Sri Lanka News Updates with Discussions

Prof G.H. Peiris argues that the distribution of ethnicity renders the district rather than the province the more suitable unit of devolution if empowering the minorities is the name of the game.My counterarguments are threefold: domestic geopolitics, politics, and regional geopolitics. Or, to reduce it a single factor, the realities of the balance of power and the island`s strategic vulnerability.

Firstly, it is not merely the Jaffna district or any single district in the North, but the Northern Province that has a Tamil majority. The Tamils of that province have evolved and crystallised a collective identity that the Sri Lankan state must accommodate, institutionally and structurally, if it is to remain as a single overarching entity over the very long duration. Military dominance alone cannot ensure this and in any case such dominance is both prohibitively expensive to sustain and easily neutralised by far stronger players over the horizon.

The Bodu Bala Sena (BBS) will mobilize people from every nook and corner of Sri Lanka, if the government goes ahead with the planned Northern Province (NP) election, the General Secretary, BBS, Galagodaatthe Gnanasara Thera, declared yesterday.


He said if elections are held in the Northern Province, it would lead to the country being divided, and would pave the way for Eelam.
Addressing the media in Colombo, Gnanasara Thera expressed BBS`s strong opposition to the upcoming election in the North, as well as their opposition to the 13th Amendment.

An unscheduled mini battle is on in the junior league for 13A that could change the face of Sri Lanka in 2013/2014.

Non-playing captains, Mahinda Rajapaksa and Ranil Wickremesinghe are watching the game from the pavilion cheering respectively the Weerawansa / Ranawaka crew and the Sumanthiran combine?

What follows is more intriguing? When: where: what? Call elections on schedule in September 2013? Police and Land Powers or is much more of 13A to be thrown overboard? On with the Commonwealth Conference is it to be a showpiece or a goon show? Geneva 2014- take care or damn it?

It would be an insult to the war heroes who sacrificed their lives for their mothers_day.jsp' class=black>motherland if we gave into international pressure and held Provincial Council (PC) elections in the North, Technology and Atomic Energy Minister Champika Ranawaka said.

Speaking at the 4th anniversary of the Sri Lankan War Heroes` Commemoration Day organised by the Jathika Hela Urumaya (JHU) at the Public Library in Colombo on Saturday, the Minister said Indian politicians Karunanidhi and Jayalalithaa wouldn`t even be alive today to continue their politics against Sri Lanka if the late LTTE Leader Velupillai Prabhakaran had won the Eelam war.

The Left parties in the ruling coalition have taken a collective decision not to support an amendment that envisages weakening the 13th Amendment to the Constitution, Senior Minister and General Secretary of the Communist Party, D.E.W. Gunasekara said.

A coalition of traditional Left parties including the Communist Party, Lanka Sama Samaja Party, Socialist Left Party and Desha Vimukthi Janatha Party which are constituent parties of the ruling United People`s Freedom Alliance (UPFA) hold 12 seats in the current Parliament.

India today cautioned Sri Lanka against the Army acquiring private land in the Northern Province for the socalled High Security Zones.

In a telephone conversation with his Sri Lankan counterpart Prof GL Peiris today, External Affairs Minister Salman Khurshid emphasised that this will not be in accordance with the recommendations of the Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission (LLRC) and such a move will not be helpful.

If Sri Lanka Continues in This Way it May Wind Up With Its Control Shrunk to Its Ethno- Lingual and Ethno-Religious Heartland -Dayan Jayatilleka

Sergei DeSilva-Ranasinghe: Now that the civil war is over, what are the challenges for Sri Lanka`s political future? Can Sri Lanka `win the peace` and achieve enduring political stability?

Dayan Jayatilleka: The protracted mid-intensity civil war has been won, but the peace has not.We have a state one that has laudably restored its legitimate territorial boundaries, which are co-extensive with the island`s natural ones. We do not, however, have a unified nation a nation that considers itself Sri Lankan, irrespective of and transcending ethnic, linguistic and religious markersWhether Sri Lanka can win the peace and ensure the long-term durability of that peace depends on the nature of the peace. If it is a victor`s peace, and if victory is defined or felt to be one of the Sinhalese over the Tamils, it will not be a durable peace.

Intelligent hawk eyes to keep strict vigil over Indian Ocean region

India`s long-range maritime snooping and anti-submarine warfare capabilities will get a huge boost when the first of the eight contracted Poseidon-8I aircraft touches down at the Arakkonam naval air station in Tamil Nadu on Wednesday.

Under the $2.1 billion deal inked with US aviation major Boeing in January 2009, the second and the third P-8I aircraft will reach the naval air station INS Rajali in August and November, with the other five being progressively delivered by 2015. India, as reported by TOI earlier, is going in for a repeat order of four more P-8I in a contract worth over $1 billion.

Chennai move top after clinical victory

Even before the match began, Chennai Super Kings got the news that they had qualified for the playoffs. Their next target was a spot in the top two, especially after they found out last season how difficult it is to win the title after finishing No. 3 or 4. Qualifying either first or second allows them the luxury of an opening defeat in the playoffs, while ending on third or fourth will leave teams needing to win three successive matches against the best teams in the competition.

National Organizer of the SLFP, Minister Basil Rajapaksa said yesterday that the government has still not reached finality on the longstanding proposition to repeal certain sections of the 13th Amendment to the Constitution considered obstacles to government`s development initiative.

He said the effort envisaged the scrapping of land and police powers, an issue which has gathered momentum with the impending Northern PC polls.

Q: It`s been four years since the war ended. Are you satisfied with what we have achieved?

I am exceedingly unhappy as to how we have wasted the peace. By `we` I do not mean our citizenry, because the citizenry is not at fault here. By `we` I mean the Sri Lankan State and the Government that we have elected. Sri Lanka has won the war but has not won the peace and is not on the road to winning the peace. In fact, we are on the road to losing the peace.We are in reverse evolution socially and culturally we have been moving backwards

Ravana Balaya, a Buddhist national group in Sri Lanka, has urged the National Film Corporation here to ban films starring actors Rajinikanth, Kamal Haasan, Sarath Kumar and Vijay.

Secretary of Ravana Balaya, Innekande Saddhatissa Thera threatened to stop the screening of films starring Tamil Nadu actors such as Vijay, Kamal Haasan, Sarath Kumar or Rajanikanth, saying We will not say it unless we can actually do it.

The prospect of `Gaza` of the Sri Lankan kind emerging in the Northern territories is beginning to appear increasingly inevitable. The government`s decision to acquire well over 6,000 acres of privately owned land in the Jaffna peninsula has only made it look even more plausible an event in the aftermath of the 30-year-old war.

The seriousness of situation was reflected in a report and a statement released by two of the leading civil society organizations in the country, earlier this week. The Centre for Policy Alternatives (CPA) in its Field Report on the Jaffna and Kilinochchi Districts, warned that the persistence of land problems, recently compounded by policy directives, may lead to the dispossession of land of thousands, and called upon the government to take urgent steps to address this situation and to institute processes that are transparent, participatory and just.

President Rajapaksa in the recent past has been telling the people that Northern Provincial Council(NPC) elections will be held in September under 13 Amendment. If NCP elections are held and the onetime LTTE proxy TNA wins (not if, they will most certainly will) on the very next day the patriotic tabloids if there are any, would carry the headlines as Mother Lanka commits hara-kiri (ritual suicide) being unable to bear the pain of seeing that she will be dissected into ethnic enclaves .

I reject outright three myths about devolution which have been around for a long time but have been resuscitated in the post-war period. Firstly, that devolution in our context is primarily to do with empowerment of the people and `the people` considered without any ethnic connotation. Secondly, that it was to do with the Tigers and now that the Tigers are no more, there is no case for devolution. Thirdly, that it has to do originally and primarily with India.