Archive for the ‘Colombo’

The Power of Graciousness: Treading the middle-path in post-war Sri Lanka

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Photo courtesy The Economist, Truth and consequences I am not only a pacifist but a militant pacifist. I am willing to fight for peace. Nothing will end war unless the people themselves refuse to go to war. Einstein This government inherited a very complex challenge with the LTTE so focused on the mission of creating Eelam using any means possible, with terror as its central strategy. At the same time, I do not stand in judgment on Prabhakran for starting this movement as he probably had just cause at the time and I even do not judge the use of force and violence to make a point, like Mandela did to get the attention of the Apartheid government in South Africa of their unjust policies.   I do, however, abhor what Prabhakaran did as a ruthless leader who did not value any life in his quest to achieve his goal. LTTE had clearly showed that they were not interested in talking…

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  • 31 Jul, 2011
  • 17 Comments
  • Colombo,
    Development

De-globalisation: A paradigm for sustainable development?

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Illustration by Claudio Munoz, courtesy the Economist “Do not look a gifted horse in the mouth”  – So goes an old adage. The import of this statement would seem to be: except a gift with gratitude and do not question its value for after all, it is a gift. It would seem that we have as a nation accepted many gifts in this spirit. A fleet of tractors or a thousand tonnes of pesticide does indeed seem to be a generous expression of friendship. These offers are made by the donors in a genuine effort to help the least privileged nations and our accepted in gratitude with the hope that these gifts will help lighten our national load. But, it may be time for us to question such gifts however well intended they may be. A case in point is the “miracle rice” that gives an immediate manifold increase in crop over traditional varieties. This would seem indeed a welcomed…

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In conversation with Capt. Elmo Jayawardena

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Capt. Elmo Jayawardena took to the skies when Sri Lanka’s commercial aviation was, to coin a phrase, just taking off. He is today known for his writing published in mainstream media, often anchored to his work with Candle Aid Lanka. Elmo went through an impoverished childhood, and his success today as a philanthropist was achieved through singular dedication and hard work. We talk about his first job, how he got into the airline industry and the hardships he had to endure when growing up. Remarkably, Elmo is also an award winning writer. His book Sam’s Story won the Graetian Prize in 2001 and is one of the successful books Vijitha Yapa has ever published. We talk at length about the characters and leitmotifs in Sam’s Story, and what compelled Elmo to write it. Candle Aid’s work is clearly Elmo’s chief interest in Sri Lanka, and we talk about what made him begin, its nature and what he expects is the…

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Towards a Common Ground of Understanding: A response to “Aachcharya”

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Photo credit Sri Lanka Guardian Whether it be fleshing out Sangakkara’s “modern, pluralist worldview of unity in diversity”, the intersection of identity and race relations, the identity crises facing young generations of mixed parentage, or the vital facets of a Sri Lankan identity , the Groundviews contributors have done an exemplary job of critiquing the vision of a “Sri Lankan” identity no longer tied to caste, culture, ethnicity, language, or religion. While I would have liked to stay out of this conversation (for reasons outlined later) Aachcharya’s Back to Basics: The Need for an Honest Conversation About ‘Sri Lankanness’ and ‘Sri Lankan identity’, though cogently argued, unfortunately misrepresented my views. Aachcharya’s Misconceptions Aachcharya is inaccurate in his assertion that I believe that Sri Lankan identity is progressive and other identities are regressive. More precisely, I believe Sri Lankan identity should comprise of a primary multi-plural component that co-exists with important secondary components. For the sake of this article, lets call this the “soft…

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Chandrika Kumaratunga’s Morning After Thoughts and The Local Authorities’ Elections in Sri Lanka

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Photo courtesy Eranga Jayawardena/The Associated Press President Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga always wrote well and spoke eloquently when she resisted a propensity to be overly loquacious. While her recent peroration contains many intelligent and valid points, her credibility and their validity comes into serious question because she is not an independent observer or a reformist leader –in-waiting, but precisely a two term president who won by record majorities, and was indeed the immediate predecessor of the present incumbent.  Most ironic is the fact that many of the ills she identifies or attributes to present day Sri Lanka stem directly from her political sins of omission and commission. What is conspicuously lacking in her discourse, is any sign of reflexivity; of self-criticism. My criticism pertains to four vital spheres (including those of her current concern), namely viable devolution, a less discriminatory society, the role of radical Sinhala nationalism/ultra-nationalism and of course defeating terrorism and reunifying the Sri Lankan state. Having been elected…

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Justice Palakidnar Memorial Oration: Economic Development, Inclusive Societies And Peace

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[Editors note: Full text of speech delivered at the Justice Palakidnar Memorial Oration in Colombo, Sri Lanka on 24 July 2011 by former President of Sri Lanka, Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga. Photo from Club de Madrid profile. There's an interesting discussion on the speech on DBS Jeyaraj's blog. As he succinctly avers, "I do not know what impact her words would make but I do hope that it would embolden like-minded others now keeping silent to speak out".] We are all aware of what is meant by Development and Peace, and somewhat familiar with the term inclusive societies. While Development implies many aspects, it involves mainly the action of building physical or economic  and social infrastructure, as well as developing human resources – highways; transport; electricity and water supply, communications, housing, providing incentives for the development of agriculture, industries and commerce as well as health services, education and skills development and indeed employment. This is not all.  Development also means Good…

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Back to Basics: The Need for an Honest Conversation About ‘Sri Lankanness’ and ‘Sri Lankan identity’

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Photo credit Sri Lanka Guardian Groundviews pages are engaged in an important debate on the nature of Sri Lankan identity, a debate that is not new but rehearsed as a response primarily to Kumar Sangakkara’s Cowdrey lecture and to a lesser extent the exchange that I[1] had with Indi Samarajiva on Al Jazeera stream. Less than 10 minutes on Al Jazeera’s stream was obviously insufficient to articulate my views on ‘Sri Lankanness’ as a matter of belongingness and identity. I take this space to elaborate on my views on this debate. Let me first reiterate what I said in the interview. For me the political and social content of the ‘Sri Lankan’ identity in the island’s political praxis is one that identifies with a particular ideology – Sinhala Buddhist nationalism. Note that in making this claim that I do not necessarily link Sri Lankan identity’s exclusivity with persons or even a particular community – I refer to an ideology. (This…

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Holes in the UN Secretary General’s Panel of Experts Report: Examining the Probable Alternate Events

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Last week, I attended a seminar conducted by the Colombo-based Marga Institute, a think tank devoted to studying and influencing human development in Sri Lanka. Marga is in the process of putting together a review of the UN Secretary General’s advisory panel report on Sri Lanka (the well-known Darusman Report), which will analyze several aspects of this document, including its legal credibility; the manner in which it makes its allegations and narrates the series of events that made up the final stages of the war; the recommendations of the report; and, very importantly, the impact all of this will have on the reconciliation process in Sri Lanka, via accountability and restorative justice. The seminar itself was to elaborate on the thinking behind the review, discuss the draft, and possibly include the conclusions of such discussions in the final review. The seminar was therefore conducted in a series of panel discussions, each looking at a different aspect of the Darusman Report,…

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Cricketing controversies

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I have always been a cricket fan.  Cricket turns me into a flag waving, national anthem singing patriot and believer in the power of cricket to unite, to overcome all that is ugly and divisive in our country.  As a child I even collected newspaper articles about my favourite cricketers which I pasted neatly in large exercise books.  I remember reading with pride what foreign cricketing correspondents had to say about Sri Lanka’s first test match at Lords, about the spirit of Sri Lankan cricket, the gentleness, humour and courtesy of our cricket team; I was convinced that Sri Lankan cricket and cricketers could do no wrong.  I have no illusions about this: these are clearly my latent middle class, romantic, public school impulses that years of exposure to a harsher and more realistic world have till recently failed to completely subdue. Lately though my love affair with cricket (perhaps in best tradition of all great love affairs) has taken…

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TNA MP Suresh Premachandran on the result of the Local Government elections

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Photo from Wikipedia Updated, 27 July 2011: Listen to exclusive interview with Suresh Premachandran here. This statement on the results of the recently concluded local government elections (covered in detail by Groundviews here) was issued originally in Tamil by Tamil National Alliance MP Suresh Premachandran. Download PDF here. Only brief excerpts in English have been picked up by domestic and international media. In order to stimulate wider debate over its content and points, we’ve translated Premachandran’s full statement in English. Though we’ve checked it for accuracy twice, a note from our translator is worth keeping in mind, “The meaning [of the statement] is captured though every subtle nuance and emphasis is not. The entire thing is written in free flowing passive voice Tamil which while lyrical, is difficult to translate.” We also encourage our readers to suggest better translations of key phrases and words through comments. In a closed email exchange with colleagues, we wondered if a more conciliatory approach,…

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Post-Conflict Peace-Building: A Gradualist Perspective For Evolutionary Reform

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Photo credit: Eranga Jayawardena / AP, taken from Christian Science Monitor In his most famous and controversial work, Prof Samuel Huntington listed Sri Lanka’s armed conflict as an example of his key category of ‘fault line wars’. The war is over but the fault lines perhaps remain. Are the fault lines staying static, widening, narrowing, or in a dialectical sense, both widening and narrowing? Is it still too early to tell? Ours is an uneven peace, but it is not unusual, two years after a war, especially a decades-long one. The crucial questions are whether things are better than in wartime or worse, and whether the rate of improvement is on par with the global and historical average or far below. The answers require a comparative and evolutionary perspective. Compare the post-conflict phase with wartime and remember that no lethal violence on any significant scale is taking place now. Compare the fascist LTTE’s control of the North then with that…

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Northern Local Government Elections

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(Photo: Reuters, from International Business Times) Groundviews is curating news and updates from the ground, as well as domestic and international media coverage on the historic local government elections in Jaffna. Polling started at 7am today. In addition to @groundviews, Follow #NLGE on Twitter for updates from Jaffna, in addition to the usual #lka and #srilanka. In addition to our own curation, we are following: @anuradhakherath (on the ground updates) @dinidu (on the ground updates) @perambara (on the ground updates) @apelankawe (on the ground updates) @nirananketell (expert opinion / analysis) @rkguruparan (expert opinion / analysis) @lankasol (for interesting updates with international focus) @DMbreakingnews (mainstream media updates) Subscribe to #NLGE’s RSS feed here. There’s also a hashtag for other local government election news, #SLGE. Subscribe to its RSS feed here. Groundviews also maintains two key curated Twitter lists. One for leading bloggers, the other for Twitter accounts related to media and journalism. Both will invariably feature updates on the elections. Our…

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I AM… Identity crisis in Post-conflict Sri Lanka

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Photo by Ishara S.KODIKARA/AFP/Getty Images “There are no more minorities” said the President after the defeat of the LTTE – a secessionist rebel group that waged a war against Sri Lanka in 2009. From now on, everyone is part of the majority. It was a nice feeling after decades of distinction between the communities in the island. I belong to one of the three recognized minorities of the island – the Burghers. A friend of mine noticed that we were the only ones not represented in the National Flag, I assumed that maybe we shared one strip in the flag with another community. This was not the least an issue for me. But with regards to the current conflict which the country went through I find this misrepresentation amusing. As a Sri Lankan of mixed ethnicity- Burgher after my dad and Sinhala, after my mother-  I had some great deal to figure out. Aged 13, I presented myself at an…

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Our Sri Lankan Identity: Another Case of ‘Being Nobody, Going Nowhere’?

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(AP Photo/Manish Swarup, from JDS) The 2011 MCC Spirit of Cricket Cowdrey Lecture delivered by Kumar Sangakkara was indeed a very thoughtful, courageous and passionate one. Much has been written about the lecture, and it is not necessary to repeat how inspiring it was. But there is that poignant final paragraph in Sangakkara’s lecture which has contributed in numerous ways to a resurgence of an old debate concerning our Sri Lankan identity and what it ought to mean in our contemporary post-war Sri Lanka. The relevant paragraph is as follows: “Fans of different races, castes, ethnicities and religions who together celebrate their diversity by uniting for a common national cause. They are my foundation, they are my family. I will play my cricket for them. Their spirit is the true spirit of cricket. With me are all my people. I am Tamil, Sinhalese, Muslim and Burgher. I am a Buddhist, a Hindu, a follower of Islam and Christianity. I am…

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A ‘Sri Lankan identity’ and race relations

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Since the nation’s much-celebrated war victory, countless references have been made of our potential to become the Wonder of Asia. Is this mere hyperbole? Do we really have what it takes to become a prosperous, modern nation on par with emerging Asian superpowers like Singapore and Malaysia? Seneviratne’s candid response to this question is: “We are on our way to Zimbabwe, not Singapore.” – Prof. H. L. Seneviratne, Professor Emeritus of Anthropology at the University of Virginia, Lanka Monthly Digest, June 2011 Well, neighbourhood worries me a great deal, quite frankly you have a situation in Sri Lanka. The decimation of the LTTE was something which is good. But the Tamil problem does not disappear, with the defeat of the LTTE. The Tamil population has legitimate grievances. They feel they are reduced to second-class citizens. And our emphasis has been to persuade the Sri Lankan government that we must move towards a new system of institutional reforms, where the Tamil…

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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!"

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