“The opposition should take this matter to court and also organize protest against such blatant abuse of public media by SLBC.”……………………………….
SLBC Watch
(January 03, Colombo, Sri Lanka Guardian) The January 3rd 7a.m. prime time ‘Subharathi’ program was once again a propaganda piece on behalf of one of the candidates out of the 22 candidates standing for the presidential election. Several university teachers were brought as a panel to answer the allegations of the common opposition candidate against the government of Mahinda Rajapaksha. The university lecturers participating in this propaganda exercise were Dr. Sunanda Maddumabandara, Head of the Department of Sociology at University of Kalaniya; Suranga De Silva, Senior Economic Lecturer at the University of Colombo; and Sarath Amaratunga, from the Faculty of Agriculture, University of Peradeniya. Indika Jayarathna presented the program.
Answering the now common allegation of nepotism, one of the university lecturers asked what is wrong with a patriotic family playing a prominent role in business and economic affairs. He said that it is better that a patriotic family undertakes the business affairs of the nation rather than rogues of the private sector undertaking such business. He said that one could read various catalogues of investors in Singaporean businesses and one would find the name of the Lee family, meaning that family members of the Lee Kuan Yew family, in all the important businesses in Singapore. He said that that is the case all over the world and therefore there is nothing wrong in the patriotic Rajapaksha family taking over the important businesses in Sri Lanka.
This panel then went onto discuss the promises of increasing salaries of government servants by 10,000 Rupees by the common opposition candidate. They opined that such increases will result in creating inflation and thereby weakening the entire economy. They further stated that the activities in the monetary sector are not what is needed in the country but increases in production. In their view, increases of salaries for government servants will not be conducive to the increase of production in the country.
A further issue raised by this panel was the importance of agriculture. They said that agricutlrue is important not only for the economy but also for society and for culture. They implied that President Mahinda Rajapaksha is a better candidate for the improvement of agriculture than others.
Electoral law clearly provides that the government media during an election campaign should not be used for the propaganda on behalf of one of the candidates. If some of the issues are of public interest, it would only be fair that all the interested parties are allowed to express their views so that the electorate can make up their own minds after listening to all the parties. Abuse of the government media is a clear violation of the electoral laws.
The chairman of the SLBC and the producers of this program should be held liable for deliberately violating electoral laws. It should be presumed that they are engaging in such blatant violations with the full knowledge and encouragement of the government. As shown in previous columns, this violation goes on every day. The election commissioner, the opposition candidates and the election monitoring organizations should effectively intervene to stop this abuse.
The opposition should take this matter to court and also organize protest against such blatant abuse of public media by SLBC.
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