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A response to Kishali Pinto JayewardeneBy Rajpal Abeynayake
(August 22, Colombo, Sri Lanka Guardian) Pinto is pathetic. She shrieks and preens as if the Queen is reacting to the realization that she too defecates in the morning, just like everybody else.
I think it’s good for all and sundry’s general health, most of all hers, that her bloated balloon got pricked thus; with her head getting too large for her own good, one of these days she might have hurt herself.
She’s all over me, and doesn’t seem to be able to tell elbow from ankle. I have sampled below, for reader edification, the extent of her consternation and confusion:
“…… I do not intend wasting space in my regular Sunday Times column by responding to such manifest rubbish….. Frankly, his reactions and responses do not matter much to me anyway. I do not intend to waste further time on his malicious meanderings.’’
Manifest rubbish, she says, and takes out 2,158 words over it, giving new meaning to that R-word. Knowing fully well she cannot get away by a long shot with her prevarication, she then takes a caveat and says, no matter what Abeynayake’s ‘malicious meanderings’’ will be, she would not write again on the subject. Malice? That’s reserved for the big boys Pinto; one doesn’t need a super-sopper to wipe small beer off the table…
She says my argument was on shifting sands, and doesn’t even proceed to say why, so that matter is already out of the way.
Then she contends “My contention was not that the Mahinda Rajapakse regime was worse than the regimes of Kumaratunge and JR Jayawardena/Premadasa but that the public voice needs to be articulated in relation to current cases such as the killings of five Tamil youth in Trincomalee (2006) and the seventeen aid workers killed in Mutur (2006) …… as much as it was articulated in regard to the Krishanthi Kumaraswamy case. The quote by Martin Luther King was used in this context.’’
Uhg-oh. She says she was articulating the fact that public outrage is absent in the Muttur and Trincomalee cases. But that’s the whole point, Pinto. The public, do you think, is ignorant, and waits for a prick and a prod from Pinto? There is no explanation for this lack of public outrage, other than the fact that the public does not equate the vast and egregious excesses of that era with the issues such as the Muttur Contra La Fem murders or the Trincomalee killings, because the pubic in its collective wisdom already, via commission reports and other findings, knows that (a) these were not excesses attributable to the forces as in Embilipitiya, or with regard to Krishanthy Kumaraswamy, and that (b) these occurrences manifestly are not the apogee of execrable excess, as the Embilipitiya and KK cases were, in the climate of impunity of that infamous era.
Schoolboys were not killed for a private grouse, nor was a schoolgirl raped in Trincomalee or in Muttur; but as in 89, these two incidents fall within the vast rubric of literally thousands of mass killings such as that were not individually prosecuted in 89, in a climate of almost inevitable impunity.
To rabble-rouse the public on these two incidents alone is therefore invidious and sinister; it’s the very equation of Embilipitya and KK in this instance to Muttur and Trinco, when the government fought a very difficult war to get rid of a venomous terrorist group that was responsible for thousands more killings than just Embiliptiya or KK, that’s galling. Children were deliberately ‘Claymored’ and murdered in buses in Kebbilithigollewa, in the recent and not so recent LTTE induced climate of terror, and there is no special dimension that sets the Trinco or Contra Le Fem killings so radically apart. It’s why findings of the recent Udalagama commission are adequate, and there is no reason to rabble rouse against the government by equating these killings to Embilipitiya and KK, which were beyond the pale even by the worst of terrorist standards i.e.: a schoolgirl was raped and killed, and young schoolboys were killed en masse, over a private grouse.
So comprende? This, coupled with the fact that the Udalagama commission report expressly finds Pinto among one of the lawyers who expressly tried to pin this issue on the army, says volumes for the fact that Pinto, in cahoots with foreign funded agencies and opposition activists who presided over vast human rights violations in the past, is hypocritically trying to extract the pound of flesh from the Sri Lankan forces/authorities for incidents that bear no comparison with either Embilipitiya or KK in the impugned past, that she cites. Her comparisons with the past that I cited in my first column, and her rabble rousing of the ‘public’ are one and the same thing really – two sides of the same coin.
I’m not making this up, I reiterate that the Udalagama commission report which she mischievously and with conflict of interest that’s gross, (and with breach of professional conduct to boot) challenges in her same Sept 9 column, expressly lays the finger on her as one of the lawyers who mischievously tried to mislead the commission into believing it was the army that did it.
So, Pinto, not only don’t you have a leg to stand on, you have beyond all reasonable doubt exposed yourself as a NGO hack (CPA, LST whatever; you did defend and therefore work for the CPA sometime you say…) who rabble-rouses the public, falsely shows the current human rights record in a relatively poor light to the past, and furthermore tries to mislead an entire commission into believing that an army committed egregious violations equal to Embilipitiya and KK, when it’s patently not the case. This is not what I say, but what the Udalagama commission says expressly ---- and I dare anyone to contradict one word in that commission report, or to quote any of the commissioners to the effect that they don’t stand by that report, which expressly blames lawyers including Pinto for misleading the commission into believing that the army did it.
Egads, and she calls me a hack and a mud-slinger? It’s not for nothing it’s stated in the bible: “Why do you look at the speck that is in your brother’s eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye?’’ Matthew 7: 3.5.
(Incidentally this is the relevant extract from the Udalagama report, which finds fault with all lawyers for victims’ relatives who appeared before it, and that includes Pinto herself: “Their main function was in the attempt to discredit every possible institution and authority of this country before the Commission, and attempt to hold one party responsible for the gruesome crime. They did not consider any other group being possible offenders, or show any interest in ascertaining on whom responsibility could be placed except their targeted group. They appeared not to ascertain the truth but to engage in a fault finding exercise of the security forces of Sri Lanka. We consider it as a suspiciously narrow outlook to adopt, not worthy of a role to be played by responsible civil society members, who should have looked at issues broadly to ascertain who the actual culprits are in this ghastly act.’’
Back to Pinto who drones on thus: “If Abeynayake wishes to enlighten himself on my denunciations of state excesses during the eighties and nineties he may refer to past editions of not only the Sunday Times but also the now defunct Sun newspaper where throughout the mid eighties (when I was studying law at the University of Colombo) and thereafter, I consistently wrote virtually hundreds of articles as well as columns about the human rights violations of the UNP as well as the Kumaratunge regime subsequent to 1994.’’
I have already dealt with this casuistry in my notes to the Sri Lanka Guardian, but for the benefit of the reader, I shall reiterate. Quit playing baby, Pinto, you know as well as I do, that my claim is that you have teamed up with once notorious human rights violators who now happen to be of your political persuasion, or at least happen to be like-minded saboteurs, to take apart the forces and a system -- and to rabble-rouse the public into doing so -- which fought under very difficult circumstances, the most ruthless terrorist organization in the world.
That was no joke, and you owe it to the forces that fought for your security -- yours and mine, your family’s and mine -- not to rabble rouse, hand in hand with egregious violators from a hoary past, whom you know only too well have committed egregious violations from all that you now almost with flatulent bombast, claim you have written.
Go ahead, bathe yourself in self-bestowed laurels about the “hundreds’’ you wrote; that still doesn’t take away from the fact that you are teaming up with these same whippersnappers you claim to have condemned, to paint all including the army which got rid of the most ruthless terrorist outfit in the world, a bunch of cheap Embilipitiya like murderers.
“……he now (in his second missive) takes up the position that I had not written about the excesses of the LTTE. Again, this is typical of Abeyanake’s absurd perversity. He is well aware of the fact that I had all along been a most vocal and public critic of the totalitarian nature of the LTTE not only now when it has become fashionable to do so but also during the UNF period ………’’ Pinto adds.
Urrgh. It is fashionable to condemn the LTTE? This organization has been condemned for decades by the right-thinking, and it only became “fashionable’’ for NGO hacks such as Pinto to condemn it recently.
But, hear ye, she says she condemned them prior to that as well, before her own flood, in those antediluvian ages before the loss of innocence, and therefore she claims she was rara avis – a rare bird. She even contends hilariously that I complimented her on such articles when I met her at a party! If I did so, I’m very sure, that time, I really must have been drunk.
I’d like to remind her that even Ranil Wickremesighe has condemned the LTTE, at desperate times. This was when he was not running to Norway when the LTTE was cornered and in its last gasp, in a futile bid to save the LTTE in the nick of time. Folks such as Hillary Clinton condemned the LTTE, before they ran to its rescue, again in a futile bid in their last hours of resistance. So condemning the LTTE was neither fashionable nor optional. It became necessary to stay halfway credibly afloat in a right-thinking society, in a right thinking world.
But such token condemnation will not take away from the general oeuvre of Ranil Wickremesinghe’s life’s work, or Clinton’s handiwork for instance. Theirs was a mission to condemn the LTTE only when they had to, while transparently, for reasons of their own advantage and other reasons best known to them, acting as mouthpieces for the LTTE, or doing whatever possible to make life easier for its leadership and cadre.
Pinto’s tokenism is no exception. Heck, some human rights activist she would be considered, if she doesn’t make a condemnation of the diabolically venomous LTTE at some point in her jottings? But in the general oeuvre of her work, and in the general oeuvre of her work in her recent efforts to rabble rouse against the government on the ACF killings etc., and as transparently clear in her and other lawyers’ efforts to pin the blame for the ACF killings on the army and the security forces – all pointed out, not by me, but explicitly by the Udlagama commission ---- she does what the LTTE would manifestly benefit by, and the forces would manifestly lose from.
Well, I suppose if she can quote Martin Luther King Jnr, it doesn’t matter entirely if I quote Abraham Lincoln. Pinto, you can fool all the people some of the time, and some of the people all the time, but you can’t fool all the people all the time.
Tokenism against LTTE excess is after a fashion. Heck, even Anton Balasingham the LTTE’s high priest of fiction virtually condemned their own previous assassination of Rajiv Gandhi and the hilariously termed it an “accident’’. Some moonlighting tokenism in the ‘Sunday Times’ by Pinto most definitely does not an anti-LTTE activist make. Most definitely not, particularly when all your actions have the effect of helping the LTTE, while there is an army campaign ongoing to destroy this LTTE, the most ruthless terrorist organization of this world. Pinto tried to blame the security forces unfairly in the Udalagama commission hearings, and this is not me saying so, but the commissioner in a report in black and white. Her replaying scenes of some playful yapping at the LTTE in the past, will erase Pinto’s sabotage of the forces for the benefit of the LTTE and its diaspora handmaidens only in the minds of babes and knaves.
“His personalized attack in this regard is well seen by the fact that he uses the third person terminology in the initial parts of his misconceived column and then switches to the term ‘you’ when talking of this citation.
In substance…. eminent personalities in the fields of law, science and the arts who accepted honorary titles from Presidents Jayawardene, Premadasa and Kumaratunge, including ‘Deshamanya’ titles’ would all be tainted with the same brush as all these state leaders were accused of human rights violations’’, she writes.
Is this woman daft, or does she think we are daft? Personally, I don’t have much regard for the Deshamanya/bandu titles be they bestowed by human rights violators or not; con-men rotters and brigands have received them, among good people, and recently there was a move to rationalize these awards schemes that had become a bad joke. Even though I will approach any Deshamanya’s deshamanya-ness with a pinch of salt, these Deshamanya titles, compared to Pinto’s capitulation to Condi Rice, are still a different matter to me.
Are we daft to think that a scientist’s or artiste’s receiving a title from the head of state, is the same as a human rights activist receiving an award for human rights activism, from virtually the high priestess of the world’s most notorious human rights violator? Does a schoolboy accept an award from Hon. Mervyn Silva for good behavior? As I wrote in the original article, do we accept an award from the devil for quoting scripture?
That latest Pinto casuistry is the lamest of the lame. That photograph says it all. She is a happy appeaser, like a happy hooker, pardon the comparison. She says she writes attacks on the US in Khaleej Times and what not. Really, you do that, before after taking an award for human rights from the same hand ---- from the high priestess herself, none other? Either you are just completely lacking in integrity Pinto, or just a jolly good stand-up comedian.
But just by way of further explanation to the uninitiated, this is how the US operates, and operated particularly in the time of Bush and Rice. A few criticisms here and there were allowed, encouraged even, for the sake of credibility, but all those who were bought and kept, were then by the strength of awards they gave and other junkets they provided, supposed to help the imperial power in screwing us small nations, pardon if that was very simply put.
Sure, Pinto can take a shot at the U.S, get an award from them, and then fulfill their mission to subvert this nation, as she did so transparently in the Contra La Fem case. That makes her a human rights icon? Well, she does seem to think so, which is why at the very outset I made it clear it’s good for our general health but primarily hers, that she comes crashing down quick to earth.
And as for those petty-piddling arguments about my using “she’’ and then graduating to “you’’, what a transgression that, worthy of a libel suit. “Mommy, he called me ‘she’ and now he calls me ‘you’.” Says mommy; “Yeah, sweetie, either way he was referring to you Pinto, ain’t mommy right?’’
The rest of Pinto’s animadverting, I will deal with summarily for reasons of brevity. She states that I may be coerced to write what I wrote about her, even though she fortunately enjoys untrammeled freedom of the press.(!) I suppose I must be coerced also to carry, as editor in chief, the stinging attacks we make day in and day out on this government, every week? Look at the upcoming paper, Lakbimanews of 24.8. 9. The human rights and disaster management minister goes to the police to exonerate himself from what ensues from our expose. We excoriate the government’s gross diddling in Sri Lankan and Mihin Air. We excoriate the government for being tardy on the police commission, and thereby encouraging impunity. The proof of the pudding is in the eating Pinto, and so you say I was under pressure to carry all this as well, in a newspaper I edit? As for Pinto’s freedom, we can see it so transparently, it embarrasses us. Not that a journalist cannot tell the truth in the Sunday Times, and I took some very good shots all around the wicket in the twelve years I was there, and thanks.
But how can you do so, when you are very probably ingratiating yourself with the powers that be, and with the chairman’s son who is Yoo Enn Pee, and on the Council too, Pinto? How about that --- birds of a feather flock together, what, Pinto? How about that indeed?
She says ignoring of ethics to serve a pro-government agenda “is the lowest rung of the unsavory ladder.’’ About that pro-government kite she flies around me, I’ve already said she is daydreaming, considering our newspaper’s trenchant exposes of this government and its actors. They are legion and award-winning; I’ll send the cuttings if anyone wants them.
So never mind the bottom of the ladder, but this talk of ethics from a lady who is selling her own army down the drainpipe when that army fought valiantly for your security, my security, our security and our children’s security --- those kinds of ethics don’t have a place in the ladder at all. Those ‘ethics’ are five or six feet underground, deep down there, mingling with the immutable ethics of the underworld.
But I forgive them, these Pintos, they do not know what they do. Let’s be almost lyrically spiritual, what the heck? Lunatics see others as lunatics, similarly the unethical would be the last to see their own lack of ethics but would be the first to point to others to conceal their own culpability in that department.
But I say this is serious business. No time this, for jokes and levity, straighten up. If somebody tries to sabotage the efforts to ferret out the most ruthless terrorist organization in the world, that person sabotages the security of those children in buses who get Claymored in Keblithigollewa, those babies who get bayoneted in the border villages, yours and my security, our cousins’ and out grandmothers’ and our children’s security. Trying to pin the blame for the ACF killings on the army is such sabotage. Trying, in the newspapers, to rabble rouse the public into believing that the ACF killings are on par with Embilipitiya and the past, is such sabotage, not only of the army, but the efforts of this country to get back on its feet. Such labour is not meaningless or academic; it could invite the effect of stanching the flow of aid into the country, stalling concessions such as GSP, resulting in thousands of lost jobs, resulting possibly even the risk of sanctions -- all of which will impinge on the livelihoods of the long suffering people, not the NGOying, oops enjoying, Pintos.
So this is serious business, not trifling gamesmanship. Pinto’s deceit in painting me, a constant government critic, as an unethical state supporting opinion-maker, seeks to twist the tale -- to make black white, and white black, to portray truth-telling as voodoo, while making out her ham-handed, sycophantic, patently unethical NGO and foreign aided subversion that blights the lives and security of ordinary people, as the model practise of emancipator journalism.
It’s not only a laugh, it’s also an embarrassment. It’s as if a woman is dancing nude on the streets screaming her head off saying “you know, I think Abeynayake’s underwear is unclean,” or something like that….
I truly really with a conscience, pity her. She may not know that she is a source of embarrassment to the practitioners of truth telling journalism, who have a conscience, and who have the interests of the poor insecure LTTE-battered and constantly knocked down people of this country at heart - - practitioners who I daresay, practice their truth-telling even at the risk of being called pro government hacks by mad hatters such as herself.
So, Pinto, not only don’t you have a leg to stand on, you have beyond all reasonable doubt exposed yourself as a NGO hack (CPA, LST whatever; you did defend and therefore work for the CPA sometime you say…) who rabble-rouses the public, falsely shows the current human rights record in a relatively poor light to the past, and furthermore tries to mislead an entire commission into believing that an army committed egregious violations equal to Embilipitiya and KK, when it’s patently not the case. This is not what I say, but what the Udalagama commission says expressly ---- and I dare anyone to contradict one word in that commission report, or to quote any of the commissioners to the effect that they don’t stand by that report, which expressly blames lawyers including Pinto for misleading the commission into believing that the army did it.
Egads, and she calls me a hack and a mud-slinger? It’s not for nothing it’s stated in the bible: “Why do you look at the speck that is in your brother’s eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye?’’ Matthew 7: 3.5.
(Incidentally this is the relevant extract from the Udalagama report, which finds fault with all lawyers for victims’ relatives who appeared before it, and that includes Pinto herself: “Their main function was in the attempt to discredit every possible institution and authority of this country before the Commission, and attempt to hold one party responsible for the gruesome crime. They did not consider any other group being possible offenders, or show any interest in ascertaining on whom responsibility could be placed except their targeted group. They appeared not to ascertain the truth but to engage in a fault finding exercise of the security forces of Sri Lanka. We consider it as a suspiciously narrow outlook to adopt, not worthy of a role to be played by responsible civil society members, who should have looked at issues broadly to ascertain who the actual culprits are in this ghastly act.’’
Back to Pinto who drones on thus: “If Abeynayake wishes to enlighten himself on my denunciations of state excesses during the eighties and nineties he may refer to past editions of not only the Sunday Times but also the now defunct Sun newspaper where throughout the mid eighties (when I was studying law at the University of Colombo) and thereafter, I consistently wrote virtually hundreds of articles as well as columns about the human rights violations of the UNP as well as the Kumaratunge regime subsequent to 1994.’’
I have already dealt with this casuistry in my notes to the Sri Lanka Guardian, but for the benefit of the reader, I shall reiterate. Quit playing baby, Pinto, you know as well as I do, that my claim is that you have teamed up with once notorious human rights violators who now happen to be of your political persuasion, or at least happen to be like-minded saboteurs, to take apart the forces and a system -- and to rabble-rouse the public into doing so -- which fought under very difficult circumstances, the most ruthless terrorist organization in the world.
That was no joke, and you owe it to the forces that fought for your security -- yours and mine, your family’s and mine -- not to rabble rouse, hand in hand with egregious violators from a hoary past, whom you know only too well have committed egregious violations from all that you now almost with flatulent bombast, claim you have written.
Go ahead, bathe yourself in self-bestowed laurels about the “hundreds’’ you wrote; that still doesn’t take away from the fact that you are teaming up with these same whippersnappers you claim to have condemned, to paint all including the army which got rid of the most ruthless terrorist outfit in the world, a bunch of cheap Embilipitiya like murderers.
“……he now (in his second missive) takes up the position that I had not written about the excesses of the LTTE. Again, this is typical of Abeyanake’s absurd perversity. He is well aware of the fact that I had all along been a most vocal and public critic of the totalitarian nature of the LTTE not only now when it has become fashionable to do so but also during the UNF period ………’’ Pinto adds.
Urrgh. It is fashionable to condemn the LTTE? This organization has been condemned for decades by the right-thinking, and it only became “fashionable’’ for NGO hacks such as Pinto to condemn it recently.
But, hear ye, she says she condemned them prior to that as well, before her own flood, in those antediluvian ages before the loss of innocence, and therefore she claims she was rara avis – a rare bird. She even contends hilariously that I complimented her on such articles when I met her at a party! If I did so, I’m very sure, that time, I really must have been drunk.
I’d like to remind her that even Ranil Wickremesighe has condemned the LTTE, at desperate times. This was when he was not running to Norway when the LTTE was cornered and in its last gasp, in a futile bid to save the LTTE in the nick of time. Folks such as Hillary Clinton condemned the LTTE, before they ran to its rescue, again in a futile bid in their last hours of resistance. So condemning the LTTE was neither fashionable nor optional. It became necessary to stay halfway credibly afloat in a right-thinking society, in a right thinking world.
But such token condemnation will not take away from the general oeuvre of Ranil Wickremesinghe’s life’s work, or Clinton’s handiwork for instance. Theirs was a mission to condemn the LTTE only when they had to, while transparently, for reasons of their own advantage and other reasons best known to them, acting as mouthpieces for the LTTE, or doing whatever possible to make life easier for its leadership and cadre.
Pinto’s tokenism is no exception. Heck, some human rights activist she would be considered, if she doesn’t make a condemnation of the diabolically venomous LTTE at some point in her jottings? But in the general oeuvre of her work, and in the general oeuvre of her work in her recent efforts to rabble rouse against the government on the ACF killings etc., and as transparently clear in her and other lawyers’ efforts to pin the blame for the ACF killings on the army and the security forces – all pointed out, not by me, but explicitly by the Udlagama commission ---- she does what the LTTE would manifestly benefit by, and the forces would manifestly lose from.
Well, I suppose if she can quote Martin Luther King Jnr, it doesn’t matter entirely if I quote Abraham Lincoln. Pinto, you can fool all the people some of the time, and some of the people all the time, but you can’t fool all the people all the time.
Tokenism against LTTE excess is after a fashion. Heck, even Anton Balasingham the LTTE’s high priest of fiction virtually condemned their own previous assassination of Rajiv Gandhi and the hilariously termed it an “accident’’. Some moonlighting tokenism in the ‘Sunday Times’ by Pinto most definitely does not an anti-LTTE activist make. Most definitely not, particularly when all your actions have the effect of helping the LTTE, while there is an army campaign ongoing to destroy this LTTE, the most ruthless terrorist organization of this world. Pinto tried to blame the security forces unfairly in the Udalagama commission hearings, and this is not me saying so, but the commissioner in a report in black and white. Her replaying scenes of some playful yapping at the LTTE in the past, will erase Pinto’s sabotage of the forces for the benefit of the LTTE and its diaspora handmaidens only in the minds of babes and knaves.
“His personalized attack in this regard is well seen by the fact that he uses the third person terminology in the initial parts of his misconceived column and then switches to the term ‘you’ when talking of this citation.
In substance…. eminent personalities in the fields of law, science and the arts who accepted honorary titles from Presidents Jayawardene, Premadasa and Kumaratunge, including ‘Deshamanya’ titles’ would all be tainted with the same brush as all these state leaders were accused of human rights violations’’, she writes.
Is this woman daft, or does she think we are daft? Personally, I don’t have much regard for the Deshamanya/bandu titles be they bestowed by human rights violators or not; con-men rotters and brigands have received them, among good people, and recently there was a move to rationalize these awards schemes that had become a bad joke. Even though I will approach any Deshamanya’s deshamanya-ness with a pinch of salt, these Deshamanya titles, compared to Pinto’s capitulation to Condi Rice, are still a different matter to me.
Are we daft to think that a scientist’s or artiste’s receiving a title from the head of state, is the same as a human rights activist receiving an award for human rights activism, from virtually the high priestess of the world’s most notorious human rights violator? Does a schoolboy accept an award from Hon. Mervyn Silva for good behavior? As I wrote in the original article, do we accept an award from the devil for quoting scripture?
That latest Pinto casuistry is the lamest of the lame. That photograph says it all. She is a happy appeaser, like a happy hooker, pardon the comparison. She says she writes attacks on the US in Khaleej Times and what not. Really, you do that, before after taking an award for human rights from the same hand ---- from the high priestess herself, none other? Either you are just completely lacking in integrity Pinto, or just a jolly good stand-up comedian.
But just by way of further explanation to the uninitiated, this is how the US operates, and operated particularly in the time of Bush and Rice. A few criticisms here and there were allowed, encouraged even, for the sake of credibility, but all those who were bought and kept, were then by the strength of awards they gave and other junkets they provided, supposed to help the imperial power in screwing us small nations, pardon if that was very simply put.
Sure, Pinto can take a shot at the U.S, get an award from them, and then fulfill their mission to subvert this nation, as she did so transparently in the Contra La Fem case. That makes her a human rights icon? Well, she does seem to think so, which is why at the very outset I made it clear it’s good for our general health but primarily hers, that she comes crashing down quick to earth.
And as for those petty-piddling arguments about my using “she’’ and then graduating to “you’’, what a transgression that, worthy of a libel suit. “Mommy, he called me ‘she’ and now he calls me ‘you’.” Says mommy; “Yeah, sweetie, either way he was referring to you Pinto, ain’t mommy right?’’
The rest of Pinto’s animadverting, I will deal with summarily for reasons of brevity. She states that I may be coerced to write what I wrote about her, even though she fortunately enjoys untrammeled freedom of the press.(!) I suppose I must be coerced also to carry, as editor in chief, the stinging attacks we make day in and day out on this government, every week? Look at the upcoming paper, Lakbimanews of 24.8. 9. The human rights and disaster management minister goes to the police to exonerate himself from what ensues from our expose. We excoriate the government’s gross diddling in Sri Lankan and Mihin Air. We excoriate the government for being tardy on the police commission, and thereby encouraging impunity. The proof of the pudding is in the eating Pinto, and so you say I was under pressure to carry all this as well, in a newspaper I edit? As for Pinto’s freedom, we can see it so transparently, it embarrasses us. Not that a journalist cannot tell the truth in the Sunday Times, and I took some very good shots all around the wicket in the twelve years I was there, and thanks.
But how can you do so, when you are very probably ingratiating yourself with the powers that be, and with the chairman’s son who is Yoo Enn Pee, and on the Council too, Pinto? How about that --- birds of a feather flock together, what, Pinto? How about that indeed?
She says ignoring of ethics to serve a pro-government agenda “is the lowest rung of the unsavory ladder.’’ About that pro-government kite she flies around me, I’ve already said she is daydreaming, considering our newspaper’s trenchant exposes of this government and its actors. They are legion and award-winning; I’ll send the cuttings if anyone wants them.
So never mind the bottom of the ladder, but this talk of ethics from a lady who is selling her own army down the drainpipe when that army fought valiantly for your security, my security, our security and our children’s security --- those kinds of ethics don’t have a place in the ladder at all. Those ‘ethics’ are five or six feet underground, deep down there, mingling with the immutable ethics of the underworld.
But I forgive them, these Pintos, they do not know what they do. Let’s be almost lyrically spiritual, what the heck? Lunatics see others as lunatics, similarly the unethical would be the last to see their own lack of ethics but would be the first to point to others to conceal their own culpability in that department.
But I say this is serious business. No time this, for jokes and levity, straighten up. If somebody tries to sabotage the efforts to ferret out the most ruthless terrorist organization in the world, that person sabotages the security of those children in buses who get Claymored in Keblithigollewa, those babies who get bayoneted in the border villages, yours and my security, our cousins’ and out grandmothers’ and our children’s security. Trying to pin the blame for the ACF killings on the army is such sabotage. Trying, in the newspapers, to rabble rouse the public into believing that the ACF killings are on par with Embilipitiya and the past, is such sabotage, not only of the army, but the efforts of this country to get back on its feet. Such labour is not meaningless or academic; it could invite the effect of stanching the flow of aid into the country, stalling concessions such as GSP, resulting in thousands of lost jobs, resulting possibly even the risk of sanctions -- all of which will impinge on the livelihoods of the long suffering people, not the NGOying, oops enjoying, Pintos.
So this is serious business, not trifling gamesmanship. Pinto’s deceit in painting me, a constant government critic, as an unethical state supporting opinion-maker, seeks to twist the tale -- to make black white, and white black, to portray truth-telling as voodoo, while making out her ham-handed, sycophantic, patently unethical NGO and foreign aided subversion that blights the lives and security of ordinary people, as the model practise of emancipator journalism.
It’s not only a laugh, it’s also an embarrassment. It’s as if a woman is dancing nude on the streets screaming her head off saying “you know, I think Abeynayake’s underwear is unclean,” or something like that….
I truly really with a conscience, pity her. She may not know that she is a source of embarrassment to the practitioners of truth telling journalism, who have a conscience, and who have the interests of the poor insecure LTTE-battered and constantly knocked down people of this country at heart - - practitioners who I daresay, practice their truth-telling even at the risk of being called pro government hacks by mad hatters such as herself.
It’s true. It’s easy to paint someone who acknowledges the good that the government does as pro-government. It’s something commonly and banally done by the nattering nabobs. I say now, right here, loud and very clear, with my integrity worn on my sleeve, that I stand and applaud this government of ridding this country of the horror of LTTE terror.
If that and that alone means I’m a pro government stooge, no matter how much I persistently call the government bluff on umpteen other matters, as Pinto rarely does, so be it.
Being me is much better than living half a life as a nude mad hatter running around the streets complaining about other people’s underwear … or even their ideas of friendship. It’s puerile Pinto. You are but juvenile; an adult with a child’s mental age. I called you a friend, and there are friends and friends. I did so because I have no enmity towards mentally underdeveloped, shop-talking, yackkety-yacking, smarmy, shrill, two-bit chattering-class Harriets such as yourself.
Related Articles:
Of journalistic hacks and the slinging of mud - By Kishali Pinto-Jayawardena
The rotten egg and the phantom limb - By Basil Fernando
More rotten egg in his face - By Rajpal Abeynayake
Rotten egg is now in his pocket -By Basil Fernando
Rotten eggheads never get better - By Rajpal Abeynayake
Rotten eggs never get better - By Basil Fernando
Rice-fed rascality? - By Rajapal Abeynayake
Rajpal I guess you must save your words instead of getting into a stupid public diologue. Both of you have been and could be invaluable to the jounalistic clan in SL and washing dirty clothes in public is not getting you anywhere.
Those who oppose you or Kishali or even side with one of you is doing greater damage than good.
You are both professionals who need to bury the hatchet and bring sanity to prevail in this stupid dialogue. So beat it....who cares as to which one of you is superior??? Where I am concerned the SL journalistic fraternity need the likes of you two, now more than ever when the country has turned a new leaf...please forget these petty mud slingings and make up for the good of everyone and our beautiful country which has got a new lease of life after 30 gruesome years.
Crude Male Chauvinism of Rajpal Abeynayake
A woman’s response
In one of the ugliest pieces of writing ever to appear in recent times, Rajpal Abyanake has exposed himself as a crude male chauvinist. He even talks of his underwear and images of women dancing in the street naked. His opponent is a woman and this is the way he thinks he must deal with it. Very much like a drunken husband trying to teach a lesson to his woman.
Behind the veneer of civility, this is the real man. He portrays himself as adult, and his opponent as a child; he is brilliant and she is referred to as mentally retarded; and talks about her knowledge of his underwear. He is truth teller, she is a liar. He is noble and she sells her. He is all reason and she is a rabble-rouser. He is sane and she is a lunatic. He is high class and she is low class. He is talking sense and she is a chattering Harriet.
This piece of writing is a good example of example of male chauvinism amongst Sri Lankan “journalists”. Just scratch the surface of civility and the postures of “Mahatahya”, and then you see the image of the chauvinist in its ugliest form.
There is a good reason for women to boycott reading of such a “journalist”, so that the editors will take trouble to teach a lesson to such male chauvinists.
Kisali gets ugly and personal
Kishali could not counter the argument. She started the mud slinging with various name calling and Rajpal has come out strong and destroyed her. I think the diaspora people want dull boring harangues but Rajpal has used colorful language and demolished her. There is nothing wrong or unparliamentarily and if Rajpal is a male chauvinist then Kishali is a female chauvinist sow? In a debate the first thing is to answer the argument but she gets personal. For the diaspora that’s ok but Rajpal answering in the way she asked for it, after that, is bad. Take the facts and remember that this is not grade school --- she get’s personal, and man or woman she may be, she deserves every ounce of what she gets. I think this kind of hard hitting was opportune because she was trying to get away with a great deal of untruth. You should debate these things out; fair people will judge who has come out better in this exchange.
All the ugly mud slinging that was indulged in by Pinto Jayawardane and her ugly personalisation of the whole issue is an ugly and un-woman like response, and this is the typical thing. When these NGO types are attacked in their same coin they say 'we are women.'' This has nothing to do with women and the some persons who posted here are are ugly. Let us not forget the issue. Rajpal Abeynayake beautifully demolished Kishali and the methods he used are similar to Churchill’s. Churchill told a lady in parliament: If I was married to you, and you gave me poison, I’d drink it.'' So these are time honoured ways of demolishing people colourfully and anyway that's not the point. Rajpal has demolished with facts and the problem is that all these people have nowhere to hide when the facts are exposed. It’s a very thorough expose.
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