No in Sri Lanka LAW prohibits you from inhibiting racial division, hatred and provoking. Which I think is FAIR ENOUGH! It is there purely to stop another black July. It should be an integral legislative mechanism in any multi ethnic, multi cultural country. Just because you’re a journalist you have no right to insight racial hatred!

About freedom of expression, I will just hold this blog as a very simple example. In countries like China, Iran this will be filtered outside the country! So give Sri Lanka some credit! We only filtered Tamilnet (maybe Pr0n too but not a big concern for me :P) which belonged to the enemy propaganda arm. C’mon that’s fair!

Also all international media have a presence in Sri Lanka other than Channel 4 which is their own fault. You need to have some manners at least. So Shamed Lankan everything you said was BS! SPIN! and propaganda to put it in plain terms.

Shamed Lankan, can you tell an unashamed lankan like my self if there were any peaceful protests outside previously LTTE held territory where the protestors were suppressed this year? Using state force? I can’t recall. I maybe wrong. So tell me.

I still think you’re crazy if you want to equate the current administration to Nazis when there’s nothing even remotely similar but do so because the administration opposes your views and are unable to deal with a democratic endorsement spitefully. Just like they attack Obama.

Also it is fair to ask not to criticize the armed forces during a war. Even Bush administration requested that sort of cooperation from media and most of the media like CNN, FOX played by it. They were all gloating when “shock and awe” descended like a block buster movie. Not a single news channel covered for the Iraqi side when the first precision air strikes were on its way. Oh how easily we forget.

At first I thought “she” was a parody (she couldn’t be that crazy, could she?) – but now I think it’s just a troll. Maybe “her” views are sincerely held, or maybe they are just for show. But it doesn’t matter – the point is to provoke a reaction.

Ignore the trolls, and they’ll probably have to move back to taunting their juvenile peers in real life.

I have the feeling that the consent of those being ruled is somehow important as well.

On the other hand, Winston Churchill said: “No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.”

I am sorry to disappoint you, but your pseudonym does not in any way intrigue me enough to want to get to know your “true” identity. Please understand that my mentioning of Tony Soprano was not in any way made to imply you are a thug. Perhaps you have taken yourself a tad too seriously in thinking that people are interested in uncovering the great mystery of “Smolderingjin”.

You may be a man or woman from Malaysia, Singapore, Tamil Nadu or Sri-Lanka – I don’t give a damn. Your sudden concern for “our nation”, however, surprises me to no end. We, as readers, can identify those writers who are empathetic to the people of Sri-Lanka based on their balanced arguments.

One more thing, planting Susan Goon as a straw man was a bad idea; it only goes to show that you and the crew have a lot of deep seated hatred toward the community Susan Goon is supposedly parodying. It seems like Sandun Ratnapriya, Iddamalgoda etc… have now been added as side-support for your favourite Goon.

Wilkie Collins would never have been interested in any “jin” that smoulders!

Or perhaps we should be honest with ourselves, declare an oligarchy, and be done with all the debate. Perhaps E.N.Gand above is right; maybe we should do away with democracy entirely. It would be more honest that way, at least.

But even in the earliest of the modern democracies, that of the Unites States, there was concern over what Thomas Jefferson (I think it was him) called “the tyranny of the majority.” This led directly to the Bill of Rights, which no majority is allowed to abrogate. Rights can be added, but they can not be taken away.

In addition in the US, they tried to avoid this majoritarian problem by having a system of checks and balances and a division of powers. An example is how law is dealt with there; both houses of Congress must approve it, and the President sign it, for it to come in force. If someone, even a minority, believes it to be unConstitutional, it is challenged and the Supreme Court, which is independent of both Congress and President, examines it. In theory it sounds great; in practice it’s had it’s ups and downs, but overall it seems to me that it works better than any other current system. Of course all this is based on the assumption that all political parties (and the military!) actually respect and follow the Constitution.

Perhaps that’s the problem with Sri Lankan democracy; it’s a winner take all system. The party that controls Parliament is by definition the party that holds the executive. And the executive has control over the law enforcement apparatus; in the West they are independent from the executive and seen as politically neutral. In the US, it’s possible that the different parties each control a House and/or that they are different from the party of the President. When this happens, all sides are forced to sit and compromise and negotiate to actually get anything done. And although this doesn’t seem to be happening right now in the US with it’s health care issue, ultimately that’s what will happen once all the screaming is over.

In the West the judiciary is independent of the executive and is respected by all sides; here it’s ignored almost completely. Again, as the our executive has control over law enforcement, the judiciary can do little to enforce it’s decisions. In the US if an official commits a crime or defies the courts (Nixon comes to mind), the law enforcement apparatus will arrest him at the request of the judiciary; such a thing would never happen here. OK, Nixon wasn’t exactly arrested, but the courts, aided by Congress, did bring about his downfall. You get the idea.

Additionally, and this is an important point, is the fact that the US has a relatively weak central government. When I was there, I was amazed at how much real power the states have. And my American friends, when they come visit, are astounded at how powerful our central government is. We have a fear of strong provincial powers having a centrifugal effect; they fear the consolidation of power. An interesting difference in perspective, don’t you think?

I don’t know why this is, although I suspect that part of it is their frontier do-it-yourself mentality, as opposed to our traditional dependence of Great Men doing things for us. I’m sure there have been many books written about this; all I know is that for the vast majority of Americans, landing a government job is not a goal in life!

I’m not saying the American political structure is perfect and should be imitated wholesale; it has many flaws and hasn’t always lived up to it’s ideals. However, it has functioned for over 200 years without violent change of government (meaning coups or revolutions), it has slowly (and painfully) expanded the rights and privileges of citizenship to now encompass almost everyone equally, and has weathered some pretty tough storms such as civil war, economic collapse, rule by oligarchy, presidential assassination, etc. and yet has still remained not just intact, but highly functional. That’s a pretty good record, if you look at the history of the world. Maybe Sri Lanka can learn something from this.

Personally, I don’t favor living under the whim of kings, as was suggested by E.N.Gland above. Some kings have been good, others very bad. You never know what you’re going to get until they are in power. And the only way to remove a bad king is through violence of one sort or another. I prefer to have some degree of control, or at least influence, over the people who make decisions about me and my life. In a democracy you have the possibility of seeing what a candidate is like before they take power, and the opportunity to say “yes please” or “no thank you.” You can also vote them out of power in the next election; with a king you have to wait until he kicks the bucket.

Just a nit-picky point, Heshan, and only because I’m a history freak. In Athens the electorate was given only to male Athenian-born citizens of a certain rank. No women, no foreigners, no foreign-born Athenians, no poor people. Perhaps only 10% of the total population could participate politically. So while Athens had the first democracy as we understand it, it was no democratic heaven. But what is important is that the IDEA of democracy started there, and inspired people throughout history, even if it was imperfectly implemented at the time. Oh and the Roman “Republic” wasn’t that much of an improvement either. But that’s a different topic.

Interesting points you have brought up. Regarding elections – this is only one aspect of a democracy. Of course it is a very important one. Surely you will agree that elections are only important insofar as they provide adequate representation to every segment of the population. Correct me if I’m wrong, but it is my understanding that every Sri Lankan President since Independence has been a Sinhala (Govi) Buddhist from the South. As these 2005 statistics indicate, http://www.srilankanelections.com/alldistrict.htm, there is a sharp regional divide in party preference. With one or two exceptions, the entire South chose to support the pro-war UPFA. In addition, with the exception of Kandy, all of the majority-Sinhala provinces in the North also supported the UPFA. What is also significant, EVERY majority-Sinhalese rural district in the country overwhelmingly supported the UPFA.

Now, I want to pose this question to you: if every district in Sri Lanka were as developed as Colombo and Kandy, what would those election results look like? Perhaps a definitive outcome is not possible (since there are other considerations besides economics) but we can assume the margins would be much narrower. In any event, what is evident is who the “majority” are: rural-Sinhalese. Certainly, in a democracy, the majority vote is what counts, but these days what is equally significant is the majority making certain concessions to the minorities. As you see in the election results, if everything is based on just majority perceptions, minority aspirations will be left in the dust-bin.

What constitutes a democracy? A very good question. In general, though, “democracy” is largely a Western concept. Of all the ancient civilizations, the only “democracy” I can think of is Ancient Greece. Feudalism/serfdom were the prevailing structures of the day – Sri Lanka was no exception. But even in the West, democracy did not come overnight. Capitalism had to evolve to a certain stage. On the other hand, if you look closely, the evolution of democracy in the West has always paralleled their (respective) constitutions. So while we may not be able to precisely define a democracy – since it keeps evolving – at least we can agree that a working constitution is necessary. In my opinion, constitutional reform is a very good starting point for Sri Lanka. Implementation of the 17th Amendment, removal of the Executive Presidency clause, an amendment that recognizes the autonomy of Tamil regions, etc. Enough has been written about the J.R. constitution to know why it doesn’t work (plus we have had more than 2 decades to see the results).

Living in a so called democracy, I can assure you that the new laws being enacted in the West is not Democratic at all. “Democracy” is a convenient word coined by the powerful western nations to beat the underdeveloped countries.
What ever Sri Lanka does will never be Democratic” in the eyes of the G8 Nations.

FORGET ABOUT DEMOCRACY, LETS LIVE THE WAY SRI LANKANS HAVE LIVED FOR MANY THOUSANDS OF YEARS