I write this in Shillong, capital of the state of Meghalaya, while attending a Conference on ‘India’s North-East and Asiatic South-East: Beyond Borders’. It has been arranged by the Centre for Research in Rural and Industrial Development, which has an impressive array of full-time staff as well as Consultants. One of them, a retired Colonel who had worked for many ...
Island 7 April 2011 - http://www.island.lk/index.php?page_cat=article-details&page=article-details&code_title=22621 Colonial Africa 1914 The current division of the Middle East and North Africa into different countries is largely the result of decisions made by European countries. This indeed goes for Africa as a whole, for the carve up of that continent took place when colonialism was at its height, and there could be no ...
I was pleased that Laksiri Fernando had picked up on my publication of documentation with regard to the negotiations between the government and the TNA way back in 2011. I suspect he is right in saying that some might think this is betrayal, given that even my efforts to defend the Secretary of Defence against Sarath Fonseka’s allegations in 2009 ...
The National Action Plan for the Protection and Promotion of Human Rights 2011 – 2016 ( sinhala & tamil) as well as the full series of Sri Lanka Rights Watch are available at the Peace & Reconciliation Website. The ICRC study on overcrowding in prisons is deeply depressing, not only because of the sordid picture it reveals, but also because ...
Speech of Prof Rajiva Wijesinha As Chief Guest at the inaugural meeting of The Institute of Geology Sri Lanka 2nd June 2014 I am honoured to have been invited today to speak at this inaugural meeting, not least because, as you are all well aware, Geology is not a subject about which I know anything. It is the more kind ...
I continue surprised, though I should not be, given our infinite capacity for self delusion, at the virulence of attacks on India with regard to the several crises we brought upon ourselves. It is claimed that India was gratuitously nasty in supporting terrorists, and that it acted outrageously in 1987 in imposing the Indo-Lankan Accord upon us. I think India ...
At the recent discussion held at the Marga Institute on accountability and reconciliation, I was confronted with an accusation I found interesting, and not entirely groundless. One of the brighter individuals earlier involved in advocacy NGO work suggested that my explanations for some responses of government were similar to what was claimed in mitigation by those who refused to criticize ...
I was asked recently in an interview to mention seven areas of priority for the new Parliament. I began with Education and Reconciliation which have long been priorities for me. But then I also noted some other areas in which structural change was essential. One of these was providing greater autonomy to the regions and local bodies with regard to ...
A couple of days back I predicted that the FUTA strike would soon be resolved by yet another increase in the salaries of university staff, with no correctives with regard to the grave problems now facing our education system. Recent reports in the papers suggest that this will indeed be the case. …no correctives with regard to the grave problems ...
In a week of much depressing news, perhaps the most depressing was that presented under what seemed intended to be a triumphant headline. The headline read ‘President resolves Uswewa Junior School teacher shortage’, and the story was about how the President took steps to fill teacher vacancies in a Junior School in the Hambantota District. Children from that school had ...
A few weeks back I was approached by a body called the Oxford Research Group, asking about a workshop on the recording of casualties during the conflict in Sri Lanka. This seemed a good idea because, as we have expressed in the draft National Policy on Reconcilation, we must address the anguish of those who do not know what happened ...
One of the promises in the President’s manifesto which was broken was that relating to the Right to Information Bill. The manifesto pledged that the Bill would be introduced on the 20th of February and passed within three weeks. Some sort of leeway was also given, because it was actually a month later, on the 20th of March, that it ...
In the last few articles in this series, I think I should look at how and why the great hopes with which this government was elected have been shattered. I thought this essential because I have read many versions of how the 19th Amendment was passed. Many of the commentaries written in English seem largely designed to place in a ...
Students performing a tamil folk dance On World Children’s Day the Country Director of UNICEF in Sri Lanka, Mr Reza Husseini, opened an English Activity Centre at the Karandana Junior School in the Eheliyagoda Educational Division. The Centre, which also includes two classrooms for Grade V students, and looks out over the local hills, was built with decentralized funds allocated ...
Transparency International recently held a workshop on how Parliamentarians could contribute to reducing corruption. Though it was mainly opposition members who attended, government too was represented, in the form of Rev Athureliya Rathana of the JHU, as well as Thilanga Sumathipala, Vidura Wickramanayake and Manusha Nanayakkara, apart from myself. Much discussion centred around the oversight role of Parliament, following an ...
In his brilliant account of our current economic situation, delivered at the Liberal Party discussion on Economic Reform, Indrajith Coomaraswamy spent some time in discussing the budget deficit, and why it is particularly worrying in the current context. He noted that the current account of the balance of payments has been in deficit since 1957, while the current account of ...
I have been mostly away for some weeks, but that is not the only reason I did not talk about the appalling violence that occurred in Aluthgama almost a month ago. I was waiting, because I hoped that this would be a turning point for the Presidency. I hoped that, in reacting to violence that goes against the principles on ...
For the second part of this series, I will follow the system of the book that Cambridge University Press published some years back, and deal with practice in Sri Lanka. At the time I wondered whether I was not being unduly simplistic in spelling out in detail the way in which democracy developed in Sri Lanka. But a decade later, ...
Coincidentally, after I had written last week about the complications caused by Zonal Education Offices setting termly examination question papers for schools, the Minister of Education himself raised the question at the fortnightly Parliamentary Group Meeting. He was hurt, understandably so, at the harsh criticism of errors in a number of papers set by a number of Zones. His point ...
