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Morning Spice by Ginger
Fools rush in where angels fear to treadThis is the kind of pantomime comic opera that Ginger just loves. Also he is of the view that some top brass around the place need the services of a plastic surgeon. At one moment the state declares war on video parlours the next moment the OIC of the unit who going on what we hear busted a major racket in the business was shunted out of his unit overnight. That precisely is why we are looking for a good plastic surgeon. We feel the governmental tongue has to be pulled back from its cheek.
The Island reported last Monday that this OIC who had arrested a Pakistani national who was allegedly the head of a big pornographic VCD that has international ramifications. It reminds one of the adage that fools rush in where angels fear to tread and in a country that is notoriously lacking in angels or where angels are stepping around the place rather gingerly. Impecunious inspectors must not go and fool around with king pins. True there was a governmental statement perhaps that it did intend to crack down on video parlours. He should have stuck to parlours and not suppliers. These men must be paying their GST or something like it to those whom they are supposed to pay it to though the public is not supposed to know who they are.
Breast cancer
Perhaps breast cancer is one disease that scares women more than most other diseases. The reason for such an universal fear of this illness is the rising incidence of this form of malignancy. Fortunately diagnosis and treatment have improved so much that people need not fear it quite so much as they did in the past.Doctors have relied quite a lot on mammograms to get a fairly close view of a patients breast tissue. Recently there has been an innovation introduced that could help the doctors more than mammograms. The latest imaging test is known as Miraluma which gives a clear view of breast tissue that is hard to make out on a mammogram.
A visit to Maldives
Many of us have been to the Maldives but how many of us have bothered to drink in its ethos and enjoy its cuisine as it should be? We tend to stay in four or five star hotels, swim in the pool, play some kind of game or other that the hotel offers its guests and think we have had a good look at the Maldives.Have you eaten Maldivian delicacies such as kulhi boakibaa. It is made with soaked rice, chilly onion, ginger, coconut and smoked tuna fish. You knead all the ingredients together and then place it in a greased baking dish and bake after it is cut into squares or cubes.
The North East Province Governor
Freedom of expression, though is a democratic right, becomes unpardonable when it is done with ulterior motives and with the intension of bringing disrepute to an individual.
The hurting remarks which are factually incorrect, made by Mr. Thambirajah Mahadevan of Vavuniya in the "Opinion" column of November 14 about the first Governor of the North-East Province are far from the truth and is apparently a reflection of writer's ignorance of the North East Provincial administration.
Lt. Gen. Nalin Seneviratne, referred to as "an army man", as all know is a retired Army Commander with considerable ability and experience in handling heavy responsibilities. His five-year term of office as Governor North East Province has proved this fact beyond any doubt to all those who were administered by him. So far, he is the only Governor who served his full period of five years.
North East Province is a war-torn area with normal life disrupted; with restricted freedom of movement; an area under continuous threat of life and where the affected and helpless people needed someone in authority to be with them to console and comfort them and to solve their problems especially when an attempt was being made to normalise administration. The so-called SLAS administrators bluntly refused to serve in the affected areas of the North East and they had to be substituted with others to run the Government administrative machinery.
The people of North East are well aware of the capabilities of the General - how he kept the Provincial bureaucracy under his complete control; how he handled financial management and how he kept the North East Provincial machinery function effectively. Above all he spent more time in his secretariat in Trincomalee, making himself available to the people to air their grievances and find suitable solutions. It was during his tenure of office that the North East Province saw substantial development within the limited funds provided by the State. He spent considerable time in the field supervising development activities undertaken by the Provincial administration.
He is the one Governor of the NEP who moved freely without pomp and pageantry in a Maruti jeep in Trincomalee without arms and armed escort; residing in a cottage inside Dockyard and using the former District Minister's quarters as his humble Secretariat. He was opposed to spending millions of rupees on the construction of a Governor's Secretariat and a bungalow for the Governor though they were necessities. He always said that he was prepared to work under a tree and that whatever Government funds available should be utilised for the welfare of the affected people.
He moved freely with the people; had close contact with all NGO's and encouraged their-service activities. Above all he was deeply and genuinely concerned about the affected people and found ways and means of rehabilitating them and helping them to engage in self-employment.
He extended his support to all religious sectors - he was the man behind the consecration ceremony of Koneswaran which was overdue after the historic temple was affected during the ethnic disturbances. He was also one responsible for the construction of a new Chaitiya at 4th Mile Post, Trincomalee.
These facts could be verified from, politicians included, who were residing in the North East Province at that time. General Nalin Seneviratne is a person always remembered by the people of the North East Province with gratitude, respect and love as the first Governor of this Province who dedicated five years of his retired life to the well being of the unfortunate people of this Province who were repeatedly affected by ethnic violence and armed conflicts.
T. Kulaweerasingam,
T. Thavasilingam,
T. Konamalai, R. Subramaniam,
S. Jayashankar, V. Ratnasothy.
I should have preferred to stay out of the controversy between Kamalika Pieris and S. L. David, but the former has, by selectively quoting from my book, done me less than justice.
Mr. David has claimed that all the policemen involved in the burning of the library were Sinhalese. He cannot know this. In fact, if one looks at the sequence of events on that sad day, Mr. David's assertion seems unlikely to be true.
It is not necessary to exaggerate the illegalities that were inflicted on the Tamils during JR's rule. The bare facts are devastating enough. JR sent two senior ministers to Jaffna to ensure, by fair means or foul, that his party won the DDC elections. In spite of the many illegal, acts of these two ministers (including the sacking of the Election Commissioner's staff and appointing JSS men as Presiding officers) the Tamil people inflicted a crushing defeat on JR's party. 'The TULF polled 263,369 votes to the UNP's 23,302.
But the burning of the library (and much, much more) was not connected to the unlawful activities that JR' ministers were engaged in.
A large number of police personnel had been brought to Jaffna from all over the country for the elections. On 31 May 1981, there was a TULF rally near the Nachchimar Kovilady Temple which went on till late in the night. Four policemen who were on duty at this rally were shot in the back by Uma Maheswaran's PLOTE men. Two policemen died, one a Sinhalese and the other a Tamil, within hours, the large contingent of police in Jaffna ran amok. The burning of the library was a direct consequence of the killing of the two policemen. The terrorists had killed many policemen up to then, a total of 18 of which as many as 14 were Tamils. It does not seem probable that what Mr. David calls "the race factor" was involved in this burning.
Mr. David is of course perfectly correct when he says that not a single member of this mob was brought to justice. That was pure JR.
V. P. Vittachi
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