International The Telegraph

CHINESE LEADER CONCLUDES VISIT TO SRI LANKA

Kathmandu : The Chairman of the Chinese Peoples' Political Consultative Committee Li Ruihuan who concluded a four day official goodwill visit to the island nation Sri Lanka left for his home country China last Sunday. In a special message addressed to President Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga and Prime Minister Sirimavo Bandaranaike from aboard his special plane, the departing Chinese leader said he is "fully satisfied with the visit" and that the meetings he had with the Sri Lankan leaders " had helped enhance the understanding and friendship between the two governments and peoples". He added that he was "deeply convinced that the friendship and cooperation between China and Sri Lanka will continue to be consolidated and developed in the twenty first century". During his talks with President Kumaratunga last Thursday, Chairman Li had expressed the appreciation of the Chinese Government for Sri Lanka's support of the one China Policy and said the Chinese people would never forget it. Chairman Li announced that the Chinese Government would donate 1 million Yuan (approximately Rs. 8.5 million) worth of items to Sri Lanka. The modalities regarding choice of the items have been left to be worked out through diplomatic channels. During the meeting, President Kumaratunga had also suggested that the Sino-Sri Lanka Joint Economic Committee should meet more frequently and had urged the Chinese Government to directly invest more in the industrial sector in the country. Chairman Li said the Vice. Minister of Economic Affairs will be visiting Sri Lanka later this month and those trade and investment issues could be further discussed during his visit. It is noteworthy that at present 30 Chinese Companies have commenced operations in Sri Lanka as BOI ventures with investment amounting to over 200 million rupees. The sectors identified for future investment include rubber based industries, light engineering and heavy engineering, ceramics and glassware products, agriculture and food processing, garment accessories, electronic industry, gems and jewelry and construction of housing apartments. Among the ongoing Chinese aided projects in Sri Lanka are the BMICH Exhibition Centre and the construction of the new building of the Lady Ridgeway Hospital.

Time Quickly: An exhibition for the start of the year 2000

-Claudine Canetti, France

To start the year 2000 and, at the same time, to celebrate its opening on 1st January after two years of renovation, the Georges Pompidou Centre, familiarly known as "Beaubourg" after the name of the district in Paris where it is located, is holding an exhibition devoted to time. The aim of this multi-disciplinary exhibition, called "Time, Quickly", presented in the large new gallery on the 5th floor, is to show the changes in out perception and conception of time under the effects of the ever faster acceleration of speed mastered by mankind.

The sky, life and consciousness are the basics of any reflection on time and these are developed in the exhibition. The observation of the movement of the heavenly bodies is the basis of our objective conception of time, while life and the important biological rhythms (birth, growth and death) lie at the root of our intimate but also social perception of time and duration.

The multi-disciplinary organization of the exhibition places the stress on the visual arts, with numerous and contemporary works contrasted with the virtual transposition of important works from the past, but also music literature, philosophy and science and technology. The visitor is greeted by a highly symbolical object: it is an Egyptian (15 century BC) clepsydra, one of the oldest instruments for measuring time to have come down to us. It also symbolizes a flow, one of the metaphors universally used for time. The itinerary through the exhibition follows the rhythm of the changing sky. It starts in the twilight of an area devoted to images of the sky and astronomical instruments, from prehistory to the Century of Enlightenment. The ceiling produces the dome of the basilica of San Lorenzo in Florence, which shows a picture of the night sky on 4th July 1442. It ends in bright light in the last room after a clever graduation of the light, symbolizing the passage from night to day.

The second stage of the itinerary through the exhibition concerns personal identity and subjectivity in relation to time. A series of self-portraits, presented in the form of a virtual transposition (from Durer and Rembrandt to Edward Munch and Casimir Malevitch) is placed in opposition to contemporary self-portraits such as those of Andy Warhol, Christian Boltanski and Bruce Nauman. This section also includes a 'literary' performance: the complete reading of Marcel Proust's "Remembrance of Things Past" by about 50 of today's writers.

This is followed by the time of languages, a "Babelian" section in which the visitor is permanently plunged into the musical buzzing of the translation of the word "time" in the greatest number of languages possible. He can use computer games to plunge into the mysteries of the translation of time in the most varied languages.

Important elements in the study of time are calendars. Ancient Greek, Roman, Aztec, Maya, Islamic, Christian, Hebrew and revolutionary ones have been objects and systems of calculation but they have also marked the days for feasts and rituals for all cultures in the world, with spectacular examples such as the still enigmatic site of Stonehenge in England. From the clepsydra to the quartz watch and including ancient or 16 century Italian sundials, the first watches of the 15 century and the conquest of accuracy in time-pieces in the centuryof Enlightenment, the way of measuring time has continued to improve, becoming a fundamental condition in the organization of social and economic life in the West since the beginning of 'modern times' is the point of departure of the section devoted to working time. It is the time of manual and industrial work of course, scanned by the expression "time is money", but also the time of the creative work of the writer, the musician or the artist.

In contrast to working time, there is time for leisure, symmetrically introduced by Jacques Tati's film "Mr.Hulot's holiday", then illustrated by a famous series of photographs such as Claude Closky's "August Holiday-Makers"' or Massimo Vitalli's Italian beaches. They reveal all the ambiguity of the notion of leisure that, instead of being free time, can be simply a "consumed" time, a product of consumer society.

In the part of the exhibition devoted to speed which affects our relations with time, the speed of storing time is one of the most complex. From writing to printing, from painting to photography and then to film-making and video, and from sound recording to digital techniques, the relation between the amount of information and the time needed to store it has continued to grow. Hence, we are increasingly being invaded by memory and stored time without the nature of time itself changing. This leads the organizers of the exhibition to ask this worrying question: "What can be done with all the time that is continually being recorded all over the world?"

The last sections of the exhibition, devoted, in particular, to the speed of the movement in space, to 'real time' (with 24 screens linked, through the Internet, to 24 cameras in 24 sites chosen in each time zone), and to its "irreversibility", pave the very technical way to the final room devoted to "the future of time", a room open to the sky and daylight but also to the big question on the future of the human species, on earth and in the universe. Not really very reassuring.

Civil society:Dilemmas and Caveats-13

Matching funding provides one potential method: if an NGO can honestly say it will receive five or ten dollars in international support for every dollar it raises locally, that sharply increases the incentive of the organization to raise locally and of local donors (large and small) to give. (It also increases the efficacy of small donors who can see that their contributions are being multiplied to much larger effect). As we see in Chapters 8 and 9 on promoting democracy, other methods of assistance are now seeking to build endowments (in part again with matching or challenge grants) for the most pivotal democracy-building civil society organizations, and to help motivate and assist major owners of private wealth to create, contribute to, or develop philanthropic trusts as a way to leave an enduring legacy for their society. Efforts by the Ford Foundation and the Asia Society to strengthen and professionalize private philanthropy in emerging democracies constitute one of the most significant and potentially long-lasting forms of aid to civil societies.

Institutionalization raises a fifth dilemma or caveat for civil society. A social or political movement is only sustainable with organization. Sustainable organization means, to some extent, bureaucratization, the development of more complex vertical structure and more permanent and professional staff. This returns us to Michels� dilemma: �who says organization says oligarchy.� This dimension of the organizational life cycle parallels and interacts with the diminution of autonomy. Again, the evolution of Chile�s PARTICIPA provides a graphic illustration. �Once PARTICIPA became an institution, questions of membership and control became important issues. As is usually the case when volunteer movements become institutionalized, a certain tension developed between the role of the professionals and the volunteers, which in the case of PARTICIPA has been resolved through the professionalization of the organization.� This has led to a distinctly less mass-based organization, utilizing fewer volunteers.

In fact, a stronger and broader generalization appears warranted. As I have argued in chapter 3, the single most important and urgent factor in the consolidation of democracy is not civil society but political institutionalization. If consolidation is the process by which democracy becomes �the only game in town,� broadly and profoundly legitimate at both the elite and mass levels, cultural change is crucial, but it must be reinforced by a political system that works to deliver the political goods of democracy, and eventually, at least to some degree, the economic and social goods people expect as well. The normalization of politics and entrenchment of legitimacy that consolidation entails requires the expansion of citizen access, the development of democratic citizenship and culture, the broadening of leadership recruitment and training, and other functions that civil society performs. But it also requires orderly and effective democratic governance, and that is something that civil society cannot in and of itself provide. Political institutions - parties, legislatures, judicial systems, local governments, and the bureaucratic structures of the state more generally - must become more capable, complex, coherent, and responsive.

Despite their impressive capacity to survive years (in cases a decade or more) of social strife and economic instability and decline, many new democracies in Latin America, Eastern Europe, Asia, and Africa will probably break down in the medium to long run unless they can reduce their often appalling levels of poverty, inequality, and social injustice and, through market-oriented reforms, lay the basis for sustainable growth. For these and other policy challenges, not only strong parties but effective state institutions are vital. They do not guarantee wise and effective policies, but they do ensure that government will be able to make and implement policies of some kind, and not flail about, impotent or deadlocked.

These caveats and dilemmas are sobering, but they do not nullify my principal thesis. Civil society can, and typically must, play a central role in building and consolidating democracy. Its role is not decisive, not even the most important, at least not initially. However, the more active, pluralistic, resourceful, institutionalized, and internally democratic is civil society, and the more effectively it balances the tensions in its relations with the state - between autonomy and cooperation, vigilance and loyalty, skepticism and trust, assertiveness and civility - the more likely democracy will be to emerge and endure.

Kathmandu : Sri Lankan Foreign Minister, Lakshman Kadirgamar, has said the Chandrika Kumaratunga Government was committed to peace and would be prepared to resume negotiations with the LTTE "as soon as practicable" after the Presidential elections.

In an interview with the "Hindu'' published in its edition of Saturday 4th December the minister noted that without setting a time-frame for the process, he said there was no change in the President's commitment to peace and that the Government was ready to have a "facilitator '' to break the ice with the Tamil Tigers to reopen the talks. It said the Foreign Minister, drew a clear distinction between a "facilitator'' and a "mediator'', to drive home the point that Sri Lanka was ready to negotiate a political solution and was not prepared to accept any "imposed solution". Dealing at length with the role of the facilitator, Mr. Kadirgamar said, "he must go into all aspects of coming and going between the two parties, carry messages, provide a venue, be a friend to both sides and basically be an ice-breaker who enjoys the confidence of both parties ''. The facilitator must not be "somebody's mouthpiece'' but be capable of advising both sides to "remain engaged, despite any difficulties in negotiations to see it through to the finish''. Citing examples from the Northern Ireland peace process and the West Asia negotiations, the Foreign Minister was optimistic of clinching the issue, if both sides had the political will. "We remain totally committed and have both the political will and a devolution package already on the table. I don't know if the same can be said about the LTTE''. Without any hesitation, he said, "there can be no peace without the LTTE. They are so deeply engaged in the situation that you cannot expect them to magically disappear from the scene.'' Mr. Kadirgamar refused to buy the argument that the LTTE would find it easier to negotiate with the UNP, if its leader, Mr. Ranil Wickremesinghe, won the election. "The late President Premadasa tried to negotiate with them, not very successfully. We also began in earnest but did not go very far. They may want to run circles around the UNP next time.''

Kathmandu : A fresh news monitored in here reveals that the US favored talks "at the highest level" between India and Pakistan on all irritants, including Kashmir, the US envoy to New Delhi said early this week.

Ambassador Richard Celeste reportedly told the Press Trust of India that Washington was concerned peace talks between the two countries should resume soon.

"We continue to take the position that it will be very valuable for India to engage Pakistan at the highest level on issues that trouble the relationship between the two countries... "We are concerned that the momentum (of a prime ministerial meeting in February in Lahore) is not completely lost," he said.

To recall, the Lahore declaration was signed by Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee at a landmark summit in February with the ousted prime minister Nawaz Sharif.(see for details issue of this weekly of February last).

Basically the Lahore meet of the two Premiers from India and Pakistan called for intensifying efforts to resolve outstanding issues, including those of Kashmir. Ambassador Celeste said that "a great deal of trust" had been "damaged" on account of a two-month conflicts earlier this year between Indian soldiers and the Mujahideen.

The ambassador said that even the "smartest and wisest" American could not fashion a workable solution to the Kashmir tangle. "We believe this will require extraordinary leadership from India and Pakistan and on behalf of people of Kashmir," the envoy added.

Kathmandu : Dropping first hints on the minimum term of the army rule in Pakistan, military ruler General Pervez Musharraf indicated elections would not be held before the end of next year by when an electoral reform process was to be carried out.

``We would have electoral reforms to strengthen the election commission and complete the process of electoral rolls, registration/ delimitation of constituencies, so that the representative institutions at the district level become functional by the end of next year,'' Musharraf told the Islamabad-based diplomats last weekend, it is learnt.

However Musharraf's stand was questioned by leading politicians who demanded immediate restoration of democracy. Cutting across party lines they shared a common platform supposedly for the first time since the coup and arrived at a unanimous conclusion that ``the process of restoration of democracy should not be linked to the accountability process.''

Grandson of Frontier Gandhi and Awami National Party president, Asfandyar Wali, attacked Musharraf's repeated claims that politicians and civilian governments were responsible for all the problems of Pakistan. ``We are not devils that we are being held responsible for all the ills in this country. We are getting abused for the fault of 12 per cent of the people. ' Akram Zaki, a close relative of Nepali congress President G.P.Koirala, who belongs to the PML agreed that accountability should supplement democracy and the wrongs of few should not be used to condemn a whole group. Meanwhile, two top army officers, including former chief of the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), are likely to face court martial for their alleged role in the events on October 12 prior to the coup the same day. Both officers -- Lt Gen Khwaja Ziauddin, former ISI director general and Brigadier Javed Malik, former military secretary to the deposed Nawaz Sharif -- are under protective custody of the army. The process of framing of charges against them was on. ( News compiled from various sources-editor).