Rajpal's Column

16th August 1998

The President's love letter to the press

By Rajpal Abeynayake

Ms. Kumaratunga

The President has fired some thumping broadsides at the media in a letter addressed to her Media Minister, and already the papers have been full of this missive. Minister Samaraweera read the letter last Thursday at his weekly pow-wow with the press.

Even hardboiled mediamen listened to the contents of the letter without really coming to terms with the strength of its venom. Obviously the President sounded deeply hurt, and since the matter involved the broadcast of her daughter's photograph on a TNL news bulletin, even scribes with a crustacean shell were moved.

What are the beginnings then of this whole episode? Apparently TNL broadcast the said news item with a blow up of the first daughter's photograph.

The TNL news desk learned that a man was seen on a motorbike veering towards Yasodara's car. Though TNL announced that the close brush with the motorcyclist was an "assassination attempt,'' apparently it turned out that the biker was just drunk. The assassination story was wrong.

The President is the first to say in her letter to Minister Samaraweera that the story is false. So it was a wrong story, and TNL is culpable of stating what is palpably incorrect.

The President then goes on to say that the publication of the youngsters photograph would help the LTTE to "get a closer look at her daughter , in case they wish to perpetrate some terrible crime.''

Wait a minute. If the President says the story about the so called assassination attempt was false, then surely there was no assassination attempt..

If there is no plot on the part of the Tigers to target her daughter, and if the President is the first to say there wasn't such a plot, how come the TNL is accused of helping the Tigers to "get a closer look'' ? Praise the deities, there was no crime on the cards.

But yet TNL is accused of stooping so low " as to provide the LTTE with a closer look?''

Having got this logic off her Presidential chest, the President then proceeds to launch a stunning attack on the owners of TNL, Shan, daughter, family members and all.

That's followed by a absolutely no holds barred assault on the integrity of the present leader of the Opposition, and then the Times group which is accused of insulting her with constant "filth." ( ! ) At the end of it all, there is no room for a shred of doubt that this is one very angry President.

Now being that her daughter is the subject of this whole unpretty shimozzle, nobody would contradict that getting angry is a mother's prerogative. For all we know it could be typical of any mother's protective reflex.

But yet the President is speaking in a very public forum, and she is making some very substantial allegation of malicious wrongdoing against quite a number of persons. She is also threatening the severest legal action against them.

She is making unequivocal clear allegations of calculated malice not just against TNL, but also a whole cross section of persons who happen to be Mr. Ranil Wickremesinghe's relatives.

She goes on to decide that the media outfits owned by these persons are a lost cause. She concludes that they are in cahoots with her detractors and that they are indeed all collectively her enemies.

(Phew!) Now philosophically speaking there may be material here to further the argument that the independent media is in reality a kept press.

A closer look at her missive, and a reader cannot be blamed for getting the idea that the President is preparing a case for placing curbs on the independent media .

If the President is convinced that the independent media is an irresponsible cabal and a family mafia, then who would be surprised if she says next that there is a reason to place limits on the freedoms exercised by these organisations?

One picture of her daughter warrants all of this? Prince William was on the cover of Time magazine, and not a political cat raised a whimper. If you look at it more dispassionately, we saw the President accompany her son and daughter to the SAARC summit of her own volition, in the full glare of the state media strobe lights two weeks back. In retrospect people would remember that the President's children were in the glare of the TV lights from the day she assumed Presidential office.

Remember that heady November day in which she wore a deep blue saree, and with son and daughter by her side, pledged to lead this nation? Since that time the people have on occasions got accustomed to seeing the President with her children by her side.

And yet TNL publishes one picture in a faux pas news story, and she, so to speak, throws bell book and candle at them. She also threatens to take them to court in the bargain..

Who is watching? The prime time viewers are watching, and a lot of them, by their own admission would say they didn't see the Yasodara story in the first place.

But after the President made TNL and the Yasodara story post cabinet news, her daughter's name is now suddenly all over the papers , the tube and in prime time headlines.

We do not know what the President means by saying she wants to keep her daughter out of the limelight, but certainly she has now done a better job of putting her there than TNL could have ever dreamed of.

Now to get to this whole thing about the TNL (which seems to be always in breakdown, I mean trouble), though it is abundantly clear that TNL is a private news organisation whose prerogative is to back anybody, TNL is accused of backing the UNP in somewhat the same way that the state media backs the PA.

Now when was the last time the state media was accused of being "low down" just because it backed the government?

But the TNL affair came to a head in recent times when Ishini Wickeremesinghe the proprietor's daughter was asked to leave the premises. It happens that Ishini is the wife of a Member of Parliament aligned to the PA, and which wife wouldn't want to prop up her husband's government at the expense of the opposition? This seems to be exactly what Ishini did. In her father's eyes, she may have been her husband's plant at TNL.

Father throws out daughter, and the government loses their plant in the TNL? The government has more and more reason to be daggers drawn at the TNL? Plausible scenario? We don't know.

Only isn't it curious that the President has thought it fit to come out sword in hand against the TNL, just weeks after Shan gave daughter Ishini the boot?

Doesn't it get even curioser and curioser when the spokesman makes it a point to say that the letter was drafted before the 20th, the day Ishini was sacked? Folks, if this is not a fight against Shan it's a crusade against a good cross section of the privately owned media — and it must be made to look like that.

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