The Media As A Tool For Social Action

By Emil van der Poorten –May 1, 2016

Emil van der Poorten

One of the recent bonuses of writing a weekly column for both an English Sunday newspaper and to a web publication has been the development of an informal “think tank” in the matter of seeking social justice for the vast majority of rural Sri Lankans whose travails go unreported otherwise.

Amidst the barrage of downright racist filth, up to and including the “c-word,” have been thoughtful suggestions from readers as to how those of us who live in the great “outback” of rural Sri Lanka might seek some little relief from the problems that face us on a daily basis and to which politicians, supposedly representing us at local, regional, provincial, and national level pay not the slightest attention. After all, they are too busy lining their pockets to listen to their alleged constituents and have tools waiting in the wings to provide appropriate “persuasion” in the event that their constituents show signs of wanting to ensure that they do not return to their positions of absolute power. This “persuasion” is basically of two kinds – crumbs from the table at which the politicians sup and the threat of bodily harm. You want proof? Check the track records of those who rode back into Parliament on Mahinda Rajapaksa’s (MR1) coattails. I don’t think you could find one who had a non-violent, uncorrupt track record among their considerable number still on our political scene.

A significant number of readers of Colombo Telegraph, a web publication, have provided leads as to how government legal institutions might be contacted in order to seek the relief that we so desperately need and cannot afford to buy in the marketplace that is Sri Lanka today. For that, I and my neighbours will always be grateful.

However, another serious problem facing all Sri Lankans, urban middle class to countryside peasant, is of a “New Class” that only a Milovan Djilas may have been able to do justice to: those who’ve become the new beneficiaries of the new Ohey Palayang (OP) dispensation despite being part of the violence and corruption of the MR1 entourage. The suggestions made by a number of readers as to how to circumvent the bureaucratic roadblocks, unfortunately, do not appear to provide a solution to what I am about to relate.

A significant number of the political flotsam and jetsam on our national scene are not only being tolerated by the OP dispensation but have begun ascending the (new) ladder of wealth, power and privilege under the Maithripala/Ranil (MR2) government! In fact, I have solid evidence of one individual that I have had cause to have contact with who has not only been restored to “respectability” after exposure of his conduct vis-à-vis human rights during the not-so-recently-concluded war against the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), but has been placed at the head of one of Sri Lanka’s premier medical institutions by the official mouthpiece and Minister of Health of the OP lot, Rajitha Senaratne.

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