Cartoon
by Prageeth Eknaligoda, who was abduted and made to disapper 3 years ago
Hana Ibrahim
The
Department of Police is the country’s chief law enforcement authority. When its
spokesperson comes each and every day before the mass media and relates the
numerous activities and their surrounding circumstances to the public, he is
taken at his word. For, the word of the Police is the ultimate. Yet, what seems
to be happening is just the opposite.
The government could not have asked for a more favourable
setting, whether it was its own creation or if it was a result of converging
social and political realities, for a total onslaught on their ‘perceived
enemies’.
In the follow up to the recent shooting incident outside the
house of the President of the Bar Association of Sri Lanka (BASL),
Parliamentarian Wijeyadasa Rajapakshe, Police Spokesman, SSP Prishantha Jayakody
had reportedly claimed there was a contradiction in the statements taken with
regard to the shooting, alluding to inconsistency in the evidence
given.
Irked by the police backtracking, Rajapakshe, who has claimed the
statement he had made to the police had been issued to the media erroneously,
has threatened legal action against the police spokesman.
Rajapakshe has
said when talking in Parliament regarding a case that is being heard in a court
of law is prohibited, the statement such as the one made by the police spokesman
amounts to a contempt of court, and charged such announcements indicate of
manipulations by higher forces.
The police stance makes one wonder
whether the rule of law in this country has been totally abandoned by those who
govern the country.
To make matters worse, not just for the government
and its main players but for the country at large, its image and the very
survival of the independence of the Judiciary, a statement by ‘The Lawyers’
Collective’ deplored the ‘false propaganda’ against the Chief Justice deeming
them not as isolated incidents, but “meticulously orchestrated attacks coerced
and carried out at the behest of the highest in authority.”
It went on to
state, “Among the false accusations intended to mislead the public, they
(State-controlled media) have stated the Chief Justice had fixed the benches in
the Court of Appeal. It is common knowledge the Chief Justice has no role to
play in arranging any bench whatsoever in the Court of Appeal. Their insinuation
the Chief Justice selected a bench to hear her case is an insult to the dignity
and integrity of the Judges of the country’s higher judiciary.”
The
manipulation of the news cycles is not something alien to any party in power.
Yet when the State-controlled media are engaged in the manufacture of lies and
half-truths and when that same State-controlled outlets are dominating a market
share, and whose viewers and listeners are so gullible as has been proven time
after time, one wonders as to what alternatives are left for the intellectually
curious and even for those who hang around the threshold of rational
inquiry.
The government could not have asked for a more favourable
setting, whether it was its own creation or if it was a result of converging
social and political realities, for a total onslaught on their ‘perceived
enemies’.
To brand the sitting Chief Justice as an active politician and
term the members of the Bar Association as conspirators is something beyond the
pale. One can surely recall the malicious and utterly disingenuous campaign
aired by the State-controlled television during the last Presidential Elections
with grisly images of Idi Amin, the notorious Ugandan dictator. The messaging
was quite obvious but in retrospect, one is invariably prompted to wonder as to
what the real parallels are, if such parallels do exist.
Whatever the
government has in its repertoire of capabilities, a well-oiled propaganda
machine is certainly one of them. They know how to use it and drive home a point
to the extent the people become accustomed to what is being produced on a
regular basis by that machine. All the aces are held by the government, which
has opened a ‘Pandora’s Box’. Only thing that is left for the Opposition and for
the people is at the bottom of that box: ‘Hope.’
(The writer is the editor of
the Ceylon Today, a daily based in Colombo, where this piece was originally
appeared)
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SLG
The Conflict Of Interest And What The CJ Has Not Answered
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Sri Lanka ranked 12th highest source country of asylum-seekers who claimed refuge in 44 industrialised countries last year, reports the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).
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