Athula Pushpakumara, Head- Media & Strategic Communications at the Information Communication Technology Agency (ICTA) has sent the following response to a point of view expressed by Prof Rohan Samarajiva published in last week’s Business Times under the heading “Unethical, and possibly unlawful, election propaganda by ICTA”:
“All the contents in that article mislead the public and constitute a malicious campaign of hatred against ICTA by Prof. Samarajiva who is a brother-in-law of former UNP minister Lal Dharmapriya Gamage.
ICTA has never violated the country’s law (election or other) when conducting its awareness campaigns on e-Sri Lanka.
The particular billboards referred by Samarajiva in his false-propaganda against ICTA were part of a series of awareness campaigns for e-Asia 2009, which consisted of Asia’s premier ICT conference & exhibition held in Colombo in December 2009. HE President Mahinda Rajapaksa was the chief guest on that prestigious occasion in which most prominent ICT practitioners, visionaries and policy makers participated. I cannot see any person other than President Mahinda Rajapaksa as the ideal person to grace this occasion as he was the leader who most earnestly and tirelessly worked for ICT development in this country. This view was endorsed by the ICT Private sector in this country that organised e-Asia 2009 along with counterpart organisations in India.
e-Asia 2009 follow-up awareness campaign obviously includes HE the President’s photographs at e-Asia inauguration and it is sad to see Samarajiva’s comment on these photographs as a violation of election law. So, it’s up to the readers to decide on Samarajiva’s hypocritical charges and I am not going to waste my time to respond (to) them. I strongly refute Samarajiva’s allegations about ICTA using public money for e-Asia 2009 branding and would like to say that ICTA never used public money for these advertising campaigns for e-Asia 2009 and our sponsors largely contributed for our advertising budget of e-Asia 2009.
Also in his letter, Samarajiva is trying to expose my political affiliation saying that I have a close-relationship with HE the President. As an official who is working for a sGovernment Institution, this attempt by Samarajiva is a clear violation of my fundamental rights and is tantamount to defamation of my personal character. Therefore I have personally advised my lawyers to take legal action against Samarajiva’s public comment on my political affiliation. “ |