When wily crocs weep

Friday 9th July, 2021

Our honourable representatives are a bunch of shape-shifters capable of assuming various forms including those of knights-errant ever ready to fight for the members of the Fourth Estate in distress. Their transmogrification into the saviours of journalists occurs when they are in the political wilderness, and they never miss an opportunity to make a public display of what they claim to be their love for the media. Alas, these saviours change into werewolves the moment they savour power, and prey on journalists.

The incumbent government stands accused of hatching a plot to silence the media institutions that refuse to toe its line. The SJB MPs, on Wednesday, staged a protest in Parliament, invading as they did the Well of the House. They claimed that the government was planning to strip Sirasa TV of its transmission licence in retaliation for exposing various ruling party rackets. The SLPP MPs vehemently denied the allegation, but the government’s credibility level has diminished so much that the public does not believe anything until it is officially denied.

He that has an ill name is said to be half-hanged. This is the SLPP’s problem. There were attacks on journalists and media institutions while the present-day leaders were in power previously, and none of the incidents were properly probed, and all perpetrators of violence went scot-free thanks to their links to the rulers of the day. Sirasa is one of the television stations that suffered goon attacks, which could not have been carried out without the backing of the then UPFA government. So, it is only natural that Sirasa fears for its safety, and the Opposition has taken up the cudgels on its behalf.

On Wednesday, one’s gorge must have risen on seeing the members of Parliament shedding copious tears for the media. They mentioned the names of journalists who had perished during previous governments. Our politicians have apparently taken a leaf out of the book of Genghis Khan, of all people. The Mongolian emperor had rotting cadavers catapulted into the cities he laid siege to, so that diseases would spread there, forcing his enemies to surrender. Sri Lankan politicians do likewise; they, too, hurl corpses (of journalists) at one another to score political points, so to speak. What may be called ‘cadaver politics’, however, is not of recent origin.

In 1990, the SLFP grandees, occupying the Opposition benches, used the assassination of veteran journalist and artiste, Richard de Zoysa, to gain political mileage. Three decades on, they (currently in the SLPP) are doing so again. On Wednesday, Minister Bandula Gunawardena made a vain attempt to counter the SJB’s claim by mentioning the killing of Richard. He almost wept for Richard, killed during the government of the current Opposition Leader’s late father, President Ranasinghe Premadasa. He was careful not to mention The Sunday Leader Editor Lasantha Wickrematunge, killed during a previous Rajapaksa government. Those who defended the Premadasa government then are in the Opposition at present. Parliament was reeking of duplicity.

The yahapalana camp exploited the assassination of Lasantha to gain political mileage in 2014/15, the way the UNP used the Premawathie Manamperi killing, among other things, to win the 1977 general election. But after being ensconced in power, the UNP-led UNF government conveniently forgot Lasantha. It could also have had the attacks on Sirasa and other media institutions during the Rajapaksa government probed and the attackers and their political masters brought to justice. The SJB MPs were then in the UNF government, and some of them even held ministerial portfolios in it. Will they explain why they failed to do so?

If the government is as squeaky clean as it claims to be, then there is no reason why it should fear any media institution. Only the regimes whose dealings, financial or otherwise, are not open and above board, turn hostile towards the media.

Let the politicians toying with the idea of throttling the media outfits perceived to be anti-government in a bid to suppress the truth be warned that theirs is a futile effort like ‘using a loincloth to control dysentery’. Successive governments have tried this method without any success. It is bound to go pear-shaped again.