Pleasant surprise!
The President has told a foreign visitor ”This is why it is necessary change the mindset of the people in the South. This is why reconciliation should be inculcated in the minds of the people in the South,” !! He must tell this in the cabinet and inthe parliament. He must call call the press and tell them. I deally this should have happened before the process of Reconciliation Task Force started talking with the citizens.

Sending Reginald Cooray (who stayed with the Rajapakse faction for weeks after the presidential election) as Governor of Northern Province glaringly spoke that singing of the anthem in Tamil is a screen for the absence of political will for a solution to the ethnic conflict.
The Governor had discredited himself by saying that reconciliation can be brought about by intermarriages!

Positive Peace Report 2015, Institute of Peace and Economics:
‘’ Negative Peace is the absence of violence and Positive Peace is the presence of the attitudes, institutions and structures that create and sustain peaceful societies. Positive Peace provides a framework to understand and then address the multiple and complex challenges the world faces:
A framework of eight positive peace factors:

i.Well-functioning government
ii.Equitable distribution of resources
iii.Acceptance of the rights of others
iv.Sound business environment
v.High levels of human capital
vi.Low levels of corruption
vii.Free flow of information
viii.Good relations with neighbours’’ – http://static.visionofhumanity.org/sites/default/files/Positive%20Peace%202015%20Highlights.pdf

How many of the eight factors can Sri Lanka tick?

It is very unfortunate that the Minister for Foreign Affairs was rebuffed by an army official in Jaffna when he went to launch the Secretariat for Coordinating Reconciliation Mechanism two weeks back: http://www.tamilguardian.com/article.asp?articleid=17264
But actually the President should have launched it in the South as
a.Tamils had overwhelmingly voted for him on 08.01.2016 without any conditions though the Common Candidate mentioned only Good Governance and avoided mentioning anything at all about political solution: http://groundviews.org/2015/01/20/the-executive-presidency-and-the-sri-lankan-state-myths-and-realities/ and
b.it’s a considerable section of the South that needs to be convinced of the need for a dialogue towards political solution as they support the former President in spite of the fact that he was dragging his feet without offering a genuine dialogue(they had a pretend dialogue for a period to cheat the international community) for a political solution.
As Tamils have overwhelmingly voted for the TNA, the President may have a dialogue with them when the South is convinced of its need.

Thank you very much, Mr Nesiah, for the response and for the articles you post here.

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Puniselva :
Any person who has read your response to my 1st entry to groundviews on the singing of the national anthem in our national languages would be deeply appreciative of the extensively researched details that have gone into your response. Your tone is in sharp contrast to the imperious tone adopted by one of our “scholars” whose ill researched and factually incorrect article in “The Island” on 19th February , under the title “National Anthem and language” prescribes that “ The National Anthem should be in Sinhala only”. This “scholar” goes on to wrongly conclude that “The Yahapalanaya government” has opted for Sri Lanka to be a “multi civilisation federal state”.

While I remain cautiously and moderately optimistic, I agree with you that the outlook for Sri Lanka is patchy. In my view it helps to go forward if , firstly , we get our priorities right and, second, focus on the positives rather than the negatives. My priorities include National reconciliation; Freeing those held without charges; Justice and reparations for the victims of crimes; Rehabilitating war damaged societies; Restoring equal rights, which we lost very soon after independence, and Restoring law and order. To me, changing of the National flag is of low priority, but justice for the education officer murdered in December 2010 for resisting the order to organise the singing of the national anthem Sinhala only in Jaffna as well as for all victims of war crimes is of high priority. Investigating war crimes and prosecuting war criminals will clear the reputation of the large numbers of the war heroes who had fought bravely and honourably. The problem is that there are a few war criminals very high up in the hierarchy and it is they, not war heroes, who will be opposed to investigation of war crimes.

I agree with you that the progress has been below expectations, with a shaky and internally fractured government confronted by a menacing opposition that seems to be poised to take us back to the situation pre-January 2015. Hopefully, the forthcoming elections and other developments will improve matters.

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Jayalath: Minister Vijayakala Maheshwaran and Chief Minister Justice C.V.Wigneswaran can answer for themselves, and I don’t need to come in. I am happy that you favour the singing of our national anthem in both our national languages. English is not our national language, and there is no English version of our national anthem. Bringing it into the debate seems to be a red herring designed to muddy the waters. Let us sing our national anthem in Sinhala and Tamil and focus on national reconciliation, equality and justice. A great deal needs to be done, and quickly.

Please let me post the weblink to the speech for the benefit of the other citizens: http://www.srilankaembassy.be/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=382:speech-delivered-by-h-e-the-president-maithripala-sirisena-at-the-68th-independence-day-celebrations-on-february-4-2016&catid=90:fashion
Unfortunately there is a liberal sprinkling of gobbledegoog that avoids two critical words: justice and equality. Let us see if there is any change after the workshop(Select Committee Capacity Building) for our parliamentarians run in the last three days by the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association UK Branch in our parliament.

I meant Devanesan Nesiah by ”This author”

But you would be utterly confused if you look at
i.the President’s speech(”we have to recover from imperialists’ rule that caused the 26-yr war”) he took the country back past 2010 (when conscientious Sinhalese told LLRC that successive governments had been oppressing ethnic minorities politically and economically from the time of independence and created the LTTE and that the constitution must be changed to give equality and justice for all and the submissions were taken off the LLRC website within days) to 1948.
ii.in the last 10 days alone the non-stop contradictions among the govt politicians(including the PM and the Prez) and the verbal wrangling between the govt and Opposition MR faction,
it seems that this singing is a ploy to keep the international community and the pro-govt South quiet while the armed forces(cimicjaffna.com, army.lk) give away only a glimpse) are strengthening themselves in the North