The Island Politics

The week that was
President exposes LTTE at UN meeting
The opportunity afforded to the president to address the U.N. at the opening of the General Assembly provided an opportunity to expose the true nature of the LTTE. She said it was an insult to compare them with the liberation movements of other countries such as Africa. She also had amicable discussions with the U.S. President and Nelson Mandela with foreign minister Lakshman Kadirgamar in attendance. (full text)

Are the educational reforms on the correct track?
Sometime back Prof. G. L. Peiris commented on the lethargic and laissez-faire attitude of academics and professionals towards innovations/projects launched by the government. He stressed that the academics and the professionals could make a worthwhile contribution by offering constructive criticism based on sound data. This is widely practised in countries like UK and USA because such active participation brings in a self correcting mechanism into the entire process of government. (full text)
Germans vote in a pivotal election
Today German voters will decide who will usher Europe's economically most powerful nation into the next millennium. Chancellor Helmut Kohl (68) is making an unprecedented bid for a fifth successive term in office and is battling for the prize, a few percentage points behind a telegenic and much younger opponent. Gerhard Schroeder (54) Since the election campaign began some four months ago. Schroeder has led in the public opinion polls but Kohl has been steadily catching up and, on the eve of the election, the result is too close to predict. (full text)

The light at the end of the tunnel is another train
This was a line, penned by a largely unknown but much loved poet in Thimbirigasyaya, which recently came to mind. You see, (do you, really?), the British High Commissioner in Sri Lanka, David Tatham, has seen the light and we are happy that he has found a way out of the darkness.
The enlightened Tatham recently dusted the shady layers that colour his understanding of our country and our problems by declaring that he could see light at the end of the tunnel for Sri Lanka's "ethnic crisis" . I get the feeling that this presumptuous luminary from that far off island (whose leaders had their heads so loosely floating within the clouds when they believed not all that long ago that the sun would never set on its 'empire') believed we were waiting for him to make his discerning pronouncements before taking a peep into the tunnel. (full text)

L E G A L W A T C H
Private lives and public office
The right to privacy, debated around the world in September 1997 following the death of Princess Diana, has again become a global topic of discussion exactly one year later, due to the problems - some would say pillorying - of President Bill Clinton.
The emotional calls for a "right to privacy" that followed Diana’s death were somewhat misguided because, as this column pointed out at the time, even if there had been such a law, publicity-hungry celebrities such as Diana would have been the first to waive it. For instance, nobody forced her to make a confession of marital infidelity over BBC television.

In the same way, Clinton apologists have cleverly turned the present debate into a seemingly simple issue involving the private life of a public figure. (full text)