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AYMAN / May 3, 2013
THE LEFT HAVE BEEN “SEDATED” BY RAJAPAKSE WITH PORTFOLIOS AND OTHER PERKS.WHILE THE WORKERS ARE SUFFERING LIVING IN A LAWLESS, POLICE STATE,
THE LEADERS ARE NOT BOTHERED. GONE ARE THE DAYS OF PHILIP,ROBERT,LESLIE
PETER AND N.M !!!WE LOOKED FORWARD TO MAY DAY.
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Ben Hurling / May 4, 2013
None of these 3 did anything to stop the 18th amendment.
Vijaya was the last man who managed to unify all lunatics of the left in Sri Lanka. United Socialist Alliance under Vijaya’s leadership managed to pull in a lot of voters.
Since Vijaya’s death these opportunistic & idiotic leaders of the traditional left in Sri Lanka have done absolutely nothing of importance for the people.
Except disappointing all left leaning voters in Sri Lanka. Time and again.
They have not noursihed a younger generation of left leaning leaders to move the left into the future either. These leaders just hang in there as long as they can. Enjoying all the perks.
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Sama / May 4, 2013
Though they not yet pensioners, they are just enjoying their later day life. As seniors they seem to be voiceless before any malpractices consistently carried out by the rulers. Most of their presence is seen nowhere. So do majority of the ministers. I really dont know what all these are doing as politicians. Somehow they have been retarded as no other times in the past. ane apoi :(
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Sitting in the waiting room / May 4, 2013
These are the last remaining fossils of the Red Dinosaurs ,brought out of the museum cabinet for display on May 1st every year . Public interest in these old bones are waning so this might be your last chance to see these skeletons !
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Nimal / May 3, 2013
Of course they are sleeping for a long time.
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OutRider / May 3, 2013
The International
Arise ye workers from your slumbers
Arise ye prisoners of want
For reason in revolt now thunders
And at last ends the age of cant.
Away with all your superstitions
Servile masses arise, arise
We’ll change henceforth the old tradition
And spurn the dust to win the prize.
So comrades, come rally
And the last fight let us face
The Internationale unites the human race.
No more deluded by reaction
On tyrants only we’ll make war
The soldiers too will take strike action
They’ll break ranks and fight no more
And if those cannibals keep trying
To sacrifice us to their pride
They soon shall hear the bullets flying
We’ll shoot the generals on our own side.
No saviour from on high delivers
No faith have we in prince or peer
Our own right hand the chains must shiver
Chains of hatred, greed and fear
E’er the thieves will out with their booty
And give to all a happier lot.
Each at the forge must do their duty
And we’ll strike while the iron is hot.
[The song of the First and Second International, it was written by Eugène Pottier, a transport worker, after the Paris Commune was crushed by the French government in June 1871. The song was later used as the first Soviet Union National Anthem and Anthem of the (Third) Communist International, until 1944 when the latter was dissolved.]
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Senguttuvan / May 5, 2013
Thank you, dear OutRider. You have done many of us in the readership
a favour. Can the Nation ride out our collective plight in the sunset
in the immediate future?
Senguttuvan
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Chamly Warnakulasuriya / May 3, 2013
People who ware RED are not leftist or communists. That is a dress to cover their hippocracy.
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justice / May 3, 2013
Vasudeva’s smile says it all – contentment on what they have achived under the tyrannical regime.
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Roger Kumar / May 3, 2013
GONE ARE THE DAYS OF PHILIP, ROBERT, LESLIE CHOMDLEY , NM , COLVIN, BERNARD, EDMUND, & PETER. These Gentlemen were educated members of a loyal and tough opposition . Unfortunately the present generation of Sri Lankans do not have people of such caliber and the Rajapakse SAMAGAMA is running the show as they please .
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Bedrock Barney / May 4, 2013
The hammer and sickle have been used by communists as symbols for way too long! They have to upgrade. The peasants don’t use hammers and sickles as a path to equality and self sufficiency anymore. The use C++ or IT knowledge to upgrade themselves. Also cell phones. Widespread Cell phone use is having a huge impact on the common man. In terms of upgrading their lives. Hence the symbol of the leftists should be a cell phone surrounded by a band of computer code. The new symbols of communism.
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R. Randeniya / May 4, 2013
These Left leaders should never show up in public as they stand naked in their greed and hypocrisy. As Ayman says Vasu,Dew,Athauda and NM’s nephew Vitharna are in a state of sedation enjoying as they do all the perks of Rajapakse.The picture shows they are still under sedation.They are part of the dishonest game of the greatest sorcerer of all time-Mahinda Rajapakse
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Shyamon Jayasinghe,Melbourne / May 4, 2013
The Left is a joke
Vasu is thier biggest joke.
In the picture
They look well-fed.
I remember
The days they sang
“Sadukin pelenawun
Den ithin negitiyaw!”
They riled against the capiatalists
Only until they got there.
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AYMAN / May 4, 2013
VASIDEVA IS THE BIGGEST HYPOCRITE!!!!
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Rohan / May 4, 2013
What is new here? The Left went to sleep many Mays ago!! Even, Left left from the Sri Lankan Left ages ago!!!
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Sumith Ariyasinghe / May 4, 2013
Sumith Ariyasinghe
When I first went to America for higher studies, I found an extraordinary degree of friendship and respect from two of my professors. The attention I got was nearly embarrassing and I found it inexplicable. After a while, when I got to know the professors better I plucked up the courage to ask them why they lavished so much attention on me. Their answer surprised me for several reasons, among which were (1) how much they knew about the then Ceylon, and insignificant small country, and (2) that in America, the fortress of capitalism, there were Marxists, in particular, Trotskyites. They told me that they were very happy to meet a student from the one country in the world where there was a thriving Trotskyite movement. I was more surprised when they mentioned the names of NM, Philip, Colvin and others, who to them were heroes. When I told them that I come from a family that supported the Trotskyite party, the LSSP, my standing with them rose to new heights.
For those “leftists” who have a stereotyped view America and brand every American as a capitalist, it is worthwhile mentioning here that Philip learnt the ABC of his Marxism in America, at the University of Wisconsin. Philip was in particular influenced by Professors Scott Nearing and John Commons. It is this background that helped him understand Marx’s Das Capital at the British Museum Library, when he spent a prolonged stay in England, on his way back from America.
It is deeply saddening to see the great NM’s nephew Tissa Vitarana, the psedo-firebrand Vasudaeva Nanayakkara, DEW Gunasekera and company disgrace the names of our beloved leaders, and lick the boots of a despicable dictator, for nothing but perks and personal gain, still claiming to be defenders of the working people. Even at this late stage these betrayers of the trust of the people can gain some respect if they give up their bootlicking and join the inexorably swelling opposition to tyranny.
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Senguttuvan / May 4, 2013
Mr Ariyasinghe must forgive me, as I remind him the boot-licking began in the mid 1960s when those great left names we adored – NM, Colvin, Leslie, Pieter, Cholomondley, Anil et al prostrated at the feet of Mrs B – flower trays in hand, to boot. Vasu, DEW, Tissa V are doubtless guilty but apparently less culpable as that sin was already committed by the peers decades ago.
Senguttuvan
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velayuthan / May 9, 2013
N.M, Colvin and others pushed the sinhala/Tamil parity and they became unpopular with the Sinhala masses. however, if the Ilankai Thamil Arasu Kadchi had supported them even once in the 1950s or 1960, they had a fighting chance to become the key player in the politics of the Country. However, ITAK was a lander-owner upper-caste (basically racist) organization run by rich Colombo lawyers with strong church leanings. They were basically against the social equality implicit in the agenda of the left parties. For them sinhala-tamil parity was irrelevant. They wanted power into their hands and the language issue was a good weapon to for polarizing the nation into two ethnic factions! .
They were ready to cut deals with the UNP leadership that had always actually been strongly sinhala chauvinist when it suited them — i.e., most of the time.
So, lacking any support from the tamils, and having lost the confidence of the sinhalese because of their sinhala-tamil parity policy, they Left leaders suddenly found that they had no political future -So the desperate act of hanging onto the Saari of Mrs bandaranaike, with the Marxist leaders now supporting the Sinhala only legislation etc., came into the offing.
So, Marxism became a vicitm of the obdurate racism of our own Tamil communit.
Note also that the Tamil Marxist theoreticians like Karalasingham, Kandaiah (MP for Point Pedro) had little or no impact on the caste ridden tamil society even well after the Vaddukkodai resolution. It ws in the laste 1970s that Shanmugathasan challenged SJV to re-run the Mavattipuram electon on the abolition of caste-discrimination ticket. SJV simply ignore it and carried on as usual, basking in the accentuated tamil Militancy, as well as the rise of ‘our boys’. Fortunately, he died before the ‘boys’ took over and bumped off the old Colombo leaders.
So, if the left movement came to a sorry state, we should blame our Tamil leaders for actually being responsible for strangling that progressive movement . Furthermore, should I remind the readers about the `Jaffna boycott’ by the progressives, and how it was hijacked by the racist politics of GGPonnamblam.
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alagan / May 9, 2013
Kumar David, writing in Lakbima news 21/12/08 on “LTTE must answer Bahu’s question Why does the LTTE fear the principled left?” said:
Tamil nationalism’s paranoia of Southern (not merely Sinhalese) progressive movements goes all the way back to Tamil Congress and the Federal Party days. In that period it was rooted in a terror that engulfed the Ponnambalam-Chelvanayagam class about property, caste and social change. In the 1940s, 50s and 60s, NM Perera, Peiter Keuneman, Sanmugathasan (in the later period) and their ilk, were the very incarnation of the devil in the eyes of these Tamil leaders; the Tamil people chose to follow these leaders. I do not make excuses for the capitulation of the left on the national question in 1964, but from my own deep personal involvement, I do know that repeated rejection of the left by the Tamil electorate contributed to its disillusionment and capitulation. But what property rights, capitalist programme, caste privileges, or hostility to socialism, does today’s LTTE need to champion? What logic is there in continuing the old TC-FP-TULF enmity towards the left and progressives, into a 21st Century national liberation struggle, led by young Tamil people, drawn mainly from subaltern social classes?
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Senguttuvan / May 10, 2013
Mr Velayathuam’s analysis carries much validity although I have a different take on some of his opinions. “Bumped off the old Colombo leaders” I am afraid, is an uncharitable comment. Violence in that form was condemnable then, later and even now. It was that kind of violence and fascism that brought the savage end of the militant leadership and a situation where we are forced to thank the Sinhalese and the army for saving the Tamils.
The other was the changing times. Those committed, highly educated LSSP leaders could not function in a vacuum. Banda’s break-away from the UNP, the Buddha Jayanti and the 1956 victory converging produced and released new socio-political forces in the landscape. The strong winds of Tamil Nationalism in a weak and uncertain India unleashed by the DK/DMK in Madras State – combined to turn our political landscape topsy-turvy. The LSSP leadership was forced to take hard decisions and sacrifice their stand on Parity. Tamil Nationalism displacedg the role of the traditional right-centrist-left parties in the Tamil NEP. Tamil Nationalism was born and many mistakes made by successive Sinhala governments from 1960 to date fuels the flame of the dreams of a pre-1505 reality. The Sinhala leaderships have disastrously failed to accommodate the Tamil Nation into a composite whole.
Other post-1980 developments, centred on religious extremism, further complicated matters within the country forcing it to the brink.
The march of history cannot be easily contained by mediocre leadership. It requires the sagacity and political skill of a Mandela or LKY to steer a plural nation through turbulent waters. SWRD then or the Rajapakses now are not equipped to meet the tough challenges exacerbated by an influential but visionless and prejudiced Buddhist hierarchy that always remained an insidious challenge to popular elected governments. The declining economy, lack of opportunities, destruction of the educational/health sectors here will create conditions when the economically growing India will be either surreptitiously invited or otherwise play a greater role in Lankan affairs than previously. Already the Rajapakses, in different ways, are handing over many of our crucial commercial-industrial sectors to India – while keeping the Chinese reasonably happy. China’s eventual ambitions in the region remains ambiguous as shown in the recent incursion of Chinese troops and their quick withdrawal in the LAC in the Northern Border. That this took place only weeks before the arrival of the new Chinese PM adds to the quagmire.
The net result will be that in which Sri Lanka will continue to be on the boil for the foreseeable future. There is little reason for Lankans to be of a cheerful disposition in the coming months.
Senguttuvan
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Sunaka Sena / May 4, 2013
These old red foxes are counting their last dying days.big joke is all these foxes are still wear red shirts and call them self as leftist. all leftist in our country died as a capitalist this our history.Philip,N.M., Colwin, Etc.
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Sunaka Sena / May 4, 2013
“Sahadukin Pelanawun Then Ithin Negitiyaw”
Is no more New Anthem Is
“Sadukin Pelanawun Then Ithin Hukapiyaw”
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georgethebushpig / May 4, 2013
Exit stage left – “To exit or disappear in a quiet, non-dramatic fashion, making way for more interesting events.”
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Mahela / May 5, 2013
The ever sleeping uneducated bunch of old fake communists crooks who never want to retire and hanging on to their posts while doing nothing to the country but sucking the blood of the working class.
What they have done to our country is anybody’s guess.
No wonder the whole country is also sleeping. Anybody could guess what they may be doing during their official duty time, other than carrying Maharaja’s “pottani” baggage handelers.
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J.Muthu / May 6, 2013
How many wifes and girl friends vasu got….i heard…this guy must be enough enegry even this age…good luk to him..i am bit oohhhhhhhhhhhhhh
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Native Vedda / May 6, 2013
J.Muthu
You must be very jealous about his Virility indeed.
Vasudeva Nanayakkara’s ancestors were noted for polygamy. Why should he now confine himself to Victorian values enforced by Western morals?
As a former Socialist he will not allow himself to be judged by Western imported values.
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nanayakkara pathirage martin / May 6, 2013
What about Tissa V? He has the best consultant among senior ministers. He goes around the world with the consultant. That is why he is glued to his ministerial portfolio.
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Native Vedda / May 6, 2013
nanayakkara pathirage martin
Was NM Perera a bachelor or remained unmarried? Didn’t he have a doctor (GP) girl friend in the UK?
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nanayakkara pathirage martin / May 7, 2013
NM married Selena Peiris but they divorced soon. NM was a very handsome man and yes, he had a few girl friends both in Sri Lanka and abroad (why not?). Yes, he had one in the UK (I know the name) but I am not sure whether she was a doctor. But NM never took political decisions based on his personal life. He did make mistakes but they were honest mistakes. When he realised that the coalition was not going to work the way he anticipated, he took his resignation letter to Cabinet. (Imagine Tissa doing that!)He was not sure whether he could get majority support in the Politbureau to walk out of the coalition. So, he made his famous Hartal speech without discussing it within the Party and that led to the LSSP being thrown out.
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Native Vedda / May 8, 2013
nanayakkara pathirage martin
“He did make mistakes but they were honest mistakes.”
Breaking the Bank Employees Union strike in the early 1970s?
“Yes, he had one in the UK (I know the name) “
Was she also a Nanayakkara?
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sunildissa / May 8, 2013
Bank strike- yes a big mistake. The LSSP at the last Party conference before NM died, with NM in the chair, agreed in the political resolution that the position taken by the Party was a mistake. The resolution was published.
No, the one that I know about was not a Nanayakkara. Now, don’t ask me for the name. What does it matter? She is entitled to her privacy.
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P.B / May 7, 2013
Frauds! Blood sucking parasites
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Sonlight / May 7, 2013
All these are MARA’s shoe lickers without any self respect.All have voted for the 18th amendment to keep Mara in power forever for their own survival as individuals.
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nanayakkara pathirage martin / May 8, 2013
Yes, Sunil Dissa is right about the bank strike.
About the lady, as he says why bother about the name? After all it was a private affair and his politics was never influenced by it.
What an uncle, what a nephew?
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Gune / May 9, 2013
It’s the right time for them to sleep for good, they didn’t do any thing worthy for the people, simply warming their chairs and enjoy every thing comes along with it at the people’s expenses. All these are no good blood sucking MFs and parasites who clink to MR to suck the blood of the people and do jolly living.
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Ajith / May 9, 2013
Parasites!
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Satya Sahadevan / May 10, 2013
Martin & Company.
Yes, the old left made innocent political mistakes, but they did politics on certain principles. If not, NM & Leslie would have continued under Mrs. B ( after Sept 75) as Trade & Fisheries Ministers respectively. Nor they did politics to make money or prestege. They were real heros of our history. Being a Tamil I salute them for their 56 stand on minority rights. But in 64 they made a political blunder. But the JVP which formed as an alternative to the Left’s coalitin politics also made the same blunder forming a coalitin with CBK & Mahinda. Even today we can see the ramnents of the principled Left i.e Lal Wijenayake, Kumar David, Chandrapla Kumarage etc,
Sahadevan
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Native Vedda / May 10, 2013
Satya Sahadevan
Those cuddly lefties were safely sitting in the government whilst it forces killed thousands of innocent youth in 1971.
Colvin was the father of 1972 racist constitution.
In the early 1970s according to my elders, NM speaking in the Parliament made a rotten statement to the effect that Tamils could sell their women’s Thaali (a gold chain worn by married women) to buy rice to feed their family.
NM mismanaged the economy in the name of self sufficiency. Import substitution was believed to have been confused for self sufficiency, a confusion continue to dog many third world lefties for many years. He completely ignored the role of international trade including foreign exchange regime.
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Satya Sahadevan / May 10, 2013
Native Vedda,
REmember, It was a coalition Gov. & all humans are opportunists, including NM, but less when compared to many others. NM was not the Minister in carage of Foreign Trade, it was under Illangaratne. NM never made a statement re. Thaali, if you can prove.
See the positive side/ achievements of the Left under coalition- Land reform, nationalization of plantations, liberation of our economy from foreign inistutions, restructing the banking systym complete independance under 72 cons. ( it was not what Colvin & Left wanted, but remember power postion of the Left Vs SLFP)….More over……the Left Ministers did not use posts to make money.
Finaly..it was a internesine experience…………
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