Archive for the ‘Politics and Governance’

Twitter Q&A with Lalith Weeratunga, Secretary to the President of Sri Lanka

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Image courtesy Business Today The Presidential Spokesman and International Media Unit (i.e. @AnuradhaKHerath) announced on 14th June something that’s never happened before in Sri Lankan politics – a Q&A with Lalith Weeratunga, the President’s Secretary over Twitter, slated for 19th June, from 2.30pm to 4pm. A live search of #askLW is embedded below to follow in real time the Q&A on Wednesday and the questions leading up to it. Tweets about “#askLW” Ironically, the announcement of the Twitter Q&A with Weeratunga came on the same day Gotabaya Rajapaksa, the President’s brother, in a spark of unrivalled genius, called social media no less than a a national security threat in post-war Sri Lanka. Unlike Gotabaya Rajapaksa and as Sri Lanka’s top civil servant, Weeratunga has openly spoken about the potential of ICTs for post-war development and reconciliation. Rather endearingly, Weeratunge noted in late 2012, “I have somehow resisted in getting into the Facebook and resisted getting into Twitter.I’m not in Linkedin,…

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The ascendent hate speech in Sri Lanka: In conversation with Mohamed Hisham

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Mohamed Hisham, Co-Spokesperson, Rally for Unity begins the interview by saying why he chose to be associated with and helped co-found a group that openly and in public stands up against hate speech, in a country where most citizens are fearful of opposing policies, practices and bitter invective supported by the highest authorities in government aimed at minority groups and certain communities. He notes the reasons that drove a small group of diverse people to set up the initiative, its constitution and sources of funding. We then focus on the video series Rally for Unity has created on YouTube, featuring some of Sri Lanka’s best known individuals, speaking out against hate and harm. Hisham looks at some of the common ideas and themes emerging from this set of interviews. Based on Rally for Unity’s leaflets that were distributed to thousands on May Day, Hisham is then probed on his understanding of a ‘patriot’ and ‘patriotism’, especially since leaflets distributed at…

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Gotabaya Rajapaksa and National Security: The Kotelawala Defence University lecture

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Photo courtesy Business Today As a citizen of Sri Lanka, naturally I was keen to know what the country’s secretary of defense thinks about the current security situation and the military history of Sri Lanka. Therefore, I went through his “lecture”  under the National Interest Module of the inaugural MPhil/PhD Programme of the Kotelawala Defense University. Usually, any “lecture” is followed by a question and answer session unlike “speeches”. I am sure the secretary of defense allowed this tradition to happen in the free country. However, I couldn’t see such details of a Q&A session in the above link on defence.lk. Therefore, I thought of posing some of my thoughts as a citizen, not as an academic or any kind of defense expert, for the contemplation of the distinguished academics involved in the above MPhil/PhD programme and the secretary defense himself. Heavy handed state reaction to public descent and National security: First, the secretary of defense gives an indication of…

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Twitter archive of @groundviews: June 2013

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Every single one of the nearly 23,000 tweets by Groundviews as @groundviews can be downloaded as a ZIP file from here. The archive, generated by Twitter, is fully searchable and can be browsed offline. All the tweets can be downloaded as a CSV file from here (7.1Mb). The archive is also accessible online here. The archive is a wealth of information spanning four years, with conversations and content holding Sri Lanka’s mainstream media accountable for serious lapses in journalism, in addition to updates around every single major socio-political development in Sri Lanka. Updated version of the archive will be published bi-annually. Also read Comprehensive archive of tweets: 8 May to 1 October 2012 and Resource book for historians, researchers and media: A year of tweeting from Groundviews. Repost This Article

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Viroda Vipakshaya, General Fonseka and early presidential stakes

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Image courtesy The Australian The political opposition in Sri Lanka seems freshly energized if recent events are anything to go by. The UNP has formed some form of a broader opposition coalition through the “Viroda Vipakshaya” and released a draft constitution as a discussion document for public and civil society debate, while the JVP galvanized by the economic issue of the electricity rate hike is seeking to mobilize support. General Fonseka, the united opposition’s presidential candidate in 2010, succeeded in getting his democratic party recognized by the Elections Commission, thereby changing the political opposition landscape at a time when there is considerable speculation in political circles that the proposed 19th amendment to the constitution will not only reduce the powers of the provincial council but also reduce the presidential term from six years to five years and thereby enable presidential elections early next year, with only a loss of one year in the incumbent’s current term. However, there are several important strategic political…

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Gender Issues in Constitutional Reform: A Review of The Republic at 40

The Sri Lankan Republic at 40: Reflections on Constitutional History, Theory and Practice, edited by Asanga Welikala is an important contribution to the discussion on the problems concerning the republican constitutions of Sri Lanka and constitution-making projects and processes. The volume contains three chapters dealing specifically with gender concerns in relation to Sri Lanka’s constitutional history which I subject to brief review here. The chapter authored by Maithree Wickremesinghe and Chulani Kodikara deals with “Representation in Politics: Women and Gender in the Sri Lankan Republic”. The inadequacy of women’s representation in politics has been a vexed subject for Sri Lankan activists, advocates and feminists alike and has been written about fairly extensively. This chapter extends and nuances this discussion significantly, offering a timely exploration of political representation within the Sri Lankan republic vis-à-vis its women citizens and gender issues. It asks critically if the state has indeed represented the interests of women as a collective sex/gender; looks at the dominant…

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Sri Lanka: After the world’s media has moved on

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As the Editor of Groundviews, I was invited by World Association of Newspapers and News Publishers (WAN/IFRA) to give a presentation on Sri Lanka at the 20th World Editors Forum (WEF) and the 65th World Newspaper Congress, held recently in Bangkok, Thailand. As noted on the WAN/IFRA WEF site, “The World Editors Forum is the leading network for print and digital editors of newspapers and news organisations around the world. It is built on a commitment to defend press freedom and promote editorial excellence.” As the only Sri Lankan invited to speak at the Forum, I focussed on challenges facing governance, human rights and democracy in Sri Lanka, over four years after the end of the war. I also spoke about the violence against independent media, and the culture of near total impunity against those who have killed, abducted, harmed, forced into exile and murdered journalists. Moderated by Anne Nelson, Groundviews shared a stage with Philippe Massonnet, Global News Director,…

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Burning for (Sinhala) Buddhism?

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Image from Sunday Leader First, I want to convey my deepest sympathies to the family and friends of late Venerable Bōwatte Indrarathana (VBI) for the shocking and untimely way he embraced his death on the most venerable day of the Buddhist calendar. No amount of academic analysis will bring a life back. However, we must move on and learn from this how to avoid such tragedies. Such learning cannot come without preliminary analyses of the reasons and backgrounds. Suicides are at least three major types: Suicide for personal reasons of shame or pain, Suicide as a military attack and Suicide as a political protest. Irrespective of the doubts if that was a pre-arranged publicity tactic, I consider the suicide of VBI as a political act embedded in the Buddhist tradition. This essay is a brief reflection on his death and the politics of it. Politics of Suicide The act of suicide is historical, supra cultural and could be reviewed from…

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Sri Lanka’s Global Vulnerability & the Devolution Conundrum

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Photo courtesy The Hindustan Times/AP A society or state that demonstrates repeated violent convulsions over a fairly prolonged period such as decades does so because of a deep underlying problem. In the case of Sri Lanka this is the problem of the relations between the Sinhalese, Tamils and the state or to put it another way, the problem between the North and South or centre and periphery.  A problem of this sort is usually classified as a Nationalities Question or an ethno-national or ethno-regional question.  Insofar as it has a territorial dimension, it cannot but require a solution that is also has a territorial aspect.  In order to resolve the issue of the permanent political alienation of the Tamil people of the North of Sri Lanka, an alienation that had been aggravated to one of active armed antagonism, it is necessary to reform the state so as to provide the North with a moderate though irreducible measure of political and…

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UNP’S DRAFT, TNA’S OPTIONS & THE CBK COMEBACK SCENARIO

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Photo courtesy China Daily The UNP’s constitutional draft makes a most positive contribution by unambiguously committing itself to a unitary state form with the devolution of power to the provinces. This avoids the extreme of over-centralisation. Over-centralisation can take three forms: a unitary state without devolution, devolution only to units smaller than the province or a dilution of the powers devolved to the provinces. The UNP’s stance also avoids the other extreme of devolution exceeding the bounds of a unitary state. The formula of devolution to the provinces within a unitary state is not only logical, it has many precedents and parallels throughout the world. The UNP’s proposal is supportive of the 13th amendment though it suggests certain revisions and improvements which would make the process less top-heavy than it is now. The modified model of devolution proposed by the UNP would make provincial semi-autonomy more authentic than today. What is perhaps most significant about the UNP’s recommitment to provincial…

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The Asymmetric Relationship of Buddhist-Muslim Bond in Sri Lanka

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Photo via IBN Live, taken by Reuters The Buddhist –Muslim relationship in Sri Lanka is centuries old. It grew from the pre-Islamic Arab relationship with Sri Lanka and continued beyond the advent of Islam. Principally, the Arabs who built vibrant trade relation with Sri Lanka put their roots here and made Sri Lanka a second home. With the advent of Islam in the 7th Century, the Arabs became Muslims; hence the Arab-Muslim relationship with Sri Lanka became ever stronger and prominent with the ascendency of Islam as a global power. As a result, the relationship that originated as commercial links extended beyond to other areas like internal and external trade, defense, diplomatic relationship and Arab-Muslim settlements and domicile etc. This relationship has grown over a very long period of time and as a result, grew together with the Buddhist population to almost fifty percent (50%) of the life time of Buddhism in Sri Lanka. This relationship with Buddhism developed and…

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Sumanthiran’s Choice

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I have two Tamil friends. Their names are SriLankan Tamil and Tamil Sri Lankan. “Aren’t they the same?” you ask. No, the order in which the identifiers appear is significant, and is crucial for the rest of my story. My friend SriLankan Tamil (SLT for short) has the following take on the politics of Sri Lanka. History started on 4 February 1948, the day the suddhas (white folk) left the island after 500 years of colonial rule, leaving us to run our own business. Our independence was not won in a fight. The struggle in India, the weakened state of Britain after the war, and the discovery that to have a flow of wealth from the poor to the rich, you need not physically control them, were elements that made the suddhas leave. SLT is saddened by the decline since 1948. “Have we built a single yard of railway line on our own?” he often asks. “Have we developed the…

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Radical UNP and its New Constitutional Proposals: A Radical Farce?

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Photo courtesy Sunday Observer When regimes are dictatorial and dangerous, alternative forces which promise a better society and future do tend to be taken seriously by the people. This, quite simply, is because the future promised by such alternative forces tends to be better than the present. But one thing many people can’t do about the present UNP is to take it seriously. The UNP’s new constitutional proposals/principles – which it claims will shape and form the new constitution it hopes to place before the people once elected to power – tell us why this is the case (see, ‘UNP draft proposal for new constitution’, The Island, 30 May 2013). Apart from a few grand promises, the UNP’s guiding constitutional principles are generally known to the people and can be easily found, stated in different words, in the 1978 Constitution. The new set of constitutional principles and proposals needs to be viewed in the context of the grand promise of…

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Sri Lanka at a critical crossroad: JHU and the 13th Amendment

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Udaya Gammanpila, Senior Member of the Jathika Hela Urumaya (JHU), courtesy FT.lk The country stands at a crossroad. A parliamentary victory for the JHU bill will complete the negative process which commenced with Sinhala Only in 1956 and the distortion in 1972 of the laudable shift to a Republic with mono-linguistic and mono-religious hegemony. If ’56 and ’72 were paving stones for the Tamil Eelam project, the passage of the JHU bill to abolish the 13th amendment will complete the process of the legitimisation of secessionism. A victory for the JHU will also cast a pall over the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting and guarantee Sri Lanka’s defeat at the UN Human Rights Council in March 2014. It will embarrass our allies Russia and China and drive South Africa and much of the Non-Aligned Movement away from us. It will irreversibly discredit and radically isolate the country and the Sinhalese, regionally and internationally. In short, in terms of Sri Lanka’s…

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Spot Fixing Sri Lanka Style: Revisiting the Enumeration of Vital Events

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Image courtesy Thuppahi blog In November 2011, Sri Lanka’s Defence Secretary Gotabhaya Rajapaksa, said that discovering how many civilians “died or went missing during the last few months of the conflict” would be “a first step towards reconciliation.”[1] The government’s Enumeration of Vital Events (EVE) attempted to answer that question by collecting information about people who have died, disappeared and emigrated from Sri Lanka since 1982. The survey was overseen by the Ministry of Defence, but was conducted by the Department of Census and Statistics (DCS).[2] More recently, Sri Lanka’s Permanent Representative to the United Nations (UN), Ambassador Ravinatha Aryasinha, said[3] the following at the UN’s Human Rights Council (HRC): “Addressing concerns relating to accountability, the only authoritative and credible source of information relating to the demographics and those killed and untraceable in the Northern Province during the period 2005 – 2009, the Enumeration of Vital Events 2011 in the Northern Province (EVE 2011) by the Department of Census and…

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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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