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Mr. Rauf Hakeem has been the first to go crying to the election monitors, reportedly from the European Community, that the Commissioner of Elections does not enjoy full powers to ensure a free and fair election. He has told them that favourite bed-time story of the Commissioner not having the powers to control the Police. However, in a bizarre twist, a Sunday English newspaper reported that the UNP had asked the Inspector General of Police to ensure that the media controlled by the Government would be fair by it during this election campaign.

Can things get any more absurd? How does the IGP ensure a free press? Should he send his policemen to seal newspapers which the UNP thinks is hostile to them ? Should the IGP in person go and look over the shoulders of news readers as they read the evening news on radio and television? In short does the UNP want Mr. Lucky Kodituwakku to play the role of Big Brother?

All these absurdities could have been avoided if the Opposition of which Mr. Hakeem was a pillar and indeed the saviour had been patient until the Elections Commission had been put in place as an inevitable corollary to the 17th Amendment.

But, of course, they couldn't and were in too much of a hurry to bring down the Government. As it is, the Commissioner of Elections does not enjoy the same powers that the Elections Commission would have enjoyed.

This the Commissioner himself has admitted in his letter to the IGP although for obvious reasons the UNP and its lackey press would like to keep the shadow boxing between the Commissioner and the IGP going.

The same goes for the media. When Mr. Alavi Mowlana on behalf of the PA complained to the Elections Commissioner about bias on the part of the TNL, the Commissioner had ruled that the Chairmen of the Sri Lanka Broadcasting Corporation and the Sri Lanka Rupavahini Corporation had the right to take action on this matter. As the TNL has pointed out through its news editor, this is hardly a tenable position since the SLBC and the SLRC are after all competitive media vis-a-vis the TNL. But again this flows from a too rigid reading on the part of the Commissioner of the law. When the law pertaining to Parliamentary and Presidential Elections was drafted after 1977 there were no private media in existence.

The law therefore took cognisance of state radio and television only. But now with a plethora of private channels which have blossomed under the present Government it would be absurd to expect state radio and television to determine the election time morals of its private sector counterparts.

So absurdity is heaped upon more absurdity. Again if the Elections Commission had been in place there would have been provision for the appointment of a Competent Authority who would have been able to ensure objective coverage on the part of all sections of the media. All this was brought to nought by the unholy haste of the UNP and its new adherents to bring down a Government brought into power only a year ago, something in which Mr. Hakeem does not need any special tuition.

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