The principal recommendations I sent to the President were based on 70 meetings over the year of District and Divisional Secretariat Reconciliation Committees. Two meetings were held in every Divisional Secretariat in the North, excluding the Jaffna District, where four meetings were held altogether. There were 20 meetings in Divisional Secretariats in the East, in addition to meetings at District ...
April 17th 2014 The Editor The Island Dear Sir I write with reference to the article by Shamindra Ferdinando, to which he kindly drew my attention, which appeared in your columns on April 16th. While I am grateful to him for drawing attention to a period when government had dedicated agencies to deal with such matters, using analysis and ...
Mr Speaker, it gives me great pleasure to speak in support of the Budget for 2012 put forward by the Government. More than two years have passed since the conclusion of the conflict which held back the development of this country. Since then we have had a series of elections, the last of which was concluded a couple of ...
On the basis of consultations undertaken over the year as Adviser on Reconciliation to the President, I have submitted a report, with several recommendations. One set deals with problems raised at Divisional meetings. I give here the preamble, and the actual recommendations - Much dissatisfaction is created by the sense that government is distant, and decisions are made without consideration ...
Andrea Spalinger Dear Sir I was deeply shocked by the article on Sri Lanka by Andrea Spalinger that appeared in your columns last week. She listened in while I was giving an interview to another lady from Switzerland, and I fear she has misrepresented some of the things I said. Innuendo, as with regard to the last sentence concerning ...
Efforts to rouse concern about conditions at the welfare centres are understandable in sympathizers of the LTTE agenda seeking to bring Sri Lanka into disrepute. What is astonishing is that a panel appointed by the UN Secretary General should have followed this line, while ignoring the clear evide
The meeting at the House of Commons to screen ‘Lies Agreed Upon’, the refutation of several falsehoods propagated by Channel 4, provided many interesting insights into the manner in which the whole case against Sri Lanka is being built up. The screening was intended primarily for politicians, so that discussion could be of issues germane to the ongoing political ...
Gareth Evans - a flamboyant and opinionated Gilderoy Lockhart I have two questions based on the ICG report on women’s insecurity in the North and East: 1. The ICG is critical of the government for not doing enough to address the security concerns of women in the North and East, who face a ”desperate lack of security”. How do you ...
Text of lecture at a workshop at the Kotelawala Defence University January 20th 2013 In the first section of this talk I spoke about the confusion in Sri Lanka between the Executive and the Legislature. Flowing from a system in which expansion of the Executive is seen as the easiest way of ensuring a Parliamentary majority, we have overlapping Ministries. ...
Namal then is here to stay, and with the passing of the 18th Amendment to the Constitution that removed term limits, his father would obviously be able to stay on as President, or to be precise as the Presidential candidate of his party, until Namal were ready to take his place. This was of course understood by other members of ...
Liam Fox (centre) with Adam Werritty (right) and Colombo politician Ravi Karunanayake pictured in Sri Lanka in 2009 Liam Fox has been the subject of much criticism, and some of it seems to relate to possible financial benefits to Adam Werrity, his former flat-mate. If indeed it turns out that Werrity has benefited from business deals through Fox’s influence, ...
The area in which there seems the greatest perversity about the concerns that have been expressed, regarding the conflict in Sri Lanka, is that of humanitarian assistance. The Darusman report claims categorically that ‘The Government systematically deprived persons in the conflict zone of humanitarian assistance, in the form of food and basic medical supplies, particularly [...] ...
Roma Tearne Amongst the most interesting offshoots of the discussion on Channel 4 and Sri Lanka held at the Frontline Club in London was a wonderfully creative piece by the novelist Roma Tearne. Her photograph is that of a very smart young lady, long face set off by bullet shaped ear-rings and long dark hair, with a tasteful fringe on ...
… after the unprecendented action of two Cabinet Ministers who did not vote for the government in a vote of confidence, after which one of them has put the government on probation. Your Excellency Last year, when I did not vote for the impeachment of the Chief Justice, instructions had been given, before I even returned home, to reduce my Security. ...
March 2011 - Source: AP, Reuters, Global Security | Tim Goheen / MCT The recent events in Libya have given rise to much discussion about the morality of decisions with regard to international relations. There have been allegations of inconsistency and double standards, of greed masquerading as compassion, of power purporting to be righteousness. All this analysis ignores the ...
Text of a presentation by Prof Rajiva Wijesinha, MP, at the Seminar on Crossed Perceptions: China, the United States, the European Union, Brazil and the Emerging World October 22nd 2013, Rio de Janeiro Let me begin with one of the formative myths of the Sri Lankan state. It deals with the introduction of Buddhism to the country, in the 2nd ...
CALD General Assembly 2012 I must begin by thanking the Secretariat of the Council of Asian Liberals and Democrats for putting together an excellent concept paper, which presents us with a very balanced view of the topic of our general assembly this year. It is all too easy to think of populism in negative terms, and indeed the list of ...
Parvathi Nagasunderam ‘A Dance to the Music of Time’ by Antony Powell is one of the most impressive fictional works of the last century. The narrator comes across different characters in different settings over the years, and I was reminded of this as I saw so many old friends coming in here today to celebrate Parvathi Nagasunderam and her work. ...
After the recent fiasco over the delay in providing Members of Parliament with bills they were supposed to discuss and vote on, I engaged in some study of practice here and in other countries, and also referred to relevant authorities. What became clear is that Sri Lanka has in essence taken away from Parliament its power over legislation, and the ...
