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The BASL presidential election

The BASL presidential election has come and gone. As in any contest there emerged a victor and the vanquished. This was a hotly contested election as reported by the press prior to the polls.

However we were told that there were two unconventional aspects that surfaced in the run up to the election. First that the incumbent president was not given a second term without a contest and secondly a previous president who does not as a custom, recontest.

The first did not happen meaning the election was contested and the sitting president faced a contest and the second did happen in that a past president chose to contest the post.

The reason trotted out by the contestant was to bring dignity to the legal profession and make it an independent apolitical body. On this basis one has to conclude that all these years or in the recent past, there has been an erosion of the dignity of the legal profession.

It is known that the present president was in the legal profession for well nigh over 30 years and was a president at one time.

One wonders whether he was part and parcel contributed to this decline in the legal fraternity. He contested on the basis with the motive of cleaning up the profession. He may well take up the position he was in no way contributory to the dirt in the Aegean stables of the legal profession if their was any.

As humans grow old they suffer from a common ailment-amnesia. Some suffer to a greater extent and others much less.

Regarding an apolitical legal profession one cannot but help recall the highly politicised legal profession in the past where court decisions were allegedly made on political grounds and dissenting judges had to face the wrath of the then powers making them targets to missiles hurled by goondas of the ruling party.

In this context, one wonders where this crusader of non-partisan legal system was during this period. Once again we come to a statement allegedly made by this crusader in the aftermath of the suicide bomber attack on the President in 1999 immediately before the election.

It was reported if I remember right in the Sunday Times purported to have come from this personage that with the bomb attack on the President and her losing the sight of one eye there could be doubt whether she had suffered additional brain damage which makes her an unsuitable person to be the President.

How dignified could this statement be. We next come to an incident where in the precincts of the court he was associated with the felicitation and garlanding of the editor of the Sunday Times in a case where the editor was accused of defaming the President.

One does not need much intelligence to conclude where his political leanings rest. It can be argued that one is entitled to one's political belief but one can exercise neutrality as president of the BASL. So much so for dignity and politicisation of the legal profession.

It could be said that this is all 'old hat' but old habits are hard to kill. He appears to give the impression he has come to kill the dragon. Time is sure to tell us which way the BASL presidency blows.

ARAVINDA GAUTAMADASA - Nawala.

Watch out for other natural disasters

The disaster that occurred on December 26 last year is apparently the worst in the history of Sri Lanka when the intensity and the resulted damage are concerned. The tsunami of December 26 claimed for more than 40,000 lives and property damage of billions of rupees in a short time like two hours.

It is very clear that an accurate valuation of the damage is impossible. When the history of weather observation is scanned, one can see that any other natural hazard has not been able to cause such a big calamity in a short while.

For comparison purpose, the recent events like flood in November-December 2004 (about 8 deaths) lightning in 2004 (about 18 deaths and damage to 4-5 houses), flood in May 2003 (about 240 deaths), cyclone in 2000 (11 deaths) can be considered.

The lessons learned from the recent event are many. Future natural hazards will be even severe unless the learned lessons are not used practically.

The total cost of the tragedy of December 26 (death and property damage) is large enough to persuade someone to forget and neglect other natural hazards, which are very common in Sri Lanka.

Tsunami comes once in a century or so. But natural hazards like cyclones, thunderstorms, tornadoes, easterly waves and depressions are common weather events in a year's cycle of weather in Sri Lanka but they occur in different frequencies.

Frequency of natural hazards like cyclone is small and unpredictable because a number of requirements should be fulfilled for development of such systems. But thunderstorms (storms with lightning and thunder) develop in a number of weather systems that are very frequent in our country. We should not forget that the main component of thunderstorms is lightning which is a killer.

The electric current of a ground lightning flash is about 25,000 Amperes (25000A) and the potential difference between a charged cloud and the earth is about 100 million volts. The energy of a lightning flash is about 500 million Joules.

When the statistics is concerned, lightning kills more than 50 people and damages property of billions of rupees worth in our island every year and therefore, we should highly concern of lightning, its hazards and also precautions against lightning.

During the planetary motion of the earth around the sun, the 'Sub Solar Point' or the sun's overhead position, changes between latitudes 23.5 centigrade S (around December 22) and 23.5 centigrade N (around June 21) throughout the year.

During this transition, sun comes overhead of the equator twice, once on March 21 and again on September 21. On its relative northward movement, sun comes overhead of Sri Lanka during April 5 to 15 every year. Solar radiation falls vertically on the earth during most of Inter-.monsoon period and hence the heating of the earth soil is considerable.

The weather over the island during this season is controlled mainly by thermal influences. Winds are light and variable due to the lack of a pressure gradient across the island and the air becomes stagnant.

These phenomena make the atmosphere warm and uncomfortable during this season and this effect comes to a peak in April.

Direct solar radiation evaporates water from all water bodies like wells, rivers and paddy fields. Evapo-transpiration also occurs from plants adding moisture to the lower atmosphere around us leading to a saturated surrounding.

Prevailing light wind is not strong enough to mix the lower atmosphere and a result it becomes stagnant and saturated continuously. Such an atmosphere is not capable of absorbing the sweat from our bodies and also the light wind is unable to evaporate sweat from the body.

The normal inter-monsoon seasons are marked by clear skies in the morning followed by rapid building up of convective clouds and afternoon or evening thundershowers.

Hence lightning activity over Sri Lanka shows peaks during two inter-monsoon seasons - March-April and October-November. Since thunderstorms develop under any atmospheric conditions that are capable in developing convective clouds, we should be alert in launching precautionary steps to reduce lightning hazards during all seasons.

First inter-monsoons season starts usually in mid-March and continues till the second week of May. So we are about to get into the first inter-monsoons season, March-April.

Therefore among the all stories of recent tsunami tragedy, we should concentrate on possible fatal hazards of lightning and recollect and refresh our memories of characteristics of lightning and precautionary steps to reduce hazards.

Since the public have been made aware of precautions against lightning through media and a number of awareness programmes, repetition of the same seems not required. We should take all necessary precautionary steps to avoid or at least minimise the hazards caused by deadly lightning.

Precautions like installing protection systems, correcting the electrical circuitry etc., have to be given thought during the fair weather periods before thunderstorm peak periods.

- K. R. ABHAYASINGHA - Kotaligoda.

Ex-King's Grandson

Reference the article entitled 'The fall of the Kandyan Kingdom in 1815' in the Daily News of January 29 in which may I hasten to add the following contribution.

Browsing some old newspapers I came across the following obituary dated 14 February 1938 captioned as above.

Mr. Raja Sinha, grandson of Sri Wickrema Raja Sinha, the last king of Ceylon has died at his home in Tanjore, where he was registrar, Mr. Raja Sinha was in receipt of a royal pension from the Ceylon Government and this pension now devolves on his eldest son Santhana Raja Sinha.

I also read a speech by Sir William Gregory, the late British Governor of Ceylon, founder of the Colombo National Museum to the then Legislative Assembly of Ceylon recalling the savage massacre of the family of Ahalepola Adigar of the Kandyan Court by Sri Wickrema Raja Sinha, as well as his magnificent reconstruction work on the Dalada Maligawa, after being vandalised by British troops in the Kandyan War, says, "The late king though a ruthless and bloody tyrant, was nevertheless a man of exquisite taste". Evidently his reign was almost coincident with the fall of the Kandyan Kingdom.

O. M. R. SIRISENA - Colombo 5.

Eradicate superstition

With reference to an article under the heading 'Superstitions and the degradation of women' in the column Gender Dialogue (23.02.2005) I would like to make the following observations.

Though women are subject to many degradations, not only in our country but even in the advanced countries, the incident of a male bank employee humiliating a female employee for leaving her comb on his table does not seem to fall within the category of the males degrading the women. It is one individual's act who had been brainwashed with superstition from his birth, like many of us in this country.

The other colleagues in the bank according to the report, had teased him for his silly act of humiliating the female colleague who had left her comb on his table by mistake.

I think, even if a male colleague had left his comb on that employee's table he would have acted and spoken in the same way. It is therefore the superstition at the bottom of this trouble.

Hence, it is the superstition among our people that should be eradicated. If that is done, a lot of degradation and human rights violations too would be eliminated.

Some decades ago, there was Dr. Abraham Kovoor who went about tongs and nail on the superstitious and foolish beliefs of our people and succeeded to a great extent to dispel those foolish beliefs. There was also Dr. E.W. Adhikaram and also Dr. Carlo Fonseka who did a lot to dispel these superstitious beliefs.

Dr. Kovoor was from India, today many persons are flowing into our country and spreading superstition and foolish beliefs and hoodwinking the people and playing out their money and even their virtues by reading their horoscopes, palms and by numerology, of course along with charlatans from our own country as well, so much so, I find, that even the Catholics, who some years ago did not know and didn't care about palmistry, horoscopes etc. have now become ardent believers in these superstitions and will not embark on any matter without consulting the astrologers, and their children, though there are good partners for them, are remaining unmarried.

Our intellectuals and social workers, not to speak of the women rights activities, should join hands and work together to eliminate this superstition and foolish beliefs from our people. It is superstition that is at the bottom of most of our miseries.

ARUL - Colombo 13.

'Help us to help them rebuild'

Some weekend English and Sinhalese newspapers recently carried a beer advertisement, which reads as mentioned above.

It was very pathetic that they try to support the Sri Lankans affected by the tsunami by selling more and more beer to all Sri Lankans. What they say is that they will donate one rupee from each bottle they sell.

As for the advertisement, if this company is to build a small house which costs Rs. 100,000, they have to sell 100,000 bottles of beer to Sri Lankans.

The majority of Sri Lankans are Buddhists who do not consume liquor. And all the religions educate people about the bad effects when consume liquor. Companies should not try to use tsunami disaster as a driving force to sell their brand. By doing so, they will guide Sri Lankans to drink more and more beer.

I think the Sri Lankans as popularly known throughout the world are very kind hearted people who do not need this type of beer funding. I have seen how Sri Lankans came forward when this tsunami disaster happened.

If you go through the lists of donations published by the newspapers, there are many Sri Lankans who donated more than one hundred thousand rupees.

So, I believe that Sri Lankans do not need another man-made disaster throughout the country to overcome this natural disaster.

I would like to request this beer company to keep that one rupee for a fund which will help the Sri Lankans who need a kidney transplant because of consuming alcoholic beverages.

INDRAKUMAR HEENATIGALA - Yakkala.

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