A Comment
LAXMAN KIRIELLA LOSES HIS COOL AND INSULTS A LADY REPORTER
By Walter Jayawardhana
United National Party’s Laxman Kiriella who lost his cool at a
party press conference insultingly told a lady reporter of the Colombo
press that by holding a piece of paper and a pen one could not become
a journalist.
He became seemingly upset when the young reporter of the fair sex asked
him a question about his leader’s contentious statement on the
Army victory at Thoppigala that has created a hornet’s nest even
among his own party supporters.
Kiriella , a lawyer like his own leader quite average even in his own
field , started patronizingly giving a lecture to the reporter on good
journalism. He has had no formal training in journalism.
In contrast, his leader Wickremesinghe, a son of a press baron who won
a golden pen award for fighting for press freedom, and by his own admission
a failed journalist who could not practice his cherished profession
because the paper he intended working for was nationalized by a government
provoked by his own dad into taking over the family fiefdom . ( I hated
his dad’s unwarranted political activism as well as the take over
of the press that prompted it) But when in power, as Prime Minister,
Wickremesinghe forgot his former claims of love for the press and suppressed
all news regarding his controversial Memorandum of Understanding with
terrorist leader Velupillai Prabhakaran. Making use of the MOU and the
Ceasefire Agreement that followed it , Thoppigala was turned into one
bastion of LTTE violence to sharpen the group’s carnivorous teeth
as pioneers of suicide terrorism in the world.
The former UNP Minister Kiriella, who has not studied journalism or
practiced it at any time in a recognizable way advised the reporter
that she must know the acreage of Thoppigala jungle, the number of trees
there (as if he knows), the number of square kilometers etc. before
asking questions about his leader‘s unpatriotic and inborn hatred
of his people. Needless to say people undoubtedly were amazed by these
new Kiriella theories of journalism.
His long harangue left people wondering why should a reporter know
the number of trees of the Thoppigala jungles to ask a question why
his leader belittled the army, when he made that disgusting and insulting
statement ridiculing our armed forces. Even an average person of intelligence
like him should know that the historical military achievement singularly
brought down many hopes of terrorism on the part of the Tamil Tigers.
Many of the suicide bombers had been sent from the Thoppigala camps
of the LTTE in recent times. Many of the Tamil children were kidnapped
with the help of those directors there for years to be trained in abominable
training camps where they sometimes met with their deaths even before
they were used as cannon fodder. From deep inside the jungles they brought
nothing but misery to the less privileged Eastern province Tamils, Muslims
and the Sinhalese. Kiriella’s contention that to inquire why a
leader who once became the Prime Minister of our own country belittles
the crushing of those camps of terrorism, one should have the mandatory
knowledge of the number of trees in Thoppigala jungles, baffles anybody‘s
mind. Such statements are contemptible more than Laxman Kiriella’s
leaders contempt for the country’s dedicated heroes who braved
their way into those ravines sometimes facing nothing but treacherous
death. It is an insult to the intelligence of voters of Kandy who had
the great misfortune of sending him to the parliament.
Kiriella and this correspondent once shared the great halls of learning
together at the Ceylon law College and enjoyed each others friendship.
The man I knew then was more right thinking and pleasant than this rancorous
politician today who has most unfortunately started reflecting his leader’s
bitterness and disappointment.
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