No, The Ends Do Not Always Justify The Means
By Emil van der Poorten –June 19, 2016
Emil van der Poorten
Except that it would have provoked the editor’s red pencil, I’d have ended the title of this piece with “… particularly when they (those means) only succeed in perpetuating what the “ends” were supposed to remove!
In case there is any doubt – apart from those embedded in some of the moronic brigades that insist on demonstrating their total lack of intelligence – I speak of the current Maithripala/Ranil (MR2) government.
What has raised the ire of those observing the current political scene has been unquestionable proof that this government has slipped into the cabinet of ministers and into other positions of power and responsibility those who, to use the old term, should not have been touched with the proverbial barge pole. And I make this judgement not purely on the application of the yardsticks of honesty and principle but on the more mundane one of the public’s perception of it’s government. You don’t have to be some kind of a Sherlock Holmes of an investigative reporter to ferret out these names with, at the very least, “doubtful associations.”
The return of the culture of violence that was particularly aimed at dissenting journalists was front and centre again, recently, with the assault on a man who has, apparently and in a regional newspaper, kept investigating the behaviour of the infamous Lansa family of the western seaboard. In case readers are unfamiliar with some of the headlines that these folk generated was one where, after a particularly heinous piece of behaviour which not only went unpunished but was not even investigated, this particular member of the clan was paid what amounted to some “State Visit” by His Majesty Mahinda Rajapaksa, thereby giving the seal of respectability and approval to said crime.
In an effort to provide background to the recent assault on a respected and experienced journalist (again, in the premises of a court of law?) mention was made of the primary suspect being a sibling of a member of the MR2 cabinet. In case the reference escapes the reader, THE MR2 CABINET HAS ONE OF THE LANSA BROTHERS AS A MEMBER PAID OUT OF THE PUBLIC PURSE! If proof be needed that this is not some kind of “white sheep” of that flock, that Minister was quoted extensively in the same report attempting to rebut some of the speculation and accusations of complicity in this piece of thuggery which was reminiscent of the days when Taraki and Lasantha Wickrematunge were “taken out”, Keith Noyahr was beaten within an inch of his life and fled into tombstone silence in Great Britain and there was what can accurately be described as a mass exodus to foreign shores of journalists trying to ply their trade in Silly Lanka. It now seems like the MR2 government is prepared to look aside while we return to a culture where Sri Lanka was considered one of the most dangerous places in the world for (honest) journalists.
You want proof of more copy-catting by the MR2 lot of what their predecessors, the Mahinda Rajapaksa (MR1) entourage indulged in?
