politicle news letter n. 4. 10.01

8/14/2019 Politicle News Letter n. 4. 10.01

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Vision on anvilCOLLECTED NEWS IN ENGLISH, ITALIAN AND SINHALA

By the blog group: http://visiononanvil.blogspot.com

This space is not founded on bias or on political sides or it is not going to pretend to suggest the truth. We do not pretend to know the truth but we want to

create a flat form on which different voices and different points of view encounter to create a dialogical environment, with the unique purpose of getting

more aware of different international dynamics. To know the facts that can lead us on the basis of universal principles.

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The TNA in Lankan politics today

Dr. Dayan Jayatileka

It is significant that every Tamil leader who supported or was a fellow-traveler of Prabhakaran and the Tigers and called for foreign intervention tostop the last war, is on one side of todays electoral divide while every Tamilleader who opposed Prabhakaran and the LTTE during the decisive last war ison the other side. While the LTTE army has been decapitated and destroyedon the soil of Sri Lanka, the global Tiger movement is out there waging a Coldwar, hoping to recover by political, ideological and diplomatic means, what itlost on the battlefield.

A fairly young Sri Lankan academic and

researcher of strategic and security affairs,

Sergei de Silva-Ranasinghe, whose Australia-

based work is quite interesting and bold,posed the following question to me in an

email:

"What I dont understand is that if the LTTE

had killed the members of the TNA coalition

parties (e.g. TELO etc) previously, and they

wereforcedto tow the LTTE line, why are

they still doing it now after the Tigersdefeat? Why are they notmoderating their

stance?"

Totalitarian Temptation vs. Democratic Ethos

It seems to me an utterly fundamental

question and I suggested he explore it in his

next essay. However it immediately triggered

this thought within me. During the Pongu

Thamil, certainly in Trincomalee, bare bodied

Tamil youths rolled on the hot tarred roads in

the noonday sun behind a chariot being pulled

by other youths, which bore the portrait of

Velupillai Prabhakaran. This was witnessed

by tens of thousands and written about by

freelance British journalist Paul Harris.

The Sunday TimesColombo carried a frontpage photograph of the attendees, including

MPs Raviraj and Joseph Pararajasingham,

giving raised arm, palm extended Nazi

salutes. Certainly only a fraction of the Tamil

people attended these and still fewer

participated in the rock and roll. My point is

why were there no outcries from all across the

Tamil political spectrum against this

collective self-abnegation? Why wasnt there

a resounding cry: "Not in our name!"? If the

answer is "violent intimidation" then why wasthere not a cry of horror emanating from the

safer social spaces of the Tamil Diaspora?

If a proffered justification is the oppression of

Tamils by the Sinhalese, and the nature of

national liberation struggles, I must say that I

never heard of Republican parades in

Northern Ireland (and they have an awful lot

of parades there) in which pro-IRA civilians

flagellated themselves as if in a Philippine


7/17






Passion play, while walking behind a portrait

of Gerry Adams!

The factor of psychology was brought into the

discussion of nationhood not only by the

Austro-Marxists but by the tough minded

realist Joseph Stalin, in his Marxism and the

National Question. His definition talked of "a

common psychological makeup manifested ina community of culture". What does the

practice of rolling bare-bodied on hot tarred

roads behind a portrait of Velupillai

Prabhakaran, and the relative absence (with a

few exceptions) of a negative reaction to it

from the Tamil community here or

worldwide, say about the "common

psychological makeup" of that collective? If it

is a cultural practice, what does that

"community of culture" reveal about the

"common psychological makeup" that, inStalins definition, it manifests?

Sergei de Silva-Ranasinghes question also

reminded me that the South, by contrast, has

demonstrated a resilient if rudimentary and

basic, democratic and individualist ethos, in

that no authoritarian project from above (JRJ)

or totalitarian one from below (JVP) has been

allowed to sustain itself. It must be said

though that never did the supporters of the

JVP roll around bare-bodied on tarred roadsin the noonday sun behind portraits of Rohana

Wijeweera!

The division in the wartime Southern power

bloc that hotly contested Presidential elections

of today, in which "regime change" is both

slogan and possibility, attests to the

democratic Southern ethos which is intolerant

of pretensions to monarchy.

Questions for the TNA

Political stances that were correct or

comprehensible in their time, thirty years ago

or more, are acts of criminal folly when

adhered to later under very different

circumstances. It is one thing to adopt

maximalist demands, and extremist strategies

and tactics when the political space is closedfor any other option. It is entirely another to

do so when political space has been opened

up by the struggle and external factors. Tamil

nationalism has persisted in these stances,

slogans and options even after serious

negotiations opened in the mid 1980s and a

reformist alternative, however imperfect,

presented itself with the Indo-Lanka accord of

1987.

What is the situation today? Though Israel isan occupying power according to UN

resolutions, and Sri Lanka obviously is not,

the international community has insisted oncertain preconditions for recognition of the

Palestinians, and supported Israel in such

insistence. There were originally two

conditions supplemented by a third. The

Palestinians had to recognize the right of the

state of Israel to exist and demonstrate this by

amending the PLOs Charter. The second

condition was the renunciation of terrorism.The third has been the need for legitimization

by elections. However, even a democratically

elected administration such as Hamas has

been subject to boycott for non-compliance

with conditions one and two.

How would the TNA fare if Sri Lankan

society should subject those segments of the

Tamil movement that until recently supported

the LTTE, both here in Sri Lanka and


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overseas, to such a litmus test? The equivalent

would be (i) the willingness to officially and

unconditionally renounce Tamil Eelam and

accept that any solution will be within the

borders of Sri Lanka as currently constituted

and (ii) unconditionally renounce the use of

violence and to denounce the LTTE and

Prabhakaran for having resorted to a

campaign of terrorism. In short, Tamilnationalism has to demonstrably break from

the LTTE and "Prabhakaranism" and from the

secessionist goal. This is hardly unfair or

unprecedented given that EU member Spain

has imposed a ban on Herri Batasuna, the

parliamentary party of Basque separatism

nationalism for its links with armed

separatism.

Where would Tamil nationalism stand on

these three fundamental (and severalancillary) queries:

1. Is it positive/a good thing or a negative/bad

thing that Prabhakaran was killed/is dead?

2. Is it a good thing or bad thing that the

LTTE was militarily defeated by the Sri

Lankan armed forces?

3. Is it desirable/ good or bad that Sri Lanka

remains one country whose bordersencompass the entire island?

These three main questions can be

supplemented by several others, none of

which contradict or even impinge upon the

legitimate demands of the Tamil national

minority in Sri Lanka.

* Was it correct for the TULF not to have

participated in the North East Provincial

Council established under the Indo-Lanka

Accord?

* Why doesnt the TNA denounce the LTTE

for having walked out of the September 1987

agreement, following the Thileepan fast, by

which President Jayewardene was to establish

the interim council for the temporarily

merged North and East, with seven out oftwelve seats including the chairpersonship

given to the LTTE? Where are the Diaspora

voices which denounce that walkout?


for having gone to war against the IPKF?

* Why doesnt the TNA denounce the Tigers

for the assassination of Rajiv Gandhi?

* Why doesnt the TNA denounce the Tigersfor the murders of TULF leaders

Amirthalingam, Yogeswaran, the latters

widow Sarojini Yogewaran and Dr Neelan

Tiruchelvam?


for having murdered President Premadasa,

and Gamini Dissanayake, and attempted to

murder President Chandrika Bandaranaike

Kumaratunga all Sinhalese leaders who

held moderate views on the ethnic question?

* Why doesnt the TNA make a self-criticism

of its refusal to accept the 1995 and 1997

union of regions package of President

Kumaratunga, and support in Parliament, her

draft Constitution of August 2000?

* Why doesnt the TNA condemn the Tigers

for having violated the Ceasefire agreement


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over 4,000 times, i.e. several times more than

the Sri Lankan military did?


for unilaterally backing away from the Oslo

2002 agreement to explore a federal solution

within a united Sri Lanka?

* Why doesnt the TNA condemn the Tigersfor the boycott of the April 2003 Tokyo donor

conference?


for the manner in which they refused to

negotiate with Karuna during his schism?

The Sri Lankan state would naturally feel it is

unsafe to consider as a peace partner and an

ally in nation-building, party or formation

which failed to arrive at a consensus with iton these issues. Public opinion could be

reluctant to fully devolve power to such an

entity.

The Big Lie & the Intellectual Cover-up

Even the best engage in the cover-up. Rajan

Hoole, a respected human rights activist and

intellectual, vitiates a valuable new UTHR-J

report on the 4th anniversary of the atrocity

that was the murder of the Trinco five, bywriting of "the ideology of Sinhala hegemony

which invented its counterpart the LTTE".

This is a fallacy several times over. The

LTTE was not invented by the ideology of

Sinhala hegemonism any more than Tamil

separatism in Tamil Nadu was invented by

Sinhala hegemonism. While, arguably, the

LTTE is a product of Sinhala hegemony

note that I say a product, not the product,

since it was a product of a few other factors as

well the LTTE is certainly NOT

the "counterpart" of "the ideology of Sinhala

hegemony". Sinhala hegemony was well,

hegemonistic, chauvinistic, even racist, but

the LTTE, in addition to being all of these,

was or became totalitarian-fascist. While

every fascist is racist not every racist isfascist. Kurt Julius Goldstein, German, Jew,

holocaust survivor and chairman of the Anti-

Fascist Fighters Front told me in Moscow in

1985 at the World Festival of Youth and

Students, what one of the biggest mistakes of

the German Left movement had been. (I wrote

this up in The Island and theLanka

Guardian at the time). He said that they

confused racism for fascism when they should

even have worked with or neutralized racists,

ultranationalists and chauvinists and isolatedthe fascists.

Hooles distortion is part of a larger

ideological game or narrative, in which all

depredations of Tamil nationalism are sought

to be rationalized by the argument that this

nationalism was but reactive and defensive.

Thats the Big Lie. Writing on the 20th

anniversary of Black July 83, I proffered an

alternative explanation: "We didnt create

Prabhakaran, but we created the conditions inwhich the Tamil people called Prabhakaran

into being from the dark underside of their

collective psyche; and we provided, with

Black July 83 the conditions in which

Prabhakaran grew into a Goliath". (Black

July 83: The Stain of Guilt,Sunday

IslandJuly 27, 2003).

Original article is fromwww.island.lk
http://www.island.lk/http://www.island.lk/http://www.island.lk/http://www.island.lk/


10/17






Freedom for child soldiers

January 9, 2010Local News

712 including LTTE child soldiers who had

given up weapons, have been released.

All of them were rehabilitated in the

Vavuniya Social Welfare village. PresidentRajapaksa handed them over to their parents.

These innocent children had been conscripted

by the LTTE and were trained to handle

weapons merely to make Prabhakarans

Eelam dream a reality. They had to dedicat

their childhood for this purpose. The

President succeeded in liberating the country

from terrorism and thereby creatin an

environment for them to return to leading

normal lives after rehabilitating them.

Expressing his views on this occasion,

President Rajapaksa said that an opportunity

would not arise again for the Northern

children to fight for a terrorist organization,

taking to arms instead of the school bag.

The President said there will be no sound of

gunfire. They do not need injured or dying

civilians. Everyone should join hands and

unite for a brighter future. The children

should be granted a proper education andsecure a dignified job, enabling them to lead a

disciplined life. The President underlined that

a young generation respecting religious

leaders and parents should be moulded.

The children who underwent rehabilitation

and who were released said they are indebted

to the President for ensuring them a secure

life and a better future.

Parents of these children expressed their

gratitude to the President to the environment

created for their children to return to society

after liberating them from the ruthless

terrorists.
http://www.itnnews.lk/?p=2203http://www.itnnews.lk/?cat=3http://www.itnnews.lk/?cat=3http://www.itnnews.lk/?cat=3http://www.itnnews.lk/?cat=3http://www.itnnews.lk/?p=2203


11/17






Sri Lanka prospects bright

for rapid economic growth

by Ajit RANADE

The Sensex is a big brand, which celebrates is

25th birthday today. It is an index, calculated

as an average of 30 prices of stocks listed on

the Bombay Stock Exchange. These are 30

largest companies, and the average price is

taken by adjusting for their respective

weights. The 30 companies used in the

Sensex today is different from the 30

companies few years ago, because the league

of the top 30 keeps changing. Indeed, only 11

of the original 30 from 1986 remain in the

Sensex today.

You can choose to invest in any of those

individual companies (the so-called large cap

stocks) or you can invest in the Sensex

directly. If you had invested Rs. 100 in

Sensex one year ago, it would have become

Rs 180 today. If instead, you had invested in

gold, then your investment would have risen

only by 25 per cent.

The Sensex has soared by 80 percent, its

highest single year rise since 1991, and

among the biggest gainer in stock markets all

over the world. India beat China in this race

during 2009. However, the stock market,

which beat everybody, was from

neighbouring Sri Lanka, whose all-share

index (not just 30 stocks) rose by 125 per

cent. Colombos performance was the worlds

best, thanks to foreign inflows, declining

inflation, lower interest rates and outlook for

stability. Sri Lanka is expected to reap a peace

dividend after the defeat of LTTE, and the

end of a virtual civil war for the past 25 years.

The country will elect a new President on

January 26, and then vote for a new

Parliament in April. The Sri Lankan system of

government is a mixture of presidential

(American) and parliamentary system

(Indian), with the President being answerable

to an elected Parliament. However, the former

can dissolve the latter! There are 22

candidates in the fray, with two leading

contenders being incumbent President

Mahinda Rajapaksa and former Army chief

General Sarath Fonseka.

The promise of the peace dividend might

favour the incumbent President. If the

incumbent government led by Rajapaksa

comes back to power, it will be a repeat of the

UPA victory in Indias parliamentary

elections in May, 2009.

Sri Lankas elections are as colourful as

Indias, so expect much cacophony and noisy


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campaigning. Whatever the outcome, the

outlook for the economy is bright. The North-

Eastern Tamil-dominated area will need

massive reconstruction and investments.

Unfortunately, wars lead to destruction, and

then to economic revival. Elsewhere too in

the economy, tourism, fisheries, agriculture

and services are expected to grow twice as

fast this year.

The Lankan currency is also strengthening,

and remittances are growing too. If you

invested in Lankan government bonds last

year, you would have made a safe return of at

least 20 percent. Of course, the risky

Colombo Stock Market would have given you

125 percent.

Lanka has very high literacy and relatively

better healthcare. Its population is only two

per cent of India, while the economy is four

per cent. Were it not for the terrible two-

decade long civil war, it could have been a

tourism haven like Bangkok or Hawaii, and a

logistics hub in South Asia rivalling

Singapore.

As it makes its slow climb, its prospects are

bright in the coming years. It enjoys a free

trade pact with both India and Pakistan, so

that goods and investments can flow freely in

both directions.

The Chinese are keen to get a foothold in the

island nation, and it behooves us not to let go

of our geopolitical and cultural advantage. At

Kotla we had a fiasco, whereas in Colombo

the pitch is just right.

Courtesy: Mumbai Mirror


13/17






Jathika Hela Urumaya

points out a conspiracy to

resurrect LTTEFri, 2010-01-08 03:43editor

By Anjana Jayashan in Colombo

Colombo, 08 January (Asiantribune.com):

Jathika Hela Urumaya (JHU), an allied party

to the United Peoples Freedom Alliance

(UPFA), has pointed out that the Tamil

National Alliance (TNA) was still in the

LTTEs ideology even after the disastrous

LTTE was defeated by this government.

JHUs Parliamentary Group leader Ven.

Athuraliye Rathana Thera, addressing a press

briefing in Colombo yesterday (January 07),

said the decision of Sampanthan faction of the

TNA to support Gen. Sarath Fonseka at the

forthcoming presidential election shows that

they did not like the governments move of

defeating the LTTE.

JHUs group leader also said that all

governments took efforts to defeat the LTTE

before, but genuineness of those efforts were

questionable. The Freedom Alliance led by

President Mahinda Rajapaksa proved that all

others had done a mere show-off game and it

is he who defeated the terrorism, teaching the

world also terrorism can be defeated if

genuinely worked for the target, the JHUs

leader added.

He also pointed out that General Fonseka had

agreed to release LTTE cadres in custody

once he gets elected, because the Sampanthan

faction was close to the LTTE and is fulfilling

the needs of the LTTE. The Venarable Thera

also highlighted the danger of a contract that

had been undertaken by General Fonseka and

the United National Party (UNP) to resurrect

the LTTE which was defeated a few months

ago.

Environment Minster Patali Champaka

Ranawaka, who joined the press briefing, at

the Mahaweli Center, reminded that the

international community never wanted

Mahinda Rajapaksa to become the President

and they tried various tactics by indirectly

supporting a terrorist like Prabakaran,

organizing worker strikes, university unrest

and failed The rival factions had always been

supported to block his victory, this was true at

the last presidential elections too. It would

never work.

The Minister said the international forces that

had failed so far had now formed an anti-

national alliance in Sri Lanka. Mr. Ranawaka

assured that no one will be allowed to merge

the North and East again, which was de-

merged by a Supreme Court ruling. The

Minister further added that if one tries to that

it is a betrayal, against court ruling.


14/17






Mr. Ranawaka, who listed the mega

development projects which are being

implemented at present, said that Sri Lanka

will be transformed in to an Asiatic Center for

energy, naval, air, excelling in commercial

and knowledge areas in few years.

The Minister said all peace loving peoplewere with the President and the future policy

to further develop the country would be

known on January 10.

- Asian Tribune

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President developed

country whilestrengtheningdefenceLast modified on: 1/7/2010 8:25:40 AM

President Mahinda Rajapaksa is the only

leader who set an example to the world on

how development and welfare could be

built while at the same time strengthening

the country's defence, Media Minister

Lakshman Yapa Abeywardane said

yesterday.

He was addressing a ceremony to present

certificates to selected Samurdhi officials

who successfully completed the regional journalism course conducted by the Sri

Lanka Press Council aligned to the

regional Samurdhi communication

network development program of the

Samurdhi Authority.

The Minister said some people attempted

to introduce the Press Council as a

punishing instrument against journalists

and as a barrier to free media.

"Today the Press Council is performing acommendable function in raising the

competency of journalists to supply

information to the village."

"As never experienced before, three

funding sources nourish the village

through Gama Neguma, Samurdhi and

provincial development authorities

assigned to carry out development

programs at grassroots level, the Minister

added.

He pointed out that the strong and single

minded visionary leadership of President

Rajapaksa brought victory against

terrorism which other Presidents could not

achieve even with a stronger Parliament.

Infrastructure development programs like

highways, ports, electricity andagriculture recorded their highest

contribution ever. Ampara district alone

obtained Rs 76,000 million during the last

two years, the Minister noted.

Courtesy : Daily news


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CARTOON BY: Jamika Manohara Dias

[email protected]
mailto:[email protected]:[email protected]:[email protected]

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