Media and politics: The terrible twins!
Tuesday, 1 March 2016
Politician is top dog
There is no question that in the power hierarchy of our country the politician is top dog. Without his patronage, nothing has value. Even very private functions, a wedding, a funeral, a felicitation, has ‘cultural’ meaning only with the participation of the politician. Only he can bring legitimacy or social recognition.
The laws, systems, and traditions – they are secondary. What matters is what the politician wills. When the politician wants his friend to be awarded a government tender, the friend’s tender will be the best qualified bid. If he wants a road to go over his opponent’s land, that route will become the most efficient direction for that road to take. Only he knows best where to locate an airport or a sea port.
When the politician decides to call this country the “little miracle”, so it will be a “miracle”. A few months later he may consider “little miracle” too modest a description of the land on which he bestrides, and that the country ought to be promoted instead as the “wonder of Asia”. Now, the “little miracle” will quietly transform into the “wonder of Asia”, almost unnoticed, seamlessly. Such power is not to be taken lightly in the context of the society where it thrives.
The country lives hand to mouth, sustained formerly with Chinese largesse and now with a billion dollars deposited by a benevolent man from Belgium. A little trouble in a major tea buying country sends the economy into crisis mode.
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In 1938, during a heated argument with Churchill, his cousin Lord Londonderry, a pacifist, tried to drive home a point by asking, “Have you read my latest book?” “No” replied Churchill, “I only read for pleasure or profit”
Tuesday, 1 March 2016
The ironies inherent in the regular lambasting of the so-called free media by the political establishment, particularly when ensconced in power, and the media’s inevitable self-righteous responses, will not be lost on any independent observer. Criticisms levelled at one could just as easily be thrown back at the accuser. After all, in the way they have evolved here, the two institutions are very similar; they could well be a mirror reflection of the other, twins; discredited, self-promoting, mediocre, yet with an iron grip on our collective consciousness.
Armand de Souza took on the might of the British Empire on behalf of a people who had been grievously wronged. He was followed by a series of brilliant journalists, who in various ways uplifted the standards of public discourse
Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe. The ironies inherent in the regular lambasting of the so-called free media by the political establishment, particularly when ensconced in power, and the media’s inevitable self-righteous responses, will not be lost on any independent observer
Politician is top dogThere is no question that in the power hierarchy of our country the politician is top dog. Without his patronage, nothing has value. Even very private functions, a wedding, a funeral, a felicitation, has ‘cultural’ meaning only with the participation of the politician. Only he can bring legitimacy or social recognition.
The laws, systems, and traditions – they are secondary. What matters is what the politician wills. When the politician wants his friend to be awarded a government tender, the friend’s tender will be the best qualified bid. If he wants a road to go over his opponent’s land, that route will become the most efficient direction for that road to take. Only he knows best where to locate an airport or a sea port.
When the politician decides to call this country the “little miracle”, so it will be a “miracle”. A few months later he may consider “little miracle” too modest a description of the land on which he bestrides, and that the country ought to be promoted instead as the “wonder of Asia”. Now, the “little miracle” will quietly transform into the “wonder of Asia”, almost unnoticed, seamlessly. Such power is not to be taken lightly in the context of the society where it thrives.
The country lives hand to mouth, sustained formerly with Chinese largesse and now with a billion dollars deposited by a benevolent man from Belgium. A little trouble in a major tea buying country sends the economy into crisis mode.
