Your monks pissed on my Dhamma and perverted it beyond recognistion, so I'm going to piss on your tooth! Somewhere in a bottle I have a tooth I had pulled when I was about 14. I'm going to make a little karanduwa for it and put it on my head and walk around town. If you want you can fall on your feet and worship it. If you're really lucky I'll let you see it, which is more than they let you do at the Dalada Maligawa.

The bombing of the Dalada Maligawe angered me because of the damage done to the precious artwork, which is undeiably of great value. The LTTE couldn't blow the tooth up BECAUSE IT ISN'T THERE!!!! If you want to worship a tooth come worship mine, at least it's REALLY THERE!!!

The worship of relics is a perversion of Buddhism and I don't like it. Deal with it.

Like Fox Mulder says 'The TOOTH is out there!'

Lonely Planet Guide to LTTE Terrorism

2005-08-29T10:32:00.000-07:00

Sticking to the Lonely Planet is perhaps the best way to restrict your holiday to things that other people before you have done. Nothing new. No expanding of horizons, which to me is what travel is supposed to be all about.

For instance if you take the LP:Sri Lanka, you'd be shocked at the number of really cool places that have been left out simply because whoever was covering the island for the book didn't think they were cool enough to appeal to the average traveller. It's just a book meant to protect the image of Sri Lanka (or any other country) in the way orientalist thinking shaped it for the west. It's a warped reality.

A lot of people also seem to follow a LP like guide to LTTE terrorism in Sri Lanka.

let's look at what sparked off all this recent anti-LTTE slogan-shouting. Lakshman Kadiragamar's killing. We still don't know who did it, and everyone I've spoken to in Sri Lanka thinks it was an inside job, and says this line of thinking has an ever increasing number of followers. Since I am not in Colombo I have no right to comment on this any further.

But let's have a look at how people have responded. Let's look at a few generic statements.

**********

The LTTE kills alternative Tamil leadership, and is therefore incapable of being a part of the democratic mainstream and needs to be crushed militarily.

Seriously, that's nothing new. To anyone who's had their eyes and ears open in Sri Lanka for the past 20 years this is a painfully obvious fact. From the assassination of Doraiappa to forced assimilation of the other armed Tamil groups in the mid 80s to recent killings in Colombo, this has never stopped.

But, we didn't hear them shouting that when the leader of the EPRLF, best known by his nickname: Robert, was killed in Jaffna.

We didn't hear them shouting that when the Media Secretary of the EPDP Balanataraj was killed outside 'House of Fashions'.

But we did hear them saying pretty much the same thing when Neelan Thiruchelvam was assassinated.

Why is that?

In the first place Lakshman Kadiragamar was not an alternative Tamil leader. Find me ten Tamil people who would have voted for him, and I'll dance naked in front of Town Hall. Maybe he did have aspirations of being a great Tamil leader, but they were just dreams.

Neelan Thiruchelvam (a good man whose killing is unforgivable) never wanted to be a leader of the Tamil people. His life's work was about trying to push everyone towards a negotiated settlement, and he most certainly would not have accepted the JVP and JHU using his killing as a big stick with which to beat the LTTE.

But this was a brilliant opportunity for them to shout out to the world 'LOOK, THE LTTE ELIMINATES THEIR ALTERNATIVES!!!'

To acknowledge the EPRLF, EPDP or any one of the other groups involved in active anti-LTTE politics in the North and East (themselves not without innnocent blood on their hands) is a little dangerous, because any one of these groups could provide leadership to the Tamil people. So let the LTTE finish them off one by one and we won't utter a word. 'The fewer Tamil leaders we have around here, the better it is for us' seems to be the motto for the right wing Sinhala nationalists.

So they distract Colombo and the rest of the world from one of the most terrible crimes perpetrated upon the Tamil people by the LTTE, while elevating nobodies and unwilling people to the level of the leaders of the Tamil people. Right out of the LP Guide to LTTE Terrorism.

**********

The LTTE are terrorists because of the Central Bank bombing/Dalada Maligawa bombing/Dehiwala train bombing/Town Hall bombing/murder of monks in Anuradhapura etc...

OK, the LTTE did do all of this, and that makes them literally 'terrorists'.

But these bombings carried out in Colombo, Kandy and the other frequently used examples are, to me, poor indicators of the LTTE's terroristness. The war mongers in Colombo do not care about the dozens of Sinhala and Muslim villages where entire families were massacred by the LTTE in the past 20 years. From Gonagala in Amparai to villages like Sungawila in Anuradhapura, and in a countless number of villages in the Mahaweli settlements the LTTE have murdered thousand of innocent men, women and children.

But the war-mongers in Colombo do not care about these people. Because the LTTE trying to blow up a fucking fake tooth we crawl on our knees to worship is way more serious than them hacking to death an entire village. To them the LTTE blowing up a few airplanes in the BIA is more important than the systematic abduction and murder of hundreds of Sinhala and Muslim farmers in the East.

The Wimal Weerawanses, Athuruliye Rathnas, Maduluwawe Sobithas, and now Indika Samarajeewas keep going on and on about these few incidents to tag the LTTE as terrorists because these are 'high profile' incidents. They make for good press and everyone knows the press loves gory pictures. If it bleeds it leads.

This only proves that these pseudo-patriots care not about exposing the true nature of LTTE terrorism, but about furthering their political agendas on a 'LTTE are terrorists' platform. To do this they do not have to go to the East to speak to Sinhala villagers affected by the LTTE. Those guys don't give good soundbytes for the cameras!

So again, they distract us from the real nature of LTTE terrorism so that they may reap the benefits of the political fallout. A warped reality that we swallow whole simply because it's much easier to digest. One more from the LP Guide to LTTE terrorism.

**********

And there you have it folks, that's me trying to understand the Lonely Planet Guide to LTTE Terrorism.
Co-authored by Wimal Weerawanse, Athuruliye Rathna and Champika Ranawaka.
Layout done by our own Indika Samarajeewa.

NOTE FROM MORQUENDI
I believe the LTTE to be a group that frequently resorts to terrorism. But I also believe the Government of Sri Lanka also engages in terrorism. More debate on this later, just wanted to let those of you who read this know that I'm not the run-of-the-mill GoSL loving LTTE basher.

Other People's Lives

2005-08-22T07:18:00.000-07:00

There's a cold war era saying about the work of the CIA which was very popular among the US military. They used to joke that the CIA's motto should be 'We bet your life'. This was because the decisions that the US Government made based on the information provided by the CIA would directly impact the lives of those serving in combat zones.

What Indi, the JVP, the PNM, the JHU and other war-mongering pseudo-intellectuals in Colombo do not realise, or do not care about, is the fact that if Sri Lanka were to return to war they would not be the ones who would pay the price.

Let us for a moment forget about the people living in the North and East, because as far as the war-mongers are concerned the protection of their lives or their rights is secondary to militarily defeating the LTTE, a bloodthirsty terrorist group. Remember when Albright said that the death of Iraqi children was the price they had to pay for defeating Saddam? Sounds pretty much the same.

Let us for a moment forget about the LTTE members who would die in a war, because as far as the war-mongers are concerned they're terrorists and anyone who throws in his lot with a terrorist group should be killed.

(I will explain why I have done this leaving out later)

Let us think only of our valient, brave, patriotic Sri Lankan Military (dare I call it the Sinhala Army?). If those who shout for war finally get what they want, then it's going to be the soldiers in the front lines who have to do the actual fighting. Indi, Wimal Weerawanse, Athuruliye Rathna and the others will sit at home watching the day's news on TV and notching the score like it was a cricket match.

"Twenty two LTTE terrorists killed in an ambush. Ten SLA soldiers also gave their lives for the motherland in this encounter"

Whao! 22 - 10. What's that come to? That's 12 up for us! Time to go out and have a drink to celebrate this victory boys! Molly's or Clancy's? Or does anyone want to do some karaoke?

That's all it is to them. Those ten soldiers who died mean nothing to them. They are merely statistics. Not real human beings. They did not have mothers/fathers/brothers/sisters/wives/sons/daughters/friends/neighbours. They did not have a home. They did not have a family to feed. They did not have younger siblings or children to keep in school.

The biggest misconception among these people is that the people in the Sri Lankan military have joined it out of patriotism. These soldiers are young men from poor familes in the South who have been forced into service because of the lack of employment opportunities. A consistently failing economy (brought on by massive defense expenditure over 20 years) drives these sons of farmers to join the only sort of employment which requires nothing more than the ability to close your eyes and pull a trigger.

They do not hate the LTTE, they do not love Sri Lanka any more than the average Sri Lankan, but they have to keep their families from starving.

So they join the military and die at the hands of the LTTE or the incompetence of their own leaders so that Indi, Wimal, Athuruliye and the bunch can teach the LTTE a lesson. They will not see their siblings or loved ones die because they live in Colombo, far far away from the war. To them it is an abstract game that must be won at any cost.

I live in Colombo, far far away from the the. I am not willing to join the army. I am not willing to die to defeat the LTTE. I want to live the good life as much as any of these "patriots" do. But that takes away from me the right to gamble with other people's lives, and the right to ask them to die for me.

If I think the LTTE needs to be defeated militarily then I should be willing to do it. How can I live with the knowledge that out there young men who don't want to die, who don't have issues with the LTTE are dying because I shout my ass off online? I don't think I would be able to live with something like that running through my head. If there is a return to war, I should shout out 'not in my name'.

Indi will never join the army. Wimal Weerawanse will never have the balls to pull a trigger. The monks shouldn't be screaming for war anyway!, well at least if they understand anything about Buddhism.

These people who scream for the destruction of the LTTE have not met the women of the Mothers and Daughters of Lanka. They have not met Visaka Dharmadasa, mother of a soldier missing in action, who would easily explain to them what the war can take away from you. They have not met Margret Hewage, the mother of a PoW, who could explain to them how there are some things worse than death. They have not met the Martenstynes who could explain to them how war can leave an entire family in limbo.

They do not care about these people, they care about the politics. Much like the leaders of the USSR sacrificed millions of people to protect their politics, so do these war-mongers try to yell louder than each other that the LTTE needs to be defeated, to protect their politics. Only their lives and their politics have any value to them.

Will these people who do not attach any value to the lives of the soldiers of the Sri Lankan military give any thought to the death of innocent Tamil civilians in the Vanni or LTTE cadres?

Ultimately, they gamble with other people's lives. Because other people lives mean nothing to them.

Misinformation

2005-08-15T07:08:00.000-07:00

I spent about a half an hour going through different blogs to see what people were saying about the assassination of LK. The picture is quite distressing. The misinformation spreading online is shocking and it's propagation can only contribute to the divisions in Sri Lankan society and harm Sri Lanka.

Let's look at a few of them...

Indi has a headline that says 'LTTE Kills Kadirgamar'!!! I would certainly expect a bit more tact from Indi, but it seems he to has fallen pray to making statements that one can't really verify without depending on 'gut feeling'.

Prabath of Nidahas says 'Yesterday night, [the LTTE] murdered Lakshman Kadirgamar.'

Hold on, the Government of Sri Lanka has not formally accused the LTTE of the assassination, and the LTTE too have not issued a statement taking responsibility for the deed. On the contrary they have issued a statement denying any involvement in it. So why do Indi and Prabhath both make statements like the above?

Because I am not in Sri Lanka right now, I have been relying on online sources for my news. When I got my call at about 11.30 SL time I was sitting in a dingy little hotel in Paharganj, New Delhi. In the hours following the incident I managed to find a computer and thanks to friends who kept me updated with the occasional call and constant text messages, I followed the story as best as I could.

Over the next what became clear was how many people, especially those online, were quick to condemn the LTTE for the assassination. True, the LTTE are the most likely perps. But note: most likely, not definite. To state that the LTTE did carry out the assassination, without a shadow of doubt, as both Indi and Prabath have done, is to ride on the anti-LTTE bandwagon that forms each time something like this happens. Political groups like the JVP, JHU, PNM, media like the Island and the Divaina, and a whole host of other interests at various points in the political spectrum come together to shout down the voices that say 'hold on, how do we know for sure the LTTE is behind this?'

The work that they do in propogating such a black and white image of what is going on in this country can only damage Sri Lanka's standing in the international stage. These people are not shouting out the truth, they are shouting out what they want to hear, and what they want the rest of the world to hear. Truth means nothing to them, and in the same way the American War Machine uses CNN and Fox TV, it is the loudest voice that gets heard, not the truth.

To blame the LTTE for this incident, when there is no clear proof of their involvement (well, at least no proof that will stand up in court) is to jeopardize the peace process unnecessarily. The LTTE could use and does use such propaganda to show that world that the Sri Lankan Government and the Sinhala people are not rational (I'm not too sure about this myself), and are prone to judge and convict the LTTE and the Tamil people on purely circumstantial evidence.

This either-you're-with-us-or-against-us gung ho attitude displayed by Indi and Prabath is distressing and I strongly urge them both to show a little care when they comment online about something as serious as this in the future.

Fortunately there are also quite a few people who seem to have a firm grasp on reality. Hats off to Mahangu, Scourge, Ian and Anush for balanced commentry. Keep up the good work, the only way to counter misinformation to make the truth available, and the fact that even a few people are trying to do that gives me hope.

Wodunnitandwhydidtheybother?

2005-08-15T06:07:00.000-07:00

NOTE: Contrary to our anonymous friend Anon Anon's belief that I have vanished, I'm still very much around. Yet since I am in India I cannot comment on what is going on in Sri Lanka. I have been following the situation over the past month by reading the news online whenever I can, and also thanks to a steady stream of text messages from my friends. But today when I checked I found this comment left by Anon Anon which I think offers a lot of insight into recent developments. I have edited it a teeny weeny little but the original is available where he/she left it.

If I knew, without any doubt whatsoever who had shot LK (Lakshman Kadiragramar) I would write a story for the international press & make myself millions. It is after all a million dollar question.

If you want a bit of my ponderings on the subject - hey I'm more than happy to throw my hat in.

If the LTTE killed LK - it was not the smartest thing they could have done. The devil you know is better than the devil you don't. LK's association with the JVP made him look like a monkey pretending to be the Sinhala Lion who we all know was born a Tamil. His sychophantic pathetic desperation to become a part of the Sinhala establishment has never made him look impressive. It made him look opportunistic & an outcast. He obviously had a great desire to feel like he belonged. It is a trait shared by many Tamils who live in Colombo and speak broken English, fluent Sinhala & no Tamil.

What did make him look impressive is the classic Tamil hard-working, clever, intelligent erudite way in which as a young man he went to Oxford & impressed everyone. How difficult do you think back then was it for a "Indian" to gain the kind of recognition that LK did. For this he is remembered. I watched him on the BBC on Hard Talk & I too was impressed. He certainly restored the image of the Sri Lankan govt where Chandrika even after Sept 11 when everyone was getting ready to blast all terrorists suicide bombers out of oblivion looked like a goose & spoke like a lame duck - Quack Quack.

LK's association with the JVP has given him absolutely no credibility internationally. Whether they like this fact or not. I find it totally abhorent for anyone to associate with the JVP - sorry. I just cannot forget the horror & terror they brought to this country. It is unforgiveable what they did to us. How they destroyed our peace and tranquility. I despise them intensely for the murderous killing & cold hearted killing they committed on their very own people.

Consequently I cannot tolerate that LK associated with them.

This killing if committed by the Ltte is so obvious - too obvious. So really everyone - and if you've watched the media you will see this - everyone asks - why would they do this right now. The Ltte for the first time (as reported by the BBC) "strongly denied" the allegation. Hey why would they even bother. With bombs going off in London - really at the moment the Ltte is looking seriously marginalised - so - why would they make the situation worse?

If it was someone within LK's own party - well that would look like it was a bit of a blood-thirsly thing to do - but that's certainly what Sinhalese politics is all about.

A lot of the international press has been saying how LK was very popular but there's unfortunately a few things that that they don't know about LK. Because he was the only Tamil in the government he basically was a much canvassed man by way of bribes & favours by Tamils trying to survive in a very difficult environment in Colombo. I think he made a few friends but he also made a few enemies. I think he was greedy. The exhorbitant expenses on his round the world trip are nothing compared to years & years of bribes that he took - well he should not have. Now that's not to say as you ALL so well know that every politician in SL takes bribes that he was unique where bribes were concerned - but he was unique in that he took them more specifically from Tamils. And - sometimes he did not deliver.

His funding of the Karuna group of course pissed off the Tigers but there again - he was not alone in that. Chandrika obviously gave him carte blanche & he organised funding for the Karuna group. So what - the international community will never talk to the Karuna group - rightly or wrongly - they are state sponsered militia. Time and time again politicians like Bush & Blair have realised that it is a mistake to back milita. The media has exposed government sponsered militia who only serve one purpose. The perpetuation of war. The international community where Sri Lanka is concerned are definitely keen to have the situation resolved.

Everyone was concerned that the Muslim Tamils be given a voice & they have. Karuna does not represent them . All Karuna represents is an extension of infighting within the Ltte & now his quest for power. Well - if Karuna wants power I'm afraid he's got an uphill battle ahead of him.

The so called shadowy Prabhakaran seems to get all this loyalty from all over the planet. It is quite bizzare. For someone who has such an incompetent publicity machine - he almost has blind faith & support. You have to ask yourself why.

Ok - a few other theories now...

Was it the UNP - well I have a slight inkling that some of Ranil's uncle's leftover henchmen are very cleverly orchestrating trouble for Chandrika. They can go around shooting people - you don't have to kill very many before everyone is at everyone's throats. I cannot for one minute belive that the UNP are just sitting on the back-burner behaving themselves. They are stiring up trouble too.

It could be the JVP - although they say that LK was one of their own - I think we all know what they are capable of for the sake of the revolution. They may also have decided that he was more a liability than anything as you know he has never been popularily elected to office. He was merely appointed by Chandrika and in fact the only reason Chandrika ever trusted him was because he was "an old friend" of her mothers - hmm - yes well the second most guarded man in the country - second to none except Chandrika herself.

When did young LK come waltzing into the lives of Srimavo & Chandrika? - that's another story. Think about it. He was young, smart, highly intelligent, different to the others and hence totally trustable.

Finally was it some of the other potential contenders in Chandrikas party who are squaring up for a big showdown & did LK have some dirt on them?

Frankly - I don't know. You would think that there would be other people in Sri Lanka that needed more protection than LK. He was supposed to have total protection. SO HOW THE HELL DID SOMEONE MANAGE TO KILL HIM?????.

Does it sound like an inside job to you????!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Therein rests the case for the whodunnitandwhydidtheybother?????

Anon de Non de Non

Morquendi's Two Cents:

Well Anon Anon, Spoken like a true realist.

One theory that you might have overlooked and I feel I need to bring up might be by far the most far fetched. I have already been yelled at by a few people for suggesting this, but what about if Jayantha Dhanapala had anythying to do with it? You know the man, the head of the Peace Secretariat, Kofi Annan's best friend in South Asia etc...

OK OK OK, Don't scream at me like that. Yes I like JD a lot. I think he's a great and a very senior diplomat/administrator who could never stoop so low at to have someone killed, but I wouldn't be a true conspiracy theorist if I didn't think of all the possibilities, however absurd they are.

Now here's the deal. The clash between LK and JD has been going on for a long time. Way back when JD was small fry at the UN LK tried to cut him down and curb his rise in the international organisation. The whole world knew that LK envied JD's spot heading UNESCO, and did a lot of things to see if he could get that job himself. When JD came back to Sri Lanka to head the Peace Secretariat LK was openly not very happy about it.

But why now? If it was JD who had LK killed why now? Ask yourself, what's just around the corner? Who's going to be the next Secretary General. It's an Asian's turn next, and if you look at the UN Administration, and where Asians are placed, you gotta admit JD's got a damn good chance of making the job. But LK would never let that happen right? He's screw JD over in Sri Lanka so hard that he wouldn't stand a chance.

Was it worth killing for?

Here's another crazy theory. What about the ex wife or the kids he doesn't talk to? Come on, at least one of them is bound to hate him enough to wish they could put a bullet through his head...

Why does it have to be political? Why can't it be personal? Loads of people get killed for personal reasons like screwing around or land disputes every day. So he was a big shot and his death has political implications, but why do we dismiss that it may have had nothing to do with politics?

PS: Again, I ask Anon Anon to get a bloody blogger ID and contribute to this damn thing instead of just leaving comments! I thought insults would have an impact when I said even an idiot could figure out how to set up a blogger account, but obviously they didn't :) But please, try again.

Plucking Tea

2005-07-07T09:34:00.000-07:00

This is something that I just confirmed from a second source.

A recent World Bank document on the estate sector in Sri Lanka, grossly exaggerates the levels of poverty in the state owned estates. Yes there the situation there is poor, and it is generally accepted that estate areas are among the most poor in the country, but it is not as bad as the World Bank document makes it out to be.

S who originally put me onto the story believes that these figures are being manipulated to keep more and more money coming into the estates for poverty eradication programs. This source was one of the team who gathered the data that was manipulated. But A makes a few more links and comes up with another theory. A says the ultimate aim of the World Bank is the complete privatization of the estate sector and they can do this by twisting figures to show how shitty the state run estates are and how good the privately owned ones are. In reality the level of poverty in both state owned and private owned estates is shocking.

But the World Bank's tweaking of figures is more shocking. You out there, you know there's more to this story. Say it.

Ferial For Real...

2005-07-07T09:09:00.000-07:00

As was expected, the Muslims are not too happy with the Joint Mechanism. One of the main things they are worried about is the percentage of their representation in the power structure of the Joint Mechanism, a.k.a. the Post-Tsunami Operational Management Structure. They do have a point when they say: since in the North and East they were the most affected community, they should have more seats on all the levels than the Government of Sri Lanka (which here, and on most occasions of this sort, represent the Sinhala people) and the LTTE (which insists that it represents the Tamil people).

But everyone seems to agree that them asking for equal status to the level of having someone from the Muslim community sign the document, is just a bit too much. This is an agreement between the Government of Sri Lanka and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, and not an agreement between the Sinhalese and the Tamils. But just in cas they did have a point, and someone from the Muslim community, who represents Muslim interests (like the GoSL and the LTTE claim to protect Sinhala and Tamil interests) was to sign the document, who would it be? They would fight for months about it and kick each other out of their political parties. Bloody fun time it would have been for the press.

So anyways, after days of protests in the East (with political groups using children for their cause by making them skip school and take part in rallies), the Government is using the Muslim groups in their fold to do something about it.

It is rumored that Ferial Ahsraff of the National Unity Alliance (which broke away from the Sri Lanka Muslim Congress after the death of M H M Ashraff) or some of her representatives will be having a discussion in Kilinochchi with the LTTE to see what they can offer the Muslims of Sri Lanka. They have been talking about this meeting with the Tamil National Alliance (the unofficial representatives of the LTTE in the Parliament) and it seems all they have to do is agree on a date.

So Chandrika sends her own to negotiate with the LTTE and come back and tell the Muslims of the country 'We have got promises A B C and D from the LTTE so shut up!'. Now the relationship between then NUA and Chadrika's crew is very very complicated, but on this instance things look very very simple. Right now the Government is getting a lot of flak, and if things get messy in the future then it's not going to be the Government but Ferial and the NUA who're going to have to deal with the fallout. Scapegoats-R-us!!!

Now why is this important? I don't know. Will it calm down the Muslims? Will it placate them? Will it satisfy their need to feel that they too are getting something out of this? Like a friend said (I don't agree with him 100%, but...) Oh bloody hell no one's going to get anything out of this other than the LTTE so why don't we all just deal with it?'

OK Bad joke with the title. So shoot me!

LTTE Offers Ultimatum

2005-06-30T11:41:00.000-07:00

I managed to get my hands on a tape of Thamilchelvan's statement to the press today in Kilinochchi. This was the press conference at which he said that the Government of Sri Lanka would have 2 weeks to ensure the safety of LTTE cadre travelling through their area.

The meeting followed a June 26th incident in Welikanda (in Government held areas, a critical entry point to the Batticaloa district) where an explosion rocked a Sri Lanka Army (SLA) bus that was carrying LTTE personnel. No one was seriously hurt as the explosive device detonated away from the bus.

In February this year the LTTE's Eastern leader Kaushalyan was killed in the same area when the vehicle in which he was travelling in was attacked. This incident got a lot of attention because he was in Government held areas without informing the SLA (which they are supposed to do under the Ceasefire Agreement [CFA])

In the case of the 'attack' on the bus, the LTTE had informed the Sri Lanka Monitoring Mission (SLMM) of their movement and it had been the SLMM who had made the arrangements with the SLA.

Moving beyond the facts and what we know, my personal opinion is that the LTTE are very serious.

But what about? That seems to be the question.

The 'ultimatum' they issues says that if the SLA does not assure protection for their people while in Government held areas then they are going to provide armed escorts to their people. Under the CFA armed LTTE cadre cannot enter SLA controlled areas. So if they insist that they must travel with their own armed escort then they're just going to have to sit on their asses in Kilinochchi and chill out. No more travelling through Government held areas. They have also threatened to restrict the activities of SLA soldiers through LTTE held areas. But this is really no big deal. There are hardly any SLA soldiers moving through LTTE held areas.

I don't really think this is going to have a big impact on the CFA. Yes, there will be LTTE troop movement in and out of and through Government held areas, while SLA troops will not be able to enter LTTE areas. They'll just have to deal with that.

Let's look at things practically. How is the SLA going to ensure the safety of LTTE troops travelling through their areas? Are they going to put seatbelts on all the seats on the busses? Are they going to sweep the roads for bugs and mines before the bus comes through?

Really, what Thamilchelvam and the LTTE should be asking for is a complete end to the violence.

But making the statement today Thamilchelvam looked very serious. He looked like he was quite mad. Either he really meant it or he'd been taking acting classes since we last saw him.

Right now, everyone is hoping this does not turn out like 95.

More Killings

2005-06-30T10:40:00.000-07:00

Trouble trouble trouble has been brewing in Sri Lanka for the past few days. With all this talk of war and such, today's assassination of 3 Sri Lanka Army people in Urani is not good.

Yaaro says that there's nothing to point out that the LTTE did it, or had any hand in it, and that even if it was the LTTE, then the leadership had nothing to do with ordering the attack.

I would like to disagree with that to a certain extent. In the same way that the S P Thamilchelvan, the Leader of the LTTE's political wing says that the attack on the LTTE convoy in Welikanda could not have been carried out without the knowledge or support of the Sri Lanka Army, an attack as such that occured in Urani today could not be carried out without the knowledge or support of the LTTE. Well, maybe it could have not had any LTTE involvement if it had been someone in the Army who had a score to settle if one of the people who was killed, but that seems unlikely.

Now let me dig an old grave to make my point.

Can you remember that time Kaushalyan (former LTTE leader for the East) was killed? (again in Welikanda). The LTTE said it could not have been done without the knowledge and the help of the Sri Lanka army. What about those rumors that it might have been LTTE leader Prabhakaran who had Kaushalyan killed because Kaushalyan was becoming too popular with the people of the East? Everyone knew Kaushalyan was an accomplished and respected person. Even the few Tamil people on the East coast who did not agree with the LTTE's politics or methods, often said that Kaushalyan was someone they felt they could have a discussion with. This was something we heard again and again from the East. Kaushalyan saw his popularity rise to unprecedented levels in the post-Tsunami period, and there are many who believe that this would have been enough to trigger off a few alarms in Mullaitivu. So there is enough to build a case to say Prabhakaran had Kaushalyan killed.

In the same way, Maj. Muthalif (Army Intelligence) who was killed in Colombo could have been killed by the Sri Lanka Army themselves. There are certain things about the case that jump out at you. Where were his bodyguards who were supposed to have been supplied by the Army? Why aren't the police really digging the case? The media buzzed for a few days that Maj. Muthalif had been working on something that was out of the Government's line, and that this is why they needed him out of the way. This case seems to have died a premature death because no one seems to want it dug up and unravelled.

Another interesting things that not many people have noticed is how many intelligence people have been killed after the ceasefire. Now don't jump up and down thinking I'm only talking about the Sri Lanka Army's list of their people who have been killed, it's accepted that several LTTE intelligence operatives have been killed in various parts of the island, including 2 in Colombo a few weeks ago. Could it be that the Sri Lanka Army and the LTTE have traded lists of intelligence operatives? How else could both groups so systematically (albeit tactlessly) kill of each othere's intell people? Call me a conspiracy theorist, but why is this so hard to believe? We know someone inside the Army burned the Deep Penetration Unit (DPU) project which the Army was running to hit strategic targets deep inside LTTE areas. That was clearly the Military purging it's own ranks. In the same was the Government saw the DPU's usefulness end and sold them out, the LTTE no longer needs the services of all the proxies who ran information for them in Government areas.

Anyways, my point is that in the present situation, when we are in a low-intensity conflict that frequently flares up, there's really no telling who's killing who. There could be a million theories and all of them could be wrong. Both Tamilnet and the Army's Brig. Dayarathne can say the LTTE did it or the Army did it, but their words have lost weight. No one gives a damn about what they say anymore.

And as for the general public, if an LTTE guys gets killed, then the Army did it. If an Army guy gets killed, then the LTTE did it.

When will people realise that this is not so black and white?

Talking of Sivaram

2005-06-30T09:54:00.000-07:00

A few days ago it was 2 months since journalist Sivaram Dharmeratnam a.k.a. Taraki was abducted and murdered. The Police have arrested several former PLOTE members in connection with this killing but there is general concern that the investigation is being 'killed' to protect certain interests close to the Government who have seen Sivaram and his work as a threat. This concern stems from the fact that there was a distinct group within the politico-military powerstructure of the Sri Lanka Government who continually plagued Sivaram's life.

A small activity, a resurgence of sorts, was planned for the night of the 27th, to remind people of this tragedy but due to organisational problems nothing was done. We hope that something will happen this weekend.

For now I have something Yaaro wrote and contributed, to remind us of another time, another person a similar tragedy.

(The only editing I have done is to break it into paragraphs to make it more readable)

Talking of Sivaram

I know very little about this guy and his articles. From what I’ve read, it
looks like he was clearly an outspoken Tamil who wasn’t afraid of being hunted
down as he was quite open about his support for the LTTE. Perhaps someone I no
more about is Richard De Soysa. An unbiased journalist and dramatist. The day
after he wrote an article, voicing a different opinion to the government’s,
someone came knocking on his door the very next morning. His mom, Dr.Manorani
Saravanamuttu (fondly known as 'Babia Mami' to my family) said that she first
refused to open the door without identification but was forced when a gun was
pointed at her. When she opened the door , ‘thugs’ came barging into their
house. Well, not quite ‘thugs’, they were CID officials + cops (in uniform of
course) , and asked for Richard.

He came downstairs to see who was at the door and realised immediately that
something was wrong. In a situation like this, what would you do? Call up the
Police. You guessed right but he was (un)lucky because they were right there in
front of him! Immediately 'Babia Mami' got in front of him and hugged him as
tight as she could she said because she knew they were there to take him. They
dragged him out of her arms and that was all she saw of her son. Her whole life
falling apart right in front of her eyes and she couldn’t do anything but watch
it crumble into pieces.

His body was found in Lunawa beach the following morning. I was a kid when
this happened and little did I know about the sinhala-tamil divide at the time.
Lots of people didn’t turn up at the funeral because they were afraid that they
would be recorded and handed over to the CID. One thing I know was that Richard
wasn’t for either the LTTE or the Gov.

I read some of his articles when I was older. Despite his relative youth,
he knew all the top Sri Lankan politicians personally -- even President
Premadasa. He was employed fulltime as a corresondant of the Rome-based Inter
Press Service, an international news agency focused on a Third World market. But
he was also an outspoken and respected actor and a fixture in Colombo's artistic
community.

He couldn’t speak a word of Tamil if I remember well. But it struck me one
day. . .the day I went to see 'Babia Mami' on her deathbed. My mom said that she
had been like this for some time. Apparently she slipped into it after long
after Richard’s death. long after fighting for justice. She didn’t give up
easily though. She filed a case. Against who? The police? I think she knew she
didn’t stand a chance. Everyone knew who did the job, they even had names( a job
well done indeed) and she still couldn’t convince them. B**t**ds! I would have
finished off by saying ‘Yet another mother who sacrificed her son to this ill
war’.

But it wasn’t the war in her case.

It was politics.

P.S: Did I mention that Richard was her only child

I'd like to leave you with this . . .the second half of an article from the
LA Times

The word was out that De Zoysa had helped produce a satirical play that was
savagely critical of Premadasa, who has been so sensitive to personal criticism
that he has barred at least two foreign journalists from Sri Lanka simply for
writing about his low-caste roots.

The contraversial play was called "Who is He and What is He Doing?" But the
curtain never went up. The night before its February debut, producer Lakshman
Perera, an openly critical member of Premadasa's ruling party, disappeared and
is now believed to have been murdered.

It was the next morning that the armed men appeared at De Zoysa's mother's
fornt door, demanding to see her son."I'm not a fool," Saravanamuttu, a
prominent physician and daughter of a former Sri Lankan diplomat, told The Times
in an interview this week. "I'm a doctor. I've lived for a long time. I've
worked with police on investigations."[One] man was in full police uniform, but
I demanded to see some identification. He said, 'I.D. cards aren't necessary. If
you don't let us in, we'll shoot you.' I had no choice, and minutes later, they
took Richard away."

Saravanamuttu said that she, her houseboy and neighbors gave detailed
descriptions of at least two of the men to police, and the houseboy gave the
license number of the jeep used to take De Zoysa away. But she and her lawyer,
Weerakoon, charge that police have done nothing to trace them.

"They just want to cover this whole thing up," Weerakoon said. "It's right
from the top."Police Supt. Gamini Perera, Colombo's chief of detectives and the
head of the De Soysa investigation, insists that his men are trying to find the
killers, although he denies that the witnesses gave police any physical
descriptions.

Asked whether he has been under political pressure in the case, Perera
declared: "Absolutely not.

"President Premadasa, who has been the focus of popular speculation about
the case, has cast himself as a friend and sympathizer of the De Zoysa's
family.

Saravanamuttu said she will keep pressing. "I'm just not going to give this
thing up without a fight," she vowed, saying that she will countinue her court
battle to push the police investigation "no matter where it leads.

"Then her anger subsided for a moment, and she added, "There is another
side to this, you know. I am really very lucky."In fact, I feel I'm the luckiest
mother in Sri Lanka, because at least I got my son's body back. I could give
Richard a decent funeral and, as hard as this sounds, at least I know he's
really dead. "There are thousands of other mothers out there who jsut don't
know, who are still simply sitting there and waiting."

Doesn't compare to what happened to Sivaram. If the people who took Sivaram
justify their cause by saying that he encouraged 'terrorists' what should
Richard's abductors' excuse be? You tell me

Footnote: Richard's mother identified one of her son's abductors on TV. The suspect Ronnie Gunasinha was a bodyguard of President Premadasa and was one of those killed in the explosion that killed the President on 1st of May 1993.

No one else has ever been arrested for Richard's murder. Like Yaaro, I too was very small when Richard was abducted and killed. All I know about him is what I have found out later, from people who knew him and from reading some of his material. I still have a T-Shirt with Richard on it that says 'Freedom from Fear'. I was very small when I first wore it, but I wore it with pride.

Here's what I wrote about the Richard and other murdered Sri Lankan journalists for DesiMediaBitch to celebrate World Press Freedom day this year, a few days after Sivaram's murder.

Homeland etc...

2005-06-26T23:57:00.000-07:00

I would like to respond to a comment let by an Anonymous person to an earlier post. He/She was actually responding to a comment left by another Anonymous person.

Primarily I would like to let both these persons know that Anonymous comments are not taken seriously. If you have something valid to say put a name on it. You have the option to use a pseudonym, just in case you're worried about people hunting you down. But there were a few things in this particular comment that I thought needed some clarification.

Thing A:

Again you know jolly well that there was ONE Tamil kingdom.

What I say: No we don't jolly well know anything. What we know about history is what historians with their own political biases tell us. If you want to trust them, go ahead. But don't assume that we jolly well know anything. Same goes for all those people who say we know jolly well that this island was the traditional homeland of the Sinhalese.

Moving on to my general opinion about this whole 'traditional homeland' thing, It's bullshit. Why do I say this? This is based on the same probably-skewed historical data that you quote. According to that what we jolly well know is that both the Sinhala and Tamil people are invaders to this island. So none of these groups can call this their homeland.

The only group who can call this their homeland are the Veddas. But there's not many of them left are there?. I don't see them taking up arms and calling this place their homeland.

Think about it. The fact remains that both the Sinhala and Tamils are on this godforsaken island now. It's not right to ask either group to get out, though that would be the logical thing to do, considering what they have been upto. It's also not right to allow one group to claim one part of the island as their own, or in the case of the Sinhala people, the whole island.

So, this homeland thing is a myth. Move beyond it. Grow up.

Thing B:

The only thing I have to say to Muslims Tamil is that they must remember if not for the sacrifice of the LTTE (and other groups) they as a minority group would have been decimated a long time ago by the Sinhalese.

What I say: Oh really? Do you want to tell this to the Muslims who were expelled from the North by the LTTE? Do you know anyone who was among them? Have a conversation. They'll bring you back to reality. Also go meet the women of Sungawila, a Muslim village in the North Central Province where the LTTE rounded up all the men and killed them.

Let's not whitewash the LTTE. Whatever the LTTE may or may not have done, good or bad, they have most certainly not been champions of the Muslim cause.

Open For Contributors

2005-06-26T01:53:00.000-07:00

Me just rambling on and on is no fun right?

And other people like Kevin, Lohan, Anon Anon (who really needs to get a name!) Yaaro and Ivap also have very very interesting things to say. (The names I forgot, don't hate me, I'm just starving and posting this before I run for lunch, so no time for a comprehensive list).

If anyone else is interested there are 2 options:

A) You can write it in to morquendi@gmail.com and as long as it's the kind of stuff that Nittewa's about, I will publish it unedited. But you have to give me a name, even a fake clever one like Ivap. Your email address will not be displayed unless you request it, and NO I will not sell it to a marketing company.

B) Get a Blogger account at www.blogger.com (it's easier than getting an email account!) and send me an email to let me know about it. Then I will send you an invite and you can become a permanent contributor. Write all you want, unedited.

There are however, a few conditions for contributing.

Commenting will be allowed on ALL posts. Everything said here is open for discussion. If you want to say something and not be interested in what others have to say about it, however rabid and opposed to your opinion they may be, go away.

This is about Sri Lankan Politics. Please keep that in mind.

If/when other people begin writing, other issues will arise. We'll deal with those on a case by case basis.

I look forward to having more opinions here.

Thanks to all.

How the JM was won

2005-06-25T23:00:00.000-07:00

I have refrained from commenting on the Joint Mechanism because I have been in deep depression about the whole incident.

On friday, when the JM document was brought before Parliament, the JVP did exactly what they were supposed to do. I don't know if they were playing along with Chandrika, or if they played right into her hands. They just did EXACTLY what she wanted done in Parliament that morning.

So Maithripala Sirisena, Leader of the House, tables the JM document and the JVP goes nuts. They crowd around him and ask him if it's been signed and he says no. And then the JVP begins to make a big noise and Parliament is adjourned till the 5th of July, with the debate on the JM not going anywhere, which is exactly how it was planned.

So then a whole set of Government Ministers hold a press briefing where the press are informed of what happened. The story goes like this:

"We told the people/mahanayakes/JVP that we wouldn't sign it without a debate in Parliament. We brought it to the Parliament today but the JVP would not let us talk about it. So we Signed it :)"

They conveniently put all the blame for this rather undemocratic action on the JVP. A solid, solid political move. Now the JVP don't have a leg on which to stand and say this was undemocratic because they didn't allow it to be discussed in Parliament.

That's all there's to say about the JM. It was a bloody anti-climax. No fanfare. No riots. They just bloody signed it and went back to their work.

But there's been some interesting stirring in the UNP camp.

A couple of days ago 3 UNP Parliamentarians went to meet Chandrika. Apparently they spoke about the need for setting up what has been called a 'national Government' a.k.a. Jathika Aanduwa (one in which the two big parties, the UNP and the PA form a united Government).

Yesterday the UNP had a sudden polit bureau meeting in their HQ and all Parliamentarians and UNP members were informed that any interaction with the Government, the PA or the President should only happen on the top level. Effectively all UNP Parliamentarians are banned from talking to the President or anyone in the Government. Not even going out for a drink :(

It seems the UNP is very worried about what the PA is going to do to win a few more seats in Parliament. Chandrika now has 5 empty Minister slots and 4 empty deputy minister slots (4 minister slots and 4 deputy minister slots left blank by the JVP quitting Government and the MoIM seat from when she fired Mangala).

Is she using these seats to entice a few UNP MPs to crossover to their side? It's been done before by both sides. Or will she offer these seats and a few more to the UNP and form a Mega Alliance Government? Will that be a good thing or a bad thing? I don't know yet. I haven't been able to make up my mind on that. Well, it'll screw the JVP over for sure.

Also, our friend G the Parliamentary correspondent tells me that on Friday, in the middle of the protestors and the JM and the whole mess, Mangala was seen yelling at a few PA Parliamentarians (including Dilan Perera, Chandrika's toyboy). He was not able to pick up the whole conversation, but felt it was very serious. They were not arguing about where to go for lunch. (You need better ears G!)

Is Mangala starting to lose it? Chandrika has been treating him not-very-nicely for the past few months. But then it was his mistake to make the friends he did. He did negotiate with the JVP to form the allaince, and this was made him useful to the UPFA Government primarily. But now with the JVP gone, and irrelevant, Mangala seems to have lost his uses too.

But where will he go? The UNP won't take him. The JVP won't take him? Methinks he'll just have to go back to fashion designing. Not that I think it's a bad thing.

Senaka de Silva will just have to shoot himself.

Wrong Again!

2005-06-21T21:11:00.000-07:00

Just a little something I photoshopped this morning. I would love this on a T-Shirt.

Well, the word on the streets was wrong again. It doesn't look like the Joint Mechanism is going to be signed today either. Right now Vidar Helgesen is in Kilinochchi selling the final plan to the LTTE. It most certainly doesn't look like they're going to be signing anything today.

And Erik's not here either.

Last week a couple of newspapers reported that on Wednesday the 21st (today) the Joint Mechanism will be presented to Parliament. This was after Chandrika made her promise to the Mahanayakas that she wouldn't sign it without public debate.

Parliament sources say it's not going to be discussed in the house today. Three local newspapers have differing accounts. The Daily Mirror says it's not going to be brought before Parliament today, but it will be sometime this week. One of the Sinhala newspapers claim they have been told it will be brought to Parliament tomorrow and another one claims it will be friday (day after tomorrow).

Some people are starting to think she'll keep talking about it forever and never sign it.

Moving on to infinitely more important things, in a few days time (at the end of this month) the initial 6 month period decided on by the Government for immediate aid ends. This means the financial aid the displaced people were getting for rations, and the other immadiate aid they were getting is going to end with this month. Also the building of temporary shelters is going to stop at the same time.

This would have been OK if enough temporary shelters have been built. But the problem is they haven't. Many people, especially in Ampara, are still living in camps in tents. Quite a few of them have even been told that those are the temporary shelters they are going to have to live in until the permanent houses are built. The Ampara Government Agent has been intentionally downplaying the numbers of people living in camps and even the NGOs working in the area say their calculations are seriously affected because the GA keeps giving them wrong figures.

The Government hasn't yet realised the problems that will arise come the end of this month. This has to be the bloody height of shortsightedness. It's only when starving people begin protesting that the Government will see that they can't stop giving aid to the people just yet.

When Will The Wait Be Over?

2005-06-18T23:59:00.000-07:00

Hagar The Horrible, just a random cartoon that has little to do with this post

The word on the street is that the P-TOMS, better known as the Joint Mechanism, will be signed on the 22nd (or maybe even before that, which would make it tomorrow). But everyone thought it'll be signed on the 14th and everyone was wrong. Then we thought it would be signed on the 16th and we were wrong again. So this might also be another false rumor. But some other events are timed around this so this just might be the real deal.

Vidar Helgesen, Deputy Foreign Minister of Norway, is coming to the island tomorrow and Norwegian Special Envoy Erik Solheim is also on his way according to what we have heard. They will be meeting S P Thamilchelvam (Leader, Political Wing, LTTE) in Kilinochchi on the 22nd (Tuesday). Journalists have been asked, off the record, to be in Kilinochchi on the 22nd. the LTTE's media guy Dayanidhi "Daya Master" has extended this invitation to journalists on a one-on-one basis. So it's not really broken yet.

S P Thamichelvam, Erik Solheim and Vidar Helgesen

So I don't know if the Nordic hordes meeting the LTTE has anything to do with the Joint Mechanism. Maybe they're just coming to talk about it and drink some tea. But they are all meeting on the 22nd, and all we can do is hope something good comes out of it.

Thus Spake Chandrika

2005-06-16T07:30:00.000-07:00

No, she did not start on time. She started about a good half an hour late, which means they could have run my show and then some. But SLRC and SLBC were ready fro her from 6.30 playing stupid 'filler' songs on precious prime time air.

She started off her speech with a kind of a look back at her past 11 years in power (which is something she likes doing a lot, particularly since she has no future now). She said their Government, and she, had won four main things in those years.

They abolished state tyranny, stopped abductions and executions and restored law and order so people could feel safe again.
They rescused an out of control and spiralling-down economy and gave the country economic stability.
They crushed corruption and completely abolished corruption and bribery in the upper ranks in the power structure.
They laid the foundations for a negotiated settlement to the ethnic conflict and pursued a policy of peace-through-political-means.

At this point I fell asleep and asked my friend to wake me up when she got to the Joint Mechanism. I will not say anything about these 4 claims. Any of you may comment. Please feel free. Anon Anon, you too :)

About the joint she said several thing. I don't remember all of them because I was very sleepy (Next time something like this happens I will take notes) but here's what I remember:

The Joint Mechanism will force the LTTE to understand that they must work together with the Government, therefore it will not add to the power of the LTTE but will in fact disable them and erode their support base further.
It will not give the LTTE even a fraction of the control it wanted through the ISGA, which the UNP was ready to give to them.
If anyone thinks the Tamil people of this country do not have the same rights, or that the Government is not bound to offer them the same opportunities as anyone else, then they are racists.
No one can ask for instant peace. We need to heal wounds first. And things like this are needed to heal the wounds of 20 years of war.
If we don't do this the peace process has no future.
We will not sign this document without telling anyone, like the UNP did.
We will do whatever is necessary to establish the Joint Mechanism.

I remember there were a few more rather interesting things she said but I guess you'll have to read them in the newspapers tomorrow or something. I'll do an update after going through the newspapers tomorrow.

Moving on, what she said about the JVP was the best.

The JVP are idiots (Modayao) and they make stupid decisions.
They killed all the intellectuals in Sri Lanka in the 80s.
The Killed 135 people in my party in the 80s.
They're wishy washy, and change their stand all the time. They hated the Provincial Councils in the 80s and now they're dying to get into the bloody things.
They are racist because they only want things for the Sinhala people. They don't want to give anything to the Tamil people.
All the projects they said they did, including the 10,000 tanks were failures. Even the 300 tanks that were built were built by us.
I ask them to come back to the Government, it would be good to have them back. But even without them we will do this. They are irrelevant. We may lose a few in numbers but numbers in Parliament don't make a Government. We have the support of the people.

But what she said about the monks was the best thing.

Those racist elements who dress like Buddhist monks and try to tarnish the name of Buddhism will be dealt with severly, like they were dealt with the past few weeks.

Now moving to the Aesthetics. You guys should've seen her. She was wearing this horrible read Sari and the backdrop was this very very distracting white pattern and some stupid looking potted plant. They gave her a swivel chair and she kept turning around all the time. Looked nuts. I was seriously ashamed of her beiong the President of my country. Her hands were going all over the table and in one corner she found a yellow highligher that she had obviously been using to highlight things on her speech script (which she obviously wasn't sticking to) and then she started waving it around like it was a light sabre.

May the force be with her!

CBK to Address the Nation

2005-06-16T03:38:00.000-07:00

I'm pissed off because my show for tonight just got pulled off air.

The President is going to 'address the nation' tonight at 6.30. Just got the call from the station. So my show's one of those which have been axed to H.E. Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunge time to tell the people what she is going to do now that the JVP has left her ruling coalition.

The two channels run by Sri Lanka Rupavahini Corporation (SLRC), Rupavahini and ChannelEYE will brodacast the speech on TV while all the stations run by the Sri Lanka Broadcasting Corporation (SLBC) will do radio broadcasts of the speech. Sources at the President's office (who I got in touch partly for information and partly to scream at for getting my show cancelled) told me that they are trying to see if at least a few of the private broadcasters will want to relay the speech. Isn't that what happens in other countries when the head of the state wants to address the nation.

Anyways, let's see how things go. I will take notes and uploads little bits from what she says when possible. Let's see where she wants to take the Joint Mechanism and this country.

JVP Leaves Government

2005-06-15T22:22:00.000-07:00

The JVP announced today that it had decided to leave the UPFA Government. They say this is because they have not received a favourable response from the Government to their demand to withdraw the proposed Post-Tsunami Operational Management Structure, better known as the Joint Mechanism.

They have said they will bring together dissidents from the President's party and other parliamentarians to form another alliance soon. They have not yet stated whether they believe this alliance will be able to control Parliament. I seriously doubt if anyone major in the SLFP/UPFA is going to leave the party to join the JVP, but the JVP seems confident that they can win over some people.

Now that the UPFA no longer has the required number of seats to be in Government, it's upto Chandrika to see if she's going to broker a deal to get the support of the UNP even for a short while to sign the Joint Mechanism, or if she's going to dissolve Parliament and go for another general election.

Right now with the JVP out of power, god only knows what they will do to destabilize the situation in the country. What makes them scary is the fact that now they have infiltrated the Police and the Military way more than they had even back in 71. I know this is just a very paranoid thought, but if they decide to use this strength and maybe go for a coup or something like that, it just might work for them. But failure there would mean the end of the JVP so I don't think they're going to walk down that road just yet. They still have a few political options left, but if Chandrika is going to get the help of the UNP to get the Joint Mechanism through Parliament then all the JVP's shouting would have been pointless. As it is, all their protests seem to go into one ear and come out the next, for the President.

Divide and Rule

2005-06-15T05:50:00.000-07:00

Lohan left a comment on my post about the Joint Mechanism where he said that when we leave space for discussions like 'ethnic composition in the High Level committee' we are actually adding to the divisions that already exist.

To a very large extent I agree with him. This is also why I'm not really sure whether we need a quota system in Parliament based on ethnicities or gender.

In an ideal Sri Lanka the Joint Mechanism would have an X number of seats and an X number of Sri Lankans would be chosen to fill them regardless of what ethnicity or religion they represented. But we have to face the fact that this is not an ideal situation. It is as about far from an ideal situation as possible.

After 40 years of discrimination and 20 years of armed conflict based solely on ethnicity, ethnic identities have become very important to Sri Lankans. Being the right ethnicity at the right time could open doors for you. Being the wrong ethnicity at the wrong time could get you killed. It means a lot to people right now. The entire power structure in Sri Lanka is spun around this exaggerated inflexible and concocted notion of ethnicity, and it is not easy to change that.

To keep ethnicity-based representation out of the Joint Mechansim, while ideal, is unrealistic. But this does not mean that I believe the importance of the ethnic identity needs to be fought. But it cannot be fought top down, by keeping ethnicity out of an agreement like the Joint Mechanism. The notion has become too entrenched in collective decision making and communal thought that to challenge it all at once, and to hope for success, is impossible. Also, political groups who use this notion to their benefit will not react favourably to any attempt to erode their enthnic-identity-based constituencies.

It needs to be fought up from the level of the individuals, and many Sri Lankans have been doing this.

It is sad that this country is so divided and that political groups have been maintaining these divisions for their own use, but right now the killing must end, and if we need to be divided to discuss peace, then so be it. Maybe whatever peace we achieve as a divided nation will not be a lasting peace, but once the killing has stopped, then we can think about erasing the divisions and taking steps towards a lasting peace.

I invite Lohan and Kevin and anyone else for more discussion on this.

Colombo Remains (Surprisingly) Calm

2005-06-14T22:35:00.000-07:00

The JVP's rally in Colombo yesterday turned out to be quite a dud compared to what they were expecting. One JVPer I spoke to a couple of nights ago said they were quite confident they would be able to bring about 100,000 people to Colombo and make some waves. But they only managed to get about a tenth of that. Tamilnet says they had 10,000 people but the JVP says they had 25,000. I think the real figure would be somewhere around 15,000.

They marched from Campbell Park to the Lipton Circus and shouted their guts out and went back home. They didn't try to march to the president's house (like the pervious bunches of idiots did before they got hammered) because they had the sense to know the cops were just waiting for a chance to beat this shit out of them.

IMAGE FROM TAMILNET

But it's when you look at where these people came from that you begin to reallly develop a sense of what a dud their rally was. There were also several other anti-Joint Mechanism meetings organised in Colombo yesterday. The Jathika Hela Urumaya (JHU), the Patriotic National Movement (PNM) and the National Bhikku Front (NBF) all had their big meetings in different parts of the city in the morning. In the afternoon many of the people who had been bussed into the city for these meetings also moved over to the JVP rally. This is what made the JVP look like it had the numbers they had (which was not very much).

The only thing the JVP proved in Colombo yesterday is that they are not as popular as they think they are, especially now that they have threatened to pull out of the Government. The people would much rather stick around and see what the JVP does tonight (when the deadline to quit expires) than join them for a protest. They were simply unable to mobilise the kind of support they are used to, and they know it.

IMAGE FROM TAMILNET

So the big question in town is, whether the JVP is going to pull out of the Government. The deadline they set for themselves is midnight tonight.

Sirasa TV is actually taking bets on it. So far a lot of the people who have voted via SMS seem to think the JVP will quit. One person among those who predict it right stand to win a lot of money from Sirasa TV. They're doing it just to piss of the JVP which is something very high on their agenda, but it might be setting a very bad precedent.

Today the pro-JVP trade unions have organised a protest outside the Fort Railway Station and we don't know if it's going to turn violent. If it's anything like yesterday they'll just come and shout and go. But if they do decide to get smart like the guys last week then they'll try to march on the President's House to make a point and then they'll be beaten back.

Dambara Amila, the monk sitting outside the Fort Railway Station fasting is quite close to death say the doctors. But I don't really trust them. I met someone who was his gulping down a lime juice a few nights ago.

The docs say one of his kidneys packed up last night. But I don't think he's really going to die. He's going to get a little more sick, and then he's going to call it off. Let's look at the record of fatal fast-unto-death campaigns. Nil. No one in Sri Lanka's died fasting for a cause. And I don't think Dambara Amila has the balls to be the first.

(For those of you who are not familiar with the situation: the Government of Sri Lanka has proposed a Joint Mechanism to allow the rebel group LTTE to have a stake in the aid distribution process. Several ultra-nationalist groups are opposed to this agreement because they believe that it will help the LTTE's seperatist agenda. One of the groups opposed to the Joint Mechanism, the JVP is a key member of the ruling coalition and they have threatened to pull out of Government by midnight of the 14th of June 2005, if the President does not abandon the Joint Mechanism)

Picking Her Man...

2005-06-14T01:31:00.000-07:00

One of the questions I brought up in what I wrote about the Joint Mechanism yesterday was 'Who's going to represent the Muslims in the High Level Committee and in the Regional Committee?'. I speculated that this would be a problem, particularly picking someone for the one Muslim seat in the High Level Committee, because the Muslims cannot decide about leadership amongst themselves.

But it seems I was wrong. The Muslims never had to make that decision. Chandrika did it for them!

The gossip about town is her man Javed Yusuf is going to have the Muslim seat in the High Level Committee. He has been a staunch SLFP supporter for a very long time and has been very tight with the prez herself. As far as she is concerned he is very loyal to her and to the party and will fall in line very quickly if things were to go wrong.

Yet I do not believe he's not a idiot who's willing to be her puppet. He has shown some definete leadership skills in the past and (a few weaknesses as well that I have personally witnessed but) seems to be the best guy for the job. I think ol' Javed has already been informed of Chandrika's decision, and according to sources, Javed has already managed to win over the only person who could challenge his leadership - Rauff Hakeem.

Don't know anything about who's going to get the other seats.

Home Sweet Crumbling Down Home

2005-06-12T23:46:00.000-07:00

Last week a set of 25 permanent houses which had been built for people who lost their homes in the tsunami were completed and distributed in Hambantota. This was one of the first set of permanent houses to be distributed.

Permanent mind you, not temporary. These were not wood and tin shacks but proper cement and brick houses in which these people were supposed to spend the rest of their lives. So the people who were going to get the keys to these houses came from the camps where they had been living for almost 6 months.

They took the keys at a big ceremony that was organised to distribute the houses, inspected the houses after the event, and went back to their tents in the camps. No, they have not fallen in love with life in the tent. Nor have they become so attached to spending so much of their time in a tiny confined space shared with about a dozen others.

They thought the permanent houses which had been built for them were structurally unsound and not at all safe for living in. A reporter who was there are the event and went around to few of the houses later, said that you could poke holes in the cement walls with a pen. The sand that had been used in the construction had been sand from the beach. We asked a engineer why sand from the sea cannot be used in constructions and he told us that since they contain a lot of minerals and salts, it hampers the bonding process in the cement. So basically, when you use sea sand in a cement mixture to build a wall, the cement is not as half as strong as it would have been if you had used river sand, which is what is generally used. But river sand is more expensive that sea sand. And their using sea sand in the construction means they knew nothing about building houses, and decided to cut a few corners. Not good.

So the people who got the houses have been complaining about this but the police don't seem to be willing to take some action against the people who built the houses. And they are actually continuing to build more houses using the same sand.

So we get to the big question. Who built the houses? Here's a name. Chamal Rajapaksa. Why does that sounf familiar? Because he's the PM's brother!! Oh my god the PM's brother (who's also a bit of a politician himself) gave himself the contract to build the houses and messed up big time!!! No wonder the cops don't want to catch him!!!

I'll continue to watch this for some time, but for now, the people have no houses.

Seriously, on the Joint Mechanism...

2005-06-12T21:52:00.000-07:00

So, is the text put out by the Daily Mirror the text of the Joint Mechanism? I posted the whole thing earlier. Read it here. Let us for a moment assume that someone hasn't duped the Daily Mirror. The DM is a good newspaper, not perfect, but good, and I don't think you could dupe them as easily as Freddie Janz.

NOTE: I apologize to everyone at the Daily Mirror for having ripped off your article and published it online, but your website does not allow people to reads the news free and that is not a good thing. I believe this to be an important peice of information that people should have access to without paying for it. I'm sad to have done it, but don't regret it.

Now let me think about what I think about the document. Since the positives of any Joint Mechanism in which the Government and the LTTE work together are very obvious to anyone with one brain cell, let me nit pick and bring up some of the negatives here.

Let's see where groups like the JVP and the JHU will attack this document.

The first and most obvious thing that's going to make them say 'oh my god you're giving too much to those murdering tigers!' is the composition of the Regional Committee. 2 people nominated by the Government of Sri Lanka, 3 people nominated by the Muslim groups and 5 people nominated by the LTTE!

Now let's look at possible ethnic compostions.

The 5 people nominated by the LTTE will be Tamil. They will also most probably be Northern Tamil, since they don't really like the Eastern Tamils and have discriminated against them for ages.

The 3 people nominated by the Muslim groups will be Muslim, which is not really an ethnicity, but since we've pretended it's one for such a long time let's continue.

And then this leaves no option for the Government but to make their two representatives Sinhala, so that the Sinhala people of the east have some kind of representation. This, autromatically makes the Sri Lankan Government, the representative of the Sinhala people. STUPID!!!!

Why can't the LTTE and the Muslims have 3 seats each while the Government has 4, on the condition that 2 of the 4 nominated by the Government are representative of the Tamil people? But the LTTE would not like this would it? Because they claim to be the sole representatives of the Tamil people, and forcing the Government to develop an image of being representative only of the Sinhala people, the LTTE are furthering their own agenda.

I'll leave that there.

Now let's look at another problem. The Muslim groups. The High Level Committee will have one nominee from the Muslim groups and the Regional Committee will have 3 members nominated by the Muslim groups.

But who are these Muslim 'groups'? Do they represent the Muslim people of the country? Do they represent the tsunami-affected Muslim people of the East and South?

There are several Muslim political groups in Sri Lanka. Some of these are direct political groups regularly contesting Parliamentary elections. The Sri Lanka Muslim Congress led by Rauff Hakeem and the group that broke away from them, the National Unity Alliance, led by Ferial Ashroff. There are a few smaller groups too, but these are the main ones. Other than this, the United National Party, the People's Alliance and the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna all have their own Muslim politicians who work under the party agenda. Then there are all the Jamiathul Ulamas and other Islamic religious groups who also have a fair bit of political clout. There are also a significant number of Islamic clerics who work outside these groups. And then there are also Islamic Fundamentalist groups in the East and in Puttlam. But let's not even think about them right now.

So, none of these groups work together on a regular basis. Sometimes one or two of them come together for certain causes, but when it comes to making a decision which will affect the Muslim people of the East as much as the Joint Mechanism will, they just can't work together.

And how're you going to avoid a big fight about who gets to pick the guy for the seat in the High Level Committee? I'd like to see this one settled. Oh boy, it's going to be another string of press conferences by Rauff Hakeem and Ferial Ashraff and mud slinging going back and forth about who's the real representative of the Muslim people of Sri Lanka.

These are just two of the problems I see with the Joint Mechanism draft up front. Let me read it a bit more and hopefully I will be able to write something more. There are also certain complications in the bits about safeguards and minority protections about how things get proposed and how they can be shot down in the Regional Committee. But that needs a bit more thinking.

Joint Mechanism Cover Blown?

2005-06-12T20:52:00.000-07:00

The Daily Mirror this morning led with an 'exclusive' containing what they claim to be the 'full draft' of the Post Tsunami Operational Management Structure (PTOMS), better known as the Joint Mechanism.

No one has come forward to either verify or dispute their claim that this is indeed what the PTOMS is going to look like. That may happen at some point today.

For now I'm just going to republish stuff from the article here. The Daily Mirror site does not allow is because you have to register and sign in to read the news. I believe information like this should be free, even online and be available for discussion anywhere. So here goes.

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The Daily Mirror 13/06/05
Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) for the establishment of a Post-tsunami Operational Management Structure (the 'Joint Mechanism')

Synopsis of the Draft

Preamble
The preambular clauses set out the rationale for the formation of the Joint Mechanism, principally:

the urgent humanitarian need to effectively deliver relief, rehabilitation and reconstruction to the Sinhala, Tamil and Muslim communities affected by the Tsunami;
the need for Sinhala, Tamil and Muslim to work together to accomplish this task; and
the need for an equitable allocation of post-tsunami funds to all tsunami-affected areas of Sri Lanka, based on accepted needs-assessments.

Structure
The Joint Mechanism consists of three tiers:

A High Level Committee for the Tsunami affected areas of Sri Lanka;
A Regional Committee for the Six Districts in the Northern and Eastern provinces affected by the tsunami (Ampara, Batticaloa, Jaffna, Kilinochchi, Mullaitivu and Trincomalee); and
District Committees, one for each of the six districts.

Geographic Scope

The Joint Mechanism is restricted in it's area of operation to the land area affected by the tsunami that is within 2 kilometers of the coastline.
The MoU will not change the terms of the Ceasefire Agreement between the Government of Sri Lanka and the LTTE, which will remain in effect.

Non-Discrimination

The MoU prohibits discrimination against any person on the basis of grounds such as ethnic orgin, language or religion.

Period of Operation

The MoU states that the Joint Mechanism will only operate for one year, unless both parties mutually agree to extend it.

High-Level Committee

Functions:
The High-Level Committee's primary function will be to formulate policies regarding the allocation and disbursement of donor funds for the tsunami-affected areas.

The High Level Committee will also have an advisory and monitoring role.

Composition:
The High Level Committee will have three members - one nominee by the Government of Sri Lanka, one nominee by Muslim parties and one nominee by the LTTE.

Observers:
Two nominees from the international donor community will attend the meetings as observers.

Safeguards and Minority Protections:
Consensus between the three members is required before any decision is made.

If consensus cannot be reached, any member can, upon 14 days notice, suspend their co-operation in the High Level Committee

Regional Committee

Function:
The Regional Committee will be responsible for prioritizing, approving, managing and monitoring the implementation of projects.

Composition:
The Regional Committee will have ten members - two nominees by the Government of Sri Lanka, three nominees by Muslim parties and five nominees by the LTTE. The MoU states that the Committee should have a proper gender balance.

Observers:
Two nominees from the international donor community will attend the meetings as observers. Other observers may also be invited.

Safeguards and Minority Protections:
If at least two members of the Regional Committe acknowledge that a decision of the Regional Committee would have an adverse effect on a minority group, then approval of that decision will rerquire seven members of the Regional Committee. This provision protects the Muslim and Sinhala communities from any proposal by the Regional Committee that is, in their opinion, harmful to their interests.

Subject to the protection above, two members of the Regional Committee may request redress when a proposal submitted to the Regional Committe by a District Committee is rejected; consequently, rejection of that proposal will require seven members of the Regional Committee.

This provision allows proposals put forward by District Committees (which may have a greater representation of a particular ethnic group than the Regional Committee) to be passed by the Regional Committee without the necessary consent of the LTTE nominees.

Regional Fund:
A regional fund will be set up to make available funds for relief, rehabilitation, reconstruction and development in the six districts.

A multilateral agency will serve as the custodian of the fund.

District Committee

Functions:
The District Committee will identify needs, receive and generate project proposals, and monitor the progress of the projects.

Composition:
The District Committees that are currently established and functioning in the six districts will be used in this role. However the Committee will ensure adequate Muslim represntation and a proper gender balance.

Comments

Relationship with other development activity:
Normal Government-financed development in the Northern and Eastern provinces will continue as before, including in the six districts, in addition to what the Joint Mechanism does.

Role of Treasury:
The function of actually allocating and disbursing the donor funds will be retained by the treasury; the High Level Committee only formulates the policies regarding these.

In addition the Regional Fund administered by the multilateral agency will be set up by an agreement between the multilateral agency and the Government of Sri Lanka. The LTTE, as a non-state entity, cannot be party to such an agreement.

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Who Wants To Be A Minister?

2005-06-08T21:12:00.000-07:00

So why did Mangala resign as Minister of Information and Media? That is the question.

First let's look at what we know for sure.

Mangala would not have resigned if Chandrika had not made him resign. He's too greedy for that, and he likes the power being MoIM gives him.

Beyond this we know nothing for certain. So why would Chandrika make him resign?

Because she's pissed off with Mangala for

being pals with the JVP
allowing the JVP to creep into the State Media
being pals with Tara De Mel who's not entirely in Chandrika's good books now after the whole PIU fiasco with the school principals.

We know Mangala went to London for a couple of days for some kiss-and-make-up with CBK while he was in Paris, but apparently the plan didn't work and she's still more than a little pissed with him.

Now what does she get when Mangala resigns? An empty MoIM seat. Now what is she going to do with this seat? MoIM is a big seat, and there are a lot of people who want it badly.

So will she

give it to someone in the JVP to keep them in the coalition? (unlikely)
keep it for herself so she can weild the state media when the time comes for her unavoidable powergrab? (unlikely)
give it to someone in the UNP and bring them over to her side so she can keep her Government even if the JVP leaves?

According to what we have heard the third one seems to be the most possible. When I spoke to a senior friend in the JVP yesterday, he told me that a lot of things were going on and that he couldn't tell me anything over the phone. But Somawansa has said that he will release the JVP's plan to overthrow the Government tomorrow. He he :) Plan to overthrow the Government MY ASS!!

The way things look these are my predictions for what's going to happen:

Chandrika signs the PTOMS (Post Tsunami Operational Management Structure - that's the new name for the Joint Mechanism) next week. Yipee!!
Chadrika asks the Somawansa to take the plan and roll it up nice and tight and shove it up his ass. The JVP have no option but to bugger off.
A few key UNP MP's come over from the UNP and occupy the 4 Ministerial Portfolios left by the JVP quitting the Government. Someone big from the UNP gets MoIM.
The woman goes for another Parliamentary election and tries to make a 2/3 majority in Parliament again.
Sobitha rants and raves about the PTOMS but gives up his fast and goes back to being a bigot monk.

Even if I am wrong (which I probably will be), the next few days are going to be fun...

Mahinda Rajapaksa

2005-06-08T20:43:00.000-07:00

I have not been able to make a post in quite some time because blogger's been giving me hard time.

Even though I said I'd dedicate a post to Mahinda I now realise I don't know enough about the man to do it. I just have a gut feeling that he's a good guy. I met him last Saturday. No you asses! I do not know him personally! I was just in the same room as him :)

images stolen from mahindarajapaksa.com

But here's what I do know.

I know a few people that he's treated badly, and minor involvement in some illegal logging activities in the South. He's also dished out a few contracts to friends and family, had a few cops transferred to the North when they pissed him off.

But when you think about everything all the othere have done, Mahinda seems like a saint. And he has a very nice smile :) Kinda like a Don. He's got a pleasant smile and look about him, but you know he's not the kinda guy you wanna cross. I know at least one woman who has a major thing for him. So the appeal's not fake.

According to what I've heard he doesn't screw around. He's also had very long tight relationships with many of the grassroots level civil society groups in the South as well as in Colombo, and this is something that I believe has influenced the way he politicks.

He may have had more than three people killed. That I really don't know. And he's not family, though I guess there must be some relationship since all the people from the South are related to each other in some way.

He has an official website. Check it out.

That's all folks :)

FYI: What Morquendi thinks about politics in the South

2005-06-02T00:32:00.000-07:00

Just for the record, if someone wants to know about my politics (very briefly) :

I like Mahinda Rajapakse, I think he should be our next president.

I kinda like Chandrika, but it's on and off, sometimes I think she's ok, sometimes I think she's nuts. But person to person, she's got presence.

I don't like the JVP, and think Wimal needs help. I don't think murderers should be in Parliament.

I don't like the JHU, monks shouldn't be in politics.

As for the UNP, they are no longer relevant. They just don't get Sri Lanka or Sri Lankans. Ranil is a good diplomat, not a good politician.

These are my personal opinions, and have no impact on the work I do. Actually I wrote them down because I want someone to argue with and tell me why I'm wrong. I like getting pissed off when people tell me how wrong I am.

I'll share my personal opinions on the LTTE and the ethnic conflict later.

Ninthavur

2005-06-01T23:03:00.000-07:00

We have a report from Ninthavur in the Amparai District about anothe case like the one that we reported from Galabodawatta in the Galle District.

The Government officials in Ninthavur plan to buy a coconut plantation for about 1700,000 Rupees (that's 17 lakhs) an acre. This is rather overpriced for land in that area but according to a source the land being sold is owned by several persons who are very close to a local politician. And the owners have gotten their friend to approve the valuation which puts this plot of land at more than it's market price.

So they are going to sell this land to the Government for resettling the Tsunami displaced people and then make a profit in the process.

But why did I say this was a story like the Galabodawatta tragedy? Because this is prime coconut land, and the Government will clear the whole plantation, uprooting over 1000 coconut trees. Again, just as in Galabodawatta, the people who worked on this plantation (mostly informal labour) will receive no compensation. The owners of the plantation don't really care because they're sitting in Colombo and making a profit on the deal.

Intelligence Operative Shot Dead AGAIN!

2005-05-30T20:43:00.000-07:00

An intelligence operative of the Sri Lanka Army was this morning at about 7.50 a.m. (SL Time) in Polhengoda, Colombo 05. Maj Nizam Muthalif, a senior military intelligence official sustained heavy injuries and was taken to a nearby hospital. Though police asked the media not to disclose the hospital to which to which the wounded person was taken, they later admitted that he was dead on admission.

IMAGES SHAMELESSLY STOLEN FROM BBC

Update: I corrected the name. The cop who spoke to me in the morning was a moron who couldn't spell.

Here's a link to the BBC story.

We Are Family!

2005-05-21T04:36:00.000-07:00

Look, I know this really shouldn't be a surprise.

But someone (thanks G) tells me that many of the contracts for reconstruction of permanent houses for Tsunami victims in the Hambantota district have been given to Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapakse's brother.

We do have someone out there at the end of next week and I will verify this. But this is really nothing to be surprised about. Come on, I'd be surprised if Mahinda's family were not profiting on the work going on in Hambantota.

Also we have someone going back to the Galabodawatta estate in a few days so you'll know what's going on there right now.

JVP Hatton Office Raided

2005-05-18T22:21:00.000-07:00

I didn't see this in the papers today so I don't think it's broken yet. Or maybe no one's interested in knowing what went down, but it seems the JVP's Hatton office was raided by the police sometime yesterday or the day before yesterday. I have been trying to contact someone over there for more information but have yet been unable to do so. Sorry.

It seems there was a protest in one of the estates about some labor related issue and the JVP head honcho for the area had been involved in it. But now it seems the JVP is trying to play it down and say it was just a routine search. According to what I heard the cops didn't even have a warrant!

I guess all those JVP buggers got used to cops jumping into their houses and offices in the late 80s :)

But right now they don't want to create a stir because they don't want to piss of H.E. (that's Her Excellency you asses!). They would generally put their foot down and say they are a part of the Government and they can't be treated like this blah blah. But now seems to be not-the-right-time for them.

You'll hear more about this (if there's anything more to say) when I do.

The Ampara STF Walmart

2005-05-18T20:05:00.000-07:00

Someone who came in from Ampara yesterday told me about how the UN officers in the district had found a very large warehouse (about half the size of a football field as I was told) which contains dry rations that had been transported to the area for distribution to the Tsunami affected people.

Apparently the STF which is supposed to be providing security to the warehouse has been using it like their personal supermarket for the past few months! No they don't go around there with shopping carts, but you know what I mean.

Apparently, last week the UN officials in the District spoke to the District Secretary about this problem. They were quite pissed off that the STF was using aid that had been sent to the country to be distributed to the displaced people. It seems the Secretary admitted that there is a serious problem and has now agreed to let the WFP handle the warehouse and distribution of the goods.

According to what I heard the handover is supposed to happen on the coming monday.

Oh my, I guess those poor murdering bastards in the STF will just have to go back to their rations!