life eh!

"Life eh Lord Russell? What's it all about?" As the cabbie famously said to the philosopher. The English. You've gotta love them, for some odd reason, they're just so numbingly pithy, so absolutely right in this undogmatic, unpretentious, obvious way. God save the queen. I know I'm supposed to be suffering under the yoke of imperialism and that half the problems in Sri Lanka were born when the British left (strange how the leaving and not the staying, was the catalyst) but still I can't quite help the twinge of the heart when I read something uniquely British and profoundly familiar.


So. Watched season six of the west wing back to back and have concluded (for probably the tenth time in my life) that I want to be Josh Lyman and I want to be with Josh Lyman. Strange how this sentiment only grows in intensity over time. I can't quite reconcile British politics with the American verve and dynamism (and rottenness) in politics, but still. There's this moment with Toby, when he's trying to formulate a constitution for the Belarussians, and he's trying to explain democracy, separation of church and state, checks and balances and the executive powers and he gives up and says: You know, you'd be better off with a parliamentarian democracy. There are 30 constitutional democracies in the world and very few of them work. Or something like that. He tells the Prof, that, it takes more than hammering out a document, it takes a democratic population and a collective will to live by the law. He's like 8 guys, the delegation from Belarus, isn't going to bring democracy back to a post-Soviet nation. Then the professor goes: its 8 guys, but (he goes through their personal history, and all of them are activists that have been jailed for their protests etc.) there's Madison, Jefferson etc. etc.

Of course in England, its a different story but still. I'm rambling at the moment, I don't know why. Met a random from the Nonviolent Peace Force and looks like he has bigger problems than me, managing the mandates of 92 member organizations all of whom affect decision making.

So to all you readers out there (all three of you that is), here's to England, King and Country.

water, water everywhere and not a drop to drink

In addition to my particular flood story, Colombo itself was flooded. Cows stood knee-deep in water. Vehicles churned mud. Potholes and bylanes were deluged as items of rubbish and random pots and pans came floating by. Children in washtubs floated along the water, shrieking with delight while office workers and sari clad women hitched up their clothes undignifiedly and waddled through the water. Aaahh the joys of living in a third world country.

There is a movement in Colombo University called 'X'. It promotes the natural expression of free sex and conducts talks and seminars across Colombo and rural hubs. It is of course led by a bunch of young male professors, increasing the notches on their bedpost, as they 'spread' the word. As young, female rural undergraduates return to their hometowns after having spent 4 years in Colombo and under the influence of the X movement, their homecoming is wrought with sadness, and anger. The price that they fetch on the marriage market is of course dependent on their hymen. The thing that gets me mad is that these same professors pound the pulpit on T.V, gathering support for Rajapakse, on a return to rural traditional, Sinhala Buddhist values and denounce Ranil for being liberal and modernist and not representative of Sri Lanka.

yesterday, all my troubles

Let me tell you how my day is going. Its a holiday again, to celebrate the melon or something (tajikistan actually has a national holiday celebrating the damn melon).

The monsoons have come. My roof is leaking and my living room is flooded. The rains have unleashed a biblical horde of cockroaches. I have finished my last bottle of Mortein manning the barricades. The fort is under siege. I've inhaled more Mortein than all the cockroaches have (body count: 17! yes! I'm a lean, mean, killing machine) and as a result am hallucinating while I bail out my living room with a leaky bucket, battle the flu and rewrite the thirteenth draft of my personal statement. My boyfriend calls me during lunch (while I'm trying to write an essay explaining in detail how I'm going to save the world) with an angst-inducing conversation of how I am apparently too detached (me! What does he want? a parasite in his bloodstream?) in this sanity-defying twisted relationship that I am currently in. If I screw up this app process, I am going to be flying cargo planes full of rubber dogshit outta Hong Kong.

Yesterday I went to a Buddhist ashram in search of peace. While being actively ravaged by mosquitoes I attempted to meditate in an open garden under a bo tree. Sadly all I could think about was what to have for breakfast. On account of the elections and the rains, the shops have closed. I have no food. I have no Mortein. I have no oxygen. I have no life.

This is a call to arms. Go to the mattresses! I need some help. Over and out.

hacks

Post-election analyses and strategies are filtering in, from the man on the street, from academic intellectuals, from international election monitors and party faithfuls as well as the LTTE administration.

Rumours are floating around, some of which have more credibility than others. The assassination of the Foreign Minister Lakshman Kadirgamar approx four months ago is widely reputed to be a highly tactical maneouvre ridding the opposition of the only credible face to the international community. Mahinda Rajapakse would almost definitely have chosen as his Prime Minister the Foreign Minister, both taking an anti-terrorist stance. But Kadirgaman would have presented a credible face to the international community, and been a blow for the legitimacy of the LTTE. Rajapakse has the looks and demeanour of a thug, and will not be able to represent Sri Lanka adequately on the world stage.

It is interesting to note that this strategy was executed four months ago. It must have taken at least 2 months to plan. Meaning that exactly six months ago, the Tigers knew which presidential candidate they wanted to win (and thus would win), they would have been confident of their military capability since they had decided to actively pursue their separatist goals, and they took out the only credible leader of their opposition. Nobody could figure out why Kadirgamar was killed when he was killed. It seemed so random.

All this points to is an extremely visionary, highly strategic, ruthless, motivated and committed guerilla force. Compared to a shambolic presidential election and a mess of a coalition which will be unable to impose discipline on any peace strategy, it seems rather evident who has, for now, the upper hand. For better or for worse.

election

Mahinda Rajapakse, the hawkish leader of a coalition of an extremist Sinhala Marxist party (JVP) and himself the current prime minister belonging to the SLFP (Chandrika's party) has won in a closely contested presidential election (with 50.3% of the vote)

The election was swung by the boycott (in some cases the forced boycott as the LTTE actively discouraged Tamils from voting at the polls) of the 600,000 odd Tamils whose vote would have almost all been for Ranil Wickremasinghe (who lost by 200,000 odd votes, garnering 48.4% of the vote). The LTTE's strategic boycott is widely interpreted as an intention to actively pursue their separatist goals again, as voting for Ranil would have almost certainly meant the resumption of credible peace negotiations and a secular foreign policy.

The SLFP-JVP won through pro-Sinhala Buddhist and pro-Marxist (anti-market, anti-open economy, anti-foreign NGO) policies. The local stock market tanked about 7% initially following reports of the victory. The return of Sinhala nationalism and an insular economic policy has dire implications for the next 6-12 years. The close margin of victory means that neither party can abandon the coalition, which in turn means a hash of pork-barreled populist legislation for the coming years, pandering to the Southern rural electorate. It is a sad outcome furthermore, for the peace process seems to be in imminent danger of collapse.


It was positive to see that a critically large mass of the electorate do want pro-peace, pro-growth policies, even if it has not materialized. However it marks the definitive return of uncertainty, perhaps even a return to the 90s, with bombs in crowded bus stations and airports and schools, and perhaps even the fully-fledged outbreak of war again. Over and out.

et puis

Election tomorrow. Cynical and disillusioned about the whole thing: reckon one's as good as the other at this point. Had a reel of stories to spin, but a bit deflated at the moment after spending the day at the insanely bureaucratic and xenophobic Bureau of Immigration to get a visa extension. Ridiculous how none of the front-office staff speak any language other than Sinhala, yet deal with the predominantly foreign, and tamil visa extendors....

Went to the hill country over the weekend, stayed at the Grand in the illustrious company of (leading) presidential candidate Ranil Wickremasinghe. (Meaning, I saw his departing back, and that of his wife, who's widely rumoured to be lesbian, with a partner in the faculty of the Colombo University). Imagine the thrill as Pajeros with tinted windows roared around the sleepy town (with unnecessary fanfare) and undercover secret service men with poorly concealed weapons thronged the doorways and halls... A rally going on in the plantation country under the pouring rain, umbrellas wedged thickly over one another as foghorns blared deafening rhetoric. Driving back stopped again at the banks of the river in Kitulgala. Made a halfhearted stab at app essays, before falling into a coma. There are other things, but too tired right now.

nee how ma?

And so it is. Or goes The Blower's Daughter.

Another day, another dollar. A local corporation has adopted a school reconstruction project on the Southern coast where we are also helping, and we hitched a ride down with two executives this morning. One is a half Chinese, half Sinhalese guy in his mid-40s, who looks totally Japanese. Cognitively dissonant to hear fluent Sinhalese issuing from his lips, but just goes to show you how confused all us Sri Lankans are. Stopped by the Kalutara temple where we all donated money (one Hindu, one Christian, two Buddhists), but that's just Sri Lanka where any religious shrine is venerated. Unlike India, our wars have not been fought on the basis of religion, but of language and ethnicity. Discussion in the car revolved around the upcoming elections; one member was an ex-committee member of a prominent party and Secretary to a local Minister; his veins purportedly run 'green' the colour of the UNP nationalists. The other resignedly said: if UNP wins, I have better contacts there, so it'll be great, but i'm not going to vote as it doesn't matter anyway. (back to the paradox of voting). There is a big: you scratch my back and I'll scratch yours mentality operating here. A story of how one of them was driving along Marine Drive a few hours ago when suddenly a woman stopped in front of his car and he knocked her over. The car had tinted glasses and a mob soon began to form. He central-locked all the doors and took off to the nearest police station only to find that the area where the incident had occurred did not fall under the jurisdiction of Police Station A. So he visited Station B and then finally got to the right station C (where he knew some people and pulled some strings) and he filed a report. Sure enough, the next day the people were at his door, demanding money: USD 250. He refused, but agreed to pay them USD 100. Then he asked the policeman to act as witness to the receipt of the bill and to close the case on them. He threatened them with action in the courts saying if they went to court, they wouldn't get a penny since he was better resourced.

Maybe this is what it all boils down to.

wkned

Weekend spent leisurely fixing up DVD player to TV and watching in succession a series of B-style rom-coms, which were all predictably bad but nevertheless helped pass the time. Read academic journals on the dilemmas of humanitarian aid and all it was was sad, for the chaos it delineated had all happened before and will happen again. Must start writing app essays but somehow the urge left me and the balloon deflated. Crab and prawn curry and lobster pasta at the Gallery Cafe with tiramisu to end on Friday. This weekend back up to the hills. Finished reading A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry and although it's good, it isn't great. Somehow it seems to fail at the final step, at delivering the final pow. As a camera, though it is very good.

aid warriors

Eid Mubarak and our house owner came garbed in traditional attire, bearing gifts of ... vattalapam (YES!). Office emptied at 3 or 4pm as another week in Sri Lanka ends. Rains have begun in Colombo so the days and nights are noticeably cooler. Started reading some journalwork on international aid and the nexus between emergency relief, development and peace. The UN says development is peace. The Americans say leave Africa to Africans. The NGOs say, let's just relief. The funds and other resources that NGOs have are typically outsize in relation to their capacity for political analysis and manouevre. But aid is no longer a matter of possessing trucks and road maps. Instead it is a complex landscape of using aid as a development tool, creating sustainable methods of recovery and regeneration and empowering local communities to help themselves. The problems, as I am beginning to find out, are repetitive and unsolvable.

to vote or not to vote?

"Perhaps the fact that we have seen millions voting themselves into complete dependence on a tyrant has made our generation understand that to choose one's government is not necessarily to secure freedom" von Hayek

Gearing up for the elections here. Talking to my next door neighbour in my ever widening informal poll about voting habits and preferences. Sri Lanka, like India is a highly politically aware and politicized country, no doubt a function of having a literate, active population with extreme anti-incumbent tendencies and volatile voting preferences as well as a poorly enforced election and political system rife with corruption and opportunism by all involved.

Curfews have normally been imposed on every single election day due to the outbursts of violence and rioting (and sometimes looting) that happens throughout the country. Families stay up through the night, even with small children, to herald a new dawn of political change that hardly ever materializes. Marches and rallies are conducted by blue-clad and green-clad (colours of the 2 dominant parties, UNP and SLFP) mobs, often accosting one another on the streets, subjecting each other to extreme verbal abuse. She grew up in a family that has traditionally voted for UNP while her husband has traditionally voted for SLFP. Not in the last election however, disgusted with the calibre of the candidates offered on the ballot pape, he crossed out all the candidates, wrote his name on the bottom, ticked it, dropped it in the ballot box and walked out. He tells his wife to think hard and vote, because their children's future is at stake. Anyone wants to bring up the paradox of voting? Take your theories and fly a kite.