Groundviews was read well over 22,000 times from 1 – 9 September, when content and debates around the 18th Amendment to the constitution reached their peak. Over 170 comments were featured in the site during this week alone, totalling around 65,000 words. In addition to the content on the site, our Twitter feed posted well over one hundred and fifty updates during the course of the week.
Content on Groundviews was republished or referred to by the Sunday Leader, the New York Times, Le Monde Diplomatique dozens of other local and international Twitter accounts of leading journalists and others, Livemint.com published by the Wall Street Journal in India and a range of other blogs and websites.
Around one hundred highlights from our tweets anchored to the 18th amendment are now archived in four parts.
A full list of content on the 18th Amendment published on Groundviews can be accessed by clicking here, which includes podcasts, videos, photos and text, some of which were reduced in collaboration with Vikalpa. Other content includes statements from Leftist parties and opposition to the 18th amendment by civil society, including law students, academics, lawyers and citizens from the East.
Groundviews published for the first time in Sri Lankan media a web-based interactive timeline to highlight various promises and statements made by the President and government over abolishing the office of the Executive President. In The pathetic capitulation of the organised Left in Sri Lanka the site catalogued clear pronouncements by Left political parties against the present form and continuation of the Executive Presidency available on the web to flag the hypocrisy of leading Leftist politicians.
More than any event in the past, our Facebook fan page, independent of the debate on this website, also generated a lot of commentary amongst its 1,600+ members.
In bearing witness and recording dissent, Groundviews was acutely aware that whatever little informed and principled debate and discussion on the 18th amendment was limited to a few able to access sites such as this, the English mainstream print media and a few independent websites in Sinhala and Tamil (e.g. Perambara, Vikalpa, Vikalpa’s YouTube video channel). Responding to the comments left by a reader on the site, Sanjana Hattotuwa, the founding Editor of the site noted,
“…but even as such does flag the question as to why so few people around Sri Lanka are agitating against such a harmful amendment. I know of no protest movement – spontaneous of party political in nature – outside of Colombo against the 18th amendment. When I was asked this question in the morning by BBC Radio, I put it down to the general apathy in our country, which has more voters than it has citizens.
A timeline of duplicity: Promises to abolish the Executive Presidency records Susil Premajayantha as saying “75% of the people in rural areas are not worried about the Executive Presidency or the 17th Amendment”. This applies to the 18th amendment as well. With mainstream media still fearful of robustly interrogating the implications of the 18th amendment for what they might have to face once it is passed, a supine opposition facing an enduring crisis in its leadership, NGOs that have never really galvanised public opinion, much less sustained public support and with politicians who are opportunistic and with a marked lack of principled politics, one can argue that the President merely uses what is fundamentally a dysfunctional democracy for parochial gain. Hence for example the genuine belief on the streets, and outside fora such as this, that the 18th amendment will actually hold, inter alia, the President more accountable to Parliament and that elections henceforth can actually be conducted in a free and fair manner.
This is why I appreciated very much reading Resisting the Loss of Citizenship in Sri Lanka, for simple actions citizens can take against this government long after the furore (or is it führer?!) over the 18th amendment has passed.”
After the 18th Amendment was passed by parliament on the 8th, we questioned via our last tweets for the day whether Sri Lanka was in fact a breeding ground for authoritarianism and noted that what we published during the course of the week was a hard to erase and courageous record of critical dissent and principled opposition to a heinous constitutional amendment.
Though these were penned in the context of the 18th amendment, they undergird a vital reflection and debate that needs to ensure Sri Lanka’s democracy is not hostage to the whims of any Executive President, be it the incumbent, or someone far worse in the future.