- Latest issue of Polity Vol. 5 No. 2
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COMMENTARY
As the year 2009 comes to end, Sri Lanka’s politics is to showing signs of new contradictions and conflicts. These will unfold with greater intensity during the forthcoming presidential election campaign in which the two main contestants are President Mahinda Rajapakse and his former army chief.
The year 2009 is politically significant for Sri Lanka primarily because of the conclusion of the island’s protracted civil war. The war ended in May, with a convincing military victory for the Sri Lankan state and a total defeat for the LTTE. This is an outcome that surprised many within and outside Sri Lanka. ....
NO RETURN TO THE GALLOWSCRM opposes death penalty
The return of executions will diminish and degrade us all,” says the Civil Rights Movement (CRM), in an urgent plea against the resumption of judicial hangings. The state has an obligation to calmly weigh the pros and cons of such an important issue. The responsibility of political leaders is to lead, to guide.
Citing a unanimous eleven-judge decision of the highest court of South Africa, CRM says that punishment should be commensurate with the offence but it does not have to be equivalent or identical. “The state does not have to engage in the cold and calculated killing of murderers in order to express its moral outrage at their conduct.”
‘Covering Up’: Creeping Talibanization?
Cat’s Eye has noticed an increasing emphasis on a particular form of morality in the guise of a postwar resurgence of society. This is evident on the part of all sectors of society – not only by those in power but religious leaders, key officials in the police force and leaders of educational institutions, as well as the media. At times, the rhetoric is transformed into action. Take, for example, the continuing censorship of adult-only films (obviously there are some adults/ censors who are more adult than others who have the dubious honor of taking these decisions); images of alcohol consumption, affection and human sexuality in TV program; and the archaic prohibition on women purchasing alcohol (Why discriminate? Why not prohibit men too?).
Poverty and People’s Power, Selected Writings of G.V.S. de Silva
Nimal Sanderatne
The reissuing of the selected writings of G.V.S. de Silva by the Social Scientists’ Association will enable a new generation of readers to be acquainted with the writings of one of the country’s finest economists and social scientists. This book was first published by the Social Scientists’ Association in 1988 under the title, The Alternatives Socialism or Barbarism. It was edited by the Late Charles Abeysekera. The present volume contains three additional essays. Given the quality of his writing, it is indeed a pity that he wrote little. Most of his important writings are contained in this volume.
1947 General Strike-A Flashback
T.B. Dissanayake
Remember the day when the remains of our dear departed colleague Velupillai Kandasamy, a fellow striker in the Health Department, were taken in a massive procession of workers from the General Hospital, Borella, to the Fort Railway Station.
The route along McCallum Road (now Wijewardena Mawatha) was thronged with crowds. Workers from offices, factories and workshops from the capital and its suburbs of Ratmalana and Kollonawa had joined the vast concourse of people to pay their homage to a martyr, a government clerk who hailed from Jaffna. The coffin was borne aloft by strikers
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