BY NEVILLE DE SILVA

Alice was right. It is sure getting curiouser and curiouser. No, not in her Wo n d e rl a n d though. It is in our wonderful land where the tragi- comedy being played out in a remote-controlled foreign ministry is turning diplomacy into a sick joke.

When Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe tried from the turn of this century to make a right to information law and much later with Maithripala Sirisena as president the leadership duo saw it through parliament, the Unity Government hailed it as one of the most important pieces of legislation since it came to power.

Media specialists here and abroad thought so too. People were entitled by law to ask for and receive information- except on exempted subjects - from state- run or managed institutions so that transparency and an informed public would contribute to better governance.

But one always suspected that stubborn and half-baked bureaucrats over the years accustomed to covering up their perverse doings and those of their colleagues will somehow circle the wagons and strive to circumvent the law.

Take an institution such as the Foreign Ministry, maintained at huge public expense but not particularly relevant to the public’s daily life, that seems to consider itself above and beyond the country’s laws.

Muddle- headed ( empty headed?) officials ignore the law and in so doing cock a snook at the president and prime minister of the country who managed to meet at least one of the crucial promises to buttress their pledge of good governance.

The Information Officer manning the ministry’s Right to Information (RTI) unit is said to be the Director- General of the Legal Division which should be clear enough to him. Yet he