Lasantha Had Courage
Malinda Seneviratne
Greetings to the organizers and my fellow panelists. I participate with the full knowledge that the organizers have been at the receiving end of criticism from all quarters, those I consider friends and those who would consider me adversary. I am aware, also, that friends and colleagues though my fellow panelists are, they roughly fall into a single camp. I am an outsider, in that sense. But I believe, still, that our commonalities outweigh our differences.
Media has a role in all societies. Media can be effective in a positive way and it can be destructive and divisive too. The pen, to use the old metaphor, is not always innocent. Pens are frequently agenda-driven and used in defense and in attack, by governments and those opposed to governments, those who want to protect regime and those who want regime-change, those who prop systems and those who wish system-change. It would lovely indeed if media was always pro-people, but in the real world media says ‘pro-people’ but by omission and commission act in ways that go against popular sentiment. Self-righteousness is cheap. Self-reflection, self-criticism, expensive.
Note – This content is removed upon request by Malinda; we will re-post tonight after the event is done’.
*Malinda’s presentation to the Sri Lankans Without Borders (SLWB) event on the Lasantha Wickrematunge Memorial Lecture.
PC Elections: The ‘Ugly’ Rises Again
Malinda Seneviratne
When the first provincial council elections were held on April 28, 1988 hundreds were killed. The JVP in its Deshapremi Janatha Vyaparaya avatar decreed that the first to cast his or her vote in each and every polling station was ‘fair target’. Emerging from the fires that engulfed the country and its youth towards the end of the eighties and clothed with a democratic new-look, the JVP, in time, actually contested the PC elections. That’s another story, however.
The worst PC election in remembered history is ‘Wayamba 1999’ held during theChandrika Kumaratunga presidency. For the thuggery unleashed on opponent and voter, voter impersonation, intimidation of election officials etc., Wayamba ’99 is second only to the elections held during the UNP-JVP bheeshanaya and the 1982 Referendum.
The 17th Amendment of 2001 which yielded an independent Elections Commission and an independent Police Commission cured many but not all the ills of ‘democracy’ with respect to elections and election campaigns. If one played ‘Relative Merits’ then Sri Lanka has come a long way from 1982, 1988-89 and 1999, but that is a dangerous game which in effect can only stifle processes of further democratization, especially since the 18th Amendment did away with the 17th and all the checks and balances therein.
One day before the election, TNA’s Jaffna District candidate Ananthi Sasitharan’s house in Ariyalai came under attack. The lady alleges that there is a concerted move to eliminate ‘witnesses to what happened during the last days of the war’. Since she is the wife of former LTTE political commissar for Trincomalee District Sasitharan alias Ezhilan, detractors including victims of LTTE terrorism and their loved ones can and will say that what she suffered was ‘mild’ and not amounting to ‘just deserts’. But a terrorist’s wife is not necessarily a terrorist. She has done nothing illegal. Association will mark her no doubt, but association does not imply culpability. Her candidacy is as legitimate as that of anyone else.Read More
