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| Sunday, 05 March 2006 |
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Features |  |
| News Business Features Editorial
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We have it on authority
"We are the only authentic journalists in this whole process" was their refrain from day one - at about which time, even before the talks began, they launched a subterranean campaign for undermining the talks. That may be their prerogative, but we'll have to look into that part about state agit prop about which the aforementioned niche group made a great to-do. The fact is that these same journalists wore badges stating that they were 'officials' when Ranil Wickremesinghe was in charge of the peace process. This when they ostensibly belonged to the lily white and independent private media. What's apparently sauce for the goose, is not sauce for the gander - and mind you the goose uses all his authority (with badge to boot......) while all the while moonlighting, in the free area of the press like a free and easy pea-hen. Karu never failed, he says
He said some very complimentary things, which appeared to come from the bottom of his heart, and then he wanted a message conveyed to our political columnist who had carried a strapline to a news story to say 'Karu fails the first test.' This was while he (our columnist) was on the UNP mayoral nominations story. Karu Jayasuriya wanted it made clear to the reader that he did not fail the first test. He said that he headed the nominations committee, but all decisions made were at committee level meaning that there was collective responsibility that he said "is like cabinet responsibility." Translation: He alone cannot be made to carry the can for the UNP's disastrous stillborn mayoral run. Our columnist Prasad Gunewardene says: Siri Kotha sources confirmed that Karu Jayasuriya chaired all meetings pertaining to nominations as he was the senior-most person in the capacity of the deputy leader. They also said that issues that were beyond the purview of that committee were put to the party leader for a final determination. After power devolved following Wickremesinghe's defeat last November, Jayasuriya was placed in charge of all 'operational' matters that covered nominations for the local polls. On Cooray and his men
Why so? Cooray usually commands loyalty and respect of awe inspiring proportions. But this time some of the loyalists were just not biting. Reason? It was not that they had any falling out with Cooray per se-but it was the fallout from who was pushing Cooray. Milinda Moragoda was pushing Cooray, and it's the antipathy towards this (not so young) man in a hurry that alienated most from the Cooray effort from the very outset of that famously doomed campaign. So they tell us at least. Hopper caper
The story: Bill Clinton was treated to a hopper and egg-hopper breakfast by president Rajapakse. Nobody was hopping mad about it - there were smiles all around, and it was as if Mahinda Chithana has been exported to America via the paunchy Clinton stomach.. Until the hotel that provided the hoppers learnt that every Dharmadasa Dick and Harry from the foreign and local papers was saying it was the Hilton that catered. That's the colonial hangover for you - most newspersons assume that the President is catered to by the Hilton chefs, dollar salaried expats, what else? But the hoppers came from a hotel south of Colombo- a very old place, where some chefs and public realisations people have learnt it the hard way that even if you do a good job in Sri Lanka and do the locals proud- some five star honchos get the credit. House call
But, de Silva's comeuppance can now be clinically and dispassionately analysed now that the talks are over, and the talkers have lived to talk another day.This is just what some people got themselves into the other day. They want to know exactly what would have prompted the appointment of Nimal Siripala de Silva, whom everybody and their NGO girlfriend loved to hate, to head the talks team at the Geneva negotiations. Most have now come to the inescapable conclusion that is that this is what doctor ordered. Literally, I mean. Nimal Siripala de Silva was the man who negotiated for long hours with the doctors' unions, and it is said that he gave no quarter to the doctors. There was a local radio program which followed developments on the doctors versus Siripala de Silva opera almost on a daily basis -- and we know that Siripala in every instance had some fight left in him, even though the doctors relentlessly tried to get him with his back to the wall. But Nimal Siripala de Silva had a card to play each time, and he didn't exactly plonk his card on the table, he played his hand flamboyantly and with a touch of nuanced aggression. What better qualification to talk to the recalcitrant LTTE - just what the doctor ordered,then?
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The part of the press that occupies the pro UNP niche, has tried to make
out that there was a state media team at the Geneva talks, which looked
after state agit-prop, and had the state apparatus at their disposal. 
Karu Jayasuriya called this newspaper a week ago. He was exemplary in his
manners and was almost breathtakingly wholesome in manner. 
Sirisena Cooray was touted as the best man for mayor among the UNP's
current crop of hopefuls, but we all know that his campaign was stillborn,
in a modern day political misadventure that would have made Mr Bean want to
blush. Cooray's campaign was blighted by more than a mere jinx though-for
the simple reason that there were Cooray loyalists who from the outset were
not exactly ecstatic about the fact that Corray was running. 
The following culinary story was once upon a time a delight to the
political diarists and sketch writers of Sri Lankan newspapers who
specialise in a newspaper reporting of the culinary variety - you know, the
kind that gives the menu at some insignificant political event, and tends to
list the ingredients and the gram weights which went into the meals, as if
all that is all in the cause of excellent journalism. 
The talks are over now, and what we got are talkers talking about the
talks. No, Nimal Siripala de Silva and his team did not come a cropper -
something that had at least certain kinds of people in great discomfiture.
How could this be? Nimal Siripala de Silva was not supposed to be the kind
of fashionable talker/negotiator that talk-specialists could swoon about.
