The politics of censorship

Da Vinci code, the movie, has been banned in Sri Lanka and Hollywood has been pre-empted by the Catholic Bishops Conference. Certainly, any banning of a movie is not necessarily a happy portend, but in certain contexts, a censor's ban can bring glad tidings at least to some of us.

This week, it's the Catholic Bishops Conference that rejoices over the President's ban on the da Vinci code, underscoring that there are certain actions that could be taken by a Sri Lankan President, which could be very politically-correct in the eyes of the Church.

In certain ways, this could be a revelation. As much as the Church could do no wrong in the eyes of some, in the eyes of certain others, the President could do no good.

From last Wednesday, some of those blinkers will have to come down and people of certain religious persuasions will have to consider that a President continuously pummeled by the international media as hardliner and ultra nationalist, is not remotely close to that received image.

On the art aspect of the ban, critics analysts and cognoscenti alike could say that it is a separate matter. Though a ban does not please all comers, there is no policy of untrammeled free expression particularly when it comes to issues effecting religious principles, as a newspaper Editor in Denmark recently learnt at his cost after carrying in his publication, some cartoons to do with Islamism.

It's only a movie, it could be said, but the discourse and debate on the censorship placed on the Da Vinci code can go on. But, it's not this aspect of the controversy that should gain the focus, at least in a political sense.

If the Church asks for a special favour from the President and the President can grant it, it does mean that there is some implicit faith that has been placed upon the powers-that-be by the Church elders of this country.

If the Catholic Church could ask the President for a favour and have it granted, there is a seamless scheme of cooperation between Church and state, which would indicate that the political leadership and the religious leadership are in lockstep on certain matters of a temporal nature.

This cannot happen in a failed state. It cannot even happen in a failing state. It can only happen in a state where solid empathy for the 'other' undergirds the general attitude of the core political establishment.

It therefore looks almost canny that this whole issue of Sri Lanka being a failed state which emanated from the recesses of some obscure organization's offices in the West, is being debunked via the route of the Catholic Church, a Church sometimes associated with values that come from abroad, that are supposedly alien to the core values of this country.

UNP's CMC farce

Colombo Municipal Council's recently held election, chronic as it was, is being eclipsed by a post poll farce of such order of complexity that we are not sure whether somebody will in future turn it into a stage play, and put it up open the boards for charity.

To what ample extent could the UNP divest itself from responsibility for the goings-on in the CMC, which now threatens to make Colombo a failed city, that would probably impel the rest of the country to apply for unilateral independence from the metropolis?

The legal issues that caused the CMC elections to implode are a different kettle of fish that has to be addressed in the long term.

There is no quick fix that could make the law points that were instrumental in skidding the Colombo election disappear. But that does not mean that the parties that inherited the legal farce should also hanker for a political calamity.

If it sounds as if we are hectoring you the reader on this matter, please do refer yourself to the interview we are carrying on page 9 of this newspaper which features a lecturer in Constitutional Law saying that the UNP's 'buy one and get one free' policy of replacing elected candidates is entirely in contravention of both spirit and letter of the law.

That being the case, what would be the UNP's right to ask for fresh elections as if the party hierarchy is above board -- and is also prim as pianoforte teachers for convent girls -- in this whole exercise of holding onto power in the Colombo Municipal Council?

Its political ambitions shouldn't compel the UNP to doctor the elected list. There is still time to retract with honour, and the UNP should suspend its sense of grievance, and retract, not to lick its wounds, but to retain some image as an outfit that does not want to make a mockery of the entire legal apparatus that governs free and democratic franchise.

Some would say that the UNP has dug itself into this hole and is therefore unable to get out of it not looking totally soiled.

But, there is no law -- not even in the variety that a UNP constitutional lawyer would recommend -- to say that a party that tried a small game of political skullduggery, cannot yet go back on its tactics and retain some modicum of its image as being clean wholesome and above board. If the cost of such probity is to let some nondescript (bespectacled) independents run the city, so be it.