Japan has made a fresh pledge of aid to Sri Lanka. The Prime Minister made a special announcement about this aid pledge which runs into something like $ 270 million. There is a canard being spread in the meanwhile that 'sections of the Sri Lankan media have been critical of Japan's aid.' It is a particularly sick canard being spread by devious mischief makers in (sections of) the NGO community.

Such moral midgets have been the recipients of large Japanese and Norw-egian aid grants, which to say the very least have been dubiously spent. It is they who give Japanese aid a bad name -- and it is therefore rather rich that these are the people who choose to hector the press about being critical of Japanese aid.

The press has merely tried to put Japanese aid, particularly recent Japanese aid, in some kind of perspective. The press has in fact only attempted to report the facts about how some of this aid was channelled. This is elementary news reporting. It has nothing to do with 'sections of the media along with Marxist nationalist parties' questioning the positive role played by foreign actors. If the media does not report what happened and how, what does it do?

But, when NGO operatives who have been recipients of large chunks of aid coming from Japan and Norway sing in the papers about how Japanese aid needs to be appreciated, now that's the real catch! Nobody needs any homilies about how Japan has been the largest aid donor to Sri Lanka. Everybody knows that, though some commentators chant about it as if they just have been delivered the Holy Grail. But when NGO operatives use the space in some newspapers to vilify 'sections of the media'' for trashing Japanese aid, they are up to their old trick. Which is to paint those who report the facts about the peace process in a bad light, so that they can then ingratiate themselves with the 'foreign actors' and get aid to be spent on still more dubious purposes.

This in fact is highly unethical. When one poses off as a 'columnist', and does not disclose ones NGO connections and comments about the issue of 'aid', the reading public is made to believe that the article is bona fide, when in fact full disclosure has not been made about who is writing these articles, their NGO connections, their own positions as members of organisations which are in receipt of (governmental or non-governmental) Japanese aid. There is no full disclosure, and if this is not duplicity and deviousness, then what is? Are these moral pygmies then the high priests of virtue who are setting themselves upto hector the press?

But anyway, the Japanese themselves will cringe at some of the slavish ingratiating material that is written about them by these mercenary NGO operatives posing off as commentators. Such 'commentators' who have a big stake in the process, need to be exposed, for the simple reason that they have an ulterior motive when they make their comments. It's another matter that they are commentators on the make, a bit of a joke in the world of serious political commentary, what with falsified honorifics ahead of their names. But yet, their claims, under cover of the journalistic cloak, about Japanese aid and the media's involvement etc should not go unchallenged.

When Japan granted direct aid to the SHIRN office in Kilinochchi, and gave this aid out of a pledge that has already been made to the Sri Lankan government, and then allocated it for the specific purpose of equipping an LTTE run office, there was at the very least a circumvention of the modus operandi hammered out in Oslo for aid for the purposes of immediate humanitarian needs. SHIRN was established so that both involved parties GOSL and the LTTE could have a say in how aid is being spent -- the sub-committee was not formed for cooling its heels and being around as an ornament to decorate the peace process.

But, when the Japanese gave aid, for the purpose of refurbishing the office in Kilinochchi in LTTE held territory , this process of joint decision making was circumvented. Also, there is the World Bank which is supervising the immediate humanitarian aid. All assistance should go through this process - it was not for nothing that the process was put in place in Oslo, with World Bank supervision in place. All the press did was to point out these facts, and we have various NGO operatives -- stress on NGO operatives who receive large sums of Norweigian and other aid -- coming out of their woodwork, pretending to be bona fide commentators, attacking the media! This has got to be the pits in NGO related deviousness, duplicity and unethical behaviour, and the quicker these slick NGO lizards are exposed it is the better for all of us including the Japanese and the Norweigians.

It is good for the Japanese government to rationalise its aid policy. "Japanese foreign aid policy has come under fire in recent years, as vast sums of money have been spent on questionable projects, such as dams which are seen to be harming the environment and feeding corruption.''

Now that's not a quote from 'sections of the Sri Lankan media' determined to scupper Japanese aid! It is a Reuter report, of February 5th. So the Japanese do have a problem with their aid, and that has to be addressed by the Japanese government for its own good. Talk about Japanese aid feeding corruption. We see that happening in this country which is why Japanese aid donors should give slick NGO operatives a wide birth.

Those who launch on expansive homilies about Sri Lankan being a foreign aid dependent country (who would have guessed unless NGO pundit didn't deign to tell the rest of us mortals) and the danger that Japanese taxpayers might feel frustrated that their aid for Sri Lanka's peace process is only being criticised, should understand that their tunnel vision about aid being a process of one rich donor shoving aid on one poor recipient who should take the aid and shut up is not a vision shared these days either by recipients, by astute observers of international real politic, or the donors themselves.

This is pap, in the age of a neo liberal economy in which the modus operandi of aid giving is coming under strict scrutiny. In more enlightened circles, this kind of 'lap dog should take the aid and sleep' statements would be considered very hick, very naive and very pathetic. But then one does not expect anything close to an enlightened assessment from some NGO hack who sings for his supper.

I mean that's a craft. You sing for your supper as plaintively as you can, and large dollars of aid will hopefully fall on your platter, and then you can sell your country, your values (in the unlikely event you have any) and soul down the drain. That's an old trick that's expected of moonlighting NGO hacks. But, when they try to blow it out of perspective, and say the media is at fault etc., (particularly at a time when extreme caution needs to be exercised when even the Norwegians and the US are berating the LTTE for their spectacular weapons hauls etc.,) we need to say -- hey, look, you can sell your soul and whatever precious little that goes with it, but not everybody and particularly not those in sections of the press, are prepared to sell their values and their principles and their professional obligation to write the story as it is, in return for a mess of pottage. So there -- now you can go drown in your slippery NGO lucre.

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