Ridding the republic of rotten reporting

 Comparisons are odious. As we said in this column last week, urging a principled government minister not to contrast the administration of which he is a part with the one immediately past. Because the virtue of a republican government must stand on its own merit. Not because it positively shines in comparison and contrast with a bygone regime’s alleged and/or actual misdemeanours. 

That said, some contrasts and comparisons beg themselves into being. They simply invite public and media engagement, commentary, and critique. This week, again, it was Satana, which was also in the spotlight for those interested last week. This time round, it was a minister of the previous administration struggling against a barrage of finger-pointing on one of the most divisive issues of our time. The celebration of so-called Victory or Heroes’ Days… on both ‘sides’ of the traumatic ethno-nationalist divide. 

This week, in the full glare of the electronic media spotlight, it was one-time UNP-stalwart turned UPFA-heavyweight Gamini Lokuge’s turn to face the studio flak. He took it in the flank for the previous government’s failure to confront, combat, and control chauvinism head-on; preferring to run with the allegedly persecuted hare of majoritarianism while hunting with the pursuing hound of ultranationalism. And what a pig’s breakfast he made of it; painting the previous regime in streaks of utter cynicism, rank cowardice in the face of public disapproval, and underlying rancour against certain minorities. 

If the principled government minister in the cross-hairs last week was to be faulted for defending the indefensible, the former minister under the previous regime suffered poorly this week in comparison – if there was, in fact, one. Whereas the minister of state last week had his facts and theories and rationales at his fingertips, and slipped only in the matter of pointlessly denying any wrongdoing by his government (a mug’s game in the chessboard of realpolitik), this was a massacre. A rout. A semi-ridiculous public baiting of a bear with a sore head. 

We mean, of course, the spectre of ultra-nationalistic chauvinism; not this servant of a state subservient to ‘majority with minority complex’ sentiment. But Lokuge himself was like a punch-drunk boxer putting his head down and taking the battering like a bull in a china shop while rummaging for reality or a saving straw. 

Under pressure 

He all but admitted that the violent chauvinistic acts (Aluthgama/Beruwala) that took place under the previous President’s watch were not “cricket” (my words) and conceded that the now-ousted regime had learned its lesson from those unsavoury incidents. He denied that the previous President was an executive watchman who had failed in his duty to curb those chauvinistic bloodhounds (the BBS and other “dogs of war” – Shakespeare’s words); citing the present animus of the same BBS against the past President as proof that the chauvinists now see Mahinda Rajapaksa as a dove or at least a reformed hawk. He spectacularly fumbled the onus that was placed on the then government to protect minorities under the executive watch; and it wasn’t at all a “magnificent hunt” – as virtually the entire republic-oriented, right-thinking audience turned their sights on him, with the cornered ex-minister coming out baying balefully at the huntsmen. 

If this is the calibre of minister we voted out, it can be said to be a much desired outing and desirable ousting. The Satana interview comes a week after the imbroglio of the government minister who didn’t know who comprised a three-man committee appointed by his government to probe the Central Bank scandal, and half a week before the former President ‘graced’ the Viharamahadevi Park ‘Victory Day’ celebrations (more about that below). It begged to be compared as a fiasco to end the hunt for those culpable of chauvinistic crimes against the country. 

It wasn’t cricket. It wasn’t magnificent. It wasn’t war. (To borrow a French general’s words on The Charge of the Light Brigade.) It was the unspeakable in pursuit of the uneatable. Except that Lokuge was the fox and Lokuge was the hound at the same time... a wily old cornered fox defending the erstwhile Master of the Hounds, who’s now out of the hunt. It was the untenable in pursuit of the unimpeachable. You had to be there – or have seen it on TV (Satana, 14 May, still on YouTube) – to appreciate how egregious the ‘Bring Back Mahinda!’ (BBM) faction’s attitude to chauvinism was. And is, truth be told.

So much for the entertainment element of controversial television shows! The matter could have ended there, as far as this column is concerned. But for the ‘minor’ matter of a blatant lie put out for the consumption of a gob-smacked studio audience. That in the midst of all the hullaballoo about central banks, constitutional amendments, changing the prime ministerial guard, and other parliamentary chaos, something akin to a Mahavirar Day – a commemoration of ‘heroes’ – had taken place “in the north”. 

That that hoary chestnut and convenient ogre, a certain plague upon both sides of the House by the name of V. Prabhakaran, had been felicitated by representatives of state and government “somewhere in the north” not too long ago and close enough to the Sri Lankan government’s own ‘Remembrance Day’ celebrations to cause discomfort. That by implication this was not only a disgrace to the government and the general state of the nation. But, by extension, a denigration of the valiant effort of our security forces. And a denial of the spirit of liberty shed abroad by the previous government. To say nothing of a media cover-up. A dark conspiracy against national security, etc. (Where have we heard that before?)

Of course, ex-Minister Lokuge’s interlocutors shot him down. Of course, there was no need to do so or engage with his contentious allegations at all, except as an act of kindness, really. Because the ex-minister had already shot himself in the foot, having shot off his mouth. Of course, it was demonstrated that no such event had taken place; no such event had been reported in 2015; and no such event had taken place in the north and failed to be reported in the south by the likes of Sirasa, the producers of Satana, or anyone else for that matter. 

And the ex-minister’s patent fumblings to prove from a scrap of newspaper that he had highlighted in yellow, but subsequently failed to read out from, proved that ex-minister’s economy with facts was to be his downfall. But in this day and age, when we all thought that the shades of war and rumours of war were a thing of the past – and a good thing, too – there was to be seen, again, regrettably, the sowing of a seed. Of doubt. Of fear. Of guilt. Of hate. Of shame at having been, and being, on the wrong side of ‘patriotism’ and ‘nationalism’ and all the rest of it.

  Men, movements, monuments

If the ex-minister caught in the glare of the redoubtable Stein studio’s spotlight – like some pugilistic butterfly – was the man of the moment, a parallel movement was brewing elsewhere. Five days after the Prabhakaran/Heroes’ Day fiasco on TV, another machine in the same gear swung into action in real life under a hostile heaven. Braving the inclement weather and the prospect of a pre-monsoonal bucketing, more members of the BBM ‘Light Brigade’ turned out and turned up to commemorate a Day. And (truth be told) a Man. And (not to beat about the bush) a memorable Victory. 

Except that one man’s ‘victory’ is another man’s ‘very disappointing turn of events’. Which is usually the case when wars, and ends of wars, are used as propaganda and props for political purposes, rather than taking the big-picture view that there is no such thing as a good war or a bad peace. (Or as one sensible commentator on social media recently said: “It’s not the heroic victory or the humiliating defeat that we commemorate. It is the colossal waste of it all.” War is not magnificent, folks – like, say, cricket. Even in the memory of those who say they ‘won’ it.)

Be that as it may, some war efforts – or propaganda machines – never run out of steam. Or sensationalism and sabre-rattling. Also, some old soldiers never die, and they don’t even “just fade away”. And, worse, some old hands at politics – which is the continuation of war by other means – cannot bow out gracefully. Instead, as certain sections of the nationalistically minded press phrased it, they turn out and turn up to ‘grace’ certain commemorative events. Naturally.

Because they are – in the estimate of the organisers of this memorable event – the only ones with the requisite ‘gravitas’ to carry it off. Not that they harbour a ‘grudge’ that the electorate seems to have forgotten they virtually single-handedly won the war. Not that they conceal a public secret of a ‘grouse’ how much sharper than a serpent’s tooth it is to have an ungrateful ex-general secretary of one’s party and former comrade-in-arms. Not that they nurse a ‘grievance’ against the ingrate public who voted them out of office for crimes against democracy and decency. Just that they have the ‘grace’ to ‘grace’ such an occasion. “We won the war, after all.” The subtext being, surely that must count for something – even in a post-war republic that is seeking to become a post-conflict society? Is there to be no peace at the hands of these ‘victors’, who insist on conjuring threats – real or imaginary – against national security? Can’t some segments of the media ignore these warmongers, rather than repeating and reproducing their bile and venom for public consumption? 

This brings me to what might be termed the present rottenness of republican reporting when it comes back and down to reflecting on the war. 

On the one hand, some representatives of the media report only what certain ‘gracious’ or ‘graceful’ politicos of a particular ilk do, say, feel, think, vis-à-vis the war. (“We won it! We deserve the kingdom and the power and the glory, forever and ever, on account of it! Watch out – there’s a Western/Diaspora/Media conspiracy set to foil us!”) On the other hand, other members of the Fourth Estate reflect the type of thinking (‘Development with Reconciliation’) that conservative republicans favour more than the cynical examples above of the former regime’s sound-bites. 

In the midst of it all, the state of the free media in Sri Lanka today exhibits a gamut of ethics from raw to ripe to rotten to rank and odorous. Some fawn over war heroes and relive what they see as the glory of the zero-casualties war and how it culminated in a famous victory. Others like to, or try to, pretend the war never happened. Or downplay or pooh-pooh stories of valour and human resilience in the face of terrific hardship. Thus earning the ire of the ‘nationalist’, ‘grateful to our gallant soldiers’ camp. So which do – and can – or ought – we take seriously, regard as sincere, and consider significant in this our post-war, post-conflict, transitory phase of national life? 

Desirable 

At the upper level, there is the President’s pledge to the military that he has not forgotten them. And that their erstwhile contribution to the liberation of Sri Lanka’s once under threat sovereignty and even territorial integrity would be valued and honoured now, as then. This shows that the peacetime republican regime is as committed to the security forces as the wartime regime was. 

Such a view is naïve, discounting the pressure that the former President put on the incumbent in the run-up to 18-19 May, charging that the latter had forgotten the nation’s war heroes. 

Doable 

On the peripheries, there were two commemorations that struck a balance, and perhaps in the limit, cancelled out each other. In the northern hamlet of Vellamulliwaikkal, the perceived-to-be hardline Chief Minister of the Northern Province defied a magisterial order not to commemorate the end of the war by conducting a commemoration ceremony for the unspecified war dead. In the southern Sinhala Buddhist bastion of Matara, the incumbent Commander-in-Chief was present at a well-attended but arguably lopsidedly representative gathering to remember the end of war. For while the Field Marshal jointly credited for the last drive that rid the country of terrorism’s scourge was present, the other two members of the triad that prosecuted the supposedly unwinnable war were noticeably absent. Ex-President Rajapaksa only ‘graced’ the event in Colombo’s landmark past, while the former Defence Secretary made the headlines for a reason other than the would-be ‘Victory Day’. 

This is pragmatic, with each camp playing to its own strengths and its own galleries. But was it as necessary as the Rajapaksas overlooking Sarath Fonseka and CBK in 2009? Never mind ‘north’ and ‘south’, was an opportunity to bridge the gap between the axis of powers that prosecuted the war and the new alliance that is pursuing peace, missed – as a result of a churlish and crippling observation of petty political grievances? 

Debatable 

The jury is still out, to mix a juridical metaphor into a military matter, on whether to remember 18-19 May as ‘Victory Day’ (as the hawks and the military itself, in some sense, did) or as ‘Remembrance Day’ (as the doves, the moderates, and the powers that be chose to do)? One camp clearly considers “We Won the War!” a putative election platform with some potential left. Other perspectives appeal to a pacifist, pluralist, post-conflict orientation that might draw votes and curry favour with a war-done, economy-weary polity.

This is strategic, for both camps. No one can fault either for taking the respective positions they did. And it remains to be seen whether ‘peace with justice in due course’ or ‘post-war development apace’ will have the greater pull at the polls. 

Damnable 

We come back to the canard that a ceremony to commemorate a long-dead terrorist was held, in which the media colluded to conceal the event and which by extension the government would have contrived. This conspiracy theory of Lokuge & Co. was exploded on the studio set. But it cautions us all about the underbelly of cynical manipulation of deep-rooted chauvinism that is still being pressed into service.

This is subversive: a trend to be identified, named, and shamed. 

Denouement 

The Prime Minister has expressed a wish that the media be more responsible in their reporting. The President has challenged his people to be mindful of facts and make meaningful commentary work in the national interest. The public at large – to judge by the relative absence of invective and diatribe in the comments sections of online articles and the absence of nationalist vitriol in the letters to the editor columns now, compared to then – want a change in the tone, tenor, and timbre of media coverage of the once so-called national issue. The press, therefore, have a duty and thus a burden to strike a balance between reporting and rousing up non-, anti-, or ultra-nationalistic sentiment.

In a nation-state where supporting the war effort was the dominant discourse for so long and where its prosecutors were national heroes to the masses by virtue of their office, agency, and instrumentality, reverting to peacetime precepts, contexts, and ideals is a tough and ongoing challenge. And as a responsible writer who once – and also still – challenged the norms of our rampant nationalism recently put it (referring to troublemakers who refuse to give up stirring dull roots with spring rain): “Five months after he lost power at the presidential election in January, President Rajapaksa is still making it to the front page of virtually every newspaper on a daily basis.” It does not bode well for some people whose memories are short that they are hanging on the every word and act of an authoritarian ruler who won the war but lost the peace. 

We all need to stop looking out for flash news of despotic aspirations that will drive a wedge into the psyche of the still-fragile nation and resist listening to anti-republican diatribes. Or face the consequences of a possible development into a polity divided sharply along the lines of what we choose to remember, celebrate, perpetuate – to the point of ethnic conflagration or even the flashpoint of war. No matter what reassurances to the contrary we may hear. There are no victors in a war as bad as ours. Only survivors, resolute rebuilders, partisans committed to remembering rightly. The ramifications of continuing to report on the regime that was and its grasping ambitions can only end in tears. Again.