Sri Lanka: Living In A Skeptical Age

By Sarath De Alwis –-May 13, 2015 

Sarath De Alwis

“Just think, reader, what will happen to you if the truth of a mad beast overpowers the sane truth of man?” – Maxim Gorky in Untimely Thoughts”

Last week saw our genial, rustic peasant President and the patrician Prime Minister indulging in matters sublime. What emerged from it all is thatMaithripala Sirisena is clearly the representative of the purpose, the promise and the potential of the SLFP.

Both addressed a gathering of Literati at the book launch of Upul Shantha Sannasgala – Tuition Master, prolific writer, public thinker and media celebrity.

They differed greatly in style and content. The savoir faire displayed by the president in reaching the hearts and minds of a microcosm of the Sinhala speaking intelligentsia was electric in its impact. The Prime Minister cultivated, elegant and detached emerged as the affable outsider.

The contrasting approaches of the leader of the SLFP and the leader of the UNP created a palpable sense of Déjà vu. The cold war between politics of patrimony and politics of entitlement since the uprising of 1956.

The business like Prime Minster used the occasion to trace the evolution of mass media from the Ola leaf and Papyrus to Guttenberg and the Rotary press and thence to the digital age. He reminded the chosen elite gathering that it was the UNP that pioneered Television and introduced free Wi-Fi access.

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