It was no easy task to compile this. Only a handful ordinary citizens would have the expertise to search for this information online, or elsewhere. There is no easy record retrieval of the President’s attendance in Parliament on its official website. But what is immediately obvious when the scattered media reports are taken as a whole is that the 18th Amendment has in no way at all contributed to a more accountable Executive. ”

Excerpt from ‘Months after the 18th Amendment: Is the Executive really more accountable to Parliament?’, http://groundviews.org/2011/06/11/months-after-the-18th-amendment-is-the-executive-really-more-accountable-to-parliament/

Beauty comes with fragility
Strength comes with ugliness
Knowledge comes with acquisition
Wisdom comes with letting go

Here in sunny Sri Lanka
We have plenty knowledge
No wisdom
Human voice drowned
Amidst the booming voice of ego

Posturing, preening and looking in the (daily) mirror
My heart lights up
To see my name in print and colour

The powerful
Have lost their voices
To the seduction of ego

Egoistic communication
Keeps advancing delusion
Only human communication
Advances all humanity

You are all
Beautiful – strong and knowledgeable
And you can become wise
But not by carrying all this heavy stuff

My friends your given names
Are all pseudonyms
You have no names

Find your true name
I have found mine

point two is that pseudonyms (I call this an alternative name) can be used and also abused. the mere use of an alternative name for the purpose of a debate is not only allowed but it is something that can be done skillfully. my own name for example is intended to unify citizens … anonymous writing is a hallowed tradition in the east –

point three is that having ideas does not mean you have the answers to our predicament. the answer has already been provided by each one of us in the way we LIVE. look there and you will find the uniquely individual way we are responding to the challenge.

the personal – internal and spiritual side is completely forgotten – compare India and SL and this is the difference – there is no spirituality – it is zero – and as a result there is no spiritual backbone

so that Dr Dayan is where I suggest we look

UI,

You know we can word this differently right? LOL

“Be my guest. Give it your best shot ”

So you responded to the name UI (Useful Idiot)!

Funny man! So much for the three degrees!

but all this seems pretty much inside the box to me – is there anything original – inspiring – anything new?

I would humbly like to know

looks like everyone is treading the well trodden road pretty hard

““The UNP’s leadership survives because it is propped up by an inherited fortune and foreign patronage. Successive governments may love him as an opponent, but it is only Ranil’s leadership and his civil society solidarity committee that provide the anti-Sri Lankan external elements with a Southern partnership.”

So you dislike his specific foreign patronage. And consider it to be anti-Sri Lankan. Just as Rajapaksa does. So, I guess the current regime would not be altogether hostile to what you’re trying to do here.

ISAS’s own limits are publicly acknowledged by its director himself. In his website address he says, ISAS “wants to become a high-quality research institute…”. Apparently it hasn’t gotten there yet.

But, hey, such an international luminary such as yourself, a brighter star than Stuart Hall–how come you don’t have a professorial appointment with NUS’ Political Science dept or with their South Asian Studies dept? After all, it’s only no. 34 in global rankings, not even among the top 20 in the world. Seems like your Zizek journal ain’t getting you anywhere.

I ask again–why don’t you form the opposition you’re dreaming about, instead of whining about RW (which is just such a powerless thing to do)? Why not run for Prez? And if you fail in your bid, you can then be bracketed with Zizek yet again–as an academic who has lost touch with the ground (cos otherwise, he would have been elected, wouldn’t he)?

To anticipate, if you want my take on 18A in the Sri Lankan media, get off this website and please read me in the mainstream print media: ‘Ten Observations on the 18th Amendment’, ‘Get A grip: 18A in Proportion and Perspective’ and several other pieces ( Sunday lakbima, Sunday Island, Sunday Leader).

Sri Lanka debates ending presidential term limits

By Lydia Polgreen | The New York Times
………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………

Sri Lanka’s Parliament on Wednesday debated a proposal to remove presidential term limits from the Constitution, paving the way for the popular president, Mahinda Rajapaksa, to run for a third term and cement his family’s grip on power.

Bolstered by winning nearly 60 percent of the vote in the presidential election in January and the near-collapse of the main opposition party, Mr. Rajapaksa is likely to rally enough votes to pass the amendment, which requires a two-thirds majority in Parliament, analysts said. Sri Lanka’s Supreme Court ruled on Tuesday that a referendum was not required to make the change.

The amendment also includes provisions that could prove even more far-reaching by increasing the president’s power to act without oversight, legal experts said.

It would remove an independent advisory council that the president currently must consult before appointing people to important, nonpartisan posts like Supreme Court judgeships and Sri Lanka’s human rights and electoral commissions. In its place would be a parliamentary council that the president could ignore if it failed to act.

“It would mean that in the future the president will be in control of many independent institutions,” said Rohan Edrisinha, a Sri Lankan constitutional scholar. “That is going to have a serious impact on justice, human rights, free elections and the future of our democracy.”

Mr. Rajapaksa was re-elected in January by a wide margin after his government’s decisive May 2009 defeat of the Tamil Tiger insurgency, which had raged for 25 years and defied the efforts of his predecessors. He easily defeated his main opponent, Sarath Fonseka, a former general who had been a close ally but broke with the president. A motley coalition of opposition parties drafted Mr. Fonseka, who had executed the ruthless and highly successful military strategy that defeated the 25-year-old Tamil Tiger insurgency.

After the election Mr. Fonseka was arrested and court-martialed. The government said he had broken the law by politicking while in uniform and mishandling weapons contracts, but his supporters saw the arrest as evidence that the president was solidifying his grip on power by going after opponents.

Sri Lanka’s Constitution features a strong executive presidency, and many analysts have argued that a country with such a long history of religious, ethnic and regional strife needs to devolve, not concentrate power. Indeed, Mr. Rajapaksa himself campaigned on promises to give more power to regional governments within Sri Lanka as a way to avoid future conflicts with its Tamil and Muslim minorities.

Mr. Rajapaksa’s spokesman, Lucien Rajakarunanayake, said that given the president’s popularity and the difficult road ahead in rebuilding the country, it made sense to remove term limits.

“This is a president who has a huge mandate and has to do a great deal of work to make sure the country moves forward,” he said.

He dismissed the notion that the abolition of the independent advisory council would make the president more powerful. The previous panel was perpetually deadlocked, he said, and the new body would work more efficiently.

Dayan Jayatilleka, a diplomat political analyst who was Sri Lanka’s ambassador to the United Nations until he was removed in 2009, said that the changes simply formalize the vast enlargement of presidential power that has already take place.

“It is a constitutionalization of the wartime presidency,” he said.

But he added that opposition politicians are as much to blame for this expansion of presidential power. The main opposition party, the United National Party, is in shambles, and several of its members have defected to support Mr. Rajapaksa’s amendment. Sri Lanka’s Constitution, written when the country had a strong two-party system, did not envision that the second party would become so weak, Mr. Jayatilleka said.

“In the past neither party would be sufficiently popular or unpopular to permit constitutional change,” he said. “Clearly that has changed.”

© The New York Times

“You’re at ISEAS, now, right? How come not the more prestigious Asian Research Institute (ARI) or even NUS? Yes, I know, NUS invited you to write a book.”

Nope, I’m at the ISAS, not the ISEAS. ISAS is not only of the NUS, it is actually on-campus? And it was the ISAS/NUS that invited me to write the book which i am writing at the NUS’ ISAS? And the ARI, ISAS and a bunch of regional and area studies think tanks are stacked on top of each other in one block? As for relative prestige and why I’m not at another place, i dunnoman, I’m not that egoistic, after all, my colleagues here include two former Cabinet Minister-scholars ( Dr Chowdhury, fmr Foreign Minister of bangladesh and Jaed Berki, fmr Vice president of the World Bank and fmr Finance Minister of Pakistan) and two Professors Emeritus, Ishtiaq Ahamed and SD Muni. That’s prestigious enough for me.

Well, just my puny far-lesser-intellectual observations:

1. About “Isn’t it interesting that “…
Yes. It causes interesting and very negative realizations about the climate of fear and caution in this country. But I think DJ hasn’t said much here or before about that kind of interestingness? And DJ’s comment seems to suggest that he’s skeptical about the ‘death squads’ and other such stuff etc.? I guess he believes if powerful people fear truths of what you do/say or might do/say, then they’ll simply directly fire you, but they never will fire AT you…?

But I guess there’s no point in asking him all this… after all, all you others haven’t received much/any straight answers where you’ve queried his stance on many things. (He’s even successfully evaded Agnos’ observation about “…habitual evasion simply proves what I said.” …! I’m guessing DJ actually prefers the DJ-bashing, since it distracts the rest of us from such evasion!)

2. (By this observation, I’m not implying any agreement — nor disagreement or even “agnosticism “… — towards the “UI” opinion or similar opinions.)

Unless DJ was showing off alliteration skills (learned in LK or HK or London?), I see no relevance in his point about “anonymous Agnos”. I mean, as others have asked above too, how does Agnos’ anonymity change the validity (or invalidity or anything in between) of what Agnos said?! Did HK and London teach Logic (and aside: did G.L. etc. also learn there!)?

About anonymity: seems to me that Agnos and many other commenters are quite sensible to stay anonymous online. It shows LACK of deficiency in their brains. (OK, I agree there’s NO fear of nasty repercussions against some of you all’s DJ-bashing comments here; but in many other things anonymity could be a good idea and it doesn’t – or shouldn’t — require an LLM to know that). Of course, such commenters would NOT need any such anonymity at all, IF their writings and comments were, like a certain OTHER person, usually toeing the regime’s line at least to a large extent at least by the means of avoiding and evading making unambiguous (and simple) concrete statements about the atrocities of some regime among other things… even when directly asked.

Luckily for many of us Groundviews readers, they are NOT imitating this certain other person.

So I’m glad that some anonymous commenters see the sense of usually staying anonymous. Else we’d see some such Useful Non-idiots becoming Unuseful Idiots, if they allowed themselves to get bumped off or disabled! Anonymous And Alive — 🙂 hey I can alliterate too; woohoo, HK and London here I come!

3. Re “someone who has been described… … profound philosophical argument about morality that is distinct from classical Marxism, liberalism and some forms of post-modernism“…
Well, seems to me IMHO, the current regime’s morality sure is also “distinct” from all of the above and anything else … So it’d be great to see an equally profound — but unambiguous direct and complete — statement about what DJ thinks about what’s been, and is, happening in our unique corner of the world. Guess we’ll have to wait for DJ’s next degree, for us to read a reply to that.

4. In the case of many Groundviews articles, I find I get as much useful stuff (“stuff”: if such “godaya” English is permitted on this page!) out of many of the comments, as from the article itself. Regardless of anonymity/pseudonymity/otherwise. But in the case of DJ’s articles, I usually understand the article fully only once commenters have made it clearer,; and I usually get far more out of the comments!

Which leads to my next observation… Hey you all, don’t get too distracted in DJ-bashing! 🙂 Philosophical profound treatises are all very well to comment upon, but there are greener philosophical pastures of more concrete stuff aplenty elsewhere on Groundviews. E.g., I’ve been hoping to see anonymous dissections of a certain recent Determination for example, far more useful than DJ-bashing! 🙂 Hurry up, or DJ might beat you to the punch and comment there first!