More about the solution for Sri Lanka’s current crisis
Radio frequencies are public property given away for nothing, and MPs are traders in the state they govern. Victor Ivan uses both to argue that a balance-of-payments fix alone will change nothing.
මගේ සිහිනය
Answering websites that claimed the Rajapaksa government was buying Ravaya through Milinda Moragoda and paying Ivan a bribe, Ivan sets out Ravaya’s 27-year record of refusing favours: turning down Chandrika Kumaratunga’s offer of the Lake House chairmanship, free newsprint from the anti-Premadasa impeachment camp, and Harry Jayawardena’s private money. He describes his dream for Ravaya before he retires — staff as shareholders, new presses, a stronger paper and a web presence — and the conditions under which Moragoda would buy only a 40 per cent minority stake, inviting alternatives.
ජනමාධ්යවල සමාජ වගකීම
The coarseness ruling Sri Lankan politics is equally visible in the media, and in the temple, the church and the courts. Journalists are the teachers of modern society, but teachers without learning, training or reading do damage. Television and radio carry almost nothing of intellectual value: political discussion programmes pick guests the way a cockfight picks birds, and a presenter succeeds by turning the discussion into a brawl. Stations chase audiences with giveaways rather than quality, some pushing the foolish belief that listening all day can make you a millionaire. Ivan argues the media could fill the gap left by the absence of career guidance in schools — European countries want skilled tradesmen more than professionals, and nurses trained here cannot work abroad because their training omits English. Channels teach French and Italian cooking; few Sri Lankans can cook rice properly or make a decent cup of tea.
පරිගණක මගඩිය ඇත්තක්ද?
The official result gave Rajapaksa 6,015,934 votes to Fonseka’s 4,173,185 — a margin above 1.8 million. Fonseka and the JVP say that figure was manufactured by the Elections Secretariat’s computer unit rather than summed from the counting centres, and some UNP spokesmen agree, but none has proved it. The signed centre reports are in the hands of party organisers in every seat; comparing a sample against the declared total would take three or four hours. That nobody has done so suggests the claim is untrue. Reports of opposition agents being driven from counting centres cover fewer than ten places, and around eighty officials staff each one — too many to suborn, and the ballots are already marked. The Elections Commissioner is also at fault for not explaining publicly how the count and final tally were conducted.
ජනාධිපතිවරණය හා නීතියේ පාලනය
The Elections Commissioner has said he may have to withdraw from running the election because his orders are not obeyed — the police ignore him, and state media ignore the Competent Authority. However much authority the constitution grants him, nothing in the country lets him exercise it. This is not new: under Chandrika Kumaratunga an attempt to arrest the Elections Commissioner was stopped only by Attorney General Kamalasabesan’s intervention, and it was Chief Justice Sarath Nanda Silva who advised her to make it. The 1981 Jaffna district council poll was the first time a ruling party seized election administration outright, and Commissioner Jayasekera resigned over it. Since 1982 no election has been free and fair. Powers mean nothing while the ruler declines to obey the law.
ජනමාධ්ය මර්දනය
Six media organisations held a meeting against the revival of the Press Council at which the main speakers were not journalists but Ranil Wickremesinghe and Mangala Samaraweera. Ivan reads it as a party turning a media platform into its own, and argues that repression is native to this political system but is sharpened by the media’s own misjudgements — including, during the war, forgetting that the power to decide questions of war and peace rests with an elected government.
අදහස් පළකිරීමේ නිදහසට තහංචි නොපැනවිය යුතුය
With the war over, Ivan argues, every restriction placed on expression directly or indirectly should go — including the freedom to criticise the government, which a government put in place by the people must hear. On the Press Council revival he finds neither option good, and points to India, where the regulator is built from the media organisations and Parliament together.
පුවත්පත් මණ්ඩල ක්රමය නැවත ඇති කිරීම
The Press Council was left dormant in 2002 so that the industry could regulate itself, and is now being revived. Ivan sets out what is wrong with the law — registration of every owner and editor, renewable yearly — and what is wrong with the self-regulation that replaced it, and concludes that the media organisations’ only course is to negotiate a single institution in which the government also has a share.
පෝද්දල ජයන්තට පහරදීම
After a television programme used footage of Poddala Jayantha and Sunanda Deshapriya while
alleging that some journalists were paid by the LTTE, Poddala came to Ivan and asked him to
intervene. Ivan describes what he did, what the president said when the question was put to
him, and why he thinks naming such journalists would have been ruinous — and argues that the
fault can only be corrected by looking critically back at the policy that produced it.
කර්තෘ සංසදයේ ආචාර ධර්ම හා පුවත්පත් පැමිණිලි කොමිසම
Reading Ian Beales’s review in the Press Complaints Commission’s 2007 annual report, Ivan
sets out a verdict the industry has not answered: four years on, self-regulation stands
still, complaints are few and weak, the newspapers themselves are divided over whether they
want it, and the Editors’ Guild has let its own code go unreviewed. If neither the public it
protects nor the industry that made it believes in it, Beales asks, what future can it have?