Columns

When government spokesmen open their mouths, it is not enough to pick the pearls that drop from them. Watch their feet. In bygone days some doctors with a penchant for wit called it the foot-in-the-mouth disease.

Since then, some spokesmen have graduated into putting both their feet in it. But unlike true contortionists, they take a day or two to retrieve their feet. By that time, generally speaking, the damage has been done.

The Cabinet spokespersons, who are expected to brief the media on what transpired at the cabinet meeting that day, release selective information on cabinet decisions. If they decide to stray into areas which are irrelevant or attempt to answer questions outside immediate concerns, they do so at their own risk.

Intelligent and careful spokespersons do not do that. But not in our Resplendent Isle. We are full of blabbermouths.

Last week saw another gaffe being hastily covered up to save our cabinet spokesman Bandula Gunawardena from more embarrassment. Nothing would have happened if he stuck to his script.

Earlier this month, he tried to dictate the law at a media briefing saying that the country’s normal laws did not apply to MPs.

He claimed, probably puffing his chest to show that he and his MP colleagues were not just ordinary people, that MPs came under the parliamentary powers and privileges act. So Sri Lanka’s criminal and other such laws might apply to the sovereign people of the country but certainly not to MPs.

Of course, the sovereign people elected the MPs, the sacred beings that fatten themselves in elected office, thanks to the public purse that is often emptied to satisfy political interests and self-aggrandising politicians.

Spokesman Gunawardena boasts that he had spent many years as an elected MP and so is aware of parliamentary procedures. Earlier this month he made this asinine remark saying at a media conference that “property damage and other incidents related to the Parliament cannot be dealt with under the regular law of the country”.

He told the media with seemingly unchallengeable authority that such matters “could only be addressed within Parliament and that it cannot be even questioned by the courts.”

It did not take too long for the Speaker to inject some sense into half an inch of the human skull so that the government’s spokesman would hereafter stop talking absolute piffle.

Pedal back a few more days and one would read the same spokesman telling the media that President Gotabaya Rajapaksa is “not in hiding”, he is in Singapore and would return soon.

Okay, so he was not hiding. But he was certainly playing hide and seek as we used to do in our childhood. If he was not trying to stay out of public view or trying to cover his tracks as any escapee or wanted person would wont to do, why was he using land, sea and air to leave the country which he ruled—well some might rightly argue it was misrule — and then hopped from the Maldives to Singapore and then to Thailand.

But Spokesman Gunawardena’s most recent gaffe was when, responding to a journalist’s query, he said that Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s charter flight from Singapore to Thailand was paid for by the Sri Lanka government.

He admitted that the Sri Lanka government footed the bill to provide former President Gotabaya Rajapaksa to fly to Thailand from Singapore in a chartered flight last week, media reports said.

He was quoted as telling the post-cabinet news briefing that the Sri Lanka government paid the bill as it was the responsibility of the government

Having reportedly said that, Gunawardena added: “Each and every executive president retired and widows of those passed away enjoy benefits, privileges and special facilities and they are also paid an allowance under the ‘President Entitlement Act No. 4 of 1986’. Therefore, the government is committed to paying former President Rajapaksa’s bills,” he added.

Some time later, Spokesman Gunawardena, who is also the Minister of Mass Media, responded saying he was “misquoted” by some media, accusing them of misrepresenting what he said. Besides the media minister laying the blame on the media, what does appear strange is how several of the print media reports said the same thing. What the electronic media said I do not know.

When Minister Gunawardena says he was misquoted despite diverse media reports confirming the minister said what he later claimed he did not, it is sure hard to swallow. Especially when cries of being misquoted is an old gag that politicians, bureaucrats and other assorted people resort to when they are caught with their feet in the wrong place.

At the same time that the minister was trying to extricate himself from another messy situation, the Government Information Department, which must surely be under the Mass Media Minister’s umbrella, put a damper on the issue by releasing a statement saying that Gotabaya Rajapaksa “is not using State funds for any expenses he makes abroad. All such expenses are borne by the personal funds of the former president.”

This episode reminds me of a Groucho Marx (my favourite comedian) film I saw way back in the 1960s (if I remember correctly) where Grouch I think played a private investigator. He was seated at his desk when with a loud crash of breaking glass a stone came through a window and fell on his table. He picked up the stone, looked at it carefully and said “whoever threw that stone must be a stone’s throw from here”. Even my former philosophy professor at Peradeniya could not beat that for impeccable logic.

So as Groucho would have said if Gotabaya Rajapaksa paid for the expensive hotels in Singapore and Bangkok by digging into his personal resources he must be a very resourceful person. As our Political Correspondent referring to Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s current stays abroad asked last Sunday “Another question that begs an answer is how he is receiving resources to sustain himself with the highest luxury. If business interests underwrote all the expenses, does it not raise questions?”

He did of course leave some 17 million odd rupees lying around at President’s House but that was only because he left in rather a hurry.

At least it was not pinched by any of the thousands of passing sightseers who entered the presidential abode. It was counted and handed over to the police by honest Aragalaya activists.

Why some police big wig is supposed to have wanted the money handed over to Public Security Minister Tiran Alles instead of the Colombo Magistrate’s Court, is quite a mystery.

But then our police, like gods, work in mysterious ways. The other day I read that the police had arrested some person who is said to have removed a beer mug from President’s House after having shared a bottle of beer with others.

That was stupendous detective work like hunting down the irascible Mervyn Silva and producing him in court for forcing himself into Rupavahini– 15 years ago. Bravo indeed. The Keystone Cops could not have done any better.

(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)