Gentle wisdom was Willie's gem

A gentle father figure and a wise old man of journalism will be cremated at Kanatte today at 10 a.m., marking the last page in an exemplary career that spanned more than 50 years.

The 75-year-old Warnasuriya Patabendige Punyadasa de Silva — a little known and long name for the man who was better known as Willie, who collapsed while disembarking from a plane in London last Saturday. His body was flown home on Friday night to the motherland that he dearly loved and insisted on coming back to.

The humble, meditative and soft-spoken Willie spent the twilight of his life with us at the Sub Editors' Desk of The Sunday Times and Daily Mirror. Three score and ten is believed to be the average life span of a human being. Willie joined us after that.

Whatever he was earlier, the Willie we knew, respected and worked with at our desk was a man full of mature wisdom — ever patient and kind, never arrogant or selfish or rude. Not once did anyone at the desk hear him raising his voice angrily or snapping at anyone.

Liberated from self-centredness and enlightened by the deep values of the Buddha Dhamma early in life, the Willie we knew here was a man who seldom preached or imposed puritanical platitudes on anyone. Instead he quietly practised and lived the core Dhamma principles of love, compassion and kindness.

It was the liberative power of the Dhamma in contrast to the empty external rights or rituals that gave Willie the inspiration to rise above the desire for worldly perks, posts or privileges. Never during the past few years, did he seek extra allowances, increments and the like. Never once, did he seek high post and honours, nor did he grumble or complain even when the highly charged younger people at the desk often pushed him into late night shifts.

Journalism did not make Willie rich, powerful or famous. We are sure he did not in anyway desire those fleeting things.

Instead, he worked with commitment, competence and dedication as one of the unsung heroes in the last line of defence in journalism. He was one of those who worked hard behind the scene to raise journalism to the highest professional standards and produce The Sunday Times which is widely regarded as Sri Lanka's best Sunday newspaper in terms of professionalism, balance and independence.

Two months ago, Willie and his wife were invited for a two-week holiday in Toronto. When applying for the visa at the Canadian High Commission in Colombo, Willie told the officials there that he would definitely return within a fortnight as he would not even dream of spending the last lap of his life away from his beloved motherland.

His honesty and sincerity were so evident to the generally tough visa officials that they gave it to him over the counter.

As always, Willie honoured his word. On Saturday, November 13, he and his wife Indra took off from Toronto to get back home via London. But when the plane landed at Heathrow, Willie suddenly collapsed on a seat and passed away while being rushed to a London hospital. His wife, still dazed by the experience, said yesterday she was deeply grateful to the British Airways cabin crew who turned out to be virtual angels in her time of distress.

Back here, his children Sumuk and Sonali — both of whom work for airlines —were preparing a surprise party here to mark Willie's 75th birthday on November 17.

But life in the stormy seas of samsara is both transient and impermanent. Willie himself had entered deep into that reality. So the diamond birthday party was not to be. Regrettable as it was, Willie's son Sumuk said he was consoled by the fact that his father had been very happy during the two-week holiday and would have passed away as he lived — in a calm and peaceful way.

Sumuk told The Sunday Times yesterday he would like to remember his father for what he was — gentle, caring, always ready to listen and encouraging the children in their life and career.

So we come to the last page in the life and work of a doyen among sub editors.

Born in Bandarawela as the son of a building contractor and educated at the little known Nuwara Eliya Trinity College which no longer exists, Willie joined Lake House early in life. He served as Chief Sub Editor, Features Editor and then Deputy Editor of the Daily News and Observer at different times, with a stint at the Straits Times of Malaysia in-between. All this wealth of experience he brought with him when he joined us at The Sunday Times and his practical wisdom was more valuable to us than all the books on journalism. He himself had learnt mainly in the university of life amidst all the struggles and conflicts.

So what he imparted was both powerful and practical and we all at the desk are better journalists and better human beings because of Willie.

Thank you, Willie and farewell from our hearts as we of The Sunday Times and the Daily Mirror join family members, colleagues and friends in a final tribute to one of the finest gentlemen in journalism.

Focus on Rights

Countdown to elections- Analysing the media

Victory for idealistic fools or sour cynics?

By: Kishali Pinto Jayawardene

Our President, her Ministers and her policy makers need some quick refresher lessons in how to run a functional democracy. They need to be reminded that truly genuine elections involve three central rights; the right to take part in government; the right to vote and to be elected on fair and equal terms and the right of equal access to public service.

For these three central rights to be realised, there must be access to legitimate public information from all sources so that the electorate is fully informed about the views of each candidate or party on issues that are crucial to the people. Most importantly, this access must be enjoyed by all, without distinction based on political or other opinion. It is only then that, as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights states, the will of the people becomes the basis of the authority of government.

History will accord the Peoples Alliance Government a very special role in terms of supreme hypocrisy with regard to their treatment of the media in general and in election time in particular, regardless of their high sounding and bumptious promises about media freedom. The manner in which this hypocrisy has manifested itself is very clear.

In the beginning, we had censorship. With the military debacle in the Wanni coming soon after the announcement of the upcoming elections, the Government was given an easy reason for a tightening of the censorship in a totally arbitrary manner. The argument that the military successes or otherwise of the Government was an important election issue which the citizen needed to know in order to exercise his or her vote was an obvious non starter.

Now, we have the newly appointed Commissioner of Elections, acting to all intents and purposes at the direction of the Minister of Media and without exercising any independent judgement of his own, unprecedentedly banning the private media from reporting or covering any presidential candidate in its broadcasts. The Minister of Media has justified this reasoning by referring to Section 117 of the Presidential Elections Act, which allocates 90 minutes over the State television and 45 minutes over the state radio at Government expense to all Presidential candidates.

The section states further that "in addition to such facilities provided free of charge by the Government, other facilities should not directly or indirectly be made use of".

In the first place, this justifying by the Minister of such a totally draconian banning of the private media by reference to an Act enacted in 1981 and amended in 1988, that is clearly intended to deal with the state media and the state media alone, smacks of shameless opportunism, to say the least. The section used by the Minister does not even mention the private media, and the phrase "other facilities" is subject to interpretation and certainly not to a construction that would have the absurd result of imposing a total ban on the private media commenting and interviewing presidential candidates during election time. What should have been done, if the Government felt that the private channels were giving unfair coverage to Presidential candidates from the opposition, was to have amended the law, if necessary, and issued directives to all media, imposing on them a duty to give equal and fair time to all candidates.

Instead, recourse is made in a predictably clumsy manner to this kind of gagging that would assuredly not do anything to enhance the reputations of the present leaders of government either here or abroad. That Sri Lanka could call herself a civilized country and resort to such barefaced acts of outrage common only in banana republics is beyond the pale.

Already, international protests have been issued with regard to this gagging of the private media, most notably by Article XIX, the International Centre for Censorship which has called the ban unacceptable and asked for clarification. Reportedly, the private media is defying the ban in spite of open threats and intimidation resorted to by those in government and those who have recently joined the government.

What then of this pious injunction on the government media to give expression to the views of all the presidential candidates fairly and equally?

It is in this context that a monitoring study of the government television media published recently in the 'Ravaya" becomes interesting. The study by civil activist groups had monitored a period of six days of the Sri Lanka Rupavahini nightly news telecast from the 4th of November to the 9th of November, a week or so subsequent to the surprise announcement by the Government that the elections would be held at the close of the year.

A comment on the results of this study titled appropriately enough "Rupavahini mentions the President forty five (45) times in twenty (20) minutes" discloses a pattern of television reportage that is hardly surprising but nonetheless shocking in its blatant partisanship. During this period, the Rupavahini news had reported eighty one (81) news items of which a clear half were laudatory coverage of President Chandrika Kumaratunga and her Ministers.

Twenty one (21) such news items covered the President alone. Not one single news item reported on the activities of any of the opposition parties while there were six (06) news items critical of the opposition. Six (06) news items had also been reported on the war. On the 5th of November, the word "President" had been repeated forty five (45) times in twenty (20) minutes, while the following telecasts on the 6th and 7th saw a repeat of this performance respectively sixteen (16) times and twenty seven (27) times within the same time period.

This is, thus, the manner in which the state television has been manipulated for the purposes of the present party in power. Monitoring of the manner in which the state media gives coverage to all candidates has now been embarked on by civil activist groups from the day that nominations were accepted. If the Minister of Media intends to continue with his arbitrary construction of the letter of the law as regards the private media, the state television (and the state radio) which are institutions run on public funds contributed to by citizens of all political opinions, should look to its own protection as quickly as possible.

A reminder to these institutions is also timely that fair and equal allocation of such time means not only the actual allocation itself but also the placement and timing of such access.

Such interference with private and television media in the country is particularly obnoxious in the context of reminders by the Supreme Court not so long ago that broadcasting media is in the nature of a public trust vested in the government to be used only for the public good. In two cases brought first against the Sri Lanka Broadcasting Corporation for the arbitrary stoppage of a controversial educational programme in 1995 and secondly against a 1997 Bill that sought to set up a government aligned authority to grant licences to radio and television stations in Sri Lanka, the Supreme Court pointed out why broadcasting media was different from other media.

The frequencies available for television and radio broadcasts are so limited that only a handful of persons can be allowed the privilege of operating on them. Airwaves are public property and are in the nature of a public trust.

It is thus the obligation of the State to exercise control to use them for the public good and if such restraint is not apparent, the State could be held in breach of its constitutional duties. Could it be maintained that a total banning imposed on all private media with regard to the broadcasting of talk shows and the like by candidates presenting themselves before the people in the forthcoming elections for the post of the Sri Lankan Presidency is for the public good?

On the contrary, such a move shows very well the manner in which this public trust is being abused with an open contempt for the consequences.

It is precisely on these same principles that politically biased use of radio and television in election times have been ruled unconstitutional in other countries in the Commonwealth in recent times. One case in particular offers peculiar similarities with what we are facing here. In Trinidad and Tobago, an opposition member of Parliament had complained about the refusal of state owned Trinidad and Tobago Television to broadcast his pre recorded speech.

In deciding that the station's action violated the right to free speech, Justice Deyalsingh cited Indian and US authorities and observed that "with television being the most powerful medium of communication in the modern world, it is in my view idle to postulate that freedom to express political views means what the Constitution intends it to mean without the correlative adjunct to express such views on television.'

The Court ruled that the fundamental right of free speech demands opening up of all television media to political broadcasts without fear or favour and concluded that the government could be compelled to enact broadcasting regulations to this effect even during periods between elections.

As far as Sri Lanka is concerned, conventional wisdom might have it that there is nothing new in this clampdown of the media. Previous leaders in previous regimes have indulged in quite the same gymnastics after all. How indeed can we hope for something different now? Confirmed cynics might even go a step further and say that those who protest at such moves are fools or worse. As the days count down to elections, it can only be infinitely better if we are seen as a country peopled by idealistic fools rather than as a nation of confirmed and sour cynics, resigned to a deterioration of standards that bodes ill for this country as a land worth living in.

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