Posts Categorized: Politics

Building Peace on Shifting Sands!

By V Gunaratnam, July 11, 2004 Try building peace on shifting sands. That’s what the Tamils and the LTTE are being asked to do with the Sri Lanka government. Ranil Wicremesinghe laid the groundwork for the peace process, and things were taking shape for negotiations to start on the ISGA when Chandrika Kumaratunga took power… Read more »

The Present Crisis: A Way Out

By Jayadeva Uyangoda, The Daily Mirror, Colombo, July 9, 2004 Sri Lanka’s peace process has now reached an unmistakable turning point. The Wednesday’s suicide explosion in Kollupitiya should not be allowed to mark itself as the beginning of a new process of low-intensity war. Without any further delay, President Kumaratunga’s government should take new political… Read more »

Dissecting the April 2004 General Election Voting in Jaffna District

by Sachi Sri Kantha, July 6, 2004 Perfidy of Bhairavan’s clones Many Tamil movie fans would remember the signature role of ace comedian K.A.Thangavelu – that of a phony writer named Bhairavan – in the popular tear-jerker Kalyana Parisu (1959), directed by C.V.Sridhar. On returning home with a garland he had bought from a flower shop, and… Read more »

TNA’s Thrust in Parliament

PRESENTATION By Hon. R. Sampathan, MEMBER OF PARLIAMENT, TRINCOMALEE DISTRICT, AT THE SIXTEENTH ANNUAL LUNCH OF THE INTERNATIONAL TAMIL FOUNDATION UNITED KINGDOM on June 27, 2004   Mr. Chairman, Ladies and Gentlemen, I am honoured by the invitation extended to me by the International Tamil Foundation, to make a presentation to you on the occasion… Read more »

Sri Lanka Scene: Sinhala Chauvinism Raises its Head

By: T. Sabaratnam, July 3, 2004 Norwegian special envoy Erik Solheim returned to Colombo this (Wednesday) afternoon with the difficult task of saving the 2-year-old ceasefire agreement which the new government had put under severe strain. Tiger political chief S. P. Thamilchelvan told Solheim and Colombo-based Norwegian envoy Hans Brattskar who met him at Kilinochchi… Read more »

Kumaratunga Goads the Tigers

Cloaked Daggers: Kumaratunga goads the Tigers while delaying talks Tamil Guardian editorial, London, June 25, 2004 The surrender to the Liberation Tigers this week of four former confidantes of the renegade LTTE commander, Karuna, has provided further proof of the Sri Lankan military’s campaign of destabilisation in the island’s volatile east. The accounts by the… Read more »

Sri Lanka Scene: Truce will Hold but Prospect of Peace Talks Recedes

By: T. Sabaratnam, June 23, 2004 The situation in Sri Lanka today is that the 2-year-old truce will continue to hold despite the incidents in the east, but the prospect of the resumption of peace talks will recede. Analysts rule out another war unless an unexpected explosive situation occurs. Colombo’s respected defence analyst Iqbal Athas… Read more »

The Pursuit of Peace in Sri Lanka

by The Daily News, Colombo, June 23, 2004 Following is a lecture by Bradman Weerakoon presented at the 7th Dudley Senanayake memorial lecture, on June 21, 2004 at the BMICH. A public lecture on the subject of peace in Sri Lanka would have a validity and relevance at most times and most places. Given the… Read more »

Slow Ebb: Prospects for Peace are Fading

Tamil Guardian editorial, June 18, 2004 The stalemate in Norway’s peace process deepened visibly this week. Oslo’s Ambassador to Sri Lanka, Mr. Hans Brattskar flew to Kilinochchi to meet with senior LTTE officials there whilst Special Envoy Erik Solheim is to meet with the LTTE’s political strategist, Mr. Anton Balasingham on Thursday. Norway is striving to… Read more »

India Looks East

India is really looking towards the East now by Pranay Gupte, Straits Times, Singapore, June 17, 2004 NEW DELHI – ‘We always said, ‘Look East’, but then we would go West,’ Mr Jairam Ramesh was saying in his small ground-floor office here over the weekend. ‘Now India wants to go East and also have the… Read more »

Go Your Way!

By V. Gunaratnam, June 16, 2004 Dark Days The dark days are back again with us as Chandrika Kumaratunga, with her now well-known penchant for self-serving politics, has once more used her prodigious presidential powers to drive Sri Lanka to the brink. Everything is in disarray, with the UPFA government reduced to a political balancing… Read more »

Kumaratunga Prepares to Unleash the Sinhala Army

THE ACTION GROUP OF TAMILS (TAGOT) Kotte, Sri Lanka Email: tagots /A_T/ hotmail /D_O_T/ com”>tagots /A_T/ hotmail /D_O_T/ com PRESS RELEASE 15 June 2004 Kumaratunga prepares to unleash the Sinhala army The current political developments and war preparations in Colombo flow naturally and logically from the Sinhala President Chandrika Kumaratunga’s unparalleled anti-Tamil jingoism during her first… Read more »

Playing with Indian Fire

by Rajkumar Sivapatham, June 14, 2004 As expected by the Tamils, the Sri Lankan president is at her tricks again. That is – giving the impression that she is ready for peace talks in one hand and totally rejecting them on the other. So far, this tactic has worked very well with her Sinhalese political friends… Read more »

48 Years for the Wheel to Turn Full Circle!

by S Nadarajah, June 14, 2004 Even though the incidents that happened in the highest body of legislature in Sri Lanka on 8 June 2004 (manhandling of the Buddhist monk MPs by the government MPs) should be vehemently condemned by concerned citizens and by those who still hope to see democratic practices upheld in this… Read more »

The Time has Come to ‘Lock Horns’

by Adrian Wijemanne, June 11, 2004 1. This is the infelicitous phrase to describe the peace talks used by Foreign Minister Kadiragamar in his recent address at a meeting in Washington D.C. convened by the Brookings Institution.  There is a combative fervour about the phrase, as if the conference table were another battlefield.  Memories of… Read more »

Kurds Win Round on Constitution

By Dexter Filkins, The New York Times, June 10, 2004 BAGHDAD, Iraq, June 9 — Prime Minister Iyad Allawi said Wednesday that his government would adhere to the interim constitution agreed to in March until elections are held next year, in an effort to defuse, at least temporarily, a looming crisis with the Kurdish leadership…. Read more »

Sri Lanka Scene: Parliamentary Terrorism

by T. Sabaranam, June 9, 2004 Weekly Review Parliamentary Terrorism sounds somewhat funny and confusing.  I did not coin it. I t was coined by a Buddhist monk legislator, the Venerable Ellawel Thera.  He coined it to encapsulate Tuesday’s uproar and the recent events in the Sri Lankan parliament, where the ruling United People’s Freedom… Read more »

A Funny Old World

by Rajkumar Sivapatham, Harrow, UK. As the JVP and SLFP find out how difficult it is to be in government and to find a peaceful solution to the civil war, events are moving elsewhere. The promises and charges that UFPA has laid against the UNF government have returned to haunt the PA and the JVP… Read more »

Don’t Know, Should Care

by Jeffrey D. Sachs, New York Times, June 5, 2004. Our ability to understand what exists before and after wars in low-income countries is nearly nonexistent. George Tenet’s resignation this week came after failures of American intelligence in the Iraq war as well as in the lead-up to the Sept. 11 attacks. But the government’s… Read more »