News: democracy

As Jaffna approached local government elections two years after the war, some aspects of its social, economic and political landscape are now more apparent. Resettlement and the return of many of the displaced have been gradual; the process continues to have many economic challenges including issues of land. Economic activity has accelerated particularly in agriculture and fisheries, but also in trade with the expansion of markets after the A-9 road opened twenty months ago. Labour is heavily in demand with increasing wages as sustained economic activity has created serious shortages in skilled labour for construction and agriculture. While land prices skyrocketed last year in a post-war bubble, prices are now coming down and stabilising in many areas after improved access to services and quicker transport to Jaffna Town. Indeed, infrastructure, particularly roads, electricity, banking and telecommunications are expanding; with a visible increase in the number of vehicles and mobile phones.

BY SHANIE The thrust of Palihakkara’s lecture was that Sri Lanka, which has in the past enjoyed a diplomatic profile disproportionate to its geographic or demographic attributes and military or economic clout, should be able to show the world that our country, after emerging from an injurious and costly conflict, still retains the strength of character and the political will towards introspection; to look at our own track record and see if we had gone wrong somewhere and if we had, what remedial measures we can, as a civilised society, undertake and what course corrections should be made. We should encourage the building up of a society where peaceful dissent is seen as an enriching experience and an exciting democratic challenge and not an act of treachery or treason.

The US Asst Secretary of State Robert O Blake has set a wrong precedence by choosing to respond to a chauvinistic Sinhala perspective appeared in The Island editorial that “the United States does not support separatism but rather a united, peaceful and democratic Sri Lanka.” In doing so, Blake insults the democratic mandate of the nation of Eezham Tamils and encourages a terrorist state that openly commits genocide on one hand and blatantly denies even an iota of its human rights abuses on the other. The rhetoric of Blake, ‘peace, democracy and united Sri Lanka’, is a historically proven bundle of contradictions that always went against the nation of Eezham Tamils, writes TamilNet political commentator in Colombo.

By Ahilan Kadirgamar Over the last week, I participated in two discussions on Sri Lanka in Cambridge, Massachusetts. At Harvard University, as an activist with the Sri Lanka Democracy Forum, I was on a panel discussion with Ambassador Palitha Kohona and Prof. Vasuki Nesiah, moderated by Ambassador Nicholas Burns, former Under-Secretary under the Bush Administration and now on the faculty of the Kennedy School of Government. At the other discussion, I spoke at length to a number of graduate students at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University. Both events attracted individuals who had some interest in Sri Lanka, and while the Harvard event was politically charged with respect to recent events, the Fletcher discussion provided some room to delve into deeper historical and political questions about Sri Lanka’s place in the international order and the manner in which global political economy has shaped our state and society.