Ranil applies brakes on media freedom

Ranil Wickremesinghe’s views on media freedom are two-faced.  One, when in the opposition and one when in power.  One sports a smile and the other a scowl.  This two-facedness, if you will, is not Mr Wickremesinghe’s preserve.  It’s part of the political culture.  In general those in power mimic those they replaced and those who are replaced mimic those who replaced them.  On most counts. 

 

"I will teach journalists a good lesson!"

It is typical for the Opposition to champion media freedom and for those in power to curb the same, directly or indirectly.  It is also typical for those in power, especially those who feel insecure, to vilify critics by claiming that they are serving the interest of ‘the enemy’ (variously defined of course).   During the Rajapaksa regime those who criticized the government were labeled traitors in the pay of separatists or foreign powers intent on dividing the country.  During the regime of Chandrika Kumaratunga critics were called ‘Sinhala Buddhist chauvinists’ or ‘war-mongers’.   Today’s critics are called ‘Rajapaksa loyalists’. 

So there’s really no ‘venasa’ (change) in Ranil Wickremesinghe’s occasional attacks on and not-so-veiled threats against journalists and media houses.   Not too long ago he referred to a journalist as a dog and called for the control of certain ‘dog-media-institutions’ thereby clearly indicating that he’s moved from good-governance to dog-governance; quite unbecoming, especially for a man who his wide-eyed loyalists consider ‘a brain and nothing else’ (thanikara molayak). 

Just the other day he ranted once again, targeting his longtime bugbear, the genial and quite nondescript editor of the Daily Mirror, Kesara Abeywardena.  This is what he said:

"Last Monday's Daily Mirror called for the removal of Foreign Minister Mangala Samaraweera. I know the editor of the Daily Mirror. He once wrote saying I too should be removed from UNP leadership. We will have to see what we should do if he does not resign from his post. He is possessed by Mahinda Rajapaksa. Daily Mirror carried anti Tamil, anti Muslim articles. Now they want ministers to resign. We must teach journalists a good lesson."

What was Kesara’s crime, though?  Did he publish a news item where he craftily threw in a quote by some political maverick making a speech in an unrelated context, selectively extracting the line ‘Mangala should be removed?’  Did he write an editorial calling for the Foreign Minister’s removal?  No.  All he did was to publish a political commentary titled “Why Mangala must exit and Amunugama must enter”.   The columnist, Dayan Jayatilleka, to be fair, makes a cogent argument for the Foreign Minister’s removal.

Dayan has his preferred political outcomes.  His commentary is informed by the same.  He is clever with words and he knows enough history, political science and sociology to make his conclusions sound like they are the only ones that are logical.  There have been times when I’ve disagreed with Dayan, but on this occasion I concur with him totally.  But let’s assume that he is way off the mark. Let’s assume that he is just making a case for an outcome that serves his political objectives.  The fact is, however, that his is only a comment. 

A comment, Mr Wickremesinghe.  It’s free, Mr Wickremesinghe.  He is offering an opinion on facts which he has not distorted.  Weighted maybe, but that’s allowed Mr Wickremesinghe.  You should know this.  Editors, especially liberal editors, reserve space for regular columnists from across the political spectrum.  Kesara gives space to people who are rabidly opposed to Dayan Jayatilleka and who regularly trot out what I would call nauseatingly servile pieces about your administration, Mr Wickremesinghe.  I don’t know of any occasion when someone objecting to such views called him names and declared that Kesara would be taught a lesson. 

What does Ranil Wickremesinghe want, I wonder.  The entire media to come together and call him ‘saviour’, salaam him at every turn, sing hosannas and crack down hard on his detractors? Is that the ‘media freedom’ that this good-governance government envisaged, never mind what was promised? 

Ranil has issued a threat in no uncertain terms.  He’s basically told Kesara ‘Resign or else!’  He’s read the riot act and he has the riot police ready. That’s the message he’s given and not just to Kesara but anyone who dares question his judgment.  Well, speaking of judgment, he was found lacking when he appointed Arjuna Mahendran as Governor, Central Bank.  He did fire some shots at those who criticized Mahendran, ably supported of course by his loyal sidekick Lakshman Kiriella, the Minister of Higher Education whose judgment too has been called to question after it was found that he had appointed dozens of advisors with hardly any educational qualifications and even tried to justify the use of public funds to pay the salaries of these ‘party loyalists’.  Ranil’s tirades did not stop the media.  It did not stop commentators.  Arjuna Mahendran had to go.  At this rate, the call will not be for the exit of a bad-judgment-appointee but the appointer himself, Ranil should understand.  Arrogance was a key factor that saw the ‘exiting’ of Mahinda Rajapaksa.  This too he should not forget. 

He says that the Daily Mirror has carried anti-Tamil and anti-Muslim articles?  Maybe that’s how he reads and maybe that’s an indication of his ability to read, but then again others can say that the Daily Mirror has carried ‘anti-Sinhala’ and ‘anti-Buddhist’ articles.    After all, the Daily Mirror gives as much or more space to anti-Sinhala and anti-Buddhist commentators or, if you want to be sweet about it, those who attack Sinhala and Buddhist extremists and slip in crass generalizations to attack the entire collective.  Hasn’t Wickremesinghe seen any of these pieces?  

Those who know Wickremesinghe’s ways will not be surprised at this manifest inability to stomach any criticism and especially calling his judgment to question.  What might surprise a lot of people is the deafening silence of the bleeding-heart media-rights advocates who could barely hold their tongues at the slightest perceived wrong done to journalists.  What happened to the Editors’ Guild?  What of the Free Media Movement?  What of their lords and ladies abroad who regurgitate their whines in international forums and fire off strongly worded missives to anyone who might be willing to listen?  How about the rights-bloc (shall we call them?), those who cheered the yahapaalanists all the way?  How about those self-righteous above-them-all columnists who rant and rave about Sinhala Buddhist chauvinism (but are quiet on Tamil, Muslim and Christian varieties) in the Daily Mirror and elsewhere who also talk about media freedom?  How about Dr Ranga Kalansuriya?  How many such tirades from Wickremesinghe will it take for them to wake up or will that never happen because they are simple in pretend-slumber?  

Let’s stop there.  There’s no point doing the horage-ammagen-pena-ahana number (asking the crook’s mother about the crook’s whereabouts). 

Let’s get back to Ranil Wickremesinghe.  On the 16^th of May, 2004 the ‘Sunday Observer’ published an article titled ‘Move over Ranil, your time’s up’.   It was a political comment.  It was an exit call.  Wickremesinghe didn’t say a word.  He didn’t call for the particular editor’s blood.  He didn’t say ‘we must teach journalists a good lesson’.  He was quite the lamb.  He was in the Opposition then.  Says a lot doesn’t it? 

Malinda Seneviratne is a freelance writer.  Blog: malindawords.blogspot.com.  Email: malindasenevi@gmail.com.  Twitter: malindasene.

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Freedom of expression and walls (regime-made and self-made)

The walls are coming down in the City of Colombo.  This is one of the more apparent elements of the improvements that we see in the city’s landscape.  It has provoked an interesting response from an academic, I was told: mardanaye thaappath e vidihatama kadanavanam hondai (it would be good if the walls of repression are similarly dismantled).  This academic had elaborated and I translate here the comment as it was conveyed to me, leaving out names not out of fear but because they are irrelevant: ‘There are only two journalists who are able to write without fear.  I want to write about these walls; i.e. those of repression. In fact this is an article that I write every single day.  In my head.’

First of all I think he was grossly underestimating fearlessness and the numbers of the fearless.  There are many who openly criticize the regime and moreover do this on a regular basis. He is correct, however, on the fact of walls, although I might disagree about their strengths, heights and the costs of transgression.   

There are no countries without restriction, without censorship, formally or informally.  Some are smart about it, some not.  Some don’t have the resources to maintain an information apparatus so efficient that few would even believe it existed.  Some actually do.  What is important to understand is that in this uneven world the fact that there are rules implies that they can be stretched.  There’s always a way around censorship but there are certain conditions that must be fulfilled, fear or rather the overcoming of fear being just one.

There are two kinds of restrictions. There are formal rules which indicate boundaries that separate possible from impossible or at least ‘deemed impossible’.  Then there are informal rules which flow from the not so ad hoc construction of fear-culture.  Such restrictions are created by ‘exampling’ if you will of those who transgress the relevant lines.  Intimidation in the form of threat, attack, abduction, torture and even killing are well known instruments of defining such lines. Manifest lethargy of the law in investigating cases where such instruments have been used not only indicates strength or otherwise of the relevant legal apparatus but reveals key characteristics of relevant regime, including degree of complicity. 

How does one operate in regimes which are made of repressive walls, formal or otherwise? 

I believe that the most important weapon is integrity.  If one is motivated by malice, then one immediately turns the ground on which one stands and the territories that need to be crossed into quicksand.  This makes wall-jumping or wall-breaking extremely hard.  If, for example, one’s opposition to a particular regime and its repressive infrastructure is motivated by a preference for a different political camp that neither has a better track record in these matter nor shows any signs of having the political will and the ideological bent to do things differently if in power, wall-battering becomes a tainted operation and one which has to be undertaken without requisite numbers. 

If, for example, a person who has directly or indirectly supported a terrorist outfit on the premise ‘my enemy’s enemy is my friend,’ that person’s credentials as a righteous advocate of media freedom, let’s say, are severely compromised.  If someone is brave in pointing error of a particular political entity but is blind to the blemishes of another, the fact of selectivity compromises integrity.  If one advocates media freedom and goes on to mobilize support through the development of organizations and proceeds to pilfer the organizational kitty and use the process for self-aggrandizement, then too integrity loses out. 

Integrity constitutes the legs that make for wall-jumping, the shoulder that makes wall-breaking possible.  It is the heart that manifests itself as a beacon that draw mass to cause.  

One has to also avoid becoming victim of one’s own propaganda.  The enemy hardly ever appears in true dimensions.  It is profitable to make people believe that walls exist where there are none or else to convince them that existing walls are stronger and taller than they really are.  Sometimes, we often forget, that we too add to enemy-size. We make gonibillas (monsters) for purposes of expediency and they take a life of their own inside our own minds!  This is how walls acquire feet and start marching towards us from all sides.  We believe that the perimeter has contracted when in fact it is just that we’ve decided to stop a long way before we reach the no-no line. 

Wall makers know that people have prices and sometimes they purchase the would be wall-breaker.  We all have something to lose. We all come with a price tag. The question is whether or not we sell ourselves cheap.  Our price is a personal wall and we don’t do ourselves any favours by indicating to wall-maker what our price is.  

Then there is the wall of ignorance.  There is a wall of sloth.  Another of dishonesty.  These are not regime-made walls. They are the instruments of self-censorship. 

The first step to wall-breaking is the breaking of the walls that we ourselves create.  The academic who writes the wall-breaking article in his mind every single day, might do well to examine if he has himself constructed any walls and whether his inhibitions and lack of mobility is as defined by these as by regime-constructed repressive walls.  In fact, that’s a good exercise for all journalist and indeed all citizens, myself included of course.

msenevira@gmail.com

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The reason of protest



Media rights organizations demonstrating in Colombo.  Pic by Rukshan Abeywansha


Pensioners took to the streets early this week.  Media organizations protested too.  On Saturday, a dozen or so dog lovers stood at Lipton Circus pointing out that the city can be beautified without ‘white-vanning’ dogs.  University academics are up in arms.  Teachers complain of grievances.  University students boycott lectures as though their lives depend on it.  The non-academic staff of the universities have shown up in Colombo in considerable numbers to register objection.  Doctors threaten to strike. Nurses often do.  Political parties are always on the lookout for a cause to take up.

Now there are those who would add all these agitations up and say Sri Lanka is on the verge of an Arab-Spring equivalent; never mind the fact that the season of agitation in that part of the world was carefully scripted by those who really don’t give a damn about democracy, freedom and what-not and would not shed a tear for the victims of inevitable violence nor suffer any pangs on account of the anarchy they provoke.  But protests are a part of democracy and are a part of our political culture.  Some yield results, some don’t.  Some make headlines, some are ignored.  They don’t necessarily snowball into mass agitation and people’s movement for political change. They could, though. 

Protests indicate displeasure.  Moreover they indicate that establish means of getting grievances addressed have not worked.  Therefore, even though protests are prone to political hijacking, they are useful political moments for regimes or particular institutions to reassess policy.  Typically, the agitated are concerned only about the problems they face and when they table demands they are not concerned about other problems that redressing might engender. They can say ‘not our problem’ and wash their hands off.  Governments can’t do that.  They have to keep the large picture in mind.  They have to come up with comprehensive solutions, insist on the principle of give-and-take, work with the aggrieved by appealing to their better senses.

The biggest problem, then, is the ad hoc nature of policy and the inability to back decision with effective communication.  As of now, the generous view would be that the government has a comprehensive plan, only it has failed to communicate it to all stakeholders.  What is apparent however is that ad-hoc is the name of the game.  The pernicious designs on agent provocateurs cannot be the one and only ‘out’ when it comes to dismissing agitation.  The Government must do better than that. 

The eighties were like this, one may recall.  All kinds of agitation, all kinds of excuses for non-addressing of grievance, a clear movement in policy choice from ignoring to insult to baton-charge to harassment of protest leaders to outright slaughter describes the unfolding of that decade.  In this instance, the dismal track record of the regime-haters, especially their complicity in the machinations of both the LTTE and anti Sri Lankan actors in the international arena, have prevented people from rallying round them but this is not a cheque the Government can cash any number of times.

The Government would do well to look at all the faces arrayed against it and recognize among them many decent individuals who actually supported the Government in its policy choices regarding the LTTE and even with respect to its principal detractors, the UNP.  They might not shift political loyalties, but they probably will withdraw support if they haven’t already.  It is one thing to side with the Government against the LTTE and quite another to stand with the regime when key personalities with inflated egos and diminished common sense act against the national interest which includes the general wellbeing of the people. 

In all these encounters two factors are critical: reason and strength.  No one believes he/she is unreasonable, but everyone knows something about strength, one’s one and that of the ‘enemy’.  When there is lack, support is solicited and not always from the most decent quarters.  The protestor may be weak compared to a government, but he/she can find stronger allies overseas, even at the risk of compromising national sovereignty.  Politics, simply put, is not a nice game.  But in this game of winners and losers and victories squandered by arrogance and ignorance, the following advice from a Mexican revolutionary and poet might be useful to all parties:

“If you cannot have both reason and strength, always choose reason, and leave strength to the enemy. In many battles, it is force that makes it possible to win a victory, but the struggle as a whole can only be won by reason. The strong man will never be able to draw reason from his strength, whereas we can always draw strength from our reason.”

There’s a future at stake.  A nation’s future.  May everyone defer to reason over emotion, and may that be the source of strength for all parties!

['The Nation' Editorial, July 15, 2012]

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