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COULD THE LESSONS LEARNT HAVE BEEN FORSEEN?
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Dr DAYAN JAYATILLEKA, sep 1.
Testimony by former senior officials at the Lessons Learnt panel has provided useful insights into what went wrong with policy perceptions, process and prescriptions during the CFA. Meanwhile the grapevine has it that the Royal Norwegian Government has called for tenders for academics and think tanks which can participate in its own ‘lessons learnt’ inquiry into what went wrong with its own efforts at a ‘peace process’ in Sri Lanka.
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AN UNCOMFORTABLE PEACE IN SRI LANKA
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by Cédric Gouverneur, August 12, 2010.
Mahinda Rajapaksa, strengthened by military victory over the Tamil Tigers,
easily won the 2010 Sri Lanka elections. But his government's
authoritarianism is frightening the Sinhalese - and the Tamils are afraid of
colonisation by the Sinhalese majority
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THE SELF-IMMOLATION OF THE UNP
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DR. DAYAN JAYATILLEKA, Aug 1.
‘Change’ and ‘Unity’ are the two competing slogans within the UNP. Sadly the issue is wrongly framed for either slogan to do much good. The question should be whether change or unity should come first. If unity precedes change, it will also preclude change. Unity is thus being deployed as a slogan to counter that of reform aimed at leadership change or leadership change through reform.
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WORLD COURT ON KOSOVO: LESSONS FOR LANKA
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- DR. DAYAN JAYATILLEKA, Aug 1.
Students residing and schooling in Colombo had the bar to university entrance set higher in the mid 1970s, what with district and media wise standardisation the order of the day. For Arts students the Mt Olympus was the Faculty of Law, and those few who had done well enough were informed that they had qualified /been selected for the Law Fac. Getting their kids in over the high bar of standardisation was a dream for parents in Colombo. That year my name was on top of the list of Arts students eligible for the Law Faculty but as Prof Kamal Karunanayake, then registrar of the UGC would testify, I opted instead – over considerable parental pressure-- for Political Science at Peradeniya. The reason was a simple realisation that ‘law’ and ‘justice’ were two quite different things; that law was weighted in favour of the existing power structure and that politics, by contrast, would not veil reality so much as provide a key to the comprehension of the decision making core, which affected everything else including the law.
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INTERNATIONAL INTERVENTION & THE INTELLIGENTSIA
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DR DAYAN JAYATILLEKA, july 27.
When Julien Benda wrote of the treason of the intellectuals, he didn’t know the half of it.
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THE STATE & STRATEGY FOR THE NORTH AND EAST
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DR DAYAN JAYATILLEKA, July 20.
My first book had an awful title (‘Sri Lanka: The Travails of a Democracy’) conferred by the publisher in Delhi, but the subtitle was mine, and it was Unfinished War, Protracted Crisis. Today, that war is finished but the crisis protracts.
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NEW TRENDS IN TAMIL POLITICS
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DR DAYAN JAYATILLEKA, July 15.
There are new trends in Tamil politics and a quickening of activity in Tamil political society. The Tamil Political Parties Forum is one manifestation while the visit of the TNA to India is another. The Tamil Parties Forum, an initiative of EPDP leader Devananda has succeed in drawing together most of the old EPRLF and much of the ex-Eelam Left, with a few prominent civil society activists and the odd ultranationalist thrown in. Its very existence is a quasi-miracle, given the fissiparous character of Tamil politics. The second type of activity has been the TNA’s interaction with the Government of India. There are efforts to call a meeting in Colombo or overseas of both tendencies, the TPF and the TNA. A successful ingathering too would be akin to a miracle, given the sectarianism that abounds.
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THE POLITICS OF THE UN AND ‘POST-WAR’ SRI LANKA: A BRIEF CRITIQUE
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Kalana Senaratne, July 5.
The recent appointment of a Panel of Experts by the UN Secretary General (UNSG) is a disturbing development, even though it was bound to happen.
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NO HOSTAGE TO THE PAST:
AN ENCOUNTER WITH MERVYN DE SILVA
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ASANGA WELIKALA, june 23.
The eleventh anniversary of the death of Mervyn de Silva, the great Sri Lankan journalist and editor, falls on 22nd June. I once had an extraordinary encounter with Mervyn, although sadly as it turned out, at the very empennage of his life. In a wholly spontaneous chat that lasted less than two hours, we (mostly he) talked about the international use of force for humanitarian interventions and Robin Cook’s ‘ethical foreign policy’ in the then fashionable Blairite project (Mervyn wasn’t impressed), F.C. de Saram and M. Sathasivam (and the politico-sociological implications of their fractious dispute over the All Ceylon captaincy in 1947), billiards and snooker (I knew that the latter was invented in the Indian Army, but did not know of the debate whether it was the Jalalabad officers’ mess or the Ootacamund Club), and the relative merits of a pre-prandial aperitif at lunchtime (for one of which he was on his way).
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FEDERALIST & ANTI-FEDERALIST FUNDAMENTALISMS
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DAYAN JAYATILLEKA, June 15.
Sri Lanka has peace but is not yet at peace with itself. The critics who say that peace has not yet arrived in Sri Lanka are wrong. For anyone who has lived through thirty years of war, the absence of war deaths, of organised armed violence against the state and society is peace. But it is a cold and bitter peace on the island and a cold war outside, with elements in the Diaspora supporting the separatist cause.Discuss this story
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SRI LANKA LTTE: DIASPORA WARS - SOUTH ASIA INTELLIGENCE REVIEW
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By Asutosha Acharya, June 14, 2010.
Amidst media reports indicating that Tamil Diaspora organisations in different countries are still making desperate attempts to keep alive the concept of ‘Tamil Eelam’, suspected pro-Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) elements, for the first time since the military defeat of the LTTE in Sri Lanka in May 2009, allegedly executed a terrorist attack in neighbouring India. In the morning of June 12, suspected LTTE cadres blasted railway tracks at Perani Railway Station in Villupuram District in the Southern Indian State of Tamil Nadu. Passengers of the approaching Tiruchirapalli-Chennai Rockfort Express Train escaped unhurt, because the driver applied emergency brakes in time on hearing a loud explosion. Leaflets condemning the visit of Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapakse to India [June 8-11] were found from the incident site, police said.
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SRI LANKA: EMERGING ENCIRCLEMENT, SLOW SIEGE
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Dayan Jayatilaka, May 25.
Lanka stands ‘indicted’ for waging an unavoidable and the necessary war of self defence; a war we did not start. Did any of our critics call for Sri Lanka to be given the satellite intelligence and equipment that would have allowed us to prevail more surgically? Do these critics take into account that armed forces with far greater sophistication, such as the use of drones, have been unable to avoid civilian casualties? Do these critics expect legitimate states to be blackmailed into letting terrorists escape, because they are holding civilians as human shields, in a mega-Beslan tactic? Have those who scourge Sri Lanka called for an international inquiry into hundreds of thousands of civilian deaths in Iraq?
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TRACK 2: RESTORING OPPOSITION VIABILITY, RE-BALANCING THE COUNTRY
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DAYAN JAYATILLEKA, April 27.
President Rajapakse’s choice of Prof GL Pieris as Foreign Minister is by far the best that anyone could have made, while the Deputy Minister has been excellently chosen too. This gives the lie to the punditry of those professional pessimists who think that improvement is impossible under this administration (as if it weren’t responsible for the biggest, most qualitative improvement of all, the defeat and destruction of the Tigers). However in the interests of restoring some modicum of balance and enhancing the country’s prospects in the future, we the citizens need a viable Track 2. This requires the rapid recovery of the Opposition, mainly the United National Party.
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MAHINDA’S TRIPLE WHAMMY & THE OPPOSITION’S ORGANIC CRISIS
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DR. DAYAN JAYATILLEKA, April 14.
Remember the “Bandaranaike yugaya” (the “Bandaranaike Era”)? Well it is now the Rajapakses’ round. The Rajapakse family now dominates the SLFP and Sri Lankan politics in much the same manner as did the Bandaranaikes (Sirima, Felix, Sunethra, Anura, Chandrika, and son in law Kumar, not to mention Mackie and Seewali Ratwatte and irate Ira, and the odd Obeysekara). In the Gramscian sense, there has been a re-composition of the ‘power bloc’, and a shift to the Deep South which has provided the new ‘hegemonic fraction’ in what appears a stable, durable hegemony -- or is potentially one, provided Sri Lanka’s Northern Question (Gramsci spoke of Italy’s ‘Southern Question’) can be amicably resolved.Discuss this story
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THE POLITICAL DEBATE IN SRI LANKA TODAY
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DAYAN JAYATILLEKA, March 29.
The current Sri Lankan political discourse, thin gruel though it is, contains three morsels of content: democracy, the electoral system and national sovereignty. Some question whether the ‘mere fact of elections’ qualifies Sri Lanka, or any country for that matter, as a democracy. The second discussion is on the electoral system. The third debate revolves around human rights and international factors, with some emphasising national sovereignty and the others, democratic rights and freedoms.Discuss this story
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RANIL’S ROAD, MAHINDA’S MAP
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By DAYAN JAYATILLEKA, March 24.
Does the UNP and Opposition leader Mr Ranil Wickremesinghe suffer from a compulsion towards electoral suicide or is it a condition of political sado-masochism? Only someone who is politically suicidal or sadistic towards his own party and its supporters could have gone to Jaffna last week, in the throes of a crucial election campaign at the end of which the UNP must deprive the ruling UPFA of a two thirds majority, and made the speech that he did. If the Tamil Net report of his speech is untrue he must contradict it immediately and loudly.
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SEEING IT COMIN’
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Dr.DAYAN JAYATILLEKA, March 10.
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INDEPENDENCE EVE THOUGHTS & THE IMMINENT ELECTION
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Dr.DAYAN JAYATILLEKA, Feb 4.
Sri Lanka celebrates Independence Day this year with the State in a better state than it has been for three decades. The country is a single united territory; unquestionably a single political entity. The borders of the state are coextensive with our natural borders, the sea. The writ of the state runs from North to South, East to West. The state’s monopoly of organized violence has been restored. The travesty of an armed proto-state within the state has been excised. A Thirty Years war has been won and a hideous, powerful challenger, accurately described by The Economist (Jan 28, 2010) as “a textbook fascist”, put down. National independence and sovereignty have asserted themselves against attempts at interference and intervention. Electoral democracy survived both terrorism and the war against it.Discuss this story
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A GAME CHANGER WITHIN TAMIL POLITICS
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Dr.DAYAN JAYATILLEKA, Jan 18.
Douglas Devananda once likened Tamil nationalism to cholesterol, saying just as there is good and bad cholesterol, there is good and bad Tamil nationalism, and just as you need good cholesterol, you need the good Tamil nationalism. Certainly the history of Tamil nationalism shows plenty of examples of “bad cholesterol”. Elite Tamil nationalism opposed the abolition of communal suffrage and the introduction of the far more progressive territorial representation, demanding instead a Tamil seat in the Western Province. This was well before the founding of the Sinhala Maha Sabha in 1927, and the formation of the Pan Sinhala Board of Ministers a decade later, let alone any oppressive legislation or actions against Tamils. It resulted in a fissure in the multiethnic Ceylon National Congress.Discuss this story
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Ahilan Kadirgamar, april 1.
The title of this piece purposely uses the word Lanka and not Sri Lanka. The name and concept of ‘Sri Lanka’ was reified in the country’s republican Constitution of 1972, at a time when the prefix Sri was problematic for the minority communities because it symbolised Sinhala Buddhist majoritarianism. Indeed only a decade earlier, there had been a major ‘anti-Sri campaign’ in the North in effacing the number plates of vehicles with the Sinhala character ‘Sri’, particularly since it came soon after the ‘Sinhala Only’ language polices of 1956. During the much-needed shift from the colonial legacy, the colonial name Ceylon was abandoned as was the Soulbury Constitution in 1948 when a republican Constitution was created.
DBS Jeyaraj, Jan 23.
Last year when speculation was rife about former Army commander Sarath Fonseka announcing his candidacy for the Presidential elections this columnist was among those who warned of adverse consequences befalling the Country as a result of this unprecedented move.Chief among these was the very strong possibility of an escalation in the continuous process of the military being politicised and society being militarised in the Country.
Nalin Swaris, Jan 21.
Even you Brutus? Most famous last words in history, due to its inclusion in William Shakespeare’s tragedy ‘Julius Caesar’. Before turning to Shakespeare, a few historical facts about Gaius Julius Caesar (100 BCE- 44 BCE). Julius’ surname became the title of emperors after him. Julius undoubtedly was Rome’s greatest General – a military genius and ambitious politician. In 44 BCE, because of his brilliant victories in war and his great political influence, Caesar became Consul for a fifth time, with Mark Antony as his devoted supporter, Caesar got himself declared ‘dictator for life’.