Archive for September, 2008

A short note from the Vanni

By Witness I traveled to the Vanni on 17th September, with the hope of getting a lorry load of foodstuff from Vavuniya to Vanni, but it was impossible, as the Killinochchhi Government Agent’s convoy had been stopped at that time. From Omanthai exit – entry point to Killinochchi, the situation was very different than when I had traveled in the previous months. There were no people on the road up to the Killinochchi hospital. As I approached Murikandy I observed that everything was burnt and smashed. While I was passing this place last week, it was full of people and the place looked very busy, but now it has become a no man’s land. The people have vacated from there due to bombing and shelling and the shops were also destroyed. There was heavy traffic in the Killinochchi town, as people were crossing the A9 to Vattakachi and Tharampuram areas. Hospitals are full of injured people, including in the outer…

Continue reading »
  • 27 Sep, 2008
  • 0 Comment
  • Peace and Conflict

Email and content sharing upgrades on Groundviews

rssfwd

Groundviews is pleased to announce improvements to its back-end email subscription service. You can now enter any email address and have new articles emailed to you, in full, as soon as they are posted on the site. You can sign up by entering your email here. We’ve also made it easier for you to share any article on the site. At the end of each article, hovering the mouse over the bookmark banner allows you to add the content to your bookmarks, share on numerous social networking sites including Facebook and MySpace, share on Digg and other news sites.

Continue reading »

Media ‘Sakvithis’ in the dock in Sri Lanka?

In the past week, the name ‘Sakvithi’ has been causing ripples in Sri Lankan society and creating numerous news headlines — for all the wrong reasons. Sakvithi Ranasinghe, a populist tutor of English turned millionaire businessman, has fled the country after duping thousands of unsuspecting people to deposit their life’s savings in his investment firm. Media reports have variously placed the number of victims between 1,500 and 4,000 — and some estimates place the total worth of his loot to be a whopping Rs. Nine billion (over USD 83.5 million). Since it broke around September 21, the scandal has consumed a good deal of newspaper space and broadcast time. Editorialists and TV pundits have been having a field day, some simply unable to resist the temptation to say ‘I told you so!’. One editorial reminded us that Sakvithi means king of kings — and asked if we should call this racketeer the king of conmen or Con King? He might…

Continue reading »
  • 27 Sep, 2008
  • 0 Comment
  • Advocacy,
    Colombo

Education, Citizenship and Development

Siri Hettige Professor of Sociology University of Colombo Education is recognized the world over as a means of achieving wider social and economic objectives. Modern education systems are designed in such a way as to facilitate the achievement of such wider objectives.  On the one hand, we provide  youngsters with a basic education that enables them to fit into a society that is based on modern ideas and values so that they eventually become active citizens of a modern state. It is also in the context of general education that some of the traditional divisions in society are relegated to the background making it possible for young members of society to forge bonds that transcend their primordial identities. On the other hand, education is also widely accepted in modern societies as a means of imparting knowledge and skills that are vital for social and economic development. Such knowledge and skills can range from very basic social skills to sophisticated scientific…

Continue reading »
  • 24 Sep, 2008
  • 5 Comments
  • Colombo,
    Education

Corruption in the Education sector

People don’t realize that there is as much corruption in the private education sector as in the public sector for the corrupt counter party that offers the bribe or corrupt payment is in the private sector. There is corruption in all its forms- favoritism, nepotism, bribery and influence peddling in the education sector, which is now taking first place in the Corruption Ranking. Corruption occurs among many groups of actors from policy makers at the government level to providers of education at the school level, such as teachers and principals. Corrupt practices in the educational sphere can include bribes, illegal fees for admissions and examinations, examination frauds, preferential promotions and placements for teachers and charging students for ‘tutoring services’ to cover the curriculum needed to pass mandatory examinations and that should have been taught in the classroom. Illegal practices in textbook procurement, meal provision, and infrastructure contracting and so on are other malpractices. Educationists point out those students who are…

Continue reading »

Is Sri Lanka China’s Georgia?

Seven years after 9/11, we’re in between world orders. And winds of systemic change grip all nooks of the globe: the overstretch of America, geopolitical quicksand which is the Middle East, the benign growth of Brazil and Japan, rise of China and India, resurgence of Russia, expansion of EU and NATO, petrodiplomacy of Venezuela, nonviolent nuclear politics of Iran and North Korea. In this changing world order, for whom is the geostrategic asset of Lanka more important: China or U.S.-India? If Eelam IV’s end date pushes well into 2009, is U.S.-India intervention plausible? World order changes imply a post-Bush II America, in addition to continuing its “War on Terror” in the Middle East, will seek to reinvigorate its engagement policy toward Latin America and South Asia to counterbalance the economic and political expansion of the China-Russia axis in Europe and Central Asia. Projecting American power in South Asia is likely to lead to increased U.S.-India engagement in Lanka. This engagement…

Continue reading »

Remembering A J Gunawardana: A creative public intellectual

AJ Gunawardana and Lester James Peiris

AJ Gunawardana and Lester James Peiris September 2008 marks 10 years since the sudden death of Dr Ariyasena Jayasekera (A J) Gunawardana, an outstanding university teacher, writer/journalist, cinema personality and art critic. When he failed to regain consciousness from open heart surgery, at the relatively young age of 65, we lost a rare intellectual who had his feet firmly on the ground, and constantly built bridges linking media, culture and society. AJ’s academic and professional accomplishments are well known and remembered. Having started as a journalist with Daily News, where he was a noted arts and culture correspondent in the 1960s, he went on to obtain a doctorate in performing arts from New York University. Upon return, he pursued a career in academia as a professor of English at the Vidyodaya University (later University of Sri Jayawardenapura) and was closely associated with film and media education. He chaired a Presidential Committee of Inquiry on the Sri Lankan film industry, which…

Continue reading »

Dhamma or Violence in Sri Lanka

“I write this article as a tribute to my late father, K.S. Gunaratne, a teacher, mentor and a true pacifist”   A few weeks ago while in the Uda Walawe area I met an opposition party MP who had come to help in the provincial election campaign for the local candidates.  As I listened to the interesting stories he was relating, I could not help but be amazed as to what we have come to accept as normal, even if the behavior was total unacceptable to civilized society.  He told me of the impending violence, the gangs of thugs coming into the area to support the government party and at the same time how they were mobilizing their own thugs to respond.   It was related as if it was normal to have this kind of boorish behavior from the so called leaders of this nation. So, we wonder why we are still lagging far behind in our system of justice,…

Continue reading »

Corporate Scandals with Impunity

One of our top listed companies which was picked for a top award by a Business Magazine was recently faulted by the Supreme Court in the case filed by Mr Vasudeva Nanayakkara re the privatization of Lanka Marine Services. The bunkering business was a government monopoly carried out by a government owned company- Lanka Marine Services. The government had decided to privatize it but not before liberalizing the bunkering business which was to be done in one year. The Cabinet had decided to recommend the issue of 3 licenses to carry on the business. But the Chairman of PERC had decided to privatize it before such liberalization. The Chairman Dr P.B Jayasundera says the Supreme Court in its judgment “instead devised and carried out without any authority of the Cabinet a process for the sale of the Lanka Marine Services while the monopoly was still intact.” According to the findings of the Supreme Court the Chairman BOI had manipulated the…

Continue reading »

Hearts and Minds: the forced exit of humanitarian agencies from the Vanni in Sri Lanka

The day before yesterday, the government of Sri Lanka ordered all humanitarian organisations to cease all operations and remove all personnel (except Vanni residents) and assets from the LTTE controlled part of the Vanni. The question this observer wishes to explore is why the Government of Sri Lanka after ensuring the welfare of its citizens in the LTTE controlled Vanni for the last 18 years, is now is renegading on its responsibilities, even on the verge of an apparent victory. The Government of Sri Lanka, to its credit, has treated its people, many who are forcibly kept in LTTE controlled areas, as citizens; therefore, it provided them with normal government services (education, healthcare) and also emergency aid (rations, non-food relief items). Furthermore, the government, realising that it could not ensure all services were adequately provided, requested humanitarian organizations to fill necessary gaps. These gaps were often created in emergency situations where the government did not have the immediate resources or…

Continue reading »

The Politics of Winning in the Vanni

Fascists launch a final surge before they lose wars. The Kamikaze pilots were a last card against the US fleet. The Nazis developed the Tiger tank, launched the V-1 and V-2 rockets and fought the Battle of the Bulge in the closing stages of the war, when they had already lost in the strategic sense. The battle of Iwo Jima is the classic model of a fanatical, suicidal, dug-in fighting force defending its home turf against a final onslaught. It was the toughest possible going but the US Marines won. It is only to be expected that the Tigers would offer the stiffest possible resistance in their Ithiyabhoomi or ‘heartland’. In their best case scenario they would turn Kilinochchi-Mullaitivu into a meat-grinder and then launch tactical counteroffensives which could develop into strategic ones, reversing their losses. In a more modest scenario, they would simply hold on until the combination of casualties, propaganda about IDPs, international and regional political developments (USA…

Continue reading »
  • 2 Sep, 2008
  • 4 Comments
  • Advocacy,
    Colombo

Women and politics in Sri Lanka: The challenges to meaningful participation

In an earlier article on Groundviews titled ‘Half a Democracy‘,  the author referred to the virtual absence of women in political institutions in Sri Lanka, and their resultant inability to define  politics and influence decision making in a context of continuing conflict, soaring prices, and widespread human rights abuses by the state. I want to add that the main obstacle to equal political representation of women in political institutions in Sri Lanka is POLITICAL PARTIES – their lack of commitment to give nominations to women, the lack of internal party democracy and the present political culture perpetuated by parties. Following more than a decade of women’s activism on the abysmal numbers of women in political institutions, it is true that the two major political parties now feel obliged to pay lip service to increasing women’s representation. Recent election manifestos of both the SLFP and the UNP make promises about increasing nomination of women candidates and implementing a reservation or quota…

Continue reading »

Understanding electoral results in Sri Lanka: Beyond winners and losers

graph-cmev

Introduction The United People’s Freedom Party (UPFA) claimed its second consecutive provincial electoral victory on the 24th of August by winning a clear majority of seats in the North Central and Sabaragamuwa Province.  This election was more competitive than the previous Eastern Provincial Council election,  where the government managed to get the Tamil and Muslim votes by  their crafty handling of Pillayan and Hisbulla.  Unlike in the Eastern province, the government contested in the North Central and Sabaragamuwa provinces with relatively unpopular politicians and more importantly on a platform where the opposition politicians too enjoyed almost equal access to votes. However, election results proved that the desperate United National Party, has once again failed to shake up  the electoral support of the ruling coalition despite introducing new celebrities for the chief ministerial  candidacy. The third party that secured a representation in these provincial councils, the JVP  is experiencing the bitter truth of politics; the government that they brought into power…

Continue reading »

About Groundviews

Located at the Centre for Policy Alternatives in Colombo, Sri Lanka, Groundviews is a citizen journalism website that uses a range of genres and media to highlight critical perspectives on governance, reconciliation, human rights, the arts and literature, democracy and other issues. The site has won two international awards, including the prestigious Manthan Award South Asia in 2009. The grand jury's evaluation of the site noted, "What no media dares to report, Groundviews publicly exposes. It's a new age media for a new Sri Lanka... Free media at it's very best!"

cezarneaga.eu
canakkale canakkale canakkale balik tutma search canakkale vergi mevzuati bagimsiz denetim vergi mevzuati ozurlu engelliler