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Sri Lanka’s Tamil nation question is not just an external issue for India 29 May 2011, 4:23 pm By Sumanisiri Liyanage A t the end of Minister of External Affairs of the Government of Sri Lanka, Prof. G L Peiris’ visit to India from 15-17 May, 2011, a joint press statement was issued by the two governments and it has once again raised critical issues that govern India-Sri Lanka relations. Cartoon in Chennai Tamil Daily Dinamani in April 2009, depicting DMK leader M. Karunanidhi on a heated campaign trail laying ultimatum 'whether war is going to be stopped or not' in Sri Lanka over Tamil deaths Moreover, as it happened on many an occasion, the India-bashers within the government coalition and without have decried the press statement by invoking the grand but blurred notions of national independence and sovereignty. In my opinion, revisiting the issue of India-Sri Lanka relations with special emphasis on post-conflict situation and developing a policy framework taking the geo-...

http://www.island.lk/index.php?page_cat=article-details&page=article-details&code_title=25469 Saving State U: Why We Must Fix Public Higher Education May 15, 2011, 7:19 pm   The title of this note is borrowed in full from the Nancy Folbre’s book with the same title published in 2010. Nancy Folbre is a professor of economics at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. We, the university teachers in Sri Lanka, have to prove occasionally that we read books since the present government and its Minister of Higher Education seem convinced otherwise. Providing completely a new interpretation to his famous speech in Parliament, where he stated that the government would increase the salaries of the university teachers substantially to place them on par with the salaries of the university teachers in the neighbouring countries, the Minister of Higher Education, S B Disanayaka, has revealed the hidden agenda of his government’s policy on higher education. Minister informed us on T...

Why do University Teachers resort to Trade Union Action?: A Statement by the Executive Committee of the Federation of University Teachers’ Association 1.       Trade Unions may not have a long history but in the short history of their existence they have acquired an indelible presence in the affairs of nation-states. Trade unions historically evolved as organizations to defend collectively the rights and interests of working people. Although TUs seek to win their demands through soft and hard negotiations, in some instances, they are compelled to launch strong trade union actions, especially when employers, public or private sector, disregard totally the interests of their employees. Middle class unions, like the union of university teachers, always prefer to win their demands through negotiations. Hence, since 2007, Federation of University Teachers' Associations and its sister unions have engaged in negotiations at different levels to arrive at a satisfactory...

Is degrading Academia way to make SL a knowledge hub? March 13, 2011, 12:00 pm The behaviour of the present government, the statements by its ministers and the actions by its bureaucracy have compelled me to portray this government as the worst government in post-colonial Sri Lanka as far as its treatment of academia is concerned. Although Minister of Higher Education S. B. Dissanayake has been active on many fronts and appears really keen to effect some changes—let me make it clear that I wholeheartedly support his goal of eliminating ragging from higher educational institutions—it is sad that the Ministry of Higher Education has failed so far miserably to develop a comprehensive higher education plan and strategy.Moreover, I also argue that the policies of the government as a whole will not assist in any manner in achieving its objective of making Sri Lanka a knowledge hub in the region. Addressing public meetings during the last presidential election in many parts of the country...

Tunisian Contagion and Gaddafi’s Libya Sumanasiri Liyanage The events that began in Tunisia have spread to other Arab countries and have destabilized the entire region. Of course the reverberation of those events has been felt in other countries as well. The latest in the series is the events unfolding in Muammar Gaddafi’s Libya. Muammer Gaddafi came to power o n 1 September 1969 by a bloodless   coup d'état   against   King Idris   while the king was in   Turkey   for medical treatment. He was profoundly influenced by the Arab defeat in Palestine in 1948 to Israeli forces and   Nasser 's rise to power in Egypt in 1952 . The frustration and shame felt by young Libyan military officers who witnessed the humiliating defeat of Arab armies on three fronts by Israel in 1967 fuelled their determination to contribute to Arab unity by overthrowing the Libyan monarchy. Owing to this fact, it was clear that his regime would adopt popular nationalist and also ...

PBJconomics: A Path to Disaster? Sumanasiri Liyanage Sometime back I had a brief chat with a UPFA MP who was made a minister in the last cabinet reshuffle about the economic policies of the UPFA government. Although he himself claims to be a Marxist, the question he had posed to me was concerned with the issue of how to reduce the budget deficit by increasing government revenue. Although political economists recognize the adverse consequences of persistent budget deficit, they do not, as neo-liberal economists do, analyze economic issues solely from the prism of budgetary management especially in an underdeveloped country. A recent IMF report on Sri Lankan economy gives the impression that the fundamentals of the Sri Lankan economy are sound and the only worry has been the inability of the government to maintain fiscal deficit at a reasonable level. Let me paraphrase my answer to the question posed by the UPFA MP. I told him that although the broad contours of the economic policies u...

Terrorizing seats of higher learning The Island, 08/05/2011,  By Sumanasiri Liyanage Faced with the threat of trade union action by the university teachers, the Minister of Higher Education S. B. Dissanayake and Chairman of the University Grants Commission, Prof. Gamini Samaranayake instead of making an effort to find an amicable solution to the issues raised by the university teachers, seem to be engaged in confrontational strategy deploying threats, intimidations, misinterpretations and absolute lies. This behaviour, in a way, signifies the approach and attitude of the government in general. Following this general pattern, Minister came up with a big conspiracy theory linking the university teachers and their trade unions to imperialism and Tamil diaspora. When they realised that this argument does not hold water, an attempt was made to connect trade union action to local anti-government forces including opposition parties. The Federation of University Teachers’ Association (F...