Features

It’s the Guns, Stupid

Published

4 years ago

2022/06/19

by Vijaya Chandrasoma

I have used a variance of the catchphrase, “It’s the Economy, Stupid”, which became the mantra of the successful Clinton presidential campaign in 1992, when the US was facing an economic recession during the presidency of George H.W. Bush. The slogan served to highlight and exploit one key issue in the minds of a majority of voters, the economic downturn, and make it the central point of the successful Clinton campaign.

In 2004, the central issue for the voters was the illegal, pre-emptive war against Iraq waged by the younger Bush. The Democrats did not exploit overwhelming opposition of the electorate against the US invasion of a sovereign nation. They failed to rally voters behind the strategic slogan, “It’s the War, Stupid”, out of a sense of misplaced patriotism, which probably cost them the presidency.

As the New York Times stated, “The Democratic leaders never united around a substantive alternative vision to the administration’s pre-emptive war against the thug of Baghdad. That isn’t patriotism, it’s abdication”.

The Democrats seem to be heading in the same direction in their preliminary campaigns for the 2022 midterms just five months away and the 2024 presidential election. Despite all the dangerous threats the nation faces today – the end to democracy, high inflation and the possibility of a recession, the Republican Supreme Court’s ruling to take away women’s rights to reproductive freedom, the one single issue is, and has been for years, the proliferation of military-style weapons and the resultant loss of 40,000 lives per year, especially the murder of toddlers.

After all, according to the National Rifle Association, the Republican Party and the huntin’, fishin’ cowboys of America, the dead have no need for rights and freedoms.

The current public hearings of the Bipartisan Committee presented overwhelming evidence that the insurrection was being planned by Trump and his closest “advisors” even before the presidential election, when the polls indicated that Trump would lose the election.

The first public hearing of the Committee laid the framework of Trump’s treasonous plan to cling to power, with an extensive propaganda campaign that the election was stolen from him. The Big Lie still believed by 50% of Republican voters, who refuse to trust the evidence of their own eyes.

The Deputy Chairman of the January 6 Committee, Republican Liz Cheney made an opening statement, considered to be one of the finest prosecutorial orations in recent times.

Towards the end of her speech, Cheney offered a stark warning to members of her party who continue to support former President Donald Trump and downplay the events of January 6. “Tonight I say this to my Republican colleagues who are defending the indefensible: There will come a day when Donald Trump is gone, but your dishonour will remain”.

Previously unheard and unseen evidence, from police and congressional witnesses, Trump’s previous associates and a video filmed by a documentarian, were made public during the televised hearings. They provided incontrovertible evidence of Trump’s treason, that Trump knew that the Big Lie was indeed a Big Lie, but still spread false propaganda in a desperate, seditious attempt to cling to power.

He defrauded his own supporters for funds to the tune of an estimated $250 million, in an ostensible appeal to fight non-existent “election fraud”. The Committee proved that these donations went straight into the personal coffers of Trump and his family, potentially a prosecutable federal crime of Mail Fraud.

During the second hearing, then Attorney General William Barr stated that he told Trump a few days after the election that there was no evidence of election fraud. He also said that “Trump was detached from reality” and his claim of election fraud was “bullshit”. Ivanka Trump, the former president’s daughter and his “chief adviser” was also present at this meeting. She confirmed under oath that Trump had accepted Barr’s findings and knew that he had lost the election. Predictably, Trump has now turned against his favourite lady.

These crimes have been long known to the public, but there is little hope that even the comprehensive evidence provided by the January 6 Committee will sway the entrenched minds of Trump supporters. They will continue to downplay four years of crimes while Trump was at the White House and his leading role in the January 6 insurrection. They still worship him, and their cult-like support will be shown at future elections. Whatever the crimes, including treason, that Trump has been proven to commit, his supporters will pretend to disbelieve, forgive, even ignore them as long as he keeps their dreams of white supremacy alive.

And there is no doubt that if Trump, or any of his closest associates are indicted for fomenting a coup that came very close to the destruction of American democracy, there will be widespread violence resembling another Civil War. Millions of white supremacists armed with military style weapons, who form the base of the Trump cult, will take to the streets in a nationwide insurrection to preserve the privileges of the white race. This threat of domestic terrorism and white supremacy which emerged during Trump’s presidency, may be brought to the boil, one way or another, perhaps even before the midterms in November.

The next hearing is scheduled for Thursday, June 16, when the Committee will show evidence of the extreme pressure Trump put on Vice President Pence, ordering him to illegally overturn the votes of the Electoral College on January 6, an act against the Constitution. To his credit, Pence refused to succumb, even at the risk to his own life.

However, the monotonous regularity of the murder of 40,000 people per year, including little children, seems to be the current central issue. It is bad enough that there have been 228 mass shootings (defined so when four or more people are killed), including 27 school shootings this year. We are still in June.

We have witnessed the mutilation of children, between six and 10 years of age, and teachers who spent their lives on education. The worst were in Columbine, Colorado (1999), in Newtown, Connecticut (2014), in Parkland, Florida (2018), the last, two weeks ago in Uvalde, Texas. With hundreds of lesser school shootings sprinkled among these four major tragedies.

What sadistic cretin can still find excuses for the imposition of gun control regulations after the constant mutilation of innocent children? The answer is the NRA and their bought and paid for puppets in the Republican Party.

Where gun regulations are concerned, these corrupt Republican Congressmen do not represent the opinion of the vast majority of Americans, including moderate conservatives and independents.

Except for the five million members of the NRA, which include all Republican members of Congress, there is none who would not have been touched, saddened, even angered, at the speech made by actor Mathew McConaughey from the podium of the White House Press room, days after the Uvalde shooting. McConaughey grew up in Uvalde, Texas, his mother taught elementary school a mile away from the massacre. He still has friends and relations in that little town, and a shared grief in the tragedy.

In an impassioned speech lasting 21 minutes, McConaughey said, “we have an epidemic of indiscriminate mass shootings, of parents burying their children, of inaction. Buck passing to save the unnecessary loss of lives is not a partisan issue”.

He spoke tenderly of each of the little ones by name, talking of their individual dreams: of 10-year-old Alithia, whose dream was to attend art school in Paris and one day share her art with the world. Of nine-year old Maite, who dreamed of being a marine biologist. Maite wore green high top Converse (shoes) with a heart she had hand-drawn on the right toe. Green because they represented her love of nature. “Wore them every day. These are the same green Converse on her feet that turned out to be the only clear evidence of her identity after the shooting. How about that?”

One little girl explained, in pre-recorded testimony, that she had smeared her classmate’s blood on herself to play dead, and graphically described the moment the gunman shot her teacher in the head. What wonderful childhood memories she will carry the rest of her life?

According to Dr. Roy Guerrero, a Paediatrician who testified in Uvalde, “Two children whose bodies had been pulverized by bullets fired at them, decapitated, with their flesh ripped apart. The only clues to their identities were their blood-splattered cartoon clothes still clinging to them, clinging for life and finding none”. How about that?

The reconstruction of these little bodies was beyond the expertise of morticians’ cosmetologists, whose job was to beautify corpses for public viewing at funerals. An impossible task for these mutilated little bodies. How about that?

“This moment is different. We’re in a moment of opportunity that we have not been in before, a window of opportunity where real change can happen. So while we honour and acknowledge the victims, we need to recognize that this time it seems something is different. There is a sense that perhaps there is a viable path forward. Responsible parties in this debate seem to at least be committed to sitting down and having a real conversation about a new and improved path forward – a path that can bring us closer and make us safer as a country, a path that can actually get something done this time”, concluded McConaughey.

This time may be different, even to a minimal extent. A bipartisan group of Republican and Democratic Senators are trying to find common ground. Whatever they come up with will be unlikely to involve any sweeping reforms.

The reforms under discussion – mental health, improving school safety and support for children and ensuring that those who are adjudicated as mentally ill cannot purchase assault rifles – fall far short of the serious action that needs to be taken to significantly diminish gun violence – increase of the age of those allowed to purchase guns to 21, universal background checks, waiting periods, mental health and red flag laws, a total ban on military style assault rifles, the weapon of choice of most mass murderers.

On Thursday, more than 220 CEOs of major companies – all contributors to Republican campaigns, called on the Senate to take “immediate action” to reduce gun violence following the spate of recent shooting deaths.

These business leaders wrote, “Taken together, the gun violence epidemic represents a public health crisis that continues to devastate communities – especially Black and Brown communities – and harm our national economy”.

In my opinion, if more meaningful steps are not taken to curb gun violence and the massacre of little children, those politicians who prefer to hide these tragedies under an avalanche of thoughts and prayers and nothing else, will be routed in any future election.

America is at the tipping point on the threats to many freedoms – women’s, LGBTQ and civil rights, voting rights, police reform, inflation, recession – and democracy itself. In spite of this, the central issue in any future election will be gun control, until stringent regulations are enacted capable of finally lowering gun deaths to levels enjoyed by every other advanced nation.

Today, the economy is the central issue, the main concern amongst 48% of the electorate; gun violence is a distant second, at 17%.

However, inflation and economic downturns are global and temporary. Gun violence is American are permanent. My thoughts and prayers go to the men and women who will realize that that the lives of our little children are more important than the price of gas, as they go to the polls in November.

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Features

‘There are no private universities in Sri Lanka’ – some considerations for higher education reform

Published

14 hours ago

2026/07/21

Thilina Walpola

Academics involved in education policy like to say that there is no such thing as a private university in Sri Lanka. The only ‘universities’ in the country are state universities; anything else offering degrees is a private higher education institution (HEI). This position is technically accurate. Yet, in the discourse and imagination of the public, private universities are very real – people teach in them, students register in them, families pay fees, and such degree holders enter job markets in Sri Lanka and outside.

For decades, activists concerned for public higher education have ignored or resisted looking at private HEIs, as if such scrutiny would taint them. Others have worked in both types of institutions, carrying practices from each to the other. The apex body governing state universities, the UGC, has, meanwhile, ignored the concept of conflict of interest and appointed individuals in private higher education in committees and leadership positions. It is unsurprising then that some of the ideologies informing private higher education appear in reform agendas in the state sector.

This is a good time then to consider the varying types of private HEIs around us, and to take a look at some of the issues within them in the hope that higher education reform agendas will include private, as well as state higher education.

What is a ‘private university’?

First, some clarifications. In the public imaginary, a ‘private university’ is typically an institution that provides a foreign or local degree for which the student makes a payment. But this broad classification encompasses a host of diverse institutions and types of degrees which I detail below.

The Non-State Higher Education Division (NSHE) of the Ministry of Education has recognised 295 degrees by 32 institutions. Most of these are private companies and include a handful of established, well-known private HEIs that are ‘university like’. The degrees are local degrees conferred by the institutions accredited by the NSHE Division. While private HEIs conferring local degrees must be accredited by the NSHE Division, there appears to be no legal consequence for not doing so. In addition, there are several permutations of the private degree that miss the net of this Division and the Standing Committee on Accreditation and Quality Assurance (SCAQA) that assists this Division.

For one, degrees conferred by foreign universities offered, via these same private HEIs, are not vetted by the NSHE Division. Secondly, there is a growing plethora of private HEIs which have either no physical presence locally or only a dubious presence. The University Grants Commission has notified the public, through their website, that foreign universities listed in the Commonwealth Universities Yearbook and the World Higher Education Database are recognised, but refrained from giving any other details – which degrees? Offered by what modes? These details are not known. Some of the foreign universities in the lists may be legitimate entities in their own land but the degrees conferred locally, in their name, may not adhere to curriculum or teaching specifications of the NSHE Division or the UGC.

Another troubling phenomenon is the ‘top up degree’, which appears to work on the same principle as that of a pre-paid mobile connection: if I have a Diploma or an HND of a sort, I am eligible to complete a course of study which provides me with a degree, usually from a foreign university. The idea that someone who does not initially qualify for a degree programme should be able to work their way towards one is a progressive notion. This is the concept that open and distance learning (ODL) was based on initially, but which is now sadly exploited. ODL models are expected to provide opportunity for learning for those who may be excluded from traditional learning institutions. In Sri Lanka, however, we have seen ODL become a marketplace offering easy to obtain, for-fee qualifications by institutions with little commitment to superior teaching and learning.

Finally, a perusal of the many types of private HEIs and their varied degrees bring to mind another question – how should the private degrees, provided by state institutions (that are not educational institutions), be regulated? Who should do so?

All of these create a host of problems for the public – for hopeful students and parents and trusting employers. For the higher education sector, recruitment of academic staff, too, has become difficult due to this plethora of ambiguous higher education qualifications, as I discussed in a previous Kuppi article (‘Recruiting academics to state universities’).

Some issues in private HEIs – a bellwether for change in state universities

In this second part of this article, I will discuss some aspects of work in private HEIs – albeit the more established institutions – given that such issues may appear in reform agendas in future.

Across state universities, all permanent staff of a specific category are paid according to the same criteria. The picture is not so clear when it comes to private HEIs since they are different entities legally, typically companies. Private HEIs have salary scales and financial incentives that are different to each other. The more established private HEIs reportedly have attractive renumeration packages, possibly a reason for academics of state universities migrating eagerly to such institutions during sabbatical years and on retirement. This may not of course be the case with other less established, or improperly registered HEIs of which we know little. Academic staff of these more accepted private HEIs seem to value the high financial remuneration they receive (in comparison to state universities) as something that makes their work rewarding.

Attractive remuneration is important to sustain the good life and is at times seen as the institution’s way of encouraging good work. Yet, this has implications for the future of the institution: to continue to deliver on promised financial packages, institutions must continue to have large profit margins. One strategy has been to enroll multiple cohorts of students per year, even up to three or four intakes per year. This can result in exploitative work conditions, since staff must cater to all these cohorts in that same year. If there is inadequate staff, employees are further burdened. On the other hand, if there is a sudden drop in enrolments (degrees can go out of fashion) unexpected layoffs occur. Similar to other sectors that employ short-term contract staff – including state universities – in private HEIs, too, individual teachers, who are on short term contracts that need regular renewal, can feel pressured to work under difficult or exploitative conditions.

At the same time, even in the more established private HEIs, work norms differ from those of state universities in that they include promotional work that keeps the institution’s name in the eye of the public. The Marketing (or similarly named) unit comes up in conversations as one of the most important departments. It appears to weigh in on decision-making related to the number of staff, the amount of re-sits per exams, and other pedagogically important matters. This is a worrying example of how financial rationales interfere with pedagogically or academically sound processes, resulting in problematic results in the classroom. On the plus side, junior colleagues, who had experience in both state and private HEIs, also felt that they faced less harassment in private HEIs – primarily due to the private HEIs ability to take swift action in reported cases of harassment. This is a real indictment on state institutions and their reluctance to address chronic issues of harassment in our universities.

Yet, while we hear much about problems in state universities, we hardly hear of problems that staff in private HEIs face. One rationale for a lack of public expressions by staff is that expressions of discontent might lead to trouble given the importance of reputation for private HEIs. The worry about reputational damage is a growing concern in state universities, too, as evidenced by social media policies and internal conversations on reputational damage, consequent to negative publicity. Institutional worries of reputational damage are harmful in the long run since these impact not only freedom of expression by student and staff, but also research that is possible in and about the education sector.

Some thoughts at the end…

A close look at the private higher education sector is important given its strong presence in the country. Impending reform needs to regulate this diverse array of higher education offerings in the private sector, as well as the state institutions that offer privately-funded options of higher education (a topic for a separate Kuppi on its own). It is time we carefully considered how to build a whole system of higher education out of this broken mess.

Kaushalya Perera is a senior lecturer at the University of Colombo.

Kuppi is a politics and pedagogy happening on the margins of the lecture hall that parodies, subverts, and simultaneously reaffirms social hierarchies.

Features

Ready for solo spotlight

Published

14 hours ago

2026/07/21

Thilina Walpola

Nish Peiris: Excited about future plans

Singer Nish Peiris is set to take the next big step in her music journey.

The talented vocalist, who has been seen and heard in the scene here for a short while, and was also featured with the now-defunct band, Inner Vision, has announced that she will be fully committing to her solo career, after completing her degree this year.

“I’m finishing my degree this year, and after that I’ll be fully committing to my solo music career,” Nish told The Island.

“I’ve already got a few tours lined up for next year, so I’m really excited for what’s ahead.”

Fans, no doubt, will remember Nish for her smooth voice and stage presence, and the good news is that she is now ready to chart her own path and bring new music to audiences at home and abroad.

With tours already planned for 2027, the year 2026 promises to be an exciting year for the young artiste as she steps into the spotlight on her own.

We wish Nish every success in this new chapter!

Features

Exclusive musical evening for Sri Lankans in Toronto

Published

14 hours ago

2026/07/21

Thilina Walpola

Toronto Ceymphony Live Band, with Sri Lankans doing the needful

While Sri Lankan music lovers, in Dubai, are eagerly looking forward to being a part of the action on Saturday, 25th July, with Rajiv Sebastian in the limelight, Sri Lankans, in Toronto, Canada, are equally excited and are anxiously awaiting the arrival of Sri Lanka’s famous singer/entertainer Sohan Weerasinghe.

Having done the needful with The X-Periments, the legendary performer has now embarked on an exciting new chapter – a solo career – and Toronto, Canada, will see him do the needful, on Friday, 31st July, 2026, from 8.00 pm to 12.00 am, at the Angus Glen Golf Club.

Sohan Weerasinghe: In Canada, and ready to do the needful on 31st July

Reports indicate that it’s a ‘sold out’ event – naturally with Sohan in the spotlight.

Gamini Hemalal: Creating all the excitement for Sri Lankans in Toronto

Having built his reputation through years of unforgettable performances, and hits that became part of our musical fabric, Sohan is ready to bring his own vision, sound, and stories directly to the audience, in Toronto, Canada, backed by the phenomenal Toronto Ceymphony Live Band.

Says Gamini Hemalal, who has been instrumental in reviving the Sri Lankan entertainment scene, in that part of the world:

“The countdown begins for the most exclusive musical event of the summer! Join us for a premium night of incredible music, elite hospitality, and a lavish buffet as the legendary Sohan Weerasinghe takes the stage live in Toronto!

“This is a high-end event, designed for those who appreciate exceptional entertainment and great food.”

Gamini, who is also a member of the Toronto Ceymphony Live Band, mentioned that it’s going to be an intimate musical evening with the celebrated Sohan Weerasinghe.

From packed auditoriums to intimate shows, Sohan continues to prove why he remains one of Sri Lanka’s most beloved entertainers.

For decades, Sohan Weerasinghe has been a household name in Sri Lankan entertainment.

Known for his captivating smooth voice and charismatic stage presence, Canada will experience it all on Friday, 31st July.

Next on the list of events, Gamini Hemal is working on, is Halloween night and he says “what we plan to do will be very interesting and unique … with a surprise guest star, as well!”