Propaganda blowback

Tuesday 23rd July, 2024

President Ranil Wickremesnghe may not have thought he was providing grist to the Opposition’s propaganda mill when he sought to scapegoat former Yahapalana MP Dr. Jayampathy Wickramaratne for what he called the inadequacies of the 19th Amendment to the Constitution. His tongue-in-cheek apology to the public for the ambiguities in that constitutional amendment and his attempt to use them to cast Dr. Wickramaratne in a bad light blew up in his face. Dr. Wickramaratne lost no time in setting the record straight; he said the Yahapalana government had insisted that only constitutional amendments that did not require a referendum for their passage be introduced, and therefore Article 83 b in the Constitution had not been changed when the terms of the President and Parliament were reduced to five years from six years.

Hoist with his own petard, President Wickremesinghe is now struggling to justify the publication of the 22nd Amendment Bill, which is widely considered a move aimed at delaying the upcoming presidential contest.

Propaganda attacks are double-edged swords. They can backfire on the person who carries them out. President Wickremesinghe’s aforesaid apology has provided ammunition to the SJB, some of whose lawyers, addressing the media on Sunday, demanded to know why Wickremesinghe had not apologised for many other wrongs committed during the Yahapalana government. They asked him to apologise for having Arjuna Mahendran appointed the Central Bank Governor, and paving the way for the Treasury bond scams. He also owed an apology to the public for the Yahapalana government’s serious security lapses that had led to the Easter Sunday carnage in 2019, the SJB lawyers maintained.

The SJB lawyers made the mistake of reminding the public that the SJB leaders had been prominent members of the Yahapalana government and therefore they were also responsible for what that administration did or failed to do.

The SJB seniors who were in the Yahapalana government should also apologise for the Treasury bond scams, which they tried to cover up, albeit in vain. One may recall that some of them stooped so low as to make a shameful bid to dilute the content of the second COPE (Committee on Public Enterprises) report on the bond rackets by incorporating a passel of footnotes thereinto. One of them even prevented the release of the first COPE report on the bond rackets ahead of the 2015 general election by resorting to legal action; he also wrote a book denying that the Treasury bond scams had ever happened! These self-righteous worthies are now at the forefront of a campaign to rid the country of corruption!

There is no way the SJB leaders can absolve themselves of responsibility for the current economic crisis, which has resulted from the aggravation of the country’s debt burden, among other things. They were in the Cabinet of the Yahapalana government, which increased the external debt by at least USD 10 billion through the issuance of ISBs (International Sovereign Bonds) according to SLPP leader Mahinda Rajapaksa, and ousted President Gotabaya Rajapaksa, who has said in his book, The Conspiracy, that the ISBs issued by the Mahinda Rajapaksa government amounted to USD 5 billion at the end of 2014, when the country had USD 8.2 billion in foreign exchange reserves, but the Yahapalana government increased the stock of ISBs to USD 15 billion by 2019, with foreign currency reserves remaining at USD 7.6 billion. It will be interesting to see what the SJB propagandists have got to say to this.

The SJB leaders were also responsible for the Yahapalana government’s lapses that enabled the perpetrators of the Easter Sunday terror to strike with ease. This is what the Presidential Commission of Inquiry (PCoI) Report on the carnage has said: “The Government including President Sirisena and Prime Minister [Ranil Wickremesinghe] is accountable for the [Easter Sunday) tragedy (p. 471). Most of the SJB seniors were in that government, which became a metaphor for failure. Interestingly, the JVP, which is currently vilifying President Wickremesinghe, unashamedly propped up the UNP-led Yahapalana government from 2018 to 2019, despite all its failings, following an attempt by President Sirisena and Mahinda, who was the Joint Opposition leader at the time, to dislodge that administration.

One’s gorge rises when one sees the erstwhile Yahapalana chums washing loads and loads of dirty linen in public.