Columns

Surely not Left. Our NPP leader left it some time ago, and now it would seem he has ditched it altogether.

Now I hear no Marxist ideology belting from some social media machine. Not now anyway, when the serving spoon is very much in his hand, as our charismatic one-time Prime Minister Sir John Kotelawala used to remind his cabinet and friends.

Well, anyway, he is too busy distributing largesse to the needy and trying to keep the restless happy as best as his foot soldiers could, despite the brickbats being thrown at them for political interference in village officers’ duties. Or so we are told by angry Grama Sevakas (village officials).

Little by little the NPP government is forced to face the music as party faithfuls step out of line and violate the party code, which we used to hear about at the beginning.

We had a short-time Speaker, who hardly had time to speak from the chair but spoke a little too much from his rather shaky seat about his misplaced doctoral certificate from a Japanese university. He has still not been able to recover from where it is or where it is not.

We all know how such academic successes happen, but when asked, silence prevails, like that woman MP who claimed to have got a law degree from a UK university that doesn’t grant degrees.

These things come to light very fast, like those containers from the port which made a quick exit. Now these might be considered minor infractions by the party hierarchy to cover up the party’s shady face. It might hurt the nicely polished party image in the early days of changing the country’s tattered and battered public image.

But as we approach a new year after the country has taken an unprecedented battering from forces of nature and thousands of the citizenry are hardly out of shell-shock, what they cannot tolerate from a government that promised a clean Sri Lanka is hardly what they expected.

Promises come thick and fast, from rebuilt educational systems to new electronic gadgetry and glittering awards to the saviours of the nation turning this country into a gloriously replenished new South Asia.

And in a few days’ time when New Year dawns, the country’s media will be splattered with more promises and cascades of new names emerging from hidden places to pledge a new dawn.

But there is more to Sri Lanka coming of age under the NPP. That is what has not been. The other day I heard of an interesting story that would make the media dead and the people of this country uninformed because we would be stuck with a government which likes to keep information under wraps.

I must say that having heard this convoluted statement, I was amazed that something was published a month or two earlier about Sri Lanka’s average IQ level, which is 102 and so above the global average of 100.

That might not be much to speak of considering that highly informed intellectuals touch the 145-500 mark. Personally I don’t mind who touches a high intelligence mark like Donald Trump, who thinks he can run the world on his wristwatch.

But what galls me is when otherwise intelligent, educated people try to sell a mickey and try to provide excuses for governments hiding various MoUs and agreements.

I heard that one such otherwise learned academic said that media should not speculate on such agreements until they are officially released. I really cannot fathom this.

The Parliament and its chamber have a right to learn what the country has signed itself to. It is an inherent right of the people as represented in parliament to be informed of what the government has committed the country to.

If parliament has the right to be advised of agreements signed with foreign entities, and the media can expose their contents, then why should the media not also discuss a journalist’s perception of potential dangers to sovereignty and the freedom of the people — especially since the media is regarded as the Fourth Estate?

I’m quite sure that many of our parliamentarians might well remember how many times the government was urged by parliament to release some of the agreements signed with the IMF, and when it was eventually done, it seemed the most important agreements were held back.

So it has been with the agreement Ranil Wickremesinghe and Indian Prime Minister Modi signed.

Right now there are agreements—70, as the foreign minister boastfully claimed, including with the US and its Department of War. Now why are they hidden from the public, including parliament?

The fact is that democracy is being denied to those who have a democratic right.

We used to hear during our university days how democratic institutions sprang up and those institutions fought for democratic rights. Now we are being told that the media is a dangerous instrument and should not be presented government secrets.

Only last week a fellow columnist exposed the dangers of the newly drafted anti-terrorism law.

If we are told what terrorism is, it might be useful to all. In the meantime let them release the agreements with Trump’s world acquiring avarice. Can our government deny at least one agreement with Trump’s US?

(Neville de Silva is a veteran Sri Lankan journalist who was Assistant Editor, Diplomatic Editor and Political Columnist of the Hong Kong Standard before moving to London, where he worked for Gemini News Service. Later he was Deputy
Chief of Mission in Bangkok and Deputy
High Commissioner in London before returning to journalism.)