Columns
For Lanka’s good, zip it Mr. Avdhash
View(s):Even before making his first appearance at the crease, the Indian member appointed by the President to the international panel of six eminent advisers, Avdhash Kaushal is batting keenly for Lanka in the dressing room where the rest of the team are still to gather; and, though his masterly strokes deserve an audience of appreciation, the troubling question is whether he is batting too hard for Lanka’s own good.
Barely five days after his selection as one of the six ‘eminent’ advisors to the Sri Lankan Presidential Commission on Missing Persons and War Crimes, the 77-year-old Indian social worker is playing his shots right round the wicket, determined to prove, it seems, with every lofted drive clearing the boundary line, that he thoroughly merits his inclusion in the Lankan team and that his strident display dispels all doubts anyone may have had of the solidness of the captain’s choice.
On the 17th of this month and then again this Monday, he tells the Indian newspapers:
= India has adopted the wrong approach to Lanka because of the Tamil Nadu factor.
= The Lankan Government is implementing the 13th constitutional amendment but progress has hit the rocks because the Tamils want powers over the police.
Avdhash Kaushal: Batting keenly for Lanka
= Manmohan Singh made a big blunder by not attending the Commonwealth summit in Colombo, listening to Tamil Nadu politicians.
= India should respect Sri Lanka’s sovereignty. You can talk to the Sri Lankan Government and give them advice, but you cannot ask them to behave.
= Tamils must give up the bullet and take up the ballot. (Does he think the terrorist war is still ongoing and that Prabhakaran is still alive?)
= Lankan Tamils must forget that they came from India and consider themselves Sri Lankans now, and abide by Lanka’s laws and constitution.
All true. All correct and fine. All goes very well down the Sinhala Street. And all sixes hammered over the pavilion and over the Sinhalese Sports Club grounds. But despite the flashing runs totted up at a rate on the scoreboard, doesn’t something jar?
His timing, for instance?
Don’t his pre-match comments, coming from the panel’s enclosure at this hour, cast a brooding shadow of brazen partiality that may well have a drastic bearing upon the panel’s vital stance of being independent of any prejudices either way?
In fact, when the Indian media pointed out that as per the terms of reference for the “experts”, they cannot do any research or make any suggestion on their own, and that they can tender advice only when the commission seeks advice, Kaushal said he can offer suggestions to the President in a bid to solve the problem, though he cannot force him to accept the suggestions. But he is hired to give advice to the Missing Persons Commission, not as suggestion maker to the president.
Compare it to the conduct of the original three eminent people who were appointed to this advisory body that demands not only impartiality but the appearance of impartiality as well if it is to possess an iota of credibility and demand a modicum of respect in international eyes. Without it the whole purpose of forming such a panel as a parallel body to rival that of the UN sponsored tribunal into alleged war crimes would be a futile exercise.
Arise, Sir Desmond Lorenz de Silva, the 75-year-old legal luminary, born in England to Lankan parents, British Barrister, Queens Counsel and a former Chief War Crimes Prosecutor at the UN Tribunal for Sierra Leone, which saw the conviction of Charles Taylor the former Liberian President in 2012. When a Lankan newspaper asked Sir Desmond for his comments upon being appointed to the Lankan panel on 17th of July, his emailed response was confined to one taciturn line that ‘he was happy to be invited and glad to accept.’
When the Daily FT published an article on the 24th of July that that he had attended and addressed a Defence Ministry conference titled ‘Defeating terrorism: The Sri Lanka experience’ three years ago, Sir Desmond immediately issued a denial. He said the suggestion that he attended such a conference and spoke the words alleged on that occasion is incorrect. He said that he was never invited for the conference; hence reference to attending and addressing is false.
The newspaper apologised to Sir Desmond for the publication though stating that it was based on a report carried in another newspaper on June 2, 2011 which was available online and which was still not contradicted to give Sir Desmond the benefit of the doubt, it maybe that he was unaware that such a reference had been made three years ago. Even had he known of it, he may not have felt the compelling need then to deny it since he was not a member at that time of any Lankan committee that required impartiality. But now, when he had accepted membership of an independent panel of expert advisers, it was patently clear that he could brook no such falsity that would undermine and compromise his position as an impartial adviser.
This story which was published barely one week after his appointment last month and the swift manner in which Sir Desmond responded to cleanse any stain the story might attach to his good name and impartial stance, demonstrates and underscores the importance of being like Caesar’s wife: not merely suspected but above suspicion.
As far as the other two eminent advisers no word has slipped from their taut tongues and their reticence has been exemplary. Take the 68-year-old Professor, Sir Geoffrey Nice, a British Barrister-at-Law and a Queens Counsel, with vast experience of international criminal tribunals including Sudan, Kenya and Libya. He headed the trial of Slobodan Milosevic at the international tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in The Hague. From him, not a single word.
Same goes for Prof. David M. Crane. He is an American who was the Chief Prosecutor of the Special Court for Sierra Leone (SCSL) from April 2002 until July 15, 2005. During his tenure, he indicted, among others, the then President of Liberia, Charles Taylor. Crane was replaced as chief prosecutor by his deputy Desmond de Silva. The SCSL sitting in The Hague two years ago convicted Taylor on various charges including terrorism, murder and rape.
The fifth member to be appointed to the international advisory panel by the Government is a Pakistani lawyer Ahmer Bilal Soofi. He is a former caretaker federal law minister in Pakistan and an international law expert. He was appointed to the expert panel on August 19. So far he, too, has remained silent and has kept his own prejudices and preferences, if any, wisely to himself rather than jump the gun and forward his own suggestions to solve the Lankan ethnic crisis, knowing full well that the Lankan president has called not for his two paisas on how to overcome the minority impasse but to merely proffer advice to the Missing Persons Commission if and only if asked.
The sixth and final member of the panel has still not been named. Thus, presently, the odd one out in the pack of aces and kings who have prudently maintained a dignified aloofness instead of recklessly dabbling in presumptuous prattle, is the naive Indian Avdhash Kaushal who believes he is justified to rush in where others, more qualified and experienced than he is, fear to tread.
A social worker, he is at the moment charged with the high duty of monitoring the rural job guarantee scheme by the Union Ministry of Rural Development in India and is presumably taking a well deserved break from his onerous chores. He is also the head of an NGO, Rural Litigation and Entitlement Kendra (RLEK) which works to promote the cause of the Van Gujjars, an indigenous forest-dwelling nomadic tribe of the northern Himalayas. And the campaigns he has conducted so far include literacy, elementary health and veterinary care, and community forest management. No doubt his appointment to the advisory panel which makes him think he is qualified to speak on the vexing problem of a minority race in Lanka, may provide him with another scalp to add to his trove of threatened tribes.
What Mr. Kaushal fails to comprehend is that he has not been invited to be a member of this panel to offer gratuitous suggestions to the Lankan president on how best to solve the ethnic crisis or to give unsolicited lectures to Lankan Tamils on how best to conduct themselves in their dealings with the Government. He has been appointed to the international panel and is handsomely paid only to give advice to the Presidential Commission on Misusing Persons, if and when asked to do so. Nothing more, nothing else. Apart from this, he is also under a concomitant duty, during this period, to refrain and resist from doing any act that will compromise the panel’s impartiality and independence.
Enough that the Government already has many detractors to this newly appointed expert panel with some even claiming that it violates the principles of natural justice which bar one from appointing one’s own judges to hear one’s own case. In the midst of such attacks, for Mr. Kaushal to persist in robustly making his own prejudices public even before the panel had sat, may even prompt the other eminent experts to resign from the commission on the basis that they would rather do that and retain their credibility than risk a blot on their copy books being on a panel with a rotten apple.
Before such a debacle ensues, it must be gently explained to this oldest member of the ‘expert’ panel, Mr. Avdhash Kaushal that, if he intends to continue scoring for the Lankan Government in this aggressive style, he may well indeed be damning Lanka with his profusion of praise; and will only succeed in queering the pitch the government has painstakingly striven to prepare for the panel, without leaving any sod untended for a single weed of prejudice to sprout upon it. For Lanka’s sake, zip the lip, Mr. Avdhash.
| SUNDAY PUNCH 2
Dig the dirty talk you sex bomb or face arrest Waiting at the bus stop to get to work, biscuit factory girl, 21-year-old Thilini Amalka showed she was no cookie to crumble when a bearded male made vulgar comments about her blue jeans and white T-shirt and then made lewd gestures in sign language conveying a perverse plethora of obscene sexual innuendos. According to the Daily Mirror, the man had exposed his private parts and had started indulging in an act of self-gratification until the bus terminal timekeeper had spotted him and warned him. As would come naturally to any damsel whose modesty had been outraged, she gave him a public tongue lashing and delivered a series of slaps on his face. Whereas other men would have turned tail and vanished, squirming in shame at the first whiff of trouble, the youth accepted the girl’s public slapping like a glutton at a gourmet feast and almost seemed to be begging for more, displaying all the typical signs of a warped mind with a fetish for femdom — female domination which refers to BDSM, the acronym standing for Bondage and disciple, Dominance and submission, Sadism and Masochism: A willing male slave waiting for his Miss Whiplash to scourge him proper. She was then arrested by the Police and produced before the Judicial Medical Officer for a medical examination and then produced before the Wariyapola magistrate. She was later released on Rs 50,000 surety bail. The case against her is to be held on September 23. Her ordeal has just begun. On Friday she revealed she had decided to file a fundamental rights application in the Supreme Court against the police for wrongful arrest. Well now the message from the police to the women of Lanka is clear: Keep your halter top on next time any lascivious youth anywhere makes vulgar comments about your body and then makes lewd sexual suggestions verbally or in graphic sign lingo after exhibiting his self. Or else run the risk of being summoned by the law enforcing authorities and being arrested, sent to the JMO to have a full medical examination done on your body and mental state to judicially determine whether you are a mentally deranged woman merely because you did not grin and go gaga, smile, encourage and thank when a man called you a sex bomb which he wished to defuse and frothed out verbal sexual abuse and you failed to treat it as a compliment, failed to be flattered by the attention paid to your body by a lecherous pervert. In the meantime, take a bow Amalka. By your spontaneous and gutsy reaction to this sordid incident, you have struck a blow for thousands of women in Lanka who have to silently bear this leering, groping, pawing, pressing, lecherous, obscene perverted behaviour every time, everyday they use public transport. After Amalka’s sterling performance on Tuesday at the Wariyapola bus terminal went viral on social media, many a vulgar pervert will, hopefully, think twice before attempting to commit similar and even more outage on women; and keep their frustrations to themselves than expose it to the full flame of hell’s infernal rage. By the way, next time a man tells a curvy dish in a tight fitting dress that she has a beautiful body, do you think she will hold it against him?
SUNDAY PUNCH 3 There’s a hole in the ice bucket Much ado is made of the so-called American-born craze called the Ice Bucket Challenge where people get drenched in ice cold water to raise money to find a cure for the disease amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). The challenge dares nominated participants to be filmed having a bucket of ice water poured on their heads and then nominating others to do the same.  Philippine's Secretary of Justice Leila De Lima has a bucket of iced water dumped on her for the ALS ice bucket challenge during a break at the Department of Justice headquarters in Manila August 26, 2014. The Ice Bucket Challenge is aimed at raising awareness of - and money to fight - Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis, more often known as ALS or Lou Gehrig's Disease. REUTERS The rage has swept to Lanka’s shores and even some local celebrities and politicians have taken the dare and have had buckets of ice water dumped on their heads to raise money for their favourite charities. Opinion, however, is divided sharply as to the utility of the concept. Some say that anything to raise money for charity is good. But some, including Mangala Samaraweera, have condemned the ice bucket challenge as a stupid and insensitive waste of water when thousands in Lanka are almost on the verge of dying of the prevalent drought. Whatever the pros and cons maybe, isn’t there a hole in the ice water bucket challenge as dared in Lanka? In the cold climates of America’s northern states, facing the prospect of having a bucket of freezing cold ice water poured on you may well present a formidable chilling challenge. But in the tropical heat of sun drenched Lanka, what’s the big deal in bathing in cold water? Isn’t it positively a cool way to chill out on a hot day? Nay, the real bucket challenge for all those local enthusiasts is to have buckets of boiling hot water poured upon them. Now that would be the real thing. Let’s see how many local celebs and politicos will take up that hot bucket challenge to raise money for charity and boost their image?
SUNDAY PUNCH 4 What ails UPFA heavies in Uva air? Something in the Badulla air seems to disagree violently with the ruddy health of UPFA’s palpitating election heart. Literally. Senior members of the party who climbed the Haputale hill to campaign for their party appear to be strenuously going beyond the call of duty to such an extent that it perhaps calls for the attention of Maithripala Sirisena to slap a ‘Campaigning for an UPFA win can seriously endanger health” warning, not sixty or eighty percent as he wishes on fag packs but one hundred percent, across the face of Uva, in view of the spot of bother and alarms some have encountered in the province. Consider how the spectre of ill health has struck down those in mid flight without warning on the heart of Uva Wellassa. Two weeks ago on Saturday the 16th of August while travelling to chair the workshop conducted by the UPFA Women’s Association in Wiyaluwa, Uva, the 49-year-old Minister, Pavithra Wanniarachchi, was rushed to the Bandarawela Hospital where she was admitted for a undisclosed illness which caused her to experience bouts of vomiting. The same evening the 53-year-old UPFA MP Sudarshini Fernandopulle took ill after addressing a meeting in Badulla and had to be rushed to Badulla where she was admitted and underwent tests. As evidence that she may have been overdoing the canvassing exercise, one of her aides said, “The MP had addressed several meetings on the previous day as well, and was tired when she was heading to Badulla.” The 45-year-old Dayasiri Jayasekera, UPFA chief minister of the North Western Province, had come to make good his avowed and declared intention: to scuttle any hopes Harin may harbour to win the second largest province in Lanka for the UNP and emerge as its chief minister. But hardly had he stepped foot on the Uva plateau, the hand of fate laid him low. Struck with giddiness and difficulty in breathing, he was rushed to the Badulla hospital on Wednesday night where he underwent emergency treatment and several tests. Doctors said on Friday it was due to lack of oxygen to the brain and advised him to have rest. Thankfully all three are well and we wish them a complete recovery and the best of health. But what was the common cause? Was it the air? Was it the water? Was it the stress, the tension and anxiety? Was it the vibes they received from the masses? Or was it due to some UNP Uva hooniyam spell cast by a master kattaadhiya in favour of Harin the incredible hunk? Whatever it may have been, the UPFA leadership may have suffered a jolt of the jitters wondering whether the sudden wakeup calls for the three members, portended an unexpected bout of hiccups in its electoral well being. But as the Uva bed chart seem to indicate, their fears, if any, may be groundless. That, provided it maintains its propaganda workout diligently and gives a lot of water to the voter buffalos, the electoral test on September 20 will show that UPFA continues to remain in the pink of health.
|