NEVILLE DE SILVA

How times have changed! Three years ago in December the Common Candidate contesting the presidential election and political leaders of various hues who had gathered round him were making myriad promises which would turn our nation into a paradise flowing with milk and money. One such promise was to restore media freedom.

Those determined to effect regime change promised not only a free press but also to safeguard the rights of journalists unlike the government they were struggling to uproot and dump along with the garbage.

A laudable undertaking indeed. The media in general seemed cowed by fear that harsh criticism of the government and expose’s of political crookedness and corruption could result in unimaginable horrors to editors and journalists and their immovable property.

I was in Sri Lanka in those exciting months before and after the election that brought Maithripala Sirisena to power. Every promise pledged from political pulpits including that of press freedom, had been greeted with enthusiastic applause by a public with great expectations. Now the time had come to see them fulfilled.

Criticise us if we do wrong, criticise us if we fail to keep our promises to the people, said the leading lights of the campaign who promised the citizens a new dawn. After years of gestation was the Miracle of Asia about to be born?

A public eager for change lapped it all up. But those who have heard such sonorous sayings time and again especially at election time were not entirely convinced. In conversations with senior journalists, commentators and the politically savvy one could detect a smell of cynicism. It seemed to say one thing-we have been through this before. Not once, not twice.

With the parliamentary election won a few months later and political power consolidated the sweet smell of success was unmistakable. But soon the euphoria of success began to fade as Sri Lanka’s new unity government stumbled along and the media started to articulate the growing disillusionment of the people who had expected an end to nepotism and cronyism. They saw the sheaf of promises turn