Jeyaraj's Comments

This is in response to the lankanewspaper.com article titled ‘Jeyaraj attacks church hierarchy’ where the current Minister of transportation and so many other things apparently blamed the Catholic Church for it’s apparent support of Ranil.

First of all despite what jeyaraj has to say, majority of the Christian vote did not go for Mahinda, this is quite clear when looking at electorates where there is a Christian majority in the population. Even in his own electorate in Katana, usually a robust clean win for a SLFP backed alliance saw a great narrowing down of the gap between the UNP and the SLFP candidate.

It must be said, that statements near elections are in fact quite a common procedure for the church, where they usually preach about choosing a candidate who can bring peace. This has been the sermon of the church near election times for the past few elections, and if someone actually bothered to read the statement they would notice that even this time around the statement have not deviated from this basic message.

What is true however, is the fact that anyone reading a statement such as that, anything which calls for ‘peace’ over an election period would immediately get the perception that whoever wrote the statement is in support of the UNP. it’s also true that some Christian priests did ask very openly from the public to vote for Ranil, basing their arguments on mahinda’s JHU affiliations among others.

The truth be told, it’s highly unlikely that Christians would face great ‘atrocities’ in the hands of mahinda; after all his wife is a Christian, he sent his kids to a Christian school, and as far as I know, up until now had a pretty healthy relationship with the church.

I, as a Christian and a catholic would personally prefer if the church stayed out of the political process as much as possible, especially in instances where Christians as an entity is not under any sort of great ‘danger’. I strongly believe that religion is a personal thing, and the state and its politics should be separated as much as possible from religion.

However, if a criticism is leveled against the church for influencing the political thinking of its followers then the criticism should also be leveled against all the religious organizations and figures using religion as leverage for political gain, but unfortunately neither Jeyaraj, or anyone else for that matter have the balls enough to say anything against these other, mainly Buddhist religious organizations and figures influencing and participating in mainstream politics.

Cheers
Deane.


p.s – this was supposed to be one of my replies to the actual news story in lankanewspapers, but figured it would be better to just blog it.

Finally.. the Interact site is up..

After like a year since i built this, finally managed to upload the Gateway interact club site, now of course im out of school and out of the club, but the bureaucracy in Gateway is unbelievable, after building the site it took us 2 months to get approval,and then ofcourse i had to sit for ALs and then it was too outdated to upload. Even now this upload is on a free server.

The site is a little buggy, and i also did a pretty dirty job on HTML and as of now it's pretty much outdated, the new Interact board is supposed to send me the content; Hopefully they can get 'permission' for it, and pretty soon the site can move on to paid hosting and get a propper (already paid for) domain running.

Any comments are welcome, i know, the gfx arent that optimized, the HTML is horrible but apart from that.. looks alright huh? :)

hmm.. come to think of it, this is pretty much a pointless blog.. oh.. and probably my first non-political post :) .. wow.. i actually managed to do that..

Ahh.. Rajpal

It’s been a long time since my last post; things have been crazy with exams, Christmas and lot of other stuff. But hell, how often does your blog get referred on mainstream media? I just had to blog this one.

The shocker came yesterday when reading the Rajpal Abeynayake column (of the Sunday Times) where Mr.Rajpal, now back to his usual UNP bashing ways, referred to a blog post I made the day before the November 17 election where I wrote about how Rajpal likes to pinch, slap and punch the UNP, and in particular Ranil and Milinda Moragoda.

So our dear Rajpal is a blog reader (perhaps even a blogger?), must say I’m rather elated about the fact that he referred to the post, more so than I like to admit, and hell I’ve been always curious about knowing who this Rajpal pora really is, and what other columns he writes. Hmm..

so perhaps you can leave a comment next time you visit Mr.Rajpal, nice to see you in the LK blogsphere.

Ciao
Deane.

We, the silent majority

Getting actively involved with the Sri Lankan Blogsphere and if I may call it, the entire Websphere has been truly an eye-opener.

The pure and filthy Racism is not only hurtful but just horribly disgusting to even read. It seems the racists have sprung up everywhere most notably in comments on blogs, mailing lists, and news sites. A prime example is comments posted at Lankanewspapers.com a site which offers regular news updates from Sri Lanka. The comments for each of these news articles almost always end up in a war of words between Sinhalese extremists and Tamil extremists.

It’s interesting to analyze where exactly this blatant racism is coming from, usually the majority of Sri Lankans (please excuse Mr.Wimal Weerawansa) are rather laid-back creatures. Perhaps the apparent anonymity of the web gives them a sense of security to voice out what they really feel without worrying about the possible consequences. Either way the situation is very depressing, not only because there seems to be so much of racists but more so for the fact that there seems to be almost no response from the middle minded moderates of this country.

"All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing."
(Edmund Burke)

So I think it’s time we the silent majority take some action, perhaps maintain a racist list in a separate Blog dedicated to Anti-Racism in Sri Lanka or maybe something as simple as a ‘I hate Racists’ button on blogs with a zero tolerance for Racism. Any ideas are welcome.

Cheers,
Deane J AKA ~CC~

An interesting week ahead

As far as Sri Lankan politics is concerned the coming week is an interesting one.

we have already solved the mystery of the Prime Minister. Rajapakse has gone for a safe choice as far his party is concerned and given it to Ratnasiri, an option CBK went for with same concerns in mind. The BBC, reporting the appointment called the new PM a Hawk, and a Sinhalese Nationalist Hardliner. Perhaps they should have just called him an idiot, because he's nothing much more than that.

The decision is surprising because despite Rajapakse's pre-election deals with the devils (JHU/JVP) I really never thought of him as an extremist or a nationalist, and I believed like some others, if he were to get elected he would try to tune down his ‘hardliner’ image which he seems to have created. The step to make Ratanasiri PM doesn’t do well to that end, as Ratansiri’s known to spontaneously flame the tigers with words that up until now, has had no weight. So definitely a not so positive move as far as the peace process is concern.

Other interesting development to follow will be actions of Anura Bandaranaike, most speculate that he is going to loose the Foreign ministry. I’m not so sure about that, I think it’s in Mahinda’s best interest that he keeps at least some solidarity with the Banda’s. Anura is such an unpredictable creature; you’ll never know what he will do, so he will be an interesting character to look out for.

It’s also reported that Jeppa’s wont accept ministries just as yet, so it will be interesting again to see who will get the key ministries of Finance, Agriculture, and if above speculation is correct, The Foreign ministry. It’s likely that Sarath Amunugama will retain as the finance minister; at least the guy has some common sense in him.

Other key appointments to look out for will be who will receive Kadiragamar’s national list seat, and who will be appointed as the peace secretariat after Mr.Danapala’s resignation. Let’s hope he wont be replaced by a ‘war secretariat’ :P

The other more perhaps important development will be to see how the UNP will reform it self, whether or not Ranil will leave will perhaps be the thing to watch this week. A lot of people speculate that despite the loss, he might stay on as the leader of the UNP. I must admit that it’s seems to be likely, he seems to have the backing of the party seniors. Having said that I think Ranil should start grooming the next presidential candidate from the UNP. So perhaps he will continue on as the leader of the UNP, and give the post of ‘Opposition Leader’ to someone else, like Mahinda Samarasinghe.

All comments/speculation/predictions/bets are welcome :)

We won the people, just not their vote.

Grief is now replaced by a glum acceptance. We will have to tolerate Rajapakse for six more years unless of course he keeps his promise and abolish executive presidency, I don’t think that’s going to happen.

In any case as a perhaps my final blog on the results it’s fair to say that Ranil even though he lost the actual poll, was the choice of Sri Lanka. To put it in prospective, there are more people today wishing Ranil was president instead of mahinda its just so happens that part of those who wants him, mainly the North, just didn’t show up on the poling booths to put that wish in writing. We now have to live with that grim reality.

My utter disgust and the feeling of betrayal from the north east Tamils is still very much present, whether they boycotted the polls out of pure loyalty or fear of the LTTE is immaterial at this point. What matters is that when I and many others like me who believe in a multi-cultural, multi-ethnic and an equal-to-all Sri Lanka voted on those ideals, the Tamil people of the north failed to give a response.

I can understand why the LTTE called the boycott. It is in their interest that Sri Lanka chooses a leader that the Tamils can dismiss as being acceptable to them, and this would mean greater control. What is most disappointing is that the majority of Tamils chose to follow this instruction; and to put it very simply, it just hurts Having said that, hats off to the people from the North who did vote, especially for that one guy in Killinochi (he voted for Ranil), who voted on behalf of the district. Well done sir and thank you.

What’s done is done. Sri Lanka perhaps lost its greatest leader, one who could have solved this stupid conflict for good. Now we might have to wait another generation, maybe even more bloodshed. I Hope it wont be the case.

A Blogsphere in Mourning

The majority of the Sri Lankan Blogsphere is in a state of mourning as can be seen by the posts in www.kottu.org. This perhaps is not a sentiment exclusive to bloggers but a certain sect of expressive sri lankans who expected a victory for Ranil.


Some Blogs, such as This one , seems to be on strike. while many others are filled with rather depressed blogs. i have also decided to display a black ribbon for an indefiinite period of time as as a token of my protest of the election results and the inability for the North Eastern people to exercise their democratic rights.


Meanwhile there is some speculation that the UNP is moving towards a re-poll in Jaffna as reported in Nittewa and also reported by Channel News Asia. there are also reports that Mahinda will move to a quick swearing in today at about 6PM.

As much as i would like to believe the re-poll rumors i just cannot think it happening, and us repeating a Ukrain. infact it seems these demands of a re-poll have aready being rejected

so it's over...

so it's over...

it still haven’t sunk in, but the fat lady is singing loud and clear. Ranil Wickramasinghe is not the President of Sri Lanka, the 5th executive president of Sri Lanka is going to be Mahinda Rajapakse and looks like we will have to tolerate him for the next six years.

Grief is an understatement on how I feel, in fact it’s a combination of many emotions that goes through me when I blog the entry I never wanted to. The emotion is a mix of sadness, disappointment, embarrassment, and possibly sometimes down right anger. Basically the LTTE fcuked us over, and we all cannot help but feel betrayed, after all the political capital we put behind the people of the north and east, all the shit we had to take from the south to protect those interests, the people of the north and east have abandoned the peaceful leadership and paved the way for a coalition of disorder.

The people of the north and east, primarily the Tamils in those reasons could have decided who the president would have been, they had the power in their hands, or so it seemed. It seems now the LTTE have decided for them and their choice was Mahinda. Why LTTE took such a decision would be a matter of debate over the coming days and weeks but if you are a pace loving citizen of this country then if ever there was a sign of war, then this must be it. Despite this, I hope with all my heart that Mahinda can somehow steer this country to peace, I really do; however it’s not the man himself that casts doubts in me but the devils he sleeps with. I can hardly imagine anything worthwhile happening while the JVP/JHU is involved; it is truly ironic, as some other bloggers pointed out that Mahinda it seems had the backing of all the extremists in the country, a key ally being the LTTE.

As the morning dawned, and when I heard the first news that at 11 AM yesterday, the turnout from the LTTE areas is virtually zero, fears began to rise, and as the day gave away to the night and night to dawn it was increasingly becoming clear, Wickramasinghe’s options were running out, and running out fast. He needed big victories, sort of victories he would/ or should have got from the north.

The writing is on the wall for Mr.Wickramasinghe, it’s unlikely that he will contest again, and that will be a great pity. Sri Lanka will never get to see the true capabilities of the man, and the man wont get the chance to properly serve Sri Lanka. What went wrong for Wickramasinghe would be again a matter of debate, but to be honest he was baking on the north and east, and if he got it, (and I know the IFs and BUTs don’t count.) he would be the president and this country and this entry would have been dramatically different. People will now try to analyze whether Mr.Moragoda was responsible with his interview, or was it Navin Dissanayake, but to be honest for the tigers to call for the boycott it has to be more than that. It would have been a policy decision by the LTTE.

Call it hypocrisy, but the result is the not wish of the whole of Sri Lanka. It may be the narrow wish of the south, but not the country. That should be accepted. Well I could go like this for ever so it’s time to stop.

So bottom line LTTE decides - Mahinda is the president.

The Voting is over,

Sri Lanka have decided, I must say out of all the campaign days this one is the most bleak.
Tigers have indeed asked the Tamils to boycott the polls, reports say that there is not a single vote cast from the LTTE controlled areas, and only about 5% in the rest of the north, these reports are of course from the State Media, but they cant be off the truth by much in this case.

We are still trying to be positive, and hope that that somehow Ranil will be able to pull it off. I simply cant stand to think that we might have to endure six years of rajapakse. Hopefully we dont have to, we will know in about 5 or 6 hours how the vote is going to go.

Deane J

Pre D-Day

For many Sri Lankans tomorrow will be Decision Day. Approximately 75 percent of 133,27,160 registered voters in Sri Lanka will go to the poling booths to decide whom they will refer to as ‘the president’ of the country for the next six years.

I on the other hand will be taking part in this whole ‘voting’ business for the first time. Being only 19, I’m kinda lucky that my democratic rights are reserved so promptly by the state while many of my friends are still made involuntary observers. This is possibly due to the fact that I knew our gramey quite well. (grama seva niladari ..hmm in English it’s probably Village Service Officer, probably not bt,.. you get the idea)

As for the whom to vote for… well if you have known me for like a day, you would know that I vote for RANIL. I even played my part in his campaign.

In fact unless the UNP dramatically changes its policies and/or there is a credible alternative to the UNP, unlike the impractical extremists JVP/JHU/SLFP alliance, my vote is probably a life-time UNP one.

the more interesting question is not whom I am voting, but who the rest of the country will vote for, i.e. who’s gonna win this damn thing tomorrow?

Well I know this question has been popped many a times but as much as people want to be, nobody’s sure. In fact the very reason I want to create this blog today was the fact that I want to make a prediction on tomorrow.

The main problem today is, that the opinion polls in this country cannot be fully trusted even less so, the SMS polls. If you are big on the number game, do all the number crunching you want, and you can probably turn the result either way (actually if you are middle-minded. There’s a lot to assume, and assumptions can be erroneous.

The only other source of enlightment is the media; the media again in Sri Lanka can hardly be called impartial. Even so, you can at least call some idea particularly through News Papers. There is a particular column I like to read in the Sunday Times, written by Rajpal Abeynayake. Now Mr.Abeynayake usually like to pinch, (sometimes even slap and punch) the UNP, and Ranil in particular. (other favorites include Milinda Moragoda, but that’s irrelevant) last Sunday in his article, he did a sort of number crunching which resulted in a result in favor of Wickramasinghe. In fact many pre-polls does seems to indicate there is a greater chance of a Wickramasinghe victory, the pessimists (also called the mahinda camp) would say as they are now ramping on about the ‘apparent’ boycott of North Eastern Tamils of the polls, and that would mean sure death in the polls for Ranil.. with all due respect to mathematics, I think the formula for the winner just got a little complicated, and there seems to be no one with the correct head to solve the it.

So in these times of desperation, there’s only one place to go, what does your gut say, and my gut says Ranil Wickramasinghe.

The country needs Him

Deane J

Welcome to My Dimension,

We all understand that the space have at least three dimensions, that of height, breadth and length.

Einstein believed that there are four dimensions the fourth being time. Some scientists now believe that there are many more than this, in fact they think that there are at least eleven or thirteen different dimensions.

if you think that there are thirteen dimensions then this the fourteenth if you believe there are then this is the fourth. If you think that’s all bullshit, then this is bullshit + 1 either way this blog is my dimension, my way of looking at things, my perspective, my factor in cyberspace.

Cheers and Peace

Deane