WikiLeaks:80% Says MR Is Corrupt And 85% Says His Family Is Corrupt

October 5, 2011By Colombo Telegraph -

I'm not a yes–man, 80 percent says you are corrupt

“President Rajapaksa’s chief opinion pollster – who is a good contact of the embassy on other issues – shared with us the first findings from their initial survey. These initial responses indicated that potential voters had little interest in the symbolic issues” US ambassador Patricia A. Butenis wrote to Washington.

The Colombo Telegraph found the leaked cable from the Wikileak database. The cable classified as “CONFIDENTIAL” by the ambassador Patricia A. Butenis.

In the cable, written in 26^thDecember 2009 recount details of a meeting with President Mahinda Rajapaksa’s chief pollster and his close advisor Sunimal Fernando. Under the subheading “PRESIDENTIAL POLLSTER SURPRISED BY GOOD FIGURS” the ambassador wrote “Only about 10% cared about the president’s creation of a “patriotic society” after the war or his willingness to stand tall against the west. Also, many voters saw the Rajapksa family as corrupt (85%) and the

85 percent says Rajapaksa family is corrupt

president himself as corrupt (80%). Despite all his faults, the pollster claimed, many voters still saw Rajapkasa as a man of action and a man of his word and would vote for him over Fonseka.”

Placing a comment she wrote “the pollster prides himself on being one of the few figures in the president’s circle who gives him objective information and is not a yes – man… we find interesting the very high negatives for the president on corruption and apparent lack of voter interest in Rajapaksa’s standard patriotic issues, which could eat away at the president’s positive figures as the campaign progresses”

Related news links - Wikileaks – “race is neck and neck” Rajapaksa’s chief pollster Sunimal Fernando -http://colombotelegraph.com/2011/10/02/wikileaks-%E2%80%9Crace-is-neck-and-neck%E2%80%9D-rajapaksa%E2%80%99s-chief-pollster-sunimal-fernando/

Read the full cable

WikiLeaks: US Diplomats Spied On UN Leadership Including UN Views On Sri Lanka

May 3, 2012By Colombo Telegraph -

In 2010 The Guardian broke the story “US diplomats spied on UN leadership” based on a leaked US diplomatic cable which explains how Washington is running a secret intelligence campaign targeted at the leadership of the United Nations, including the secretary general, Ban Ki-moon and the permanent security council representatives from China, Russia, France and the UK.  US also spied on UN views on Sri Lanka the Colombo Telegraph can reveal today.

Hillary Clinton

“A classified directive which appears to blur the line between diplomacy and spying was issued to US diplomats under Hillary Clinton’s name in July 2009, demanding forensic technical details about the communications systems used by top UN officials, including passwords and personal encryption keys used in private and commercial networks for official communications.” The Guardian said.

It called for detailed biometric information ”on key UN officials, to include undersecretaries, heads of specialised agencies and their chief advisers, top SYG [secretary general] aides, heads of peace operations and political field missions, including force commanders” as well as intelligence on Ban’s “management and decision-making style and his influence on the secretariat”.

Washington also wanted credit card numbers, email addresses, phone, fax and pager numbers and even frequent-flyer account numbers for UN figures and “biographic and biometric information on UN Security Council permanent representatives”.

The secret “national human intelligence collection directive” was sent to US missions at the UN in New York, Vienna and Rome; 33 embassies and consulates, including those in London, Paris and Moscow.

The operation targeted at the UN appears to have involved all of Washington’s main intelligence agencies. The CIA’s clandestine service, the US Secret Service and the FBI were included in the “reporting and collection needs” cable alongside the state department under the heading “collection requirements and tasking”.

The Colombo Telegraph found the related US diplomatic cable from the Secretary of State section of the WikiLeaks database. The cable was classified as “SECRET” signed by Hillary Clinton on July 31, 2009.

Under the subheading “Human Rights and War Crimes (HRWC-3)” Clinton asked to collect “Views and intentions of UNSC, UN human rights entities, and members regarding Sri Lankan government policies on human rights and humanitarian assistance; UN views about appointing a Special Envoy for Sri Lanka.”

Read the cable below for further details;

Wikileaks: Mahinda Rajapaksa Is a “christian” – Says Archbishop

September 21, 2011By Colombo Telegraph -

A leaked US Embassy cable reveals how the Archbishop Malcolm Ranjith lobbied US government against international pressure on accountability for war crimes.

The Archbishop Malcolm Ranjith told to the US ambassador that “ pushing the government of Sri Lanka too hard on the war crimes accountability issue now could destabilize Sri Lankan democracy  and could suffer revolution from the right or a coup by the military” a leaked US Embassy cable revealed.

Archbishop- Rajapaksa is a good man

Mahinda Rajapaksa a good man

Despite his problems with the Buddhist right , has a good relationship with the President, whose wife is Catholic

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Archbishop’s Office Slams US Cable – Response to Colombo Telegraph Revelation Based On Wikileaks.

By Colombo Telegraph -             No smile - must clarify

Responding to last week Colombo Telegraph revelation, a Spokesperson from the Archbishop’s office, Rev. Father Benedict Joseph told The Sunday Leader the remarks as ‘baseless’ and ‘false’. Colombo Telegraph revealed the story how Archbishop Cardinal Malcolm Ranjith lobbied the US government against international pressure on accountability for war crimes titled “Mahinda Rajapaksa is a “christian” – says Archbishop” based on a leaked US embassy cable. We expect a clarification from ambassador Patricia A. Butenis.        Read More

The Mind of Compassion: Buddhism and Violence

The Mind of Compassion: Buddhism and Violence

Groundviews

A lion carries a dead wild boar in his mouth. He is walking through the grasslands, victorious after the hunt. On the dead boar is a crudely imprinted crescent moon and star. This is an image found in a Sinhala Facebook page (https://www.facebook.com/pages/මාගේ-හෘද-සාක්ෂිය/351343628228268) that among other things compares Sri Lankan Muslims to wild boar, puppies (the Sinhala wording is cruder) and crows. The Facebook page has more than 5,000 likes and increases daily. It is only one of many that stalks cyberspace. This is Sri Lanka in 2012! Continue reading »

‘Burmese Lessons’ for Sri Lanka

by Dr Laksiri Fernando

( May 03, 2012, Sydney, Sri Lanka Guardian) I am here not talking about Karen Connelly’s popular love story by the name of ‘Burmese Lessons,’ but rather Aung San Suu Kyi’s entry into Parliament yesterday as the leader of the opposition in Myanmar (or Burma) with 42 other members who were elected early April in a by-election from the National League for Democracy (NLD). There is no doubt that this is also a ‘love story.’

Suu Kyi came to Burma from London in 1988 just to see her ailing mother but by that time the country had exploded into a democracy uprising after 25 years of military rule. She ‘fell in love’ with that movement and since then she has been consistently perusing democracy for the country with passion and compassion.

Burmese opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi (C) is protected from the rain by one of her aids 01 June after a storm broke at the end of her weekly weekend speech from the gate of her house in Rangoon, Burma.- Getty Images

Her NLD won a landslide victory in 1990 elections winning 80 per cent of the seats in Parliament but the military junta refused to hand over power. For her passion for democracy, she refused to leave the country, leaving her family behind in London, and since then she was under house arrest until last year except for few periods.

Immediate issue after winning the last by-election in April was whether the NLD members could ‘swear to respect’ the military drafted constitution. The NLD and Suu Kyi have pledged to fight to change the constitution. Among other things, this constitution preserves 25 per cent of seats for the military in 664-member Parliament.

The issue prevented her party entering Parliament for a whole month but finally she convinced her supporters to use discretion and tact and not to lose the opportunity just because of a ‘verbal oath’ to the constitution. She and the party are determined to change the constitution and bring full democracy to the country.

Her love for democracy is full of passion as well as compassion. She said “our purpose is not to oust anybody from Parliament, but the country needs representatives who are elected and responsible to the people.”

Burma and Sri Lanka

Burmese military intelligence officers Colonel Kyaw Thein (L), Colonel Thein Swe (C) and Burma's number two strongman, Colonel Kyaw Nwin consult with each other 01 February before answering a journalist's question during the monthly governmental press conference. Military intelligence said they have identified and exposed three subversive groups linked to the All Burma Student Democratic Front (ABSDF). Emmanuel DUNAND/AFP PHOTO.

Laksiri Fernando, Senior Professor of Political Science and Public Policy at the University of Colombo, is currently is a visiting scholar at the University of Sydney in retirement. He is the Author of “Human Rights, Politics and States: Burma, Cambodia and Sri Lanka.

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Some Critical Reflections on the Silences on Secularism: A Response to Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunge

Photo courtesy Hemant Buch via JDS

Groundviews

In a piece published on Groundviews on 29 April, Ms. Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunge (CBK) makes many pertinent observations on religion and society in South Asia. Underlying all her arguments however, is a certain reading of secularism that warrants contestation, which is the aim of this piece.

Every time we fail to articulate the specificities and diversities in the history of secularism and allied Constitutional practices, and use ‘western’ in an unqualified and uncritical manner to mark it, as CBK does, we not only err factually but also succumb to the binaries of either an exclusivist or inclusivist approach to religion. Contrary to what CBK implies there is no ‘western’ idea of secularism in the sense of a single coherent approach to the separation of religion and state.Continue reading »

Extremism, Ethnic Cleansing And Nationalist Rhetoric In Sri Lanka

May 1, 2012

tamil-genocide-multi-polarity

By Terence Bunch -

Rhetoric₁ derives from a long standing enquiry into the power of oral persuasion. It is linked to the combined use of language, symbology, mutually derived identity and relations between peoples and nations. Rhetoric when used by a skilled orator can be used in service to persuasion of a given argument, to elucidate a given or perceived truth, or can be used to obscure or obfuscate an argument or the truth. In any given environment, either political or cultural, rhetoric can be used to steer public opinion toward, or away from, a particular subject of enquiry. Rhetoric has been classified as particular to oral persuasion in the field of politics, but has also been cited as having liberated form in any area in which large scale mass persuasion is required.

In the post 9/11 phase, the domestic rhetoric of the United States has been voluntarily adopted by a number of nations in pursuit of their own ideologies and political aims and motifs. This has accrued in tandem with large-scale funding₂ from the United States into the criminal justice systems of those nations which in turn has migrated into their political systems…and as a result of this, an increase in nationalist violence has taken place with the external funding of the United States facilitating the domestic enmities of various extremists regimes in pursuit of their own agenda’s.

Sri Lankan nationalism Read More

UNP-TNA May Day rally in Jaffna fails to draw in local support

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 01 May 2012, 14:45 GMT]
If the Tamil National Alliance (TNA) and the United National Party (UNP) of the Sinhala state, and whatever the international forces behind them, have thought of probing the Tamil minds about a future partnership between the parties through a May Day show, then the Eezham Tamils in Jaffna have totally rejected the idea by not showing local participation to their joint May Day rally. The local people didn’t come out even to watch the fun of roughly 10,000 Sinhalese brought down from the South by the UNP marching through the streets of Jaffna. While more than 80 buses were engaged in plying between the South and Jaffna in bringing down UNP politicians and their supporters, the Tamils seen in the rally on the side of the TNA were numbering less than a hundred, confined to the TNA members of the civic bodies, news sources in Jaffna said.

Sampanthan and Suresh walk under a placard in flawed Tamil brought by the UNP supporting southerners

UNP leader and SL Leader of the Opposition Ranil Wikremasinghe, along with TNA leaders R. Sampanthan, MA Sumanthiran, Maavai Senathirajah and Suresh Premachandran, inaugurated the procession by 2.30 pm.

Full story >>