By Tisaranee Gunasekara “Only hate was happy…” Auden (In Memory of Sigmund Freud) On Tuesday, around 700 Tamils – mostly elderly women – set off from Jaffna. As Lankan citizens, they were exercising their constitutional rights; as family members of the war-disappeared, they intended to participate in a demonstration against extra-judicial killings, outside the UN [...]
By Tisaranee Gunasekara “Of course he won’t give up power…. What were we thinking? The old man isn’t going anywhere, he’ll die in office”. Peter Godwin (The Fear: The Last Days of Robert Mugabe) Another milestone in the Rajapaksa plan to control every aspect of Lankan life has been reached. 4,000 school principals have been [...]
By Prof S. Ratnajeevan H. Hoole Balachandran Prabhakaran Topping this week’s news was the heartrending photograph of 12-year-old Balachandran, showing that he was in army custody before being murdered. The Sinhalese are rightly upset about the CJ’s impeachment and the Matale massacres. Yet the absence of an equally loud protest in the face of mounting [...]
By Prof S. Ratnajeevan H. Hoole Spinning Everywhere Our President declared in India that everyone has a right to protest in a democracy. But Tamils are questioned over religious functions and protesters are ducked in dirty engine oil, locked up or worse. He claimed to be performing a Suprabhata Seva for Venkateswara. But that seemed [...]
By Prof S. Ratnajeevan H. Hoole Habitual Lying Elmore Perera has described how the President claimed that he did not appoint his ‘good friend’ and then senior-most justice Shirani Bandaranayake as CJ when he made Nihal Jayasinghe CJ because Ranil Wickremasinghe had misdirected him by saying that 25 years of judicial service was required. Rajapaksa [...]
By Prof S. Ratnajeevan H. Hoole Crooks Pronouncing CJ Crooked Sadly the CJ impeachment protests within Sri Lanka have become a whimper. Income tax officials suddenly pursuing the CJ is probably because someone vindictively asked them to. As Dharisha Bastians’ midweek column notes, President Rajapaksa informally constituted a three-man committee, which debunked the three charges [...]
By Prof S. Ratnajeevan H. Hoole Speaking Up Together My bishop, the Rt. Revd. Dhiloraj Canagasabey, did us proud declaring today that there has been a complete collapse of democracy in the CJ’s impeachment and that we “as a Christian Church cannot remain silent in this situation. Such silence will be dishonoring to our Lord [...]
By Prof S. Ratnajeevan H. Hoole Flight of Reason, Wisdom Reason and wisdom fled the President as he purported to sack the CJ on a finding that has no standing in law. Resistance weakened as the state used thugs and every sinew to taunt, threaten and slander dissidents. Bowing before naked power, the BASL promised [...]
By Prof S. Ratnajeevan H. Hoole He that Steals an Egg will Steal an Ox. By the time this piece appears in print on Sunday 13th, Parliament would have decided on the CJ issue; to either vote for her impeachment or obey the courts’ determination that the Parliamentary Select Committee’s finding is null and void. [...]
By Prof S. Ratnajeevan H. Hoole Minorities are easy targets in a Sinhalese polity believing that no one else belongs. As Tisaranee Gunasekara has noted, UPFA ministers have attacked the Chief Justice for having Tamil lawyers – although Neelakandan voted for the BASL resolution against the Ban Ki Moon Report, it did not help him. [...]
