      |
|
|
|
Morning Spice by Ginger
Double decker buses, to ease traffic problemSomebody suggested getting down double decker buses to ease traffic problems of the day. It is not a bad idea provided they do not have to run over the approach bridges for a number of reasons but they could ply between major towns in the provinces and from the suburbs to the city. It is a good idea because one bus could almost take the load of two but Ginger would not advise that reader to tout that idea too much where the private transporters are concerned. The buses owned by this element are not driven with the greatest of care.
Many of the standard buses are listing to one side while they are being driven at break-neck speed. Imaging a double decker being driven at the same speed by such a worthy and the danger it would pose to so many on the road and the passengers in the bus as well. It would help save our population no doubt but it would lead to overcrowded accident wards as well. Moreover the double deckers for sale have all seen better days and would all need a total reconditioning which would put us back to square one as the cost of the exercise would be considerable. But there would be no harm trying it out with a few and seeing how the project fares and launch out into a bigger project later.
Pollution alerts not given
Our TV stations do not give pollution alerts as some stations in other countries do. Now the dangers of pollution are being emphasised much more than they were a couple of decades ago. Everyone is getting environment and pollution conscious and right here it does not seem to be doing any good. Nobody cares a hoot what the next man does to the environment.It would however do you no harm to know the extent of pollution around where you live or work. This is particularly useful for expecting mothers, children and those with breathing problems to know. A French firm has now invented a device known as the Pollumetre Air which helps you to read to the level of pollution close to your building.
Gay rights activist
If you have something to say about the Church of England you had better not say it inside the Canterbury Cathedral. Now take the case of Peter Tatchell. He was known as a gay rights activist who did not pull his punches when fighting for his cause or the rights of gays and lesbians.Now this forty two year old Australian born campaigner carried his militancy a little too far. He had interrupted the Archbishop’s Easter Sermon by denouncing the Bishop’s attitude to gays and lesbians. He was hauled up before the Magistrate’s Court and fined eighteen pounds.
Readers will recall the initiative launched a short time ago by a group of local business leaders, to moblise persuasive pressure on the leaderships of the PA and the UNP, to forge a consensual approach to the resolution of our national crisis. Matters had progressed to the point of a national peace committee being formed, comprising nominees of those parties and of the business leaders.
Then, on the very eve of the Wayamba PC election, these business leaders issued an open letter over the signature of their convenor, calling on all parties to eschew violence and enable a free and fair election to be conducted. Thanks to the courage of conviction of independent election monitors and, not surprisingly, of distinguished religious leaders of the Buddhist and Catholic faiths, we now know with what contemptuous disdain President Kumaratunga and the PA rejected that business leader’ appeal.
Yet, within a couple of days of the crude and, in some instances barbaric violation of the Wayamba people’ fundamental right to the vote, two of the more prominent of those business leaders were reported in the press as having accompanied President Kumaratunga on an ego-promotional trip to Davos in Switzerland. Neither of them, nor any of their colleagues in that ‘peace’ initiative, have so far been reported as having publicly deplored President Kumaratunga’s and the PA’s unconscionable behaviour in Wayamba.
Even at the inception of that business leaders’ initiative, there had been those who had called into question the political propriety and viability of it. Now, quite apart from the fundamental and democratic rights aspect of the President’s and PA’s actions in Wayamba, on which nearly all that has to be said has been said, some others have raised another crucial aspect of the matter- the contribution which the President and her party, by their behaviour at Wayamba, have made to furthering the aims and purposes of Prabhakaran and the LTTE.
So, what is one to make of the business leaders’ forums silence about the happenings in Wayamba, and of two of their more prominent members supporting the PR exercise at Davos? One can understand a business person putting all else aside to advance his/her own interest, but to do so in the name of patriotic service? And to involve the resident foreign diplomatic corps in their action, as they did at their meeting at the BMICH? National reconciliation is perhaps best left to the people and their elected representatives, while business leaders pursue their profits.
T.D.N de Abrew
Colombo 08
Ven. Gangodawila Soma Thera’s Dhamma Sermons
There appears to have been objections to Dhamma Sermons by Ven. Gangodawila Soma Thero. The opposition may have been from a microscopic few from the Buddhist clergy and laity and perhaps from a few non-Buddhists too.
Ven. Soma Thera’s Dhamma Sermons have become very popular. Buddhists as well as non-Buddhists throng to hear him. His preaching are based strictly on the Buddhist Philosophy and intended to guide the Buddhists not only in following Buddhist principles correctly but also on national issues. From whom, therefore, could the objections have come from ?
The elergy and laity who have commercialised Buddhism and who are using Buddhist Temples to generate income for private gain and who fear that Ven. Soma Thero’s sermons will adversely affect their activities have a reason to stop the Ven Thero’s views gaining ground among the Buddhists. These are the Buddhists who misunderstand Buddhism intentionally to further their materialistic ends. And they take advantage of the Buddhists who are ignorant of the true principles of Buddhism. There is no room for fortune telling and giving good fortune by "Holy" beings, in Buddhism. Ven. soma Thero’s sermons pinpoint these facts.
There are Buddhists who worship The Buddha and then pray to "Gods" for help and favour. This is not in keeping with Buddhist teachings. Buddhist temples have statues of various Gods alien to Buddhism. This is due to the fault of the Sangha.
When a Buddhist worhips before the statue of the Buddha, it is not clay or metal that he or she worships but what the statue represents - the Dhamma preached by the Buddha. The act of worship helps to respect and follow the teachings of the Enlightened One. No help or favour could be asked for, and no help or favour will be granted due to such worship. Buddhism teaches that every person is his own lord and controls his own destiny and is not controlled by a supernatural power or being. This is what Ven. Soma Thera attempts to drive home in his sermons.
The Buddha did not force his disciples to believe in his teachings blindly. In fact, Buddhism allows doubt and questioning. Such questioning is not considered as sacrilege. Buddhism urges one to believe in the Dhamma only after being convinced that the teachings are good and true. There is absolute freedom in Buddhism. It is no ‘blind faith’.
Buddhism not only propagates tolerance avoiding conflict but also teaches that among all religions in the world there is little difference in good and bad and right and wrong. Buddhists have to respect other religions as well.
Ven. Soma Thera’s sermons project these Buddhist teachings and principles correctly. He is trying to educate the Buddhists to free themselves from wrong practices and lead good lives following Buddhist principles as laid down by The Buddha.
The Thera is rendering a great service by the Buddhist laity and the clergy alike.
Upali S. Jayasekera
Colombo 4
I, as a parent wish to lodge my strongest protest against the way the Education Ministry has transferred teachers who were coaching GCE A/Level students for examinations to be held in August this year.
The GCE A/Level students sitting the exam this year have only six more months to study and the transfer of teachers of those students just six months ahead of the exam disrupt their education. The rapport between the teacher and a student built up for 1 1/2 years is suddenly broken when a new teacher who is completely unknown to the student takes over him. A student has to start afresh to adjust to the teaching style of the new teacher wasting his valuable time and effort. It is a pity that the education authorities failed to understand these simple facts that any man on the street will be able to comprehend.
If the education ministry was so adamant in transferring the A/Level teachers who were due for transfers, the simple solution would have been to effect them in August and NOT in January without affecting the students preparing for the exam in August.
Those who make decisions of this nature are not fit to hold office in the Education Ministry.
A Parent
Battaramulla
King garbage rapes Katugastota beauty
I am sure everybody who lives in and around Katugastota and thousands who pass the Katugastota Town daily will join me to express their appreciation and gratitude to Rotary Club of Katugastota, who with the sponsorship of Mahaweli Reach Hotel, Kandy has made this town area a very pleasant and a very beautiful place by creating a tiny, yet a lovely park with flowering and exotic plants, along the bank of the Mahaweli river which flows majestically right across the town. But it’s a sorry sight to behold the heaps of garbage thrown to the opposite river bank, at the main entrance of St. Anthony’s College. Used polythene bags, remnants of food and even the withered flowers offered at the nearby temple are haphazardly thrown which in a single downpour would wash down to the river, polluting the water which is used by the people of the area for bathing, washing and sometimes for drinking purposes as well. In addition to environmental pollution this is a major health hazard which affects hundreds and thousands of people who use this river water. It should be noted that an epidemic of cholera is raising its ugly head in and around Kandy.
Another stinking place is just opposite the main entrance of the Government Hospital, Katugastota. This space by the side of the main road is a garbage collecting centre of Kandy Municipal Council. I can remember a couple of years back there was a concrete enclosure with an iron lid in this place and garbage was dumped into this and the lid was closed till the garbage collecting vehicle arrived. But now that enclosure is no more, garbage is just thrown on to this spot. Stray dogs and crows scatter most of this garbage all over the place, spreading germs throughout the area. This stinking situation aggravates as the maternity unit of the hospital is housed just a hop step and a jump away from this place.
To add insult to injury the garbage collected in the Kandy Town is being transported to Gohagoda dumping grounds in open tractors and trucks, several times a day, making life immensely difficult for the residents living by the side of the main roads. These helpless people are compelled to endure the nauseating smell that emanate for at least half an hour from the time these germ spreading vehicles pass their residences.
Hence seeing is believing, let anybody who is somebody in the KMC visit these places and check the veracity of the facts shown above and take appropriate action early to relieve the innocent tax-payers from this miserable agony.
Lionel de Silva,
Katugastota
The International Medical College
I refer to the Opinion in The Island of 20.1.99 and am glad to note that three wise persons are querying the validity of this project. The arguments set out by this doctor are quite self revealing to say, the least and needs no further elaboration.
Many such projects are started emphasizing the great benefits to society and the country at large - only to serve a few and their group and help themselves with a degree for their children or grand-children, as many of them may, not be able to enter the state Medical Colleges. Starting with apparently clear cut criteria and goals it may end up with different ideas as was seen with the PMC of Ragama.
It is thus necessary to closely monitor and scrutinize such projects born to serve the country.It is for the student bodies of the State Medical faculties to do the necessary actions and not be lulled into a state of complancy.
A govt. specialist
Election Violence
A time for dispassionate assessmentFollowing the recently concluded Vayamba Provincial Council Elections, two dominant trends have been clearly evident in the media. On the one hand there has been a shrill outcry that seeks to maintain that the Peoples Alliance organised a campaign of violence and electoral fraud that completely subverted the elections making it essential that fresh elections be held. On the other hand there has been an indignant cry of outraged innocence on the part of the Peoples Alliance which claims that it was the target of a campaign of electoral violence mounted against it by the United National Party and that Peoples Alliance cadres had been forced to fight back in self defence in order to advance their electoral campaigns.
The situation has been complicated by various election monitors, some of whom seem to believe that their mandate extends far beyond the documentation of incidents of violence, fraud and other occurrences that interfere with the democratic electoral process and the task of ensuring that the machinery of law enforcement acts against those responsible for such acts, to include also the task of deciding on the validity of an, election as well as on appropriate governmental responses to their verdicts in this respect.
Within the acrimonious situation that has resulted there is an obvious need for dispassionate analysis and comment on the violence that accompanied this election and the context within which it occurred. There is room too for the articulation of viable, appropriate and creative responses to polls related violence that may help prevent such violence at future polls. The advancement of such responses through their recommendation for adoption by the government and implementation by the commissioner of elections at all forthcoming polls is one of the major tasks expected of organisations that have engaged in monitoring the elections. It is only through such a process of feedback and fine tuning based on a dialogue that rests on confidence and trust that violence and other aberrations can be eliminated from the electoral process.
The Context
The context in which this election took place is of paramount importance to such an analysis and must not be ignored. Central to this context is the fact that the Peoples Alliance Government has been the first to take decisive steps towards the realisation of the islands potential to emerge as the centre linking the South and South East Asian Regions and the Indian Ocean Rim Countries and as the platform housing the strategic function of the developmental process as it impacts upon these regions. The pressures arising from such a move must not be underestimated.The willingness of the Peoples Alliance Government to accommodate the major changes in Geo Political Relationships at regional level necessary in order to reformulate and maintain equilibrium within Regional Geo Strategic Equations has been clearly indicated by its pragmatic response to the Indian nuclear tests, the signing of the Indo Lanka Free Trade Agreement, its response to India’s Sedusamudra Kaalvai Project and to the return of the first Chief Minister of the Northeast Provincial Council - Varatharajah Perumal - from his exile in India.
Quite clearly the Peoples Alliance Government has succeeded in positioning itself as the internal political player most able and willing to rapidly move towards the realisation of the islands potential. It is thereby also able to portray itself as the player most entitled to the goodwill and support of our neighbours and the International community towards this end. Since the realisation of the islands potential demands continue- of policy the Peoples Alliance Government is no doubt keenly aware that its ability to achieve this end depends upon its remaining in power for at least another term, and possibly longer. In the absence of skilled professional political strategists, propagandists, campaign managers and other elements vital to the achievement of this end through the electoral process it is quite possible that cynical elements within the government assumed that this evident need for continuity of policy could be made to take precedence over the need to strengthen - and not weaken - democratic processes such as the process of holding free and fair elections.
The fact that the Peoples Alliance faced the opposition of the United National Party which over the course of its years in power permitted itself to be gradually transformed into a cynical master of violence, brutality and subversion of the democratic process cannot be ignored. In the absence of skilled professionals capable of conducting a sophisticated electoral campaign - both within the Peoples Alliance as well as the United National Party - a move towards violent and brutal confrontation could never have been anything more than a short step away.
The Peoples Alliance also had to contended with the growing popularity of the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna which has on more than one occasion resorted to the most cold blooded of killings on a massive scale and which despite its current claims to have dissociated itself from its bloody and violent path continues to maintain most of its machinery in a covert underground fashion. The Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna continues to appeal to a significant section of the electorate and nothing other than a lack of political sophistication within the Peoples Alliance has prevented the formation of some sort of creative engagement between it and the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna.
Saddled also with an intelligence apparatus weighted towards the machinery of law and order, suspicious of think tanks and NGO’s as well as sources of academic input, and known mostly for its real or imagined proclivities towards terror, torture and harassment and an infantile, obvious and bungling program of telephone tapping rather than a professional approach based on reliable research and analysis, and a primitive party structure with no identifiable strategic function, the Peoples Alliance seems to have entered the election not with the confidence of a party in power but riddled with the anxiety of a political dilettante brought to power by forces it could not comprehend much less harness and utilise towards consolidating its position.
The need for the employment of sophisticated human resources at various levels affecting the task of governance has been articulated on several occasions before, particularly in respect to the need to manage ethnic contradictions and relations between ethnic communities. Many of those employed by NGO’s for the task of monitoring should have been employed by the government long before the elections to formulate and implement measures that would ensure that violence and fraud did not occur and that in those instances where they may have occurred the machinery of law and order would move swiftly to punish those responsible.
The repeatedly demonstrated reluctance of the government to acquire the services of sophisticated human resources especially in those problematic areas of governance is very difficult to comprehend especially since the continued failure to do so will leave these problems unresolved and ensure a rapid deterioration of the political and economical situation.
Analysis
It appears that incidents that have occasioned serious dissatisfaction with and disaffection towards the electoral process were facilitated by the following major factors:
The governments overconfidence arising from its having successfully positioned itself as the internal entity most willing and able to realise the islands potential.
The governments anxiety arising from its desire to consolidate its position and remain in power for long enough to realise this potential.
The governments reluctance or inability to acquire the services of the sophisticated human resources required to initiate, support and sustain those processes required to consolidate its position and remain in power while realising the islands potential, and its consequent inability to:
Forge a synergistic working relationship with the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna and the New Left Front.
Initiate and sustain strategic interaction with the United National Party.
Build an effective strategic core group able to employ sophisticated systems of electoral competition free of violence and harassment.
The governments reluctance to deal with the phenomenon of linkages between the criminal underworld, politicians and political parties.
The inability or refusal of the opposition to formulate and implement an effective, non violent and strategic response to these factors
Some possible Responses
Although much avoidable damage has already occurred it is still possible for the government to acquire the services of sophisticated human resources to review electoral procedures, analyse poll-related violence and recommend preventive measures amongst which may be considered:The limiting of electoral canvassing to electronic and all other forms of media, and the postal and telecommunication system. All other forms of canvassing including the displaying of posters to be barred.
Content of electoral canvassing to be limited to contents of developmental strategy, supporting policy framework and visionary projections of outcome of implementation. All forms of criticism of opponents excepting criticism of permitted content of electoral canvassing to be barred from election propaganda.
Deployment of special police units equipped, ordered and empowered to arrest anyone bearing arms, to seize such vehicles in which such persons may be found travelling or in which arms are found, and to disarm any such armed person who may resist arrest.
The election commissioner be empowered to immediately arrest, detain and prosecute politicians who interfere with the law and order apparatus during elections.
Election monitors to be empowered to observe polls and canvassing, to document violations of election laws, to monitor prosecution of those who violate election laws, and to recommend changes in such laws as may from time to time be seen to be necessary.
It is very clear that the history of this island following its independence is a history of a violent and brutal descent towards barbarity. Many of those who wish to see this process reversed voted for the Peoples Alliance platform of Peace, Democracy and the defence of Human Rights.
However the credibility of its commitment to the establishment of peace, democracy and the defence of human rights however has come under intense scrutiny and critical review following its failure or refusal to prevent the pattern of violence so clearly evident at the recently concluded polls.
Despite this setback the visionary bankruptcy of the opposition makes it possible for the Peoples Alliance to retain its position as the vehicle commanding the most amount of political credibility with regard to the realisation of the islands potential.
Nirmalan Dhas,
Colombo 03
