Columnist, Emil Van Der Poorten writes in the Sunday Leader, Everything from Soup to Nuts: "Defenders of The Realm" in Sri Lanka (04 Dec 2012)
Extracts reproduced below:
"I have in previous columns made passing reference to those whose well-remunerated task it is to defend the status quo in this country."
"Let me, on this occasion, make the attempt to differentiate between them and the tasks that they appear to shoulder for a government that sorely needs defenders of various kinds, given the manner of its governance."
"One of the “enabling factors” to the Armageddon that seems to await us is certainly a dearth of easily accessible information about what is really happening around us. With the electronic and print media either completely controlled by the government or self-censoring itself into inconsequentiality (for reasons that should be obvious to anyone in this country), a citizenry that has no ambition to spend all its waking hours trying to get beyond the censorship of the Web is vulnerable in the extreme to the brainwashing that the state is indulging in."
Also, “A little knowledge is a dangerous thing” could well be the rejoinder to those who keep claiming that Sri Lanka is the most literate country in all of Asia. That is, unfortunately, the ugly reality when an ignorance of an international language in which dissenting opinions might appear is coupled to a steamroller of suppression, disinformation and propaganda of the most blatant kind."
"Succumbing to a particularly Sri Lankan predilection for using a much-abhorred term, what then is the “Final Solution” to this problem?"
"I’m afraid there isn’t one because it would appear that in the absence of the knowledge and information available to make informed choices, we are going to be very much at the mercy of forces to whom we have already surrendered complete control through our acceptance of a monarchy, no matter how benign."