Is it more exasperating being a reporter in Sri Lanka or a reader of Newspapers?

With record number of journalists who have left these shores due to threats to themselves and their families, who are we left with?

A journalist is someone in Sri Lanka who depends on his measly income to survive and fend for his family. He cannot afford even to forego one month’s salary let alone counter the threat of dismissal. They therefore write safely, so as not to offend anyone in power who are able to make their lives difficult for them.

Simply put, the news we read, especially as regards to the wholesale destruction of Sri Lanka as a country, by many who have been elected to run it, and therefore exert undue authority, is not reported on. Further there is simply NO analysis of what is said by politicians, even if it obviously a downright lie.

I reported in the past few blog entries of lies attributed to the Health Minister, Maithripala Sirisena, who I was shocked would make such ridiculous allegations. However NO journalist dared question, the feasibility of accuracy of the statement attributed to him. No one dare do that! Or is it sheer ignorance of our journalists, who just choose to parrot what is said with NO inkling that their job also entails a degree of objectivity and believability. Are we all a nation of Morons, where a few astute liars are able to fib their way around, to such a degree that the people believe the lies and therefore elect them to high office.

We then are fools for electing people who are pathological liars to the highest office of the land, and many would say we deserve what we got due to our own ignorance and incompetence as human beings.

I have always maintained in this blog that people should read what I say with skepticism and make up their own minds, instead of believing what I write. It is so that people can evaluate if they are sufficiently educated to think, and then take what is most likely and drop what is assumed as a figment of a fertile mind!

The issue first is to determine if our journalists are truly not worthy of that title, or if they are intelligent and know the facts and reality, but are afraid to report what they believe because they are likely to fall foul of someone even their prejudiced boss, and lose their jobs. We are then best left with NOT believing anything we read. We can then begin to understand what might be the likely truth and act on that rather than at face value of the news item! God bless the reader who thinks.

The Minister of Health, Mr. Sirisena – Hero or Traitor – you decide!!

In my blog yesterday, I pointed out the sheer hypocrisy of a man entrusted with portfolio of health, who uses every moment of limelight to sing his praises, as if to hide a multitude of personal failings. Page 3 of today’s (Sept 26^th 2013) ADA Newspaper, www.ada.lk corroborates the report yesterday, but with an even more fanciful statement that 15 generations could live in a first world country on account of the money he was offered. Somehow one doubts his knowledge on that score despite his numerous trips overseas, having been underwritten by the GOSL, and therefore free for him. So he thinks a free bribe means just that, free to do anything for life!! Pity the country for such leaders.

 http://pattapalboru.blogspot.com/2013/09/the-lies-get-ever-more-fanciful-and.html 

Today we see corroboration of the statements I made independent of any knowledge of the link in advance and justifies quite clearly my point of view.

http://www.ft.lk/2013/09/26/maithripalas-outburst-shocks-sri-lanka-inc-ctc-denies/

For Sri Lanka as a nation to have Cabinet Ministers, and General Secretary of the SLFP to boot behaving in such personal glorification, and downright lying, when it affects Sri Lanka’s image all over the world, which will put off any foreign investor who does not wish to be associated with a country where their leaders continue to lie, as they know their voter base believe in such lies, so as to credit them with sainthood in my book is traitorous and should be punished.

Every Health Minister in every country on the face of the Earth MUST BE conscious about the Health of their Nation and do something to improve the health. That does not garner person holding such office any more plaudits. So to make political capital of him doing his job (the example here being enacting legislation or procedures within the law, so as to have illustrations of packets of cigarettes with photos of the consequences of cigarette smoking is a normal part of his job, and in most developed countries these are already in place. So why not in Sri Lanka?

Taking credit and making statements that he would lay his life down for this is just play acting and playing to the gallery, which is reprehensible and should be scorned, as it put into disrepute the honorable intentions of a person doing his job.

It is time that the Media grow up, and call to task, in the interests of the Nation, the apparent conflict between their responsibility to report the news, to point out to the reader the inconsistencies of statements, and the detrimental effect such statements could result for the nation as a whole. They must put Country before ‘Individuals’ so that in future, people will not take the ‘spinelessness’ of the media for granted to make outrageous statements for personal advancement at the expense of the best interests of the Country. 

Secretary to Ministry of Law and Order and IGP – Time a few examples of clearing the inner rot are made if the following are to be prevented

The following story beats the cake, and I am sure the whole story as usual has not been given to the reader. In short the Police from the Padukka Police Station barged into a private party of a person leaving for an overseas job the following day, and beat the man senseless, and is now hospitalized in Homagama Base Hospital.

http://www.island.lk/index.php?page_cat=article-details&page=article-details&code_title=88784

What on earth are the Police doing there unless they have a warrant for a search which they clearly did not have. So to trespass a private party in the first place is illegal, and added to that a whole series of criminal acts were perpetrated. I don’t know if the Police Officers were inebriated, but that is not the point.

The Police have a job to protect the citizens from criminals who break the law. Simply put they must enforce the law fairly and justly so that the Citizens of Mother Lanka are protected from criminals. What happens when the Police become the criminals? Who is there to protect the innocents?

In answering those questions, one is clear that there is a serious breakdown in law and order and it is the Police who are behind this in MANY cases, and NOT a few that is attributed to the Police by the senior  Police Officers who are either ignorant or choose to be blind!

One cannot stress enough the importance of the police to be law abiding, and to be seen to be law abiding too. They must resist the pressures put upon them by unsavory political goons who threaten them with transfers and more heinous pitfalls if they do not do as they say. It is time that the Political Goons, of which there are many in the Island, are also shown the door, so they do not try to establish as practice this completely abhorrent behavior.

I am sure this news item will just die with this story, with NO follow up. We must find what happened to the violators, and if they were booked, prosecuted to the full extent of the law and if found guilty receive adequate punishment, so that it is a deterrent. Additionally, it would be appropriate for the OIC Padukka to be reprimanded, transferred and found wanting, as he cannot control his staff, who should have been able to behave in a more salutary manner, and not engage in beating innocent civilians to pulp for self gratification. Watch this space!!  

The lies get ever more fanciful – and people continue to believe!!!! READ ON

The saga of lies and our reporters” propensity to give it credence continues to exasperate me in trying to get our media first and then the reading public second into making up their minds whether there is even a remote chance of a fanciful figment of an imagination having even one iota or truth or the possibility thereof!

The latest in a daily litany of lies was the one reported in today’s Island see attached link of the Health Minister being offered a bribe that could maintain 14 generations of his family in a first world country.

http://www.island.lk/index.php?page_cat=article-details&page=article-details&code_title=88775

Tobacco Companies, and in this case there is only one, namely Ceylon Tobacco that gives the Govt. a Billion rupees a week in taxes, will never in their right minds even offer such a bribe, though they will lobby, and use their legal means to prevent a reduction in their overall profitability.

Any idiot (except of course the Minister ) will realize that even if a bribe was so offered, and Sirisena went away to live a life of luxury, there will be the next minister who will want the same thing and so on. Bribing a Minister is not the way they do their business. Why are you behaving like a village idiot in your own village at the speech given at the Royal College in Polonnaruwa!

They spend millions in efforts at preventing the likes of the pictures on packaging to deter smokers, but that is inevitable soon, and no amount of bribing the aforesaid minister is going to change that. Legal action will delay it though!

So why does this person have to lie like this? Well guess? It is just so that he can fool the gallery into believing he is a pious man. For a family that has been desecrating Polonnaruwa of all its resources for well nigh a generation that is a bit rich for him to buy his way into the next life. We who truly believe it is real living and giving and behavior that determine where one ends up, the rest as they say is just politicking to the masses so that they can have an extension of their already expired political life of crime.

How much can we plead with the masses to understand the intentions of these bombasts and see every word that is uttered for what it truly is? Only then will people of average intelligence use their God given intelligence to assess what is said as being fanciful, and just run them out of town, as that is the only just and righteous act of people who wish to preserve their environment from marauders!!