Cracks appear in Yahapalanaya
By all accounts, the Yahapalana government is going through a rough patch. Some folks quip, tongue-in- cheek that the Joint Opposition’s coconut dashing has begun to work. Whatever the otherworldly forces behind the fallout, this is bad show. The UNP stalwart and the Minister of Higher Education and Highways Lakshman Kiriella was on record berating in abusive language a journalist after the former was exposed in influence peddling in an academic appointment at the Kelaniya University.
The Minister has sent a letter recommending a supporter be recruited as a temporary lecturer at the university. He later justified the action claiming that ‘he had only exercised the power vested in him under the University Act and had only asked to consider the qualifications of the said individual. (The Federation of University Teachers Association (FUTA) which played a key activist role in the election of President Maithripala Sirisena has demanded that the Minister should now resign)
Minister Kiriella’s expletive- rich response to an innocuous media query brings him to the good company of a few others political bigwigs in the previous regime, especially Gotabhaya Rajapaksa and Mervyn Silva. However, the incumbent Higher Education Minister should be thankful that the media was kind enough to expunge the expletives in his response, so that the listeners and the readers had to make use of their imagination. However, the then Sunday Leader printed in verbatim the Defence Secretary Gotabhaya Rajapaksa’s menacing response to Frederica Jansz, including that gem of an ingenious insult, ‘sh*t eating pig’.
By all accounts, the Yahapalana government is going through a rough patch. Some folks quip, tongue-in- cheek that the Joint Opposition’s coconut dashing has begun to work. Whatever the otherworldly forces behind the fallout, this is bad show. The UNP stalwart and the Minister of Higher Education and Highways Lakshman Kiriella was on record berating in abusive language a journalist after the former was exposed in influence peddling in an academic appointment at the Kelaniya University.The Minister has sent a letter recommending a supporter be recruited as a temporary lecturer at the university. He later justified the action claiming that ‘he had only exercised the power vested in him under the University Act and had only asked to consider the qualifications of the said individual. (The Federation of University Teachers Association (FUTA) which played a key activist role in the election of President Maithripala Sirisena has demanded that the Minister should now resign)
Minister Kiriella’s expletive- rich response to an innocuous media query brings him to the good company of a few others political bigwigs in the previous regime, especially Gotabhaya Rajapaksa and Mervyn Silva. However, the incumbent Higher Education Minister should be thankful that the media was kind enough to expunge the expletives in his response, so that the listeners and the readers had to make use of their imagination. However, the then Sunday Leader printed in verbatim the Defence Secretary Gotabhaya Rajapaksa’s menacing response to Frederica Jansz, including that gem of an ingenious insult, ‘sh*t eating pig’.
Minister Kiriella’s letter to the Kelaniya University is a blatant abuse, no matter whatever justifications
he later concocted including the misinterpretation of his powers under the University Act, itself.
Equally disturbing is his manifest contempt to the media personnel, who dared to question about the letter. For those who believed that the new administration would herald a new era of accountability and civility, that was a disappointment.
But, those events should not be a surprise. The sense of condescension which was given verbal expression by Mr. Kiriella is deeply entrenched in a political and bureaucratic system that for too long used to view the average public as no better than goats whose only use is to be milked for the elections.
Equally disturbing is his manifest contempt to the media personnel, who dared to question about the letter. For those who believed that the new administration would herald a new era of accountability and civility, that was a disappointment.
But, those events should not be a surprise. The sense of condescension which was given verbal expression by Mr. Kiriella is deeply entrenched in a political and bureaucratic system that for too long used to view the average public as no better than goats whose only use is to be milked for the elections.
