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| Tuesday, 30 March 2004 |
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The Freedom Polls Watch has condemned the decision of the Commissioner of Elections to appoint a Competent Authority for the SLBC and the SLRC, in a statement issued last night. The move is an attempt under cover of a statutory authority, to stifle the freedom of expression of these two institutions. The appointment of censor, under whatever pretext or purported legal authority is a blow to media freedom. We trust that this move will receive the immediate condemnation of all those who believe in the independence of the media, states a FPW press release. Against the background of the private media promoting only the United National Front about which many complaints have been made to the Commissioner of Elections, the SLBC and the SLRC have been giving a balanced coverage. In fact if not for the SLBC and the SLRC the country would have been deprived of a fair coverage of the policies and programmes of the United People's Freedom Alliance. The private media and certain organisations connected to the UNF have been for some time, carrying out a campaign to stifle the only fair media coverage that the Freedom Alliance had been getting from the SLBC and SLRC. The UNF continued their boycott of these institutions, notwithstanding several appeals to give up their boycott. The Commissioner of Elections has side tracked the UNF boycott of the SLBC and the SLRC in assessing the coverage given to all parties by these two media institutions. The Commissioner's decision in a aforesaid circumstances to appoint a Competent Authority to the two institutions without even issuing at least a warning to the private media, smacks of discrimination if not partiality. The Commissioner has in addition failed to stop the violation of Sec. 104 (B) (5) (A) of the Constitution or to at least issue a warning to the private media which are continuing to defeat the above provision by carrying a disproportionately large volume of pro-UNF advertisements, paid or otherwise, though complaints have been made to him in this regard. Freedom Polls Watch believes that these acts of omissions and commissions by the Elections Chief will affect the conduct of a free and fair poll in this country. Meanwhile, the United National Party congratulated the Elections Commissioner for taking a tough stand and appointing a Competent Authority for the State media only to find that he had been hobbled within few minutes by the JVP/SLFP Alliance. "If ever you wanted a clear example of how the JVP/SLFP Alliance will work in the future then just look at this case" said Senarath Kapukotuwa, General Secretary for the UNP. "Throughout the campaign independent observers have been saying that the State media was utterly biased. The UNP has been saying that the State media was utterly biased and the Elections Commissioner hesitated to act. Today as we come to the end of the campaign the Elections Commissioner has acted and the JVP/SLFP Alliance, with one day of official campaigning left has decided to try and stop him. There are of course, two further days when no electioneering should take place but where we all know the State media will take no notice and will overtly break rules in their desperate rush to win the election. That is why they are trying to stop the appointment of a Competent Authority", he continued. "If the JVP/SLFP were such nice people to help to people of the country to stop corruption and to bring a new order to politics in Sri Lanka then is this the way they should be reacting? The answer is NO and it demonstrates that they will all be back to their old tracks the moment the election is over. We will see the same old lies and old deceit that we had to put up with between 1994-2001", he said. "In the next few days we can expect an unprecedented level of State media bias when supposedly electioneering has stopped. Despite all of this or perhaps because what they have been witnessing, the people are steadily coming over to the UNP and rejecting the low tactics of the President and her JVP/SLFP henchmen's, concluded Senarath Kapukotuwa. |
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