Editorial

20th August 2000

All that glitters is the goal

Old stories and dead ropes

All that glitters is the goal

With the dissolution of Parlia- ment at midnight on Friday, the few honourable and many dishonourable members drove away with a last day last chance privilege of a luxury vehicle at your expense.

According to trade sources the duty-free permit given to MPs just hours before dissolution of Parliament, give them a neat profit of Rs. 2 million each. That means the total profit for the 225 MPs would be 450 million rupees- to be paid not by the government which approved this vulgar exercise, but by you, the people, who are being crushed and crushed under heavier burdens with each passing day.

The fresh permits for MPs to import vehicles of any engine capacity, with luxury options were earlier to be issued in April, but President Chandrika Kumaratunga, put the proposal in the back-burner amidst widespred public protests and to fall in line with the call to austerity in the face of a full-scale civil war.

Now, almost the last act of Parliamentarian who made an ugly spectacle in all its forms, of representative democracy in the last run-up for the constitutional reform Bill has been to find consensus - a 3/3rd majority- in helping themselves to 2 million bucks. A United Front in a Divided House

At a time when they are beholders to set an example to the country and her tortured people, this then is the unworthy example they have set. And in two months time they have the audacity to ask you for your vote again. It is clear that party colours don't matter when it comes to farewell bonanza of this nature. This is the twisted distorted concept of representative democracy that politicians are trying to drive into the people today.

Old stories and dead ropes

The People's Alliance in its 1994 election manifesto pledged that it attached "the greatest importance to strengthening the media and providing a framework within which the media can function independently and without inhibition."

It promised inter alia that the Press Council Law, the Official Secrets Act and other laws which restricted the freedom of information would be removed, while an independent media training institute would be set up.

It promised to restore the independence of Lake House through a broad-basing of the management structure. What we have seen is a litany of broken promises.

Only one solitary promise was fulfilled as the PA Government concludes its first term in office-Journalists are no longer punished by committees of Parliament.

Within months of the PA riding into the corridors of power, we saw a contradiction and clash where one stream went about implementing the manifesto by appointing the R.K.W.Goonesekera committee and through other measures, but yet another stream went about kicking the manifesto with relish. Criminal defamation actions, physical assaults and gun attacks on journalists, general intimidation and thuggery. The PA took that path. All the hopes of a liberal democracy were dashed to smithereens. It was a sorry story to write.

In the midst of all this, Media Minister Mangala Samaraweera promised to review media laws in the country with a view to updating them and bringing them in line with modern democracies around the world. There was just a ray of hope when an All-Party Select Committee was appointed but it deliberated since 1998 and 2 1/2 years later it has produced little more than an obituary notice. The independent media would be justified in feeling they have been given a dead rope.

The Political Column

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