Shamindra Ferdinando of the Island does not understand English!

Shamindra Ferdinando of the Island does not understand English! 

The Island reporter / editor Shamindra F in Sunday’s Island appears to have really made a complete ass of himself and moreover incur the wrath of the Governor of the Central Bank, which will probably result in a 5 Billion rupee lawsuit for making unsubstantiated allegations against him!

Lets talk about the Rs 5B first. As a person who can command US$5M a year, that has a present value of US $ 37M (Rs5B), which is at stake here, the lawsuit seeks potential lost earnings! If this allegations makes it impossible for him to be employed again, as ‘google’ and you get the hit syndrome.

What COPE report? There is NO COPE report it is only a report once it is tabled by the committee who attach their signatures to it. That did not happen on Friday, before the dissolution and so there is just NO REPORT.

We cannot fault our journalists for being idiots, because of the caliber of person who currently occupy many of these positions and he may have to plead insanity to avoid the lawsuit! And perhaps check himself in to Angoda for good measure.

While I have maintained as early as on 9^th of January 2015, IN THIS BLOG that appointing Arjuna Mahendran would lead to a conflict of interest allegation, and that it was nevertheless done, was an accident waiting to happen. The UNP has paid a heavy price for this accident. Will Ranil Wickremasinghe ever learn?

However fair is fair and until there is sufficient proof that he profited or gave insider information to his son in law’s company is a wholly different matter, and the Supreme Court also thought that there was NO case to answer even though the Speaker referred the matter to COPE to report and the fact they did not report within two weeks, is in itself as requested, MUST be open to investigation too.

It is NOT for the Island to regurgitate unfounded allegations circulating in FB from anti UNP forces bent on throwing mud at them, if they are a responsible paper they must first get their facts right, and report the facts.

So merely making front page headline allegations to sell the Newspaper must of itself, lay the paper open to be sued for slander and defamation of character.  

So in case the readers are confused as to what the lies are, firstly there is NO COPE REPORT that they refer to, so it is merely a figment of the writer’s vivid imagination. So he cannot make or take passages out of a report that does not exist and pretend it does and the rest is therefore mere defamation in order to sell the newspapers or to tow the line of their benefactors who have supported the paper handsomely the namely the Rajapakse Government! By way of hallucinating Kumara Welgama the Island Chairman’s brother.

Let this be a lesson to all, not to get into a situation where they are trying to bite more than they can chew, as all it does, it puts the future of your paper and ALL who work for it in jeopardy. Ceylon Today, is about to disappear along with the Rivira Group, let this not be the fate of the Island and Divaina too!