|
Two
journalists with profound insight
I
wish to comment this week on the two articles written last
week of two sensible journalists by two prominent commentators.
I also wish to mention only two different aspects of their
expertise.
Last Wednesday, D.B.S. Jeyaraj wrote of Navamani’s former
editor M.P.M. Azhar, who died on August 28, aged 62. Jeyaraj
was junior to Azhar in age and in the profession. Both were
about one-and-a-half-decades younger to me. As Tamil journalists,
they worked in Virakesari and I in Thinakaran, we moved closely,
as we did reporting.
Jeyaraj recollected the advice Azhar gave him, when he was
dejected at being thrown out of a closed-door conference into
which he had sneaked. Azhar’s advice was, “Remember,
it’s best if you can see things for yourself firsthand.
But, even if you can’t be on the spot, there are ways
and means to get to know what happened.”
Reporters know that there are enough “reporters”
at every meeting. Ask them, they will tell you all you need
to know and more. There are “reporters” even at
Cabinet meetings. You might have heard those accusations some
time back.
A former Cabinet secretary told me how Prime Minister Dudley
Senanayake trapped the “reporter” in his Cabinet.
He asked the Cabinet secretary to prepare a fake Cabinet paper
and send that to the suspected minister. The story appeared
in next day’s paper.
Azhar was adept at soft questioning during press briefings
and interviews. “Our job is not to make them look
wise,” he once told me. “We need not press them
hard and try to get at the truth. But, reporting their evasive
answers and falsehoods, we can make the readers sense the
truth,” he said.
Certain politicians and government spokesmen think that, they
had dodged the question or concealed the truth in their “clever”
answers. They don’t know that, by reporting their answers,
reporters are making them look fools and liars in the eyes
of the readers. Just think what the readers will say about
the “clever” minister who contradicts media reports
of food scarcity in Jaffna with statistics of rice, flour
and sugar available in government stores, which he says was
obtained from the government agent. The people know that the
poor official has to say that, to continue to be in office.
On Friday, Dayan Jayatilleke wrote of his father, Mervyn de
Silva, giving instances of his insight. Mervyn was three years
older to me and joined Lake House four years earlier. I met
him for the first time in the press box of the old Parliament,
now Presidential Secretariat. He was then Lobby Correspondent
for the Ceylon Observer and I a cub reporter in Thinakaran,
trying my hand at Parliamentary reporting.
Mervyn took me along with him to the Parliament canteen, where
he was welcomed by Federal Party youth brigade Appapillai
Amirthalingam and V.N. Navaratnam, his seniors at the university.
Mervyn had an in-depth discussion with them on the Tamil question.
That was in early January 1957, soon after the Federal Party
(FP) had started the anti-Sri campaign, which, for the first
time, drew Tamil youth into political agitation. The FP had
also announced hartal on February 4, Sri Lanka’s eighth
Independence Day. That was the reply the Tamil democratic
leadership gave to the enactment of the Sinhala Only Act of
June 5, 1956 and the introduction of the Sinhala Sri in motor
vehicle number plates on January 1, 1957. Mervyn sensed
the long term impact of the developing situation and wrote
a commentary, warning the Sinhala leadership of the fallout
of its actions.
He was appointed Editor- Daily News, following the 1970 May
election, in which the United Front, comprising SLFP, LSSP
and CP won and formed the government with Sirimavo Bandaranaike
as the prime minister. It enacted the 1972 Constitution,
which did away with all the safeguards the Soulbury Constitution
provided for the minority communities- Article 29, which denied
Parliament the power to enact discriminatory legislation,
the system of weightage provided for the minorities, through
the use of territory and population, to determine the number
of seats in each Province, the multi-member constituencies
and the Second Chamber, the Senate, which was abolished earlier.
The FP boycotted the Constitution making process and announced
that Tamils were no party to the new Constitution. Tamil youth
had come to the forefront by that time and pressed the Tamil
parties to join hands and form a united organisation. That
resulted in the formation of the Tamil United Front, an event
that took place on May 14, 1972, eight days before Sri Lanka
was declared a Republic.
Tamils observed May 22, 1972, Republic Day, as a day of mourning.
Youths took the lead. They held village level meetings and
demonstrations. They burnt the National flag and copies of
the new Constitution. They exploded bombs. They also pressurised
Tamil Parliamentarians to quit Parliament.
The TUF Action Committee met on June 25 in Jaffna and the
youth surrounded the meeting place and shouted the slogan:
“We don’t want resolutions. We want action.”
But the Action Committee passed a resolution setting down
six demands, which included making Tamil an official language
and the decentralisation of the government machinery. They
gave the government three months to take action.
It was in that environment Mervyn wrote the editorial “What’s
up in the North” in the Daily News of July 1, 1972. Mervyn
who dismissed the resolution of the Action Committee with
disdain warned in the last line: A movement of militant youth
rooted in the soil of Jaffna and nourished by material frustration,
a feeling of humiliation and bitterness would be another kettle
of fish.”
I am aware of several other instances where Mervyn had predicted
the future course accurately. For instance, he introduced
the phrase “Muslim factor’ in 1986.
I want to raise the question Dayan had posed: Has Sri Lanka
caught up with his insights?
|
