‘National security’ is of course the sort of vague reason given by governments when they decide to place restrictions. The phrase is never properly defined but is used as a convenient cop out when good reasons cannot be produced.

The Government of Sri Lanka today is only the latest in a long line of governments worldwide who have tried to snuff out unpalatable ideas and comments by abducting, intimidating, beating and killing its journalists. Names such as Lasantha Wickramatunga, J.S.Tissainayagam and Pradeep Eknaligoda come to mind, to name just a few.

The first recorded victim of censorship was Socrates who, in 399 BC was forced to drink poison for ‘denying the gods and introducing new divinities.’ In China, in 213 BC, Emperor Shih Huang-Ti had all writing not pertaining to agriculture or medicine burnt. His target: Confucius’ thoughts. Present day China is no better. The Rajapaksa regime today follows the examples of countries like China, Libiya, Myanmar, Iran and Zimbabwe. We are now on the road to becoming like North Korea! One of the few countries our dear leader has not visited yet!

During the last century, it was the communists who most systematically censored books and hounded their authors. Writers in every communist country from East Germany to Vietnam were forced into concentration camps. Boris Pasternak, Joseph Brodsky, Milan Kundera, Czeslaw Milosz and Alexander Solzhenitsyn were just a few. Hitler’s Germany burnt the books of Jewish authors and liberals, exterminating thousands in their notorious gas chambers and forcing others to flee. In Mahinda’s Sri Lanka, over 14 journalist’s, the majority of them Tamils have been killed in the past few years. Many more journalists’ have been abducted, beaten and intimidated to keep them from writing the truth.

Sometime back the Government blocked access to the Tamilnet and Lankanewsweb, but what the Government does not understand is that with the advance of technology, censorship has become obsolete. The truth is only a click away. All you need to do to read the Tamilnet or Lankanewsweb is to go online and go through a proxy site. The same goes for ‘The Economist.’
In today’s day and age it is no longer possible to stop the message or the truth getting out by killing or imprisoning the messenger. That is why the censorship during the ‘Humanitarian’ operation was a total failure.

It won’t be too long before a 19th Amendment is enacted re-naming the country as “The Utopian Paradise of Sri Rajapakistan.’

Don’t hold your breath. Await the 19th Amendment where the name of the country will be re-named as Sri Rajapakistan!

The 13th Amendment was never put to a REFERENDUM . Hast it ?

The 13th Amendent was NEVER DRAFTED by a Sri Lankan ? True or false ???

The 13th Amendment is as complicated as the WHOLE Sri Lankan constitution.

So if you complain about the 18th Amendment complain about the 13th Amendment too….This WAS ALSO NON-DEMOCRATIC.

Rajapkse’s adroit manipulation of our venal politicianswould have been the envy of Machiavelli: he certainly knows to hit the sweetspot when it comes to offering ministerial carrots to turncoat MPs. At thisrate, he’ll soon have to set up a “Ministry for invention of MinisterialPortfolios”. Really, don’t his urbane western-educated advisors like GL,Rajiva, Palitha etc. cringe when they have to invent portfolios that soundlike the result of word games?

On the other hand, those who fall out of favour can have no doubt that they’ll get the Fonseka treatment. Rajapkse, just like any “honourable” politician,has no qualms about setting up a nepotistic idyll, surrounded by courtiers like Mervyn Silva (that learned exponent ofthe “Sri Lankan Rope Trick”) who claims that people end up tied to trees,miraculously. Perhaps this could be just the sort of good governance that these “paragons of virtue” have in mind for us?

(a) keep everyone guessing as to the content; (b) bribe MPs to crossover by offering even more ministerial portfolios (merits an entry in the Guinness Book); (c) get an urgent supreme court ruling and then rush it through parliament before we Sri Lankans realise what hit us or the crossover MPs get cold feet(more likely). So, I’d say that the Economist got it right.

You refer to the “undemocratic 17th amendment”; but conveniently omit that it was in fact a UFPA govt (of which Rajapkse was a minister) that obtained consensus and passed it through parliament. How did they obtain such rare cross-party consensus for legislation that you term undemocratic? And such a stark contrast to the rush job on the 18th. The central feature of the 17th was aimed at guaranteeing a level playing field concerning the conduct of fair elections (a near impossible task with Rajapakse) and Police appointments. The untrammelled presidential power that Rajapakse now enjoys is exactly the scenario that would make any fair election impossible. There are no effective checks and balances. So, no exaggeration here; democracy cannot survive without such attributes, although Cuba, North Korea and Burma might disagree vehemently on that point.

As to your: “not to speak of catholics excluded monarchy in uk which appoints an offspring of the most bloody barbaric family in history to head it automatically. “
What a gem! I have no idea what this has to do with democracy, but get the feeling such a comment (does outside Pyongang write such

This could pave way for a military rule in the Sri Lanka

Sri Lanka government was opening “the door for a military coup in the country by introducing the 18th Amendment to the constitution”

The bill that will enable the President to seek a third term in office is passed by Parliament late tonight, where the ruling coalition has a two-thirds majority.

Whenever the bill is passed, that will be a “dark day for democracy”.

There is little rationality in this Government. The few who are intelligent and rational on the side of the Government have decided to keep silent. Otherwise they will lose their jobs.

Can Groundviews tell me on what grounds the UNP poster printed was arrested recently?
Was it not another case of irrationality on the part of the Government?