Connect with us

Features

Bipartisan consensus for national reconciliation is urgent, necessary and possible

Published

on

Justin Trudeau

By Jehan Perera

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s remarks on May 18 that “Canada will not stop advocating for the rights of the victims and survivors of this conflict, as well as for all in Sri Lanka who continue to face hardship,” in the context of the recognition of May 18 as “Tamil Genocide Remembrance Day” has met with a strong rebuttal from the Sri Lankan government.  It is tragic that 14 years after the end of the war, and with a President as internationalist and liberal as Ranil Wickremesinghe at the helm, that Sri Lanka should be losing ground internationally and its embassies abroad are unable to stem the tide because there is no political progress on the issue of national reconciliation at home. This is particularly tragic as Sri Lanka, after its economic collapse, needs international support more than ever.

The reality is that Sri Lanka continues to be a divided society.  This was seen when people in the North and East, on May 18, remembered their loved and missing ones who are no longer with them.  The following day on May 19, the government remembered the war victory and the sacrifices of security forces who lost their lives to keep the country united.  In view of the tragedy of divided sentiment in the country, the Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission appointed by President Mahinda Rajapaksa in 2010 recommended that commemoration of all victims of the war should take place on a single day: “A separate event should be set apart on the National Day (4 February) to express solidarity and empathy with all victims of the tragic conflict and pledge the collective commitment to ensure that there should never be such blood-letting in the country again.”

So far February 4 remains a pageant of military might and not of remembrance.  It was so this year as well. It is worth quoting at length from the LLRC report at this time when views seem to be hardening on both side of the ethnic and political divides.  “The process of reconciliation requires a full acknowledgement of the tragedy of the conflict and a collective act of contrition by the political leaders and civil society, of both Sinhala and Tamil communities. The conflict could have been avoided had the southern political leaders of the two main political parties acted in the national interest and forged a consensus between them to offer an acceptable solution to the Tamil people.”

ARAGALAYA UNITY

Indeed, the time is opportune and the situation is ripe for a bipartisan approach to resolving the ethnic conflict.  Speaking to a group of civil society members, Opposition leader Sajith Premadasa observed that the country’s ethnic problem had become easier to resolve in the aftermath of the Aragalaya.  One of the protest movement’s notable features was the visible bridging of ethnic and social divides.  There was a celebration of unity in diversity that befits Sri Lanka’s plural, multi-ethnic and multi-religious composition.  During the Aragalaya the country, and world at large, heard the slogans of the youthful demonstrators who proclaimed the equality of all citizens and denounced the politicians who had come to power on narrow nationalist platforms that mobilized the sentiments of fear and suspicion against each other.

Opposition leader Premadasa also said that at the root of the ethnic conflict and difficulty to resolve it was the suspicion and insecurity that has existed between the communities, but which the economic hardships that precipitated the Aragalaya had contributed to mitigate by uniting the people.  The unity of the people who came together to protest was brought about by the common problem they faced when the economy collapsed and there were shortages and queues for most essential commodities.  However, while the protest movement could dislodge the government leadership in power, it could not replace it with a new leadership of their own. They were suppressed. Similarly, it would be the case that the unity of the people by themselves will not find a solution to the ethnic conflict. The answer needs to come from political leadership which will make them feel secure and represented.

President Ranil Wickremesinghe has been recently involved in a process of dialogue with the Tamil political parties to find a solution to the problem as has taken place many times in the past without success.  In fact, a few months ago he even made a pledge to solve the problem by February 4, the day on which Sri Lanka celebrated its 75th anniversary of independence.  He was statesmanlike in his aspirations when he said he did not wish to leave the problem to the next generation. The Opposition leader’s invitation to civil society members to make their ideas on the reconciliation process known to him and his observation that the Aragalaya had made the ethnic conflict easier to resolve can be taken as indications of his willingness to engage constructively in the resolution of the ethnic conflict.   This could provide the much-needed bipartisan consensus necessary to both negotiate and implement a political solution.

BIPARTISAN APPROACH

The revival and empowerment of the provincial council system is at the heart of the long-term resolution of the ethnic conflict.  The issue of regional autonomy, which would enable the different ethnic and religious communities to run their own affairs in the areas in which they are majority has had a long history dating back to the Bandaranaike-Chelvanayakam Pact of 1957 which was the first instance of a negotiated settlement between the leadership of the government and Tamil polity.  This was followed by the Dudley Senanayake-Chelvanayakam Agreement of 1965, the Indo-Lanka Peace Accord of 1987, the draft constitution of 2000 of Chandrika Kumaratunga, the All-Party Representatives Committee proposals of 2010 during Mahinda Rajapaksa’s period, and the constitutional assembly of 2015 by the Sirisena- Wickremesinghe government that came up with multiple proposals.

The political solution to the ethnic conflict has been worked and reworked on multiple occasions. They have been accepted by the government in power or by sections within the government but rejected by the opposition that is out of power.  This time it can be different.  During the meeting between Opposition leader Premadasa and the civil society members, when he was asked what his position on the devolution of power was, he replied that it was the maximum devolution of power within the unitary state, which was also his position during the presidential election of 2019.  Such a position would correspond to President Wickremesinghe’s position that the provisions of the constitution should be followed by fully implementing the 13th Amendment.

Among President Wickremesinghe’s most positive qualities has been his lifelong rejection of ethnic nationalist politics.  He has never tried to fan communal fears or prejudices in order to win votes at elections and has lost elections for that reason against less scrupulous political challengers whom the Aragalaya rights denounced.  In a similar way, Opposition leader Premadasa has also never engaged in the politics of ethnic nationalism.  It is important that these two non-racist leaders should work together to ensure that Sri Lanka can find a political solution and as well as deal with the human rights issues of the past through the truth and reconciliation commission that the government led by President Wickremesinghe is proposing to set up.  As a victim of the war’s atrocities himself, the Opposition leader has shown magnanimity and non-hatred that can show the way to healing the wounds of the past and regaining Sri Lanka’s place in the community of nations.



Continue Reading
Click to comment

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Features

Enduring nexus between poverty and violent identity politics

Published

on

Taliban fighters in Afghanistan

The enduring nexus between poverty or economic deprivation and violent identity politics could not be stressed enough. The lingering identity-based violence in some parts of India’s North-East, to consider one example, graphically bears out this causative link.

At first blush the continuing violence in India’s Manipur state is traceable to inter-tribal hostilities but when the observer penetrates below surface appearances she would find that the root causes of the violence are economic in nature. On the face of it, plans by the state authorities to go ahead with extended economic quotas for the majority Meitei tribal group, for instance, who are considered the economic underdogs in Manipur, have intensified hostilities between the rest of the tribal groups and the Meitei.

It is plain that perceptions among the rest of the tribal communities that they are being unfairly treated by the state are accounting in considerable measure for the continuing ethnic tensions in Manipur. That is, the fear of being deprived of their life-chances on the part of the rest of the communities as a consequence of the new economic empowerment measures being initiated for the Meitei is to a considerable degree driving the ethnic violence in Manipur. It would be reasonable to take the position that economics, in the main, are driving politics in the state.

Sri Lanka, of course, is no exception to the rule. There is no doubt that identity issues propelled to some extent the LTTE’s war against the Sri Lankan state and its armed forces over three long decades.

However, it was perceived economic deprivation on the part of sections of the Tamil community, particularly among its youthful sections, that prompted the relevant disaffected sections to interpret the conflict in ethnic identity terms. In the final analysis, economic issues drove the conflict. If Lankan governments had, from the inception, ensured economic equity and justice in all parts of the country the possibility of ethnic tensions taking root in Sri Lanka could have been guarded against.

Even in contemporary Sudan, the seeming power struggle between two army generals, which has sowed destruction in the country, is showing signs of taking on an ethnic complexion. Reports indicate that the years-long confrontation between the Arab and black African communities over land and water rights is resurfacing amid the main power contest. Economic issues, that is, are coming to the fore. Equitable resource-sharing among the main communities could have perhaps minimized the destructive nature of the current crisis in the Sudan.

Sections of the international community have, over years, seen the majority of conflicts and wars in the post-Cold War decades as being triggered in the main by identity questions. Identity politics are also seen as bound up with an upswing in terrorism. In order to understand the totality of the reasons behind this substantive change one may need to factor in the destabilizing consequences of economic globalization.

The gradual dissolving of barriers to international economic interactions that came in the wake of globalization in the eighties and nineties brought numerous material benefits to countries but in the case of the more traditional societies of the South, there were deeply destabilizing and disorienting results. This was particularly so in those societies where the clergy of particularly theistic religions, such as Islam, held sway over communities.

In these comparatively insulated societies of the South, unprecedented exposure to Western culture, which came in the wake of globalization, was seen as mainly inimical. Besides, perceived alien Western cultural and religious influences were seen by the more conservative Southern clergy as undermining their influence among their communities.

A Southern country that reacted quite early against the above forces of perceived decadence was Iran. Iran’s problems were compounded by the fact that the Shah of the times was following a staunchly pro-US foreign policy. It was only a matter of time before there was an eruption of militant religious fervour in the country, which ultimately helped in ushering an Islamic theocracy in the country. Needless to say, this revolutionary change in Iran impacted drastically the politics of the Middle East and beyond.

Militant Islam was showing signs of spreading in Central Asia when the Soviet military intervention in Afghanistan occurred in 1979. This military incursion could have been seen as an attempt by the Soviet authorities to prevent the spread of militant Islam to Afghanistan, a state which was seen as playing a principal role in the USSR’s security.

However, radical Islamic opposition to the Soviet presence in Afghanistan came in the form of the Mujahedin, who eventually morphed into the present day Taliban. However, as could be seen, the Taliban presence has led to the spread militant religious sentiment in South and South-West Asia.

Fortunately, there is substantive political science scholarship in South Asia currently which helps the observer to understand better the role poverty and material backwardness play in sowing the seeds of religious fundamentalism, or identity politics, among the youth of the region in particular. A collection of papers which would prove helpful in this regard is titled, ‘Civil Wars in South Asia – State, Sovereignty, Development’, edited by Aparna Sundar and Nandini Sundar, (SAGE Publications India Pvt. Ltd.) In some of its papers are outlined, among other things, the role religious institutions of the region play in enticing impoverished youth to radical identity-based violent politics.

While there is no questioning the lead role domestic poverty plays in the heightening and spread of identity politics and the violence that goes hand-in-hand with it, one’s analysis of these questions would not be complete without factoring into the situation external military interventions, such as those of the US in Afghanistan and Iraq, which have aggravated the economic miseries of the ordinary people of those countries. There is an urgent need for in-depth impartial studies of this kind, going forward.

Russian ambassador’s comments

The Russian ambassador to Sri Lanka in a response to my column of May 18th , 2023 titled, ‘Containment Theory returns to West’s ties with East’, takes up the position that the Soviet military presence in Afghanistan, beginning 1979, was not an invasion but an operation that was undertaken by the Soviets on the invitation of the then government of Afghanistan. This amounts to contradicting the well-founded position of the majority of international authorities on the subject that the Soviet push into Afghanistan was indeed a military invasion of the country. This is the position that I have taken over the years and I do not have any reason to back down from it.

The subsequent comments made by the ambassador on my column are quite irrelevant to its thematic substance and do not warrant any replies by me.

Continue Reading

Features

Man of the Globe International …branching out

Published

on

Chit-Chat

Kalum Samarathunga came into the spotlight when he won the title Man of the Globe International (Charity Ambassador) 2022, held in Malaysia, last year, and also Mr. Sri Lanka 2022.

A former sales and marketing co-coordinator, in Kuwait, Kalum is now into modelling (stepping into the local modelling world in 2021, when he returned to Sri Lanka), and is also focusing on becoming a professional presenter, and an actor, as well.

Kalum made his debut, as a presenter, at the ‘Ramp Comes’ Alive’ fashion show, held in April.

He also mentioned that he has been involved in music, since he was a kid…and this is how our chit-chat went:

1. How would you describe yourself?

I’m just an ordinary guy on the road to achieve my humongous dreams.

2. If you could change one thing about yourself, what would it be?

There was a time where I was very insecure about myself, but everything is fine with me now, so I wouldn’t consider making any changes.

3. If you could change one thing about your family, what would it be?

Nothing at all, because I’m blessed with an amazing family.

4. School?

Indian Public School, in Kuwait, where I was the leader of the school band, playing the keyboards, and a member of the school dance team, as well. In sports – under 19 long distance runner (800m, 1500m and 5000m), and came second in the inter-school Kuwait clusters, in 2012,

5. Happiest moment?

My happiest moment is that moment when my parents teared up with joy after I called them, from Malaysia, after winning Man Of The Globe International Charity 2022. Seeing my parents crying out of joy was the happiest moment, more than winning the title.

6. What is your idea of perfect happiness?

It doesn’t matter what you do in life as long as it makes you happy. For example, I was born in Kuwait, living a lavish life, a great job and an awesome salary, but I was still unhappy and that’s because I wasn’t doing what I wanted to.

7. Are you religious?

Let’s just say that I’m a God loving person and I live my life according to that. I believe that I’m nothing without God and I have experienced God’s blessings in my life

8. Are you superstitious?

No, because I have never experienced luck in my life. All that I have achieved, in my life, is purely out of hard work.

9. Your ideal girl?

There no points looking beautiful if you can’t keep up a conversation, so “communication” comes first for me; a woman who respects and loves my parents; loyalty and understanding; her voice should be attractive, and she doesn’t have to be someone in the same field I’m in, as long as she trusts me and respects the work I do.

10. Which living person do you most admire?

My mom and dad are my role models, because the man I’m today is because of them. They went through a lot in life to raise me and my siblings.

11. Which is your most treasured possession?

My piano, my first and only friend that was there for me, to make my day. I was a bullied kid in school, until Grade 10, so playing the piano was the only thing that kept me going, and made me happy.

12. If you were marooned on a desert island, who would you like as your companion?

Sri Lankan actress Rashiprabha Sandeepani. I admire her qualities and principles. And, most of all, she was unknowingly there for me during a bad storm in my life.

13. Your most embarrassing moment?

My ex-girlfriend’s mother catching us kissing, and I also got slapped.

14. Done anything daring?

Taking a major risk, during Covid (2021), by leaving everything behind, in Kuwait, and travelling to Sri Lanka, for good, to finally follow my dreams .

15. Your ideal vacation?

I’ve actually forgotten what a vacation feels like because I’ve been so focused on my goals, back-to-back, since 2020.

16. What kind of music are you into?

I don’t stick to a single genre…it depends on my mood.

17. Favourite radio station?

No special liking for any station in particular.

18. Favourite TV station?

I do not watch TV but I do watch TV series, and movies, on my laptop, whenever I can. And, thanks to Sinhala teledramas, on YouTube, I’m able to brush up my Sinhala.

19 What would you like to be born as in your next life?

If this ‘next life’ is actually true, I wouldn’t mind being born as anything, but, most importantly, with “Luck” on my side.

20. Any major plans for the future?

I am planning to invade and destroy Earth…just kidding! I don’t want a top seat in my industry – just the seat I deserve, would be fine.

Continue Reading

Features

Anti-ageing foods for younger-looking skin

Published

on

Broccoli:

It is a rich source of quercetin, a powerful antioxidant, which helps in the removal of harmful free radicals from your system. Broccoli is also a natural anti-inflammatory agent, and hence, it prevents your skin from looking tired and dull. So, do not forget to pick some broccolis the next time you go grocery shopping.

* Spinach:

Rich in vitamins A and C, spinach keeps your skin healthy and also helps to repair damaged skin cells. It is also rich in lutein, a biomolecule that improves the hydration, as well as elasticity of the skin. So, add this super-food in your diet for a healthy and soft skin.

*  Fish:

It is rich source of omega-3 fatty acids that help in improving the elasticity of the skin and in providing wrinkle-free skin. It also add natural glow to your skin and make you look vibrant.

*  Tomatoes:

This super-food is loaded with an age-defying ingredient called lycopene. Lycopene shields your skin from environmental damage, prevents wrinkle formation by neutralising free radicals, and also improves its texture. So, consume tomatoes in the form of salad, juice, soup, or anything else. Just do not forget to make them an essential part of your diet.

*  Mushrooms:

These tiny powerhouses are rich source of selenium, which protects newly-formed skin cells from damage, caused by pollutants, as well as harsh UV radiation. Selenium is also believed to be helpful in preventing skin cancer. Furthermore, mushrooms are also packed with vitamins B1, B2, B3, B5, and B6. All these vitamins facilitate the growth of new skin cells. Also, our body requires copper to produce collagen and elastin, which are important for maintaining the strength of skin. And, mushrooms are one of the best sources of it. So, to have a youthful skin, make sure you add this plain-looking food in your colourful diet.

Continue Reading

Trending