Columns

It was during the British parliamentary election that brought the Labour Party to power after some years of conservatism that I heard a prominent activist damn the stream of promises flowing from the lips of seasoned politicians.

He was recalling the days of Conservative politician Boris Johnson, who promised many things except the moon when Britain voted Brexit—Britain’s exit from the European Union—which Johnson said would make Britain blossom.

Instead of blossoming, the country faded despite all the promises and all the supercilious Johnsonian rhetoric, and Johnson himself was kicked out of the leadership.

One was reminded last week of bombast at home when the ruling National Peoples Power, led by Anura Kumara Dissanayake, stomped the campaign trail ahead of the presidential election and later the parliamentary poll, doing a Johnsonian act that seemed to sweep AKD and his party into power on a comfortable bed of roses.

But all the promises that Johnson held out to the people and what fantastic change would overcome Britain when his myriads of promises were fulfilled when Brexit came true faded away like the sunset, as did Johnson from the political scene.

These thoughts came to mind during the recent visit of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the sheaf of agreements the two leaders cemented in a seemingly inseparable friendship that saw Modi being presented with Sri Lanka’s highest honour.

All that might make Modi filled with glee and his country with pride. But what did Sri Lanka get out of it, especially when one recalls what the then JVP of 1971 and later 1987-89 had to say of India and its leaders and the currently whitewashed JVP and its leader had to say of India and its intrusive and aggressive approach to neighbourhood politics despite the cosy camaraderie that seems to ooze from New Delhi at appropriate times?

So much so that the NPP, which six months ago had a more critical and far less brotherly love for our northern neighbour, appears to have undergone an unexpected transmogrification; the party that once sat at the feet of Marx now worships at’ Modi’s feet, in a manner of speaking.

In fact, such is the change that the NPP and AKD, who vowed to protect freedom of the media and even allow the right of public dissent while preserving its right to rejoinder and defence, seem suddenly to have forgotten that Sri Lanka does have its own media, if it may not be always as perfect as it should.

Still, it is this country’s media, a media that the NPP and its leader used during election campaigns to spread their propaganda and the hundreds of promises that seem to be slowly slipping from their minds now that governance is turning out to be much tougher and complicated than they thought it would be.

So here comes Modi, bearing some gifts and loads of MOUs which require a plane to carry, beside some 30-odd Indian media representatives, just a few shorter than the 40 busy bodies Robin Hood had rounded up.

The Indian media contingent are very much in view—in fact, they are escorted ceremonial-like to where the two leaders would meet and talk and address the media.

But in this scenario something is shockingly missing. Where oh where is Sri Lanka’s media? Has the host country no media in a world that is overflowing with pen and paper and modern electronic equipment that can turn a meeting room into a convenient gathering place?

More so when the country is ruled by a party that appears to have nothing in its head and mind but electronics.

The public would have missed this diplomatic/media faux pas had the Sunday Times last week not drawn attention to what was surely a gaping hole in media coverage.

Here is a government which, before its election, talked of freedom of the press, how democratic practices should be preserved, not abandoned and buried, and as a government, it would allow such rights to be practised.

Quite rightly the Sunday Times headlined the story “Lankan media locked out of Modi coverage”. Continuing with the story, the newspaper said, “Sri Lanka media was blocked out from covering Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit, with the President’s Media Division taking full control of the coverage and failing dismally in coordinating events with local media.”

Now, who is the mastermind who decided to shut the local media out of an event in its own country, especially of a neighbouring leader whom the present government is treating as its most important foreign ally?

It might be recalled that critics of the NPP were opening the argument in the days before the elections that the NPP did not have experience in government and claimed it would tumble soon.

This is a classic example of handing over important media matters to what sounds very much like novices or some junior officers who appear to be out of their depths.

The question is, who decided on this arrangement? Was it the upper crust of the media division who themselves seem to find themselves in the deep end without a paddle, or some higher-up in officialdom who thought he knew everything about media management and ends up displaying his ignorance?

If this is what is to come as the days roll by and the media freedom that AKD and the NPP spoke about in the pre-election days, then maybe Sri Lanka’s media needs to prepare itself for tougher times.

I wonder, I just wonder, what would have happened if it was Donald Trump who was the visitor instead of Narendra Modi, and some half-past-six media boss decided to block covering Emperor Trump? Where would he have ended up—with a 95% tariff on his doughnut circles while seeing how nuts are proliferating in government and bureaucracy, not to mention some who are jumping ship?

(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).