The Great(er) Elephant Torture Chamber
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An elephant 'torture chamber' has been discovered in Pannipitiya. Apparently the creatures are held in horrifying conditions. This is strange news considering that the entire country is a veritable torture chamber as far as jumbos go. There's been so much wincing-in-pain for years and years. Each time elections are called, it's akin to being jabbed with the henduwa in some tender part of the body. Each time results are announced, jumbos groan with agony. So what's this about Pannipitiya? That's just a small part of a large torture chamber, isn't it?
Man rearing 4 baby elephants fined Rs. 100,000
Elephants are hogging the headlines, it seems. Another man has been fined for illegally rearing four baby elephants. It's a Rs. 100,000 fine. That's Rs. 25,000 per elephant. Cheap. After all, some jumbos claim that their fellow-pachyderms have been purchased and kept for millions and millions of rupees. Indeed, if 'keeping elephants' is a violation of the law, the relevant judge ought to slam hefty fines on the United People's Freedom Alliance. That's if the AG's Dept can be persuaded file charges of course. That's an elephantine process, we hear.
Suresh Premachandran's idea of 'news'
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'India sure to vote for UNHRC resolution,' Suresh Premachandra says. That's 'news'? Maybe Suresh actually believes the courtesies mouthed by Indian politicians and diplomats about Sri Lanka being India's friend and vice versa. People may have believed that some time ago...well, a few decades ago, let's say in the 1960s, but not anymore. Can you wake us up when you have something to tell us that we don't already know Suresh?
Wild IDs
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Around 10,000 ahiguntikas or gypsies are to be offered the option of obtaining special identity cards. What's funny about this is that it is the Ministry of Wildlife Resources Conservation that is making the offer. So they are 'wild', like wild boar, wild buffalo, wild elephants etc? Animals, then? Would the ministry proceed to give the same option to the val aliya, kulu meema, val oora, mee minna, diviya, thith-muva etc., etc? And how about politicians who operate as though they've just come out of the jungle? Would they also be offered 'Special ID Cards?
Foreign Policy not Parippu-Policy, not Mallum-Policy either
President Mahinda Rajapaksa, in a not-so-veiled reference to India, has said that Sri Lanka's foreign policy cannot be a 'parippu policy', where foreign forces are brought into the country and the country's security forces restricted to barracks. The parippu of course is a reference to India dropping dhal when the Army was about to capture Velupillai Prabhakaran. President Rajapaksa, like the people of Sri Lanka, know the costs the country had to incur on account of that 'dumping'. So he's right. We can't have a 'parippu foreign policy'. On the other hand we can't have a pol-mallum or fruit-salad foreign policy either. Especially when it comes to appointments in diplomatic missions abroad. It's one thing to pick people outside the foreign service because of a human resource problem in the ministry, but quite another to treat the Ministry of External Affairs as a Retirement Option for 'friends of the regime'.
Woman harbouring terrorist arrested
Balendran Jayakumari has been arrested for 'harbouring a terrorist'. We know that few countries if any would think twice about arresting anyone harbouring a terrorist in these days of terror. We hear even high ranking officials in the UN system talking about 'zero-tolerance of terrorism'. So when is Ban ki-Moon going to move for the arrest of a lady called Navi Pillay? She's being harbouring terrorists for years now. The LTTE kind, that is.