Robert O. Blake, better known as Bob, currently US Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asian Affairs and formerly the US Ambassador to Sri Lanka was on a official visit to Sri Lanka last week. He held discussions with his interlocutors in government, met a range of other people and then generally made his views known about the need for post war ethnic reconciliation (through a political solution) and good governance including greater democratic freedoms (through the 17^th Amendment). For expressing these candid views, Bob Blake was publicly chided and rebuked by Cabinet Spokesman and Media Minister, the Hon. Kheliya Rambukwella, who stated that no one had the right to interfere in Sri Lanka’s internal affairs. Bob Blake was virtually read the riot act by Minister Rambukwella, a quaint piece of colonial era legislation in which colonial authorities would read an order that an action was illegal and then proceed to use lethal force to stop it.

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