“Uneasy lies the head that wears the crown” (Shakespeare) and though President Rajapakse does not literarily wear a crown like Shakespeare’s Henry IV, the Rajapakse presidency further empowered by the 18^th amendment to the constitution, certainly demonstrates to various degrees all the substantive features of an absolute monarchy, from the absence of any time limit on rule, the grooming of an eldest son as heir apparent, the role and function of a ruling family, an intolerance of dissent, a subservient judiciary, a cowed public service and a somewhat repressive security regime.

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63^rd Independence Celebrations

Last week Sri Lanka commemorated her 63^rd anniversary of freedom from colonial rule and Sri Lankans rightly celebrated the achievement of our political independence and democratic rights as a free and sovereign nation. That freedom and sovereignty has not been without challenge, the most serious of which was the three decades long challenge by the LTTE. However, the two JVP armed insurrections and the attempted military coup in the nineteen sixties must also rank as undemocratic measures that sought to take away our post colonial freedom.

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President Ben Ali of Tunisia’s thirty year rule ended late last month, when popular unrest and street protests in that once calm and seemingly idyllic country erupted across the country and brought an unforeseen and abrupt end to a long rule that had provided stability and initially rising prosperity to Tunisia. However the social compact in Tunisia was seemingly to trade rising economic growth for political freedoms and while Tunisia had periodic elections which President Ben Ali predictably and convincingly won, as the economic growth benefits stopped flowing down to an increasingly restive younger generation, the end suddenly came.

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The above heading was not one we expected to witness post the war victory in May 2009. Prior to that as the LTTE operated in the Wanni, spill over violence in Jaffna was a fact of life and while contained could not really be eliminated. However one and a half years after the end of the war, Jaffna suddenly sees a spurt in the level of violence and tension in that society. Late last week the issue was debated in the Parliament of Sri Lanka. There was not much interest evinced by the government side, though the opposition was well represented and led by the Leader of the Opposition. Leading the defense on the government side was the Honourable Prime Minister.

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Gabriella Giffords was a US Congresswoman from the Tucson area for the 8^th District of Arizona and Salman Taseer was the democratically elected Governor of Pakistan’s most populous State of Punjab. Both were shot some time earlier last week, the Congresswoman as she held a political rally in Tucson and the Governor as he emerged from a private engagement in a shopping mall in Islamabad. The US Congresswoman was in a critical state fighting for her life in a shootout that left six people dead including a federal superior court judge and Governor Taseer shot more than twenty times tragically succumbed to his injuries. A US Congresswoman and a Pakistani Governor, living worlds apart but experiencing the same personal tragedy that is also more importantly a public one, facing extreme violence while engaged in the democratic process.

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