Thoughts from London

Curiouser and curiouser, as Alice said in Wonderland. All of a sudden there is a hoo-ha in the local and foreign media about President Rajapaksa taking wing to London.

Had the president just slipped away for a week or two to see his kith and kin in Old Blighty as his predecessor used to do now and then, the media would probably have snorted in annoyance turned to their daily grind forgetting all about Mahinda and his chintanaya until his return.

But no. The president’s sudden departure as it was called, had tongues wagging and media maestros at home and abroad reaching for their laptops or whatever was on their laps to dash off some highly speculative stories on Rajapaksa’s exit strategy.

The speculation was further fuelled when a presidential retinue went in the train of the head of state. The media having woken up from its Rip van Winkle-like slumber concluded that it had to be something big for the president to fly the coop, as they say. Without even a by- your- leave to the media, naughty, naughty.

The peevish threnody that followed was really because the media had been caught napping. After all, if the president intends to take two steps forward or one step back, the media expects to be kept informed of it in advance in the form of a media release. For much too long some of our media maestros have been living a handout- to-mouth existence, the old art of digging for news abandoned for slothful journalism.

So our worthies at home and abroad got together and came out in a rash of speculation that seemed like an outbreak of journalistic chicken pox.

Not to be outdone, those who should have kept wiser counsel, turned into instant experts on why the president “suddenly” left for London to meet British Prime Minister Tony Blair. It had to do with the conflict at home, what else!

Norway’s special envoy Jon Hanssen-Bauer is reported as telling radio NRKP 1- whatever those coded letters stand for- that the meeting is “presumably an attempt to secure India’s support in favour of Sri Lanka’s policy” on the ethnic question. Some presumption!

One does not know, of course, whether this double barrelled name carrier actually said so to this Norwegian radio. The issue is compounded by the fact that he is quoted as saying so by TamilNet, not the most reliable of news sources to judge by what Davide Vignati, the head of information of the International Committee of the Red Cross told his colleagues recently.

Anyway, if this Hanssen-Bauer chappie is the special envoy of the Norwegians to Sri Lanka, he should go back to diplomatic school or wherever he came from and do a crash course on the abc of modern day diplomacy.

Could this man be as naïve as his quotable quote indicates? What he is saying in effect is that a word in Tony Blair’s ear will fix things between India and Sri Lanka so that New Delhi will support Colombo’s policies.

This Bauer fellow must surely be living in colonial times when some imperious Queen would wave her magic wand and the obedient Indians will fall to their knees and say yes memsahib in sufficiently obsequious tones.

Bauer’s ignorance is only surpassed by his condescension. Does he think that our sense of diplomatic rectitude and understanding of international relations is so juvenile that we would run to Britain to seek Blair’s help to win over India?It might be the Norwegian practice to run to Big Brother in Washington when its shoals of sardines are disappearing.

But it is surely not Sri Lanka’s diplomatic style to ask Britain to intercede when we are quite capable of conducting bilateral relations with our neighbour on our own without appealing to others to intervene on our behalf.

History records that Sinhala envoys were conducting royal business in the courts of Rome when the Norwegians were probably still running round in skins trying to hunt down whales as they still do despite international opposition.

Hanssen-Bauer is also quoted as telling the same radio that the Norwegians are “getting assailed almost on a daily basis in the Sri Lankan press as if we were favouring the Tigers.”

Perhaps the man should ponder why. If he has done his home work, he would have understood by now why a substantial section of the Sri Lanka population is highly sceptical, if not downright disgusted, with what they see as Norwegian duplicity over the years while parading before the world as the great facilitator.

Had Bauer spent an hour or two trying to find out why the Sri Lankan media is reacting as it does, he might be less loquacious and more circumspect.

While Bauer was “presumably” trying to unravel the reason for Mahinda Rajapaksa’s visit, the international media also displayed a surprising naivete.

The French news agency AFP in a report said “Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa has left here on a sudden visit to London for talks with Prime Minister Tony Blair, official sources said.”

Did official sources actually say it was a “sudden visit” as suggested in the report? The possibility of a presidential visit was initiated around March. Following talks with the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office over a period for a meeting with Mr Blair, the schedule was confirmed about three months ago.

Hanssen-Bauer cannot plead he did not know about it as the foreign office kept him informed of the visit when the Norwegian passed through London last month.

Nor was the meeting unexpected as the BBC’s Sinhala service, dubbed by some Sri Lankan protestors here as a willing mouthpiece for the Tigers in a petition to the BBC, tried to make out.

It might have come “unexpectedly” for the BBC but not to those in the know and who are aware that visits to important capitals to meet heads of government are not pulled out of a hat in some Houdini act. They are planned well ahead and mutually agreed on. One does not just jump into a plane and come knocking on the door to see who is at home.

The BBC Sinhala service could very easily have checked the story with the foreign office or Downing Street.

If it did not do this elementary journalists job even though wire services carried stories from Tuesday one needs to question the motive. Did it have its own agenda?

What all this sleight of hand immediately conveyed is that Rajapaksa is here to try and explain away his government’s military action and to win support for his fight against terrorism from a prime minister equally opposed to terrorism.

If it is made out that this was no sudden or surprise visit, then it undermines the impression the media is trying to create, that of a harried president begging for international support.

Other arms of the BBC have also been slipshod. After the SLMM head accused government forces of killing the 17 aid workers, BBC News 24 carried a crawler at the bottom of the screen saying International monitors are “convinced” that soldiers killed the aid workers.

I don’t know what the BBC means by international. But it sure sets a test in semantics. How does a handful of Scandinavians from northern Europe constitute an “international” body.

There are 195 nations in the UN. Monitors from a couple of Nordic countries could hardly be called “international” unless of course they are on some evangelical mission to conquer infidels in other parts of world with help from their Quislings.It is time that some elementary lessons in diplomatic practice were imparted to the ignorant. Even private visits that call for meetings with a head of government or even a cabinet minister of a busy country do not happen overnight. Certainly not to the surprise of the host.