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Those musical shows

So the year ends with a bang and not a whimper? Reversing the post we are not concerned so much with the annual fire crackers (the damage from which we are anyway informed is now very much reduced) as with those ubiquitous musical shows which seem to be an inevitable part of the festive calendar.

Christmas, New Year, Aluth Avurudda - any excuse is good enough for Sri Lankans to have a 'bajaw' and anybody who has had to keep up until the early hours of the morning because of the raucous electronic din caused by these musical shows will testify to the fact that these have become among the chief urban torments of our time.

Don't get us wrong. We are no spoil sports and like to see the young having a good time and if this involves loud music and songs which do not sound very musical who are we to complain? But the point is that when it comes to giving out permits for musical shows in urban areas there must be some standards which are enforced.

What happens more often than not is that these musical shows take place in municipal parks, playgrounds or similar locations either as part of a carnival or as separate musical entertainment. From early evening recorded music is played accompanied by various announcements in a bid to attract an audience. Then comes the group and the vocalists. To begin with things are more or less decorous with the more classical singers keeping to some kind of a code. Things begin to get out of hand, however, close to the witching hour.

At this time what one hears is more akin to an old-fashioned 'thovil' ceremony rather than a modern musical entertainment. Come to think of it there must be something in our collective psyche which makes us hark back to our ancestral roots in our entertainment even if we are using electric guitars and drums to create our music whereas our ancestors used only therudimentary drum.

Whatever it is what is necessary is that when giving out permits for such entertainments the local government authorities must enforce a strict time limit so that while the young are not deprived of their entertainment the not so young are also not deprived of their beauty sleep.

Agree to disagree

As the country greets the New Year with a new government we have also been treated to a new concept. The government of Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe has announced that today, January 1, will be celebrated as the Day of Brotherhood when the party of government will extend the hand of friendship to all political parties and invite them to take part in the task of nation-building.

New Year's eve has been traditionally the occasion for bacchanalian revelry on the part of the country's privileged classes who see the New Year in style in their five-star temples and it will certainly take a leap of imagination for the country at large to identify the first of January as a day of high idealism. However, the advent of a new government should make it easier to get used to new ideas and it will certainly be an auspicious beginning if all political parties can start the year on a footing of cordiality.

But after we have partaken of kiribath, kavum and kokis and hugged our traditional foes and rivals and sworn undying love towards them what are we going to do?

Obviously it will take more than a gesture on the part of a new government to obscure, erase or wish away political differences. Certainly we do not think the UNF Government is given to wishful thinking to the extent that it thinks that it is possessed of a magic wand to bring about such an erasure of differences but what the Day of Brotherhood can do is to bring about an understanding that political parties can oppose one another without recourse to the bloodshed and the crass violence which has been the hallmark of recent elections.

Let us then usher in the New Year on that note of hope. Differences there will be but, how wonderful if all of us can get together, whatever our differences might be, and agree to disagree?

On criminal defamation

It was good to see the familiar bearded features of our old friends of the Free Media Movement in earnest consultations with the new Minister of Mass Media Imtiasz Bakeer Markar. As a result we have been informed by our sister Sinhala newspaper the 'Dinamina' this morning that the Minister's colleague the Minister of Justice W.J.M. Lokubandara is to bring legislation before Parliament repealing the law of criminal defamation under which several newspaper editors are already charged before courts.

It is worth recalling that this was one of the measures recommended by a committee headed by the eminent constitutional lawyer R.K.W. Gunasekera which was appointed by the late Media Minister Dharmasiri Senanayake. However his successor Minister Mangala Samaraweera for reasons best known to him chose to ignore these recommendations although this was one of the issues which the PA had campaigned against at the 1994 elections.

The Government's decision to revise the law is welcome for two reasons. One is the same purpose can be served by invoking the law of ordinary defamation. The second is that the law of criminal defamation has often been used to coerce and frighten newspapers which have provoked the displeasure of the Government. Not the least obnoxious feature of this law is that an offender can be imprisoned if the courts so desire.

Having said that, however, a word of caution to newspapers themselves will not be out of place. That is about the need to be accurate. Defamation cases are costly affairs so that it is not everybody who believes that he has been hurt by a newspaper who is in a position to go to courts.

Without telling tales out of school we can safely say that it is not every newspaper editor either who wields the enormous power he has wisely. Therefore, it becomes incumbent on newspaper editors once they have been freed of the incubus of the criminal defamation law to be accurate in their reporting and fair in their commentaries particularly in a situation where there has been an unprecedented burgeoning of the mass media in recent times.

A test of reconciliation

A news item in a morning newspaper today said that the Leader of the Opposition Ratnasiri Wickramanayake has sought an appointment with Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe to make representations about the harassment of People's Alliance supporters at certain work places in the aftermath of the General Election. Other PA spokesmen are also on record as having complained on this score, the most vocal being former Minister Mangala Samaraweera who had even chided Government-controlled media institutions for not recording such instances.

If indeed such instances have occurred on a sizeable scale needless to say such actions fly in the face of the assurances held out by responsible leaders of the United National Front Government that there will be no resort to political victimisation on the grounds of a persons' personal political affiliation.

This does not mean that there is any reason to doubt the bona fides of those who hold out such assurances. But as we know by experience there is many a slip between the cup and the lip and many things can happen in work places without the knowledge of those in authority and this is why vigilance is necessary.

While there is no reason to harass permanent employees of government departments, public corporations and other such statutory bodies merely on the grounds of political affiliations it must be borne in mind that there can be cases of people being employed on the eve of the election for political reasons.

Such persons have often worked in the constituencies of the politicians employing them rather than in their work places. We know of instances where some employees have worked in Ministries although they have drawn their salaries or wages from institutions coming under such Ministries. It is time that a stop is put to such gross abuses of power and arrogant flaunting of political muscle.

It is nevertheless necessary that the Government should take serious note of the PA's representations if they prove to be supported by facts and take immediate action to redress just grievances. Such action on the part of the new administration should go a long way towards forging that consensual politics and mood of national reconciliation which are so necessary if the country is to go forward in any meaningful manner. While crying over spilt milk is a futile business we can not at the same time afford to repeat past mistakes from whatever quarter they may have emanated.

Towards political tolerance

At the first Cabinet briefing for the year Cabinet spokesman Prof. G.L. Peiris had reportedly announced that the independent Police and Public Service Commissions would be in place before the local government elections scheduled for March 1. These elections would take place under an amended Local Government Elections Ordinance the chief feature of which would be the shortening of the period of the election itself.

The establishment of the Police and Public Service Commissions on an independent footing should go a long way towards evolving that new political culture at whose altar politicians of all parties have been paying ritual obeisance for some years now.

Unfortunately, however, the more fervent these servants of the people become in propitiating their newly-discovered godhead the more brutish have elections become. The recently-concluded election for example was one of the nastiest in recent memory characterised as it was by both pre-election as well as post-election violence. Several Members of Parliament as well as defeated candidates are still on remand as a result of this violence while the brutality unleashed on a group of Muslim youths in Madawela in the Kandy district will stand as a permanent reminder of the depths to which politics has sunk in recent times.

The new Parliament which is studded with an array of newcomers is thus offered the rich opportunity of embarking on a new political culture which should make politics less adversarial. This must not become a kind of window-dressing behind which the very real differences which exist between the political parties are subsumed. As long as there are sectional differences in society there will be political parties representing those differences so that it will be unrealistic to expect such differences to be subsumed in some kind of ersatz grand coalition.

While there can be a government of reconciliation with specific programmatic objectives in mind it will be unrealistic to expect any large panoply of a national or all-party government. The existence of dissident opinion is necessary for a healthy democracy but what is urgently needed today is the complementary existence of tolerance of different opinions and a consensus on national issues.

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