April is the cruellest month, I wrote in these columns last Friday. Not only usually because *aluth avurudda* is a time when the unkindest cuts (power outages, price hikes, pointless protests, pretty little progress in poverty reduction) affect the general populace the most. But because in some quarters it sometimes has the propensity of “mixing / memory with desire, stirring / dull roots with spring rain”.
As a case in point: Three days ago, certain journalists of two whole decades (since The Sunday Leader’s start-up in 1994) – and more (as Suranimala was on the scene for longer than just in his last incarnation, and at two other national newspapers at that: Times, Island) – remembered his passing. The death of an iconic, iconoclastic, journalist who is larger in death than in life…
That, in the midst of his death, we are in a half-life of our own is no more poignantly remembered than on his birthday/birth anniversary (5 April).
That, in the midst of our living deaths, then (remember that awful regime?), destiny struck on the very day (8 January) that his assassin’s cruel bows laid full low our harmless albatross – five years earlier (2009) – still rouses revolutionary passion among true republicans.
That, election result and the reversal of arrogant despotism’s fortunes, as well as the undoing of a rule by fiat by arrant anti-democratic forces, could have been – and still can be – a cause for celebration for upholders of the law’s just causes and civil liberties such as freedom of speech.
But it isn’t. Truth be told, between the hope of a fully realised peace with justice dispensed and the reality of just realpolitik and rank amateurishness – with attendant rationales and justice dispensed with – has fallen a shadow of delays, disappointments. No real results. Many reasons for it. Sundry excuses. Pity…
GDP
If only the powers that be could see that over and above Growth, Development, Progress, and all the other tough-minded criteria that can be measured, the true worth of a government and the society it represents is to be found in promises kept on a word given. If so, then they – a coalition with potential for national transformation like no other in our history – would be fit for posterity’s forgiving pages. If not, and if they won’t / don’t / can’t make good on promises made, in good time, then the tender-hearted books of life will record no more gracious a verdict than for any other administration culpable of succumbing to realpolitik. It would be politics as usual (at best) or cynically exploiting a demographic to secure their own ends (at worst). In the long run, we – and he, like us – may be all dead…
But in the unforgiving now (and in poll times: the soon coming hereafter) someone will remember.
Of course, all of this begs the question whether any such promise as has been interpreted by the average citizenry was ever made. Did the then aspiring government-to-be actually promise to bring Lasantha’s killers to justice? Or did another government waiting in the wings make generally attractive noises and placatory gestures like any other government to win people’s hearts – and votes?
Time will tell. Because that’s all we have – and they have – to go on: time. We: those yearning for a case closed and assassins disclosed in this singular, symbolic case… They, those who promised that the death of an editor who stood as a singular symbol of assorted freedoms (never mind his own feet of clay or personal ambitions) would be sorted – Even as they hem and haw and hedge their bets…
Especially as they field candidates for cabinet and marshal resources to militate in favour of future election victories. Let those who have ears hear, those who have eyes see! I expect that critics of critically engaged journalism and supporters or friends of the incumbent administration will be equally annoyed at or upset with me and my ilk (there are a few sterling others who won’t / don’t / can’t pass up each and every opportunity to plead our case). They will argue against or say things to us, like this… Why harp on minor matters when there are more major issues facing government today (balance of payments deficits, IMF strictures, nascent security threats)? Do let bygones be bygones (“don’t trouble trouble”)? Could it be that you have an ax to grind on behalf of the previous regime?!
Truth
But here we stand. We can do no less if government will do no more. Under the bludgeoning of fate, infamous accusations, the fury of state mandarins – and in the face of the futility of the investigations being passed like a ruggerite’s odd-shaped ball from CID to TID to who knows what next (the FCID, maybe) – our heads are bloodied but unbowed.
To cynical governmental campaigners or politically-seasoned citizenry, the idea of one man’s death being of such great import to anyone might seem to be suggesting Good Governance descend from the sublime to the ridiculous. It is an iota in a sea of jots and tittles, true… But it is an issue on which government’s true intentions, its great reputation for governance, and their real nature that no one knows or suspects, rests – And will hinge in future when the greater scorekeepers than UN peacekeepers (I mean voters and media agitators) come to write against government’s name… So do cease and desist from asking us to shut up, do.