Archive for the ‘Elections’

The consequences of political representation or the lack of it

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Image from AsiaNews.it The focus of  my article in the Sunday Leader of 5 May was on the need for Northern Provincial representation. It now looks as if those elections may be held in September 2013. I will elaborate on the likely consequences of representation, or the lack of it, drawing on past experience in Sri Lanka, India and the USA. All over Sri Lanka the bulk of the Muslim population are Tamil speakers. It was so almost 100%  at every socio- economic level when the Official Language Act was enacted in 1956. But at that time the political leader ship of the Muslims were mostly Members of Parliament representing Sinhalese majority electorates. All these voted for Sinhala only, as desired by their mostly Sinhalese voters, even though they were themselves Tamil speaking.  The Muslim MP’s representing Eastern Province electorates voted against the Bill, as desired by their voters, nearly all of them Tamil speaking. In the Senate, AMA Azeez,…

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Northern Provincial Council Election and the Future of Lankan Tamil Politics

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This year promises to be a decisive one for Lankan Tamils. Events that take place this year will considerably determine the future trajectory of Tamil politics. It is only a beginning where the end of the LTTE’s totalitarianism gives the Tamils opportunity to evaluate their nationalist politics that has brought only tragedy so far. Failure to do this would have tragic consequences. The concluded UNHRC sessions and the proposed CHOGM make up the list of key international fixtures. Efforts of the TGTE – like the formation of Tamil Eelam Freedom Charter – and other such diaspora groups will provide much entertainment, all to no avail. Apart from these events, the continuing struggle between Tamil Nadu and the Indian Central Government will also be of significance for India’s need to wake up from her long slumber in trying to wish away an explosive situation on her doorstep. However, local political (and economic) developments are what matter most. The climax, no doubt,…

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  • 26 Nov, 2012
  • 1 Comment
  • Colombo,
    Elections,
    International

Black, Brown, and White Voters Could Think Alike: A Quest for a New Social Contract!

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Photo by Carolyn Kaster/AP, courtesy Christian Science Monitor “They were striking at royalty, tyranny, reaction and oppression of all types, and with these they included slavery. The prejudice of race is superficially the most irrational of all prejudices . . . ” C.L.R. James  Implicit in Mitt Romney’s claim that President Obama won the election with “gifts” to people of color, women, and youth is the idea that these groups were bribed whereas people who voted for Romney did so freely out of a sense of responsibility, foresight, and concern for the future of the country. Rather than reach out to people of color by addressing their feelings of disenfranchisement and deprivation, Romney not only continues to insult and upset these groups but also fuel the highly racialized fears of the white community. He widens the gulf between social conservatives and people of color sympathetic to Republican ideals (who ended up voting for Obama) and the white women and low-income…

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Reflections on the US Presidential Elections

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Photo courtesy BBC The outcome of the United States Presidential elections is too close to call. Yet, three presidential debates reinforced the perception among informed voters that Mitt Romney is both a weak and most unpredictable candidate.  He does not grasp the complexities of the economy—a failing he obscures by refusing to be clear about his policies. His continual self-contradiction and his appeal to the fears of voters highlights an insincerity. Mitt Romney’s small government is a travesty Mitt Romney’s scapegoating of “big government” for all our economic and social woes is not backed by a meaningful definition of big government, nor does it seem to be based on an historically informed understanding of the government’s role in the economy and its implications for development. His five-point plan could not possibly address any of the issues he falsely attributes to big government. Romney even knocks policies that he admits are successful, if they have anything to do with the “big…

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Elections in the East, reconciliation and politics: In conversation with Javid Yusuf

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Javid Yusuf is an Attorney-at-Law and former diplomat. Groundviews last featured him over two years ago, just after the Presidential Election in early 2010. In this programme, we talked about the recently concluded elections in the North Central, Sabaragamuwa and Eastern Provinces in Sri Lanka and more generally, on politics and reconciliation in post-war Sri Lanka. We begin by looking at why this election and voting in the Eastern Province in particular was perceived to be so significant. Javid responds by noting the election was, in general, a barometer of the government’s popularity and in the Eastern Province, a barometer of how minority thinking. We talk about the very different narratives from government, the opposition and other independent political analysts after the results of the election, and what could be read into these divergent viewpoints. Javid notes that the government did quite well in getting the votes it did in the North Central Province and Sabaragamuwa, and said that there…

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Eastern Province election: The big lie about shared power in Sri Lanka

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Photo courtesy AP/Eranga Jayawardena Justice Minister Hakeem was reported to have told during campaigning, he should not be made to look like a man taken hostage. Ministers Rambukwella and Premjayantha, invited TNA to form a “National” alliance for the Council in the East. Senior Minister and Communist Party leader DEW Gunasekera says he wrote to President Rajapaksa proposing a “National Council” that includes the TNA, for the East. Senior Minister and LSSP leader, Prof Tissa Vitharana backs a “non racial”, all included Council for East. A week gone by and the claim by President Rajapaksa – that his leadership paved for ten successive victories for the UPFA which by itself is a historic feat – is being severely challenged in the East. People are strangling the conscience of the SLMC leadership and the SLMC shopping list is being ignored by President Rajapaksa. To begin with, the PC elections were NOT free and fair in any way. After many violent clashes, two…

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Provincial Council Election: Real-time updates

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@mhmhisham is turning out the best updates on Twitter. #PCelectionsLK and #ep2012 are key hashtags aggregating all the tweets on the September 2012 Provincial Council elections. See below for aggregation and real time updates. Tweets about “#PCelectionsLK “ Tweets by @mhmhisham Tweets about “#ep2012″ Repost This Article

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Muslims and the Eastern Provincial Council Elections in Sri Lanka: Kingmakers or Pawns?

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Photo via Colombo Telegraph As the campaigning for the Eastern Provincial Council (EPC) election concludes, there are only a few absolute certainties as to the outcome – most notably that there will be no outright winner.  Given the electoral system, the results of recent elections, the demography in the East and the general voting pattern along communal lines, it is more or less clear that neither the United People’s Freedom Alliance (UPFA) nor a possible Tamil National Alliance (TNA) –United National Party (UNP) combine will have a simple majority. In such a context it will be the Sri Lanka Muslim Congress (SLMC) which is contesting independently that will hold the balance of power. The strategic value of the Muslim vote is all too evident, not solely due to the SLMC having been the key focus of pre-nomination lobbying, but also that other political parties and alliances are attempting to shore up their Muslim votes. Once more, the Eastern Muslim polity,…

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Tamil Civil Society Memo to the TNA regarding the Eastern Provincial Council Elections

Sampanthan, leader of the political proxy of the Tamil Tigers, the Tamil National Alliance, addresses reporters during a media conference in Colombo

Editors note: Also read A Public Memo to Members of Parliament representing the Tamil National Alliance from the Tamil Civil Society, published in December 2011. Tamils have consistently made it clear that a unitary constitution and a provincial council system within the confines of a unitary constitution are incapable of fulfilling their political aspirations. In this regard it is notable that Tamil political parties with a Tamil Nationalist dispensation had chosen to boycott the two provincial council elections that took place in our homeland in the past (1989 and 2008). There can be no doubt that a Tamil political party with a Tamil Nationalist dispensation can never run a provincial council autonomously, something that even Tamil parties aligned with the Government could not achieve. The Chief Ministers who ran the provincial councils subsequent to the elections of 1989 and 2008 have confirmed that nothing substantive can be achieved through the provincial council system which is in the firm grip of the…

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The ghosts that continue to haunt us

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“Democratic government is strengthened, not weakened, when it faces a vigorous civil society.” Tocqueville The local government elections have been fought and won by the UPFA in 21 out of 23 Local Government bodies, an impressive result for an incumbent government in place since 2005.  Contrary to normal response the incumbency factor worked for the government and not against it.  One of the reasons given for the victory is the security factor – people’s abiding gratitude to a government that has given security by bringing to a close the thirty year war and successfully ending terrorism and their terror tactics under which all members of the Lankan polity were enslaved; no more deaths for young men and women soldiers; no more suicide bombers and ‘parcels’ exploding taking many lives and maiming many more. These have been high lighted before but each time people vote for the government it is clear that they recall them all and their vote becomes an…

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Employing thugs as Presidential advisors

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Sri Lankan hospital staff carry an injured person following a shootout on the outskirts of Colombo on Saturday – AP, via Deccan Chronicle An advisor to the President is dead and a Member of Parliament is critically injured.  Also amongst the dead and injured are supporters of the Presidential advisor and the parliamentarian. This incident, where the politicians and their henchmen openly resorted to a shoot-out in broad day light, only proves a common known fact; that Sri Lanka’s politics has, for the past several decades been taken over by thugs, criminals and drug dealers. What is interesting though, is that in this incident the two opponents belong to the governing alliance.  Bharatha Lakshman Premachandra a long time UPFA member and former Member of Parliament was the Presidential Advisor for Trade Unions while relative newcomer to the UPFA, Duminda Silva, is the monitoring MP for the Defense Ministry. It also is evidence that some of the closest advisors to the…

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Reading the results of the municipal elections in Sri Lanka

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Is this a functioning democracy or what? The governing coalition’s sweep of the local authorities election, the UNP’s successful resistance in a tough campaign in Colombo, as well as the TNA’s impressive performance at repeated elections in the North, make nonsense of the dark pronouncements and forebodings of dictatorship. Homogenization leads to conformism, which crystallises into a monolith, which translates itself into a dictatorship of discourse and opinion, which straitjackets society and creates a de-facto dictatorship. The results of the local authorities election proves that Sri Lankan society will not allow itself to be straitjacketed into conformity. We are, in short, a democracy. The extrapolation by some commentators that the Mahinda Rajapaksa administration is somewhere along the trajectory of the recently overthrown Arab regimes is way of the mark because none of them permitted pluralist media (an important feedback loop), subjected their popularity to the test of authentically competitive multiparty elections. As Emeritus Professor of International Law at Princeton, Richard…

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Developing the ‘Under served settlements’ in Colombo: An Open Letter

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Photo courtesy Prevention Web October 8th 2011 Dear Mr. Milinda Moragoda and Mr. AJM Muzammil, I wrote this open letter before the elections, to be read after, to avoid political misapprehensions that would have caused, if published earlier. Since you two may remember me, I wish I receive your attention on a few guiding principles to achieve best results when fulfilling your promises to serve the USSs, repeatedly orchestrated during election campaigns. It was heartening because you both had a singular interest on developing ‘Under served settlements’ (USSs) in the Colombo Municipal Council (CMC) area, though through different approaches, and this ‘letter’ is to motivate a singular groove. Recently I was perusing some reports and found two written by two consultancy teams, which I led, titled “Policy Framework for the Clean Settlements to Develop Urban Underserved Settlements” written in April 1997 for the World Bank and Ministry of Housing Construction and Public Utilities; and, “Environmental Profile under the Sustainable Cities Programme”…

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Local Government Elections: In sending the UNP and JVP to political oblivion the nation may find hope?

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Photo courtesy Sunday Leader “The starting point of [progressive] politics and the state is its categorical rejection of this view of the state as the trustee, instrument, or agent of this society as a whole…In class societies, the concept of the society as a whole and of the ‘national’ interest’ is clearly a mystification” - Ralph Miliband Another humiliating defeat for the United National Party (UNP) and the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP) in the forthcoming elections would certainly improve the country’s future prospects for democracy with equality and justice.  A UPFA victory could be celebrated with a sense cautious optimism: perhaps it will enable the evolution of a democratic space where we can imagine alternatives to the status quo.   But the UNP and JVP (along with TULF, LSSP, CP and JHU) represent the very forces that they name as evils, and are ideologically and programmatically bankrupt. The contemporary political scene only gives the illusion of democracy, but it co-opts dissent and…

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Milinda Moragoda’s ‘Right to Information’: A sordid record of its real nature and limits

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The Hansard of 20th September 2011 records a question posed by Dr. Harsha de Silva in Parliament over the campaign finances and the asset declaration of Mayoral candidate Milinda Moragoda. See high resolution image here. Download the Hansard from 20th September as a PDF here. Dr. de Silva flags questions repeatedly via Facebook and Twitter Groundviews posed to the Moragoda campaign on these issues, all to no avail. Milinda Moragoda: The gap between promise and reality catalogues the disconnect between what Moragoda says and actually does in more detail. In Why is Right to Information in the Moragoda Mayoral Manifesto? Prof. Rohan Samarajiva, the Head of the Policy Planning Group, Milinda for Mayor Campaign, flags Moragoda’s commitment to the Right to Information (RTI) and ends with a plea to support him on this score. Dr. de Silva, who at the time of writing is the head of the Sri Jayawardenepura Kotte Municipal Council (SJKMC) campaign committee for the UNP notes in Local…

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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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