A “Geezer” Columnist In The English Media of Sri Lanka!
By Emil van der Poorten -October 7, 2012
Emil van der Poorten
Being afforded the luxury of indulging an ambition dating back to my teen years to enter journalism, I began to write for publication in a variety of Sri Lankan journals a couple of years after my return to the land of my birth in 2006.
The first newspaper to indulge my ambitions as a journalist was the Sunday English Lakbimanews. That exercise ceased after about three or four columns were published when it was obvious that I was not about to be paid for my efforts, something guaranteed when the relationship began!
Then it was material being published, sometimes pseudonymously, in the Sunday Times, the Sunday Island, Montage magazine and, finally, the Sunday Leader. The Sunday Times, I now believe, because of a relationship with the Rajapakse Regimesimilar to that between that Regime and Ranil Wickremesinghe, gradually tapered off my “Haris Tumpane” column. Where, initially at least, I accepted the non-publication of my weekly writing as being due to the exigencies of advertising demands etc., I was ultimately forced into the recognition that this was driven by a need to ensure a particular editorial “line” vis-à-vis the government which my writing was not in consonance with. This was confirmed when, after it seemed that “advertising pressures” had eased and there was room for a return of my “Tales from the Backwoods,” I was told (via the “grapevine”) that “We can’t touch you with a barge-pole!” By then this hardly surprised me, coming from a newspaper which would not publish anything contradictory to what their company lawyer had to say in his journalistic contributions to its pages!
For the past three and a half years, on the invitation of the woman who had taken Lasantha Wickrematunga’s place on his assassination, I have been a columnist, with the “Renaissance Man” by-line, in The Sunday Leader and, during that time, despite a few hiccups have enjoyed the exercise! Recently, subsequent toAsanga Seneviratne buying a 70%+ controlling interest in the paper, Frederica Jansz was fired for allegedly refusing to toe a new editorial line at the newspaper that, until then, proclaimed on its front page that it was “Unbowed and Unafraid.” By a strange coincidence, my column disappeared from the paper on Sunday the 23rd of September, as well! I have since been assured that this was due to some kind of mix-up and that my column would continue to appear. That I am taking this assurance “under advisement” should not surprise anyone given the circumstances. Suffice it to say that, in spite of significant arrears of payment going back several months, I shall continue to supply copy to The Sunday Leader until and unless there is ever an attempt to gag me or censor my material to fulfill someone else’s political agenda.
