Education, education, education

http://transcurrents.com/tc/2009/01/why_sirimavo_refused_to_visit.html

Building a consciousness of nationhood, or a deseeya cintanaya, is not a responsibility that can be left to politicians and constitutional lawyers. A deseeya chintanaya cannot be legislated, nor can it be secured through structural changes. Unlike a jathika cintanaya, whether Sinhala or Dhamila, which have roots reaching back over two thousand years, the seeds of a deseeya cintanaya have yet to be planted.

It is pre-eminently an educational task, to be initiated at the level of our schools. It requires a new way of looking at history, and helping young minds climb out of the constraints placed on their understanding by the sectarian myths, legends, and memories that are embedded in their ancient chronicles, whether they relate to their Aryan origins or to their Dravidian origins. This does not mean that children should be ignorant of, much less that they should reject, their rich historical inheritance, but that they should acquire a more global view of history and be equipped with a critical sense that will enable them to stand back and look at their respective narratives more objectively.

2.I don’t have to remind anybody of the disgusting and debilitating corruption of our elected politicians over the past decades.

3.LTTE has come and gone. If there is no change in the life of the minorities before, during, and after, the armed struggle, what is the logical conclusion?

http://transcurrents.com/tc/2009/01/why_sirimavo_refused_to_visit.html
Why Sirimavo refused to visit Jaffna after 1964 cyclone
By Neville Jayaweera, 18 January 2009:

”…..
Broadly, there are two types of political leaders.

The commonest are those who have sensed the dominant mood of the people, the zeit geist, and ride it to power, like surfers ride the waves. They are the sectarian populists. Not being rooted in a set of values, and lacking a higher vision, they do not question the morality of the dominant mood, much less seek to transform it, and once ensconced in office, using all the state apparatus at their disposal, seek only to magnify it. Lacking moral goals higher than attaining or remaining in power, they are quite willing to sacrifice the nation and the long term good of the very people who brought them to power, at the altar of their ambitions. As they hurry the nation in a disintegrating downward spiral, their sectarian constituency cheers them on, and lacking any criteria by which to judge themselves or their constituency, they cease to be true leaders of the nation and become instead tribal chieftains.

The second type of leader is those who, having caught a vision of a civilized society, try to objectify it. Their take off point is not the mass but the vision, and their constant reference frame are the attributes of that higher moral order, viz .fundamental rights, righteousness, equality, justice, integrity, fairness, harmony and peace. The dominant paradigm will always resist any attempt by that higher order to intrude upon its sectarian domain, but the test of a great leader is his willingness to dilute into it those elevated attributes, so that they may start working as catalysts, like salt works in a bowl of soup. Seeing that there is a huge gap between the higher vision he is trying to objectify and the sectarian consciousness in which he is trapped, the great leader tries to bridge the gap by upgrading the latter. He starts paddling upstream, against the torrent. Sadly, such leaders belong to a miniscule minority.

….
More than the power it derives from an overwhelming superiority in numbers, what exalts any majority community, and endows it with a true greatness and moral authority, is its willingness to accord to all those other communities who lack the advantage of numbers, a status and dignity equal to its own, and never to let them feel marginalized or disadvantaged because they are fewer in number, or because they are different in colour or beliefs.

Unless and until Sri Lanka can produce leaders who can realize that truth, and are willing to act on it, it will continue to be dismembered by conflict, long after the LTTE and Pirabhikaran have passed into history.”

(Neville Jayaweera is a former Government Agent of Jaffna. The above article , extracted from his forthcoming book of memoirs, was published in the “Sunday Island” of Jan 18th 2009)

Hi Davidson,

This is what might happen if the govt releases TRO funds:

Post-Tsunami Sri Lanka: Swindlers Hold Sway
http://servesrilanka.blogspot.com/2005/06/post-tsunami-sri-lanka-swindlers-hold.html

“There are numerous cases of unaffected families being provided relief, cash grants, and houses due to political patronage. This type of fraud is higher in the north and east than in other parts of the country due to organised attempt by the LTTE to plunder the state and the donors in the name of tsunami rehabilitation.
“Hence, the pattern emerging out of the foregoing examples is that people closer to the LTTE are getting priority and favoured treatment whether affected by the tsunami or not in the LTTE-controlled areas of the north. Particularly, families of martyrs are given the most favoured treatment.

“Most tsunami-affected people in the camps where fieldwork was conducted have received semi-permanent homes and only a small number of people are still camping in tents. However, in Kervil the affected people were asked by the TRO to do their own roofing and that they would reimburse the cost in due course of time. However, inmates complained that they had not received the promised payment so far. Moreover, there are also differences in types of semi-permanent houses constructed in different places. Semi-permanent houses constructed by TRO in Kervil, Kattaikadu, and Maruthenkerny have a concrete floor (with no foundation), and concrete walls up to only three feet height. Then it is elevated by slim iron bars with thatched roof. The door is made out of tin sheet. Whereas the semi-permanent houses built by Sewa Lanka (southern-based national NGO) in Kallaru refugee camp have a stronger foundation floor and concrete walls right up to the roof, which is thatched. Besides, they also have a wooden door.
“Needless to say, the tsunami-affected people in Kervil, Kattaikadu and Maruthenkerny refugee camps are not satisfied with their shoddy semi-permanent houses. The inmates doubt it would have cost the TRO LKR 45,000 for each house.

“In the aftermath of the tsunami the LTTE and TRO cruelly capitalised on the massive sympathy wave sweeping the Tamil diaspora to mobilise huge amount of money. It was reported that TRO has mobilised US$ 500 million from various sources including the Tamil diaspora [Jayasekara 2005].
“However, there is no evidence of the money collected abroad remitted to Sri Lanka.
“Tamil people know only of LTTE efficiency in killings, extortions in the name of taxes and tariffs [Sarvananthan 2003], and propaganda (spreading falsehood, outright lies and misinformation). LTTEs inefficiency is well known to the Tamil people living in the North and East, but perhaps not to some overseas academics. Has the LTTE ever shown accounts for various illegal taxes it levies on the Tamil people in Sri Lanka and abroad? When did LTTE or TRO account for the monies collected after the tsunami?”

All could be forgiven and forgotten. The following could be changed:

http://transcurrents.com/tc/2009/01/why_sirimavo_refused_to_visit.html
Why Sirimavo refused to visit Jaffna after 1964 cyclone, Neville Jayaweera, 18 january 2009:
”On reaching Jaffna I found conditions were horrendous. Our resources were limited, having no heavy machinery for clearing roads and for rescuing people buried under fallen houses. Everything had to be done by hand and we were hard put to it, to bring relief and succour to hundreds of sorrowing families. All public services, particularly the PWD and the Irrigation Department, and my DROs and village headmen, suspended their normal work and mobilising to a man, struggled valiantly to bring some order out of the chaos. One of the first services to be restored was the telephone link to Colombo…..
Her response filled me with dismay and a deep sadness. It was not just that she failed to respond to her people’s anguish, but the realisation dawned on me that Sri Lanka as a nation had no leader. It was as if the Prime Minister of the country had consciously renounced responsibility for one fourth of her country’s population! Not least, the high esteem in which I had held her after meeting her on several occasions, plummeted. ….”

http://www.tsunami-evaluation.org/NR/rdonlyres/06B7033C-446F-407F-BF58-7D4A71425BFF/0/ApproachestoEquity.pdf
Approaches to equity in post-Tsunami assistance. Sri Lanka: A case study, Mandeep Kaur Grewal(DfID), November 2006:
”Within several days of the tsunami, Trincomalee’s District Secretary echoed the practice of his counterparts in other tsunami affected districts by engaging with a range of local stakeholders to form a coordination task force. By February 2005, presidential instructions arrived, requiring the District Secretary to seek ministerial approval for each task force meeting, effectively replacing this body with a special Council for the Reconstruction of Trincomalee, which involved approximately 70 members and was headed by ministers based in Colombo. The Council’s creation compromised district coordination efforts while providing no effective alternative, with the new Council meeting fewer than three times over 2005. The example of the District Secretary, who was undermined in developing a standard coordination process that other districts were able to implement, contrasts sharply with Hambantota’s housing experience, where conventional bureaucratic norms and systems of accountability were set aside, allowing the district to respond comparatively faster in planning reconstruction. ….”