Those who have been cast out into the wilderness got what they deserve!

It was reported today that 3 UNP MP’s a couple of Provincial Councilors and other elected officials amounting to 17 have had their party membership suspended due to their disobeying the whip requesting that they not attend the rally at Hyde Park organized by the breakaway faction from the UNP called the United Bhikku Front!

If one looks at this action dispassionately, it was the correct action to take in light of the breaking of the rule which elected members of the party are bound by, namely the Constitution of the Party. These pouting transgressors intend taking Court action to prevent the suspension. Why do they have to resort to a Kangaroo Court that follows the dictats of Govt. to decide their fate. That step is itself playing right into the hands of the Autocratic Presidency, which was what the rally was ostensibly meant to agitate against, but which had more covert overtones, in attempting to discredit the UNP which in all conscience could not support a rally organizes by a front critical of the leadership.

What prompted these people, when their leaders, Sajith Premadasa, Karu Jayasuriya and Dayasiri Jayasekera to abandon them for self preservation is beyond my comprehension. The future of these people is over as far as being elected in future in any form. They must know that. Their attempt at being martyred will not work either, so it is to their pig headedness, realizing they have been caught by the short and curlies by their nemesis that they could not stand and stepped right into the ring of fire.

A party needs to enforce discipline and it is better late than never for the UNP to take a stand and speak with one voice to their very confused flock, who await a clearing up of the dead wood and a reinvigorated party with a new theme, and direction, which can only happen when the cancer that is dissidents are reformed or evicted. It is a tough choice, but in the interests of party unity it is a timely move. It is important that such a clear out took place to face a prospect of political agitation in 2013, when the worst of the excesses of the present regime will become more apparent to the masses when the honeymoon period people have been in so far ends and reality begins to bite.

It is all positive from now and the General has only one option if he is to fulfill his ambition for the country, to join the UNP and work with them.

A sorry SF questions the assertion that the UNP made a mistake in hindsight in supporting SF’s candidature for Presidency.

It is no secret that the UNP grossly miscalculated the possibility of how much damage SF himself could do to his campaign, and therefore concluded after the elections that they should not have fielded him. Even RW would have polled more votes in that election, just as he had polled over half a million more votes in the previous Presidential Election, which he only lost due to the cunning of MR to convince Praba with millions in cash to prevent Tamils from voting.

For SF to question this fact now seems to be too little too late on an issue that is done and dusted long ago. So using the rally to convince himself that he was robbed of his presidency is just hallucinating with the facts.

SFs pontifications on the eve of the elections, put off a lot of UNP voters from voting in that election, and further the many who could not stomach to vote for a swan when they can only do for an elephant!

I am just pointing to the absurdity of these statements when the finger must be pointed at the daily activities of this Govt. and how it is robbing the people blind. The UNP is playing that card, not hard enough I feel, but given the meager resources at their disposal today, they are engaged in as good a job as any. So it is the duty of the SF camp to lend support to them to fight this fight, rather than attempt to fight a campaign with leadership that they cannot even hope to provide.

The rally was fruitless, as the objectives are already in focus and a fight has begun. SF not content with playing second fiddle to Sajith is hoping this would give him sufficient credibility to supplant Sajith from the Deputy Leader position in the UNP, and is trying an entry through the back door. This attempt clearly failed, before it began, due to the failure of the rally to garner sufficient support, with NO notable figures, other than SF at the rally.

Let us hope that a combined opposition can truly be formed with the UNP taking its leadership to challenge the legitimacy of the administration to govern in light of the recent revelations, which question some of the Supreme Court rulings in favor of those in power. It is the duty of the opposition to inform the public of the failings in Govt., point by point for the people to determine the right and wrongs and make up their minds.

SF is only strengthening MR’s hand not weakening it - The outcome of the Hyde Park Rally

A rational observer who went to the Hyde Park Rally yesterday, organized by the United Bhikku Front a non-existent organization must feel that the Maha Sangha in the form of the Bhikkus should not get involved in this sort of divisive politics. It should have been organized by Sarath Fonseka himself so why use a number of breakaway monks to do this task?

Its latest theme was to fight the dictatorial executive presidency system. Well this theme has already been taken up and a united opposition with the leadership of the UNP, the largest single political party has already begun that fight. So why compete with that and try to usurp its leadership?

These are hallmarks of failed direction and vision on the part of the organizers and participants, who have been mistakenly lead by a group who believe they can perform miracles of their own in galvanizing a third force.

It must be noted that even the JVP who is so much against the executive presidency DID NOT support this, when they are part of the DNA coalition with the SF front. Further Tiran Alles the principal sponsor of the DNA failed to come and therefore to support this event.

It is only a fact that politicians who have left their mother find temporary solace in these antics which have completely left them out in the cold, with no party to hold onto and in reality left to drift in the ocean with NO anchor.

It is a matter of time when SF will realize it is only through the UNP that he can have any traction in the future especially as he is not permitted to contest any election for a further 7 years which will effectively leave him permanently out in the cold. So those sad followers will again be left in the lurch, in just the same way Sajith left them out in the cold after they came out in support of him. It is very foolish in politics to support a person who one knows will abandon ship.

Let us face facts. It is MR that benefitted from the rally, not SF or the UNP. To that extent SF supported MR is a shameful testament to the direction which the UBF took him like a lamb to slaughter to further make him look silly in contesting the results of the last Presidential Elections, when there is no doubt as to who did the most damage to his cause, SF harmed himself only as he was his worst enemy and with hindsight that fact is clear.

The final nail in the superstitious coffin was when the heavens opened up and rained buckets when the rally began!

KJ Decides not to attend the Hyde Park Rally – does he fear the rain, the lightening or the thunder from the scene or after the event?

I had a sms a few minutes before the start of the Hyde Park Rally organized by the non-existent and misnamed United Bhikku Front (why a religious party would organize such a rally is really beyond my comprehension) that Karu Jayasuriya MP would NOT attend the rally. He was billed as the most prominent UNP politician who will attend, especially as Sajith Premadasa had already concluded his political life would be over if he did attend and chose the route of least resistance by not attending. One must remember that for a leader the route of least resistance is not showing good leadership, just cowardice and therefore I personally do not believe whatever the poor man does hence he can ever get the support of a reasonable majority of anyone for his cause.

Let us look into the rally which was regretfully marred by the weather, which gives a great excuse for the organizers to pretend that the numbers would have been 10X greater had it not rained!

We should therefore look at the fall out. It was clear that this is an attempt to divide the opposition. It was at a similar rally held by the UNP on behalf of the General that even his wife did not turn up giving a hardly credible excuse and therefore showed the true colors of the Fonseka team in callous disregard to the campaign to free him. Now they have the cheek to complain that the UNP, the main opposition in Sri Lanka has decided not to support a campaign by a Bhiikku Front that is clearly opposed to the policies of the UNP and was in the posters that had been printed and pasted, made assertions that were patently untrue, further infuriating the UNP into believing that they wished to use the good will of the UNP to fill in their ranks and then take the credit for themselves alone.

It is acts such as this that led the UNP to completely disown the campaign and prevent their elected officials from attending, and merely requested that other supporters desist from doing so. It impossible to keep party discipline by condoning acts of defiance and this time the Oppostion Leader took the correct stand by saying he would read the riot act as far as their standing in the party was concerned. Anyone as we know is free to do anything. However if they belong to a society or party or club that has rules and if those rules are broken they can be subjected to disciplinary action of that organization, no matter what the Asgiriya Malwatte prelates may say.

The Blogosphere in all three Languages MUST become the conscience of a humiliated nation – take courage we must take stand!–it will roll on

Where are we heading? The speed of the logic defying antics of the administration has taken on a new dimension and has gathered pace.

As if the KP statement that there are NO criminal proceedings is not enough, we have the ex- CJ admitting that he had enough on MR to ban him from ever seeking office, due to the ‘Helping Hambantota’ daylight robbery. Then there are the ridiculous statements about banning tuition in the last week of exams, from the Tuition Master turned politician. As if that was not enough, the FUTA has been tricked, the proposed budget in fact is cutting education as a percentage of GDP, it is increasing the Defence Spending by leaps and bounds in a time of peace, with Fonseka being used by MR to play his divide and rule games that is just this week.

The list is just getting longer and longer, tempers are getting shorter and shorter, people are wondering how to make ends meet and the leaders are just acting as if nothing has changed, and the fleets and size and budgets of the spending politicians just get bigger. Even the President’s Office has asked for a stupendous increase in their allocation alone for next year and the deficit is ballooning out of control.

The Ada paper noted that EVERY Sri Lankan man, woman and child has a noose of Rs300,000 debt on their heads that the Govt. now owes which ultimately has to be paid. So the largess of all these years spending and wastage is all from the pockets of the working population of Sri Lanka.

The Fourth Estate, the Media is clearly impotent. They have been crushed into submission and are unable to tell the truth to the people. It is now completely up to the bloggers to let the people know what is going on. Once the people realize the true news is in the blogosphere they will turn to it in droves to find real news. Let us be responsible in what we report and ask people to use their common sense and make their own conclusions when in some instances we cannot verify the story that we have heard and put in the blog. We can also ask bloggers for some verification from their personal knowledge and experience to corroborate what is written.

The time is now the year is 2012, and the plan is to inform, and ask the readership to just consider, not believe what is in the blogs and make their own minds up, and come to their own conclusions.

Pattapalboru – the campaign of lies and deception the State is engaged in! of course sponsored by none other than those in Power!

The main plank of the Government’s popularity has been a concerted effort, in a manner never done in the past, to deceive the public of its true intentions. This has meant that all media, private and government have been complicit knowingly or unknowingly due to the enormous pressure put on the media to comply.

For example the full page ads put into all the newspapers, some which depend solely on them for survival are part of the misinformation of the public. Often the cost of the project being advertised is less than the advertisement itself, but gains a level of public perception as a government that is actually doing something.

One must always remember that in the past work was constantly been done, as today, without the publicity it garners today due to the efforts of the govt. so people get a misunderstanding as to the work done in the past as compared with the work that is done at present. In fact more was done then than now.

Granted many roads have been built, with money borrowed and huge commissions made with many of the Govt. supporters making fortunes out of the people’s money that is borrowed usually at high rates of interest to support these untoward profits and commissions and bribes, all indistinguishable one from the other.

It is important that people understand what is normal, what is special and what is actually attributable to the government. Whilst it is not easy to know the facts as none of us can pretend to be psychic, we can get an idea after a fashion on the rights and wrongs of how things are done. It is important to have the tools to distinguish between what is likely to be correct or deceptive and then research further if one is troubled about the facts presented. This is the normal inquisitive mind at work, when presented with tall tales of right and wrong. A person who is educated sufficiently to look behind what is fed is able to get at the truth easier and more assuredly than one who is not.

Let us all take time to look into how we lead our lives, decide on right and wrong and then determine if the people making statements are more likely to be telling the truth or lying. Therein lies the answer to many a problem.

The Mawbima attempts are so lame!

On Saturday the Mawbima on Sunday paper's lambasts were laid bare and similarly the Ceylon Today on Sunday (14th October 2012) had the similar story attributed the same person in English which I show in full below:

I am giving the article more publicity as the paper does not sell at all and is running on empty except for the coffers their patrons are willing to lose as part of their attack on the opposition and are willing to spend what it takes to sling mud, with people's money as the there is no legitimate money that is financing this rag!

It will take a little time for the Editor to realize the error of his ways but until then we will just have to contend with this puerile attempt at slander. Let the reader judge for him/herself.

By Devaka Lankathilaka On Monday, a day after the attack on Manjula Tillekeratne, Secretary, Judicial Services Commission (JSC), a friend of mine, who is also a lawyer and quite close to the hierarchy of the United National Party (UNP), called me with some interesting information. He said there were some reports in Monday’s papers to the effect that UNP leader, Ranil Wickremesinghe, was planning to make a special statement in Parliament the following day, on the assault on the JSC Secretary. He said it would be a good idea for me to watch out for it.  Given the fact that Wickremesinghe is a lawyer and because of his extensive knowledge and considerable familiarity with judicial independence, my interest was kindled. I bought the paper on Wednesday, expecting to read his hard hitting speech in Parliament, condemning the assault on Tillekaratne and the affront to the judiciary. Imagine the let down, when the reports only revealed a wimpy and lacklustre speech that didn’t make any reference, even in passing, to the attack on Manjula Tillekaratne or criticize government interference in the Judiciary.  Instead his diatribe, it appeared, was directed at three concerns, all of which had nothing to do with the attack on the Judiciary. Attacked the former CJ Wickremesinghe first attacked the former Chief Justice (CJ), Sarath N. Silva.  He told the House that certain judgements given by Silva had caused serious damage to the UNP. His second was the judiciary, which he blamed for losing its exalted position in the country. And his third, and perhaps the most unlikely, was the Mawbima newspaper and its editor, over a question of how the latter had come to know about the attack on the JSC Secretary. Reading the contents, I was, to put it mildly, flabbergasted. I immediately called my friend and asked him why he wanted me to read such a nonsensical speech, completely out of tangent with the issue under discussion.  He then admitted that Wickremesinghe as usual evaded the issue. Side stepped direct involvement, even at the UNP Parliamentary Group meeting, which was held on the same morning. I then asked why Wickremesinghe was so ill-disposed towards the former Chief Justice; to which my friend replied that the UNP Leader has an axe to grind against the former CJ, whose judgements he believes had affected the UNP adversely, because, ironically, he could not prevent his MPs from  crossing over to the government. Wickremesinghe’s third grouse My next question was about Wickremesinghe’s third grouse; “Why did he attack the Mawbima and its Editor?  The response was prefaced with, what I assume was  a sarcastic smile, “Two things,” my lawyer friend said, pointing out that whenever there is a problem facing the country, Wickremesinghe runs away, while Mawbima digs deep to find out where he is at that particular moment, and then reveals it without any hesitation, unlike other papers. The other reason, he said, was the fact that Mawbima has become the greatest threat yet to his uncle’s newspaper, Lankadeepa.   “In the circulation war, ‘Mawbima’ is gaining ground on the Lankadeepa and moving ahead determinedly, that is why Wickremesinghe has launched a ‘Kamikaze’ type attack on Mawbima,” he elaborated. I was not quite satisfied with my friends’ explanations, especially about the former CJ ruining Wickremesinghe’s political fortunes with his judgements and this compromising the Independence of Judiciary. Wickremesinghe’s hypocrisy poses several questions. “If today, Wickremesinghe claims the former CJ, Sarath N. Silva, ruined the independence of  the judiciary and his own political fortunes in the process, can he explain his alliance with Silva at the 2010 Presidential election which also saw him getting on the stage with the  CJ ? “How can Wickremesinghe bring such a person to Sirikotha to give political tuition to his party MPs? If he claims it is Sarath N. Silva, who is responsible for the destruction of the party, how many such despoilers are Wickremesinghe consorting with?   How many has he consorted with?” I wonder even as I dwelt on the Party Leader’s duplicitous history. Then there was S.B Dissanayake? This is a person who was all out to destroy Wickremesinghe. In 2000, when Chandrika Kumaratunga introduced the constitutional reform package, he carried out an all out attack on the UNP and Wickremesinghe, in his bid to get the reform package approved.  After all this, Wickremesinghe  brought him to the UNP and appointed him National Organizer. Mangala’s role Then I recalled the association with Mangala Samaraweera. Has there been anybody in the Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP), who has destroyed the UNP more than Mangala Samaraweera? It was Samaraweera who induced Chandrika to dissolve the 2001 Wickremesinghe Government.   Threatening to resign, he cobbled an alliance with the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP), to send Wickremesinghe home. And later, when Mahinda Rajapaksa, held Samaraweera by the scruff of his neck and literally threw him out, wasn’t in Wickremesinghe who embraced him to the party? And today he is Wickremesinghe’s media chief...” Then I remembered his association with Chandrika Kumaratunga. “Didn’t he accompany Chandrika, the very same person who dissolved his government in 2004, to a ‘Kathikawa’ at the New Town Hall?” I wondered if Wickremesinghe had forgotten the 1988 -1989 era when the JVP used to talk to the UNP at gun point. In 2004, Wickremesinghe’s Government was ousted because of the JVP. In 2005, if the JVP did not support Mahinda Rajapaksa, Wickremesinghe would have become President. Despite all this, didn’t he get on the stage with the JVP? I couldn’t help wondering the depths to which the ‘glorified’ leader he had descended when signed a peace agreement with the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, who decimated the entire UNP leadership, R. Premadasa, Lalith Athulathmudali, Gamini Dissanayake, Ranjan Wijeratne, and so on. If Wickremesinghe had no compunctions about doing the tango with known enemies of the party, of course, it would not be a big deal for him to dance to the tune of Mahinda Rajapaksa. It is more than obvious that Wickremesinghe has a deal with Rajapaksa. Whenever any matter of national interest crops up in the country,  Wickremesinghe always performs the role of the puppet, dancing to the tunes of the puppet master, Mahinda Rajapaksa,  I believe there  are two reasons for Wickremesinghe to make a deal with Rajapaksa. Wijeya Newspapers “First and foremost is to get Rajapaksa’s support to safeguard his position as the Party and Opposition Leader. He wants to keep the party leadership until that opportune moment when he can pass on the mantle of leadership to his uncle’s son, Ruwan Wijewardena. His other reason for the deal with Rajapaksa, is to get the latter’s help to maintain the number one position of the family business, Wijeya Newspapers, in the country. That is why Wickremesinghe always attacks Mawbima,” if that is not the case, why would a recent edition of the group’s English paper, the Sunday Times criticize the Mawbima group insinuating that it was in cahoots with the government. A little bit of investigation had led me to the conclusion that the insinuation is the furthest from the truth, but that Ranjith Wijewardena has got several business deals with government patronage. I believe Mawbima, is a smoke screen to hide his connection to several deals with the government, “The Lankadeepa was at one time owned by the government. Ranjith Wijewardena took over the paper’s title from the then UNP Government. Then, during JR’s time, he started the Lankadeepa newspaper funded with a big chunk of compensation, collected from the J.R. Government, as the earlier government had nationalized Associated Newspapers of Ceylon Ltd. (Lake House), their family business. Then during the Premadasa Government, in which Ranil was Minister of Industries, Wijewardena acquired some of the best tea and coconut estates in the country with the blessings of Wickremesinghe. During this time Wijewardena got a bigger piece of the pie for his sole benefit; that of printing cheques for banks, outside tender procedures. Mangala Samaraweera had revealed these deals; not anyone else. At the 2010 Presidential Election, the Lankadeepa published a story about a secret agreement between Sarath Fonseka and the Tamil National Alliance, which helped Mahinda Rajapaksa immensely. At the time Samaraweera said it was a government contract. Income from the cheque printing business is shared by the Wijewardena family. It is printed at an associate company of Lake House, in which Wickremesinghe’s mother was a Director. Wickremesinghe gets his share too. He is working according to his uncle’s agenda,” I believe the  Opposition Leader is only a pawn in a bigger game and that the innocent reading public buys the Lankadeepa without knowing these ramifications and wheels within wheels wheeler dealings of the Wijewardena clan. The biggest threat to the  Ranil-Ranjith combine comes from Mawbima and it’s no nonsense, warts and all, revelations of Ranil Wickremesinghe’s capers. That is why he launched an impromptu attack on Mawbima in Parliament, instead of focusing on the problems of the judiciary. (The writer is an Attorney-at-Law)