| by Hana
Ibrahim
(December 29,
2012, Colombo, Sri Lanka Guardian) The Department of Police is the country's
chief law enforcement authority. When its spokesperson comes each and every day
before the mass media and relates the numerous activities and their surrounding
circumstances to the public, he is taken at his word. For, the word of the
Police is the ultimate. Yet, what seems to be happening is just the opposite.
 |
The government could not have asked for a more favourable setting, whether it was its own creation or if it was a result of converging social and political realities, for a total onslaught on their 'perceived enemies'.
In the follow up
to the recent shooting incident outside the house of the President of the Bar
Association of Sri Lanka (BASL), Parliamentarian Wijeyadasa Rajapakshe, Police
Spokesman, SSP Prishantha Jayakody had reportedly claimed there was a
contradiction in the statements taken with regard to the shooting, alluding to
inconsistency in the evidence given.
Irked by the
police backtracking, Rajapakshe, who has claimed the statement he had made to
the police had been issued to the media erroneously, has threatened legal
action against the police spokesman.
Rajapakshe has
said when talking in Parliament regarding a case that is being heard in a court
of law is prohibited, the statement such as the one made by the police
spokesman amounts to a contempt of court, and charged such announcements
indicate of manipulations by higher forces.
The police
stance makes one wonder whether the rule of law in this country has been
totally abandoned by those who govern the country.
To make matters worse,
not just for the government and its main players but for the country at large,
its image and the very survival of the independence of the Judiciary, a
statement by 'The Lawyers' Collective' deplored the 'false propaganda' against
the Chief Justice deeming them not as isolated incidents, but
"meticulously orchestrated attacks coerced and carried out at the behest
of the highest in authority."
It went on to
state, "Among the false accusations intended to mislead the public, they
(State-controlled media) have stated the Chief Justice had fixed the benches in
the Court of Appeal. It is common knowledge the Chief Justice has no role to
play in arranging any bench whatsoever in the Court of Appeal. Their
insinuation the Chief Justice selected a bench to hear her case is an insult to
the dignity and integrity of the Judges of the country's higher
judiciary."
The manipulation
of the news cycles is not something alien to any party in power. Yet when the
State-controlled media are engaged in the manufacture of lies and half-truths
and when that same State-controlled outlets are dominating a market share, and
whose viewers and listeners are so gullible as has been proven time after time,
one wonders as to what alternatives are left for the intellectually curious and
even for those who hang around the threshold of rational inquiry.
The government
could not have asked for a more favourable setting, whether it was its own
creation or if it was a result of converging social and political realities,
for a total onslaught on their 'perceived enemies'.
To brand the
sitting Chief Justice as an active politician and term the members of the Bar
Association as conspirators is something beyond the pale. One can surely recall
the malicious and utterly disingenuous campaign aired by the State-controlled
television during the last Presidential Elections with grisly images of Idi
Amin, the notorious Ugandan dictator. The messaging was quite obvious but in
retrospect, one is invariably prompted to wonder as to what the real parallels
are, if such parallels do exist.
Whatever the
government has in its repertoire of capabilities, a well-oiled propaganda
machine is certainly one of them. They know how to use it and drive home a
point to the extent the people become accustomed to what is being produced on a
regular basis by that machine. All the aces are held by the government, which
has opened a 'Pandora's Box'. Only thing that is left for the Opposition and
for the people is at the bottom of that box: 'Hope.'
(The writer
is the editor of the Ceylon Today, a
daily based in Colombo, where this piece was originally appeared)
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