Will media secretary ignore PM’s order too?

Apr 30, 2016

New secretary of the media and information ministry, lawyer Nimal Bopage is seemingly ignoring an order by the prime minister to meet him immediately, after he had sent a press release to the media without the knowledge of his minister or the deputy minister, reports say. He has been instructed so by an adviser to the president who had got him appointed to the position. In this scenario, not only the minister and the deputy minister, but also the prime minister is seemingly to be ignored by Bopage.

The PM has told ministers that the joint opposition is not something prohibited. It might not get recognition within parliament, but they are allowed to function as a separate group.

 

Also, he has stressed that it is a blatant violation of administrative ethics for a third party which has nothing to do with parliamentary affairs to issue media statements over a matter of parliament. Such authoritarian actions will create inconvenience to the president and himself, the PM noted. The media secretary’s having crossed the limits of his powers and acting thus over a matter for which even speaker Karu Jayasuriya has been unable to give a solution, has created a crisis in the national government. It is clear that anti-government forces are behind this entire episode. Those forces have been able to use the media secretary to their advantage even without his knowing it. 

 

Bopage was the working director of Rupavahini Corporation during the final stages of the Rajapaksa regime. At a media briefing yesterday (29), he said he would obtain advice from the IGP and the attorney general with regard to the use of the term joint opposition. That statement clearly demonstrates his stupidity.

 

A media expert commented to us, “If the AG and the IGP give instructions to the media ministry with regard to the terms it should use, such things happen only in dictatorial regimes, not in democratic countries.”