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Leader of the House Minister Lakshman Kiriella, following the Supreme Court determination on the 19th Amendment to the constitution, said the government viewed the court's decision positively and it was a step that strengthened Parliamentary democracy.

He also added that the national unity government, which came to power after presidential polls in January, was ready to transfer enormous powers, wielded by one man, to the 225 MPs in Parliament.

Following are excerpts from his interview.

Q: How will the Supreme Court determination affect the implementation of the constitutional amendment?

A: We welcome the Supreme Court's determination and consider it as a positive development. This determination will not make any impact on the core of the constitutional reforms which we envisaged. The most important aspect of the determination is the provision saying the President must act on the Prime Minister's advice. It is something that strengthens Parliamentary democracy. That is what we have been fighting for over the past two decades.

Q: But, according to the Supreme Court determination, the Prime Minister has lost his say in the appointment of a minister. Don't you consider that as a setback where Parliamentary democracy is concerned?

A: No. Although the President will appoint the Cabinet of ministers he will act in the advice of the Prime Minister. That will ensure checks and balances and the Parliamentary democracy will be strengthened. The setting up of independent commissions, which were introduced under the 17th Amendment, is a major victory for anyone who respects democracy. The most important characteristic in this whole process is the spirit with which the constitutional amendment was introduced. Previously, so many rulers who led this country introduced amendments to the constitution to acquire more power. Such attempts were aimed at consolidating their power. This is the first time, a leader has introduced a constitutional amendment to relinquish power. That is something every political party should appreciate. Especially with the setting up of independent commissions, the powers which were previously vested in the Executive President, has been transferred to independent bodies. This is the sort of change 62.5 million people in this country voted for at the last presidential election.

Q: You stated a few days ago that the Sri Lanka Freedom Party was facing a split. Will that possible "split" prevent the government from securing a two thirds majority for the constitutional amendment?

A: The SLFP is facing a split and that was quite evident when the treasury bills regulation was taken for vote. Earlier, the Opposition Leader said they would not go for a vote on the resolution and a few hours later, a group of opposition MPs went for a vote. Even the Opposition Leader asked his members not to stab in the back. So clearly there is a division. But, I think when the President convenes his Parliamentary group, he will be in a position to address the matter and draw their support.

Link:
'Supreme Court determination on 19A strengthened democracy'

Paul Dewar on Victims of Communism Mmeorial
Paul Dewar, MP for Ottawa Centre, asks the Conservative government why it is overruling experts and citizens on the location and design of the Memorial to the Victims of Communism.

By: Paul Dewar

Read the original here:
Paul Dewar on Victims of Communism Mmeorial - Video

Hadi must explain what is Islamic economy, too simplistic just to blame soulless materialism.

COMMENT

By TK Chua

Abdul Hadi Awang has asked why Chinese and Indian Malaysians are not willing to accept an Islamic economy when they have accepted liberal capitalism, socialism, and communism in the past. He then lamented that communism has failed and Western capitalism is soulless materialism which has resulted in trillions in debts.

To me, this is a thoughtless talk that should not be allowed to stand without challenge.

If someone wishes to be taken seriously, he must be clear in his articulation. So first thing first, Hadi must explain what is Islamic economy. He must also quote recent empirical evidence or examples we can rely on.

You see, all of us are given only one life to live. Surely our life is not meant for experimentation with untested ideology or orthodoxy. So, Hadi, please explain clearly to us what is in your mind.

Please dont get me wrong. I am not challenging the divinity of any belief. I just happen to know that whatever governing system we may have, whether divine or human, it is subject to human interpretation and implementation. I also know that all humans are capable of abusing the system to take advantage for themselves.

The sage said, Power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely. The sage did not say orthodoxy or ideology can heal corruption.

It is just too convenient and too simplistic to blame everything on Western soulless materialism. Why look so far, Singapore is also soulless to many of us. But despite its shortcomings, the United States has had more than two hundred years of continuous democracy with people enjoying good living. Some European countries have even longer records of economic growth and prosperity.

See more here:
Dogma doesnt put food on the table

This isnt perhaps the sort of thing that we normally congratulate people on, managing to so entirely screw up a national economy so as to generate 200% annual inflation. But we really should give credit where such credit is due. It is an achievement to manage to follow economic policies that blockheaded so, in the spirit of being entirely fair, congratulations to Venezuelas Bolivarian socialism. Its worth noting further that the reason for this stunning success of theirs is not because theyre a bit left wing, nor because theyve tried to make the lives of the poor a bit better. Its because theyve ignored the most important rule of trying to run an economy, theyve failed to understand that markets really do work. Something that we all need to recall in our own countries as various people tell us that weve got to excise market forces from one or another part of our own economies. Theres ways to deal with the effects that we dont want from market forces: but ignoring or trying to abolish them leads to, well, to success like that that Venezualan Bolivarian socialism is currently experiencing.

Heres the news of that inflation rate:

Venezuela, which already has the worlds fastest inflation rate at a reported 69 percent in December, could see that rate more than double this year as it struggles to respond to falling oil prices.

We may end up this year with inflation at close to 200 percent, Alberto Ades, co-head of global economics research at Bank of America Bank of America, said in an interview on Bloomberg Bloomberg Surveillance Friday. He forecast the economy would shrink 4 percent. Venezuela is in a dire crisis.

We need to understand why it is that the Venezuelan economy is in such a pickle. And no, its not because the oil price is falling. Its also not because the government there is lefty, nor that they were trying to take a bit of the money off the rich and make sure the poor thus had better lives. Its because the methods by which they tried to achieve these things were simply pig ignorant. And Im afraid this speaks to many more lefties than just those Bolivarian socialists. A potential Prime Prime Minister, Ed Miliband, in my native UK is marching around shouting about predistribution and how hes going to fix the prices of energy. Which is the mistake that Venezuela under Chavez and Maduro made. And the mistake that the equally lefty Nordics havent made.

The point being that markets, and the prices in them, are far from being just some random numbers that the plutocrats assign to things in order to strip the poor of their incomes. Theyre actually signals: signals of who is prepared to produce what, for what remuneration, and who actually wants stuff at what cost? Its actually how we coordinate production and consumption in fact. Its long been proven that we dont have any other effective method of such coordination (Hayeks Nobel was in large part for this, there have been other proofs since) so, markets and prices are what were left with.

Yet theres a terribly sad hangover from early socialism which insists that planning will do better than markets. This has its roots in Karl Marxs misunderstandings of markets and prices but its still a pernicious influence out there.

Because prices perform that coordination service for us we cant go around setting them at random. If we set them above market prices, as the EU did with food, then we end up with massive oversupply and mountains of butter and lakes of wine. As the EU did when they did this. If we set prices below market ones then people just wont produce what people want. We thus end up with empty shelves and shortages, as Venezuela famously does today of just about everything. And think how badly youve got to screw up to get a shortage of something as simple as toilet paper, which is something theyve managed.

If you actually want to do that redistribution bit then youve actually got to go off and do some redistribution. Take money from one group of people (we might politely call this taking tax) and then give it to some other group of people (call it welfare). This is what the Nordics do, they reduce inequality significantly by doing so and they manage to do so without generating near hyperinflation nor shortages of anything. Because, other than tax and redistribution they dont do anything to screw up markets nor prices.

And that, of course, is what Venezuela should have done. Take, perhaps, some of that oil revenue and just give it to the poor. Would have worked far better in reducing poverty than what they did do and it wouldnt have created that 200% inflation either.

See the original post here:
Congratulations To Venezuela's Bolivarian Socialism; 200% Inflation Is An Achievement

Published: April 11, 2015

While flattering, the March 29 letter to the editor by Don DeAngelis seems to credit me for establishing the public interest as the guiding principle in making federal law rather than Chief Justice John Marshall, who wrote the unanimous Supreme Court decision in McCulloch vs. Maryland in 1819. Since then, laws not in the public interest passed by Congress, most egregiously by the current one, have been by definition unconstitutional.

French economist Thomas Pikettys recent book, Capital in the Twenty-First Century, charts the rise of the United States to its present position as the most economically unjust society in world history, and projects the trend to the year 2100, when even the most socialist country today, Sweden, will be drastically undermined by inherited wealth.

Piketty sees no alternative but a return to the progressive and, in extreme cases, confiscatory taxation of the 1950s made possible by two world wars and the Great Depression, events that temporarily suppressed the otherwise unrestrained growth of capitalism over centuries. Throughout this period, the assets of the bottom half of society in every nation have remained at little more than zero.

Along with the domestic problems found every day in the Observer-Reporter, international ones like too much carbon in the atmosphere and the mass extinctions of species are at root political, and the fundamental obstacle to the holistic approach favored by researcher Wolfgang Sachs in planning for a sustainable future is American fear and ignorance of socialism.

Jim Greenwood

Washington

Excerpt from:
Socialism fear prevents sustainable future