Secretary General Responds to the Daily Mirror - 01 July 2009

by Rajiva Wijesinha

Prof Rajiva Wijesinha has written today to the editor of Daily Mirror regarding an article in the 1st July 2009 issue entitled, 'APRC gets one month'.

1st July 2009

The Editor

Daily Mirror

Wijaya Newspapers

COLOMBO 2.

Dear Sir,

I write with reference to your main article headlined ‘APRC gets one month’ which claims I had said ‘the APRC would be given one month’s time to complete its deliberations and submit a final document’. This is quite untrue, as indeed is made clear by the following assertion that ‘other alternatives would be looked at in case the APRC failed to complete its work within the stipulated deadline’.

What I said, in response to your reporter’s question, was that it was to be hoped, since the APRC had itself said it was close to finalizing its report, that this would be completed within a month, but that if this did not happen other arrangements would have to be made. There can be no question of a deadline being issued in the manner you insinuate.

The material in the rest of the article suggests a determination to denigrate the APRC, which is quite understandable given the political stance of your paper. I have already had occasion to write to your Chairman about previous misrepresentations, when a reporter indicated to me that her copy had been changed to omit references to Mr Ranil Wickremesinghe’s connections with Ms Sunila Abeysekera, who continues to make insidious attacks on the government.

I definitely did not say I had no idea why Ms Abeysekera continued to attack her country, since it is fairly clear to anyone who knows the long history of Ms Abeysekera’s association with the family that she will continue to attack, not her country, but anyone who stands in the way of the ambitions of Mr Wickremesinghe. The fact that the country has rejected Mr Wickremesinghe and voted for a different government simply adds fuel to her fires.

Your Chairman, whose integrity is well known, admitted in his response that – “I acknowledge that both in the process of sub-editing and page lay out, changes in copy are known to happen.”

Omission is bad enough, but it is particularly unworthy of a former student of mine to misquote me to achieve particular political ends.

Yours faithfully,

Prof Rajiva Wijesinha

Secretary General.

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