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Editorial3rd May 1998 |
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47, W. A. D. Ramanayake Mawatha Colombo 2. P.O. Box: 1136, Colombo 2.
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Workers divideLeave aside workers of the world uniting. The workers of Sri Lanka had 14 separate rallies and demonstrations on May Day — the day annually marked to honour the worker. Year by year there seem to be more divisions among the workers than there is unity. Divisions on political or party lines. Each sector has pro-government and anti-government unions. Only a few are strictly non-political, but in the context of today's politics, it is the union in Government that gets the plums of office. The voice of the others is seldom heard. It is ironic how the victims of the infamous crackdown on the July strike of 1980 also held a meeting —18 years after J. R. Jayewardene broke their general strike. May Day this year was celebrated in the midst of an agonising postal crisis that has gone on for nearly two months, hospital go-slows and in the backdrop of a threat of a general strike. The government must be decisive in these matters. While it is true that dialogue is better than strike action, it is also true that a government must be fair to worker grievances and have a rapport with them. Dialogue must come from the government as well. If the government is fair and workers continue to disrupt essential services, the government must be equally decisive. While anyone would sympathise with the plight of the families of the July 1980 strikers, workers must also know the immense difficulties — sometimes deaths — they cause to ordinary people by prolonged strike action. They must know that there are thousands and thousands of people young and old who haven't the luxury of employment itself.
Media uniteIn contrast to the disunity among the workers there were fresh winds blow- ing across the BMICH this week, when four major media organisations united to come up with a Colombo Declaration on Media Freedom and Social Responsibility. The journalists the editors and the publishers — for the first time in Sri Lanka — united to map out a common strategy to tell the politicians from both the government and the opposition that there were basic demands from their side to ensure freedom of expression, including that of publication in this country. They pointed out that, for instance, criminal defamation is practised selectively in Sri Lanka by the high and mighty against the media and that it is an old-fashioned law which has fallen into disuse in modern liberal democracies. Common ground was found among publishers (who want newsprint duties reduced to bring down the price of newspapers), editors (who want penal provisions removed) and journalists (who basically want a freer hand). They also pledged to turn the searchlight inward and self-regulate. One of the most liberal decisions was the agreement to call for the repeal of that part of the Sixth Amendment which prohibits the peaceful advocacy of separation. That the publishers, editors and journalists agreed to this does not necessarily mean they support secession by any means. But it displays the enlightenment of the media in Sri Lanka, far more than most democracies in the world would permit, and it also, once and for all, gives the lie to LTTE propaganda which through the years has been describing the 'Sinhala media' as racist. That alone is a ringing message to the pro-Eelam propagandists that while freedom of expression is suppressed with all its brutality in areas that were or are under LTTE control, the media in Sri Lanka unitedly, have called for freedom of expression in almost its purest form. The Colombo Declaration, it is hoped, will be taken to its logical conclusion — where the bi-partisan Parliamentary Select Committee will amend the obnoxious laws of the land that inhibit a free and responsible media to give birth to a new, modern and liberal media culture in an enlightened, tolerant democracy in Sri Lanka.
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