Columns

All these years I thought that saying “hoo”, especially hurling it at others as a sign of grievance or anger, is a national trait. Well, it has been around for a long, long time. As they say, hoo has a history. So those who publicly express concern about preserving national traditions and habits might seriously think of giving it some consideration.

In fact, it is even used in remote areas to indicate distance from one place to another. Many years ago travelling from Colombo to Mannar, we stopped at a wayside boutique to inquire about the direction to the northwestern town. We were told to take a left turn at the next crossroads. How far is that, asked the driver. Quite close by, said the helpful owner of the tea boutique, just a “hoo kiyana dura” (not farther than your hoo would carry).

Such a useful word with multiple uses should not be discarded as though it has a single purpose and its users threatened with dire consequences as though law enforcement was readying for a revival of the Spanish Inquisition.

The other day the Police Spokesman was rapped sharply on his knuckles by lawyers and the media for making what were called “false claims” with regard to police powers. Spokesman SSP Nihal Thalduwa was quoted as telling the media “that it is prohibited to publish and exchange statements that insult the president on social or any other media. The police are vested with the authority to take legal action against those who do it.”

It will be extremely helpful for those untutored in the law, if Spokesman Thalduwa points out who (not hoo) vested the police with such authority, what provision of the law gave the police this power especially since the prohibition he speaks of must consist of both ‘offences’– publishing AND exchanging statements and not one OR the other.

One must perforce pose this question to the Police spokesman because his contention has been roundly dismissed by Fact Checker Verité Research which quotes both Article 14(1)(a) of the Sri Lanka Constitution and a 2015 judgment of the Supreme Court.

In its determination the SC declared “that the publication of defamatory, embarrassing, or insulting statements against the president or the government is a lawful and democratic exercise of the freedom of expression.”

The SC also held that the police cannot prosecute members of the public for merely publishing defamatory, embarrassing, or insulting statements against the president or the government, and that Section 120 of the Penal Code would apply only if such statements were intended to incite violence.”

So from where did the Police spokesman pick up the idea that the “police is vested with the authority” to take legal action against some imagined law breaker? Who is it who told him that the police had the authority to violate the constitution and supersede the determination of the Supreme Court?

Not that decisions of higher courts and their sentences have not been over-turned today by Presidential Commissions or pardons which make people wonder whatever happened to the rule of law and what would be the Gnanasara Thera determinations on ‘one law for all’ that would soon come to pass when it is imposed on a populace left with little to do to express their anger and frustration but to resort to much maligned national traits.

Was the spokesman misled by others into believing that the police were armed with such a law or was it that he was ignorant that criminal defamation was removed from the statute books in 2002? He must also know the old dictum that ignorance of the law is no excuse.

When politicians such as Wijeyadasa Rajapakshe, Susil Premajayantha, Vidura Wickremanayake and others—some from within the ruling coalition — castigate the government, they, as senior politicians, have a platform from which to do so. It could be from within parliament, in public or in media interviews.

The fact is that they get column inches in the print media of minutes in the electronic media. That is because what they say, their remarks that could be a different or contrary view to what the government maintains and are considered worthy of being aired for the benefit of the public.

Such criticism, especially if it comes from within the governing circles, might well anger the rulers to the extent they are kicked out of office or parliament itself. But that is hardly the point. The issue is that they gain media attention because they strike responsive chords with mounting public opinion and thinking.

On the other hand farmer Appuhamy, Banda and other tillers of the soil do not have the same access to media as publicly-known politicians, professionals and experts who gain media attention for opinions they hold and are ready to express.

That is, unless, Appuhamy and others vent their anger and frustration by threatening to surround the houses of offending politicians as some said they would do if their grievances are not attended to.

It is not surprising that those who stand for hours on end in a queue to buy a packet of powdered milk or a cylinder of cooking gas and still not be certain of obtaining either, would vent their mounting anger and frustration at the sight of a government politician and in a manner that is best known to them.

Booing at politicians and other wielders of power is not just a home grown phenomenon known only to Sri Lankan people. They will hoot at cricketers who let the ball go between their legs to the boundary or at umpires or at square pegs selected to fill round holes in state institutions who also happen to be relatives or cronies.

Surely an occasional hoo to indicate to governing politicians the temperature of public opinion is a far more preferable alternative to the kind of anarchy that Sri Lanka faced in the late 1980s. The peoples’ anger is understandable when cooking gas producers who (no hoo here) a presidential committee revealed had changed the composition of the gas that was one reason for exploding cylinders killing some people, seem to be getting away without retribution.

Could the people who have undergone more than just stress and strain for quite some time be blamed for letting off steam?

Surely nobody would like to see the kind of chaos and violence that has been seeing in Almaty in Kazakhstan where people have taken to the streets against the increase in fuel prices.

(Neville de Silva is a veteran Sri Lankan journalist who was Assistant Editor of the Hong Kong Standard and worked for Gemini News Service in London. Later he was Deputy Chief-of-Mission in Bangkok and Deputy High Commissioner in London)