Nittewa

The campaing for Mahinda has never moved very far beyond mudslinging. They chose not to win votes from the people through their promises, but to make Ranil so hated that people would vote for Mahinda as the alternative. The Mahinda campaign, I believe has been focusing a bit too much on the fact that the UNP candidate Ranil has no children. Their rhetoric behind this has progressed and evolved quite a bit in the past few months. Certain mistakes made by the UNP have helped the UPFA further capitalise on this but the way in which this campaign has appropriated and spun parenthood for their political purposes remains disgusting.

It started way back about a month before the nominations. The UPFA put up a series of hoardings all around the country carrying pictures of Mahinda with kids saying things like 'Daru Senehasa Mata Dene' and other inane shit like that. There were literally hunderds of these all over the place. Of course they came down on the day the nominations were handed over because hoardings are not allowed during election camaigning, but by that time it had become very clear what the Mahinda campaign was going to be about. Since Mahinda cannot really attack Ranil on this directly they have been using their righteous brigade, the JHU, to bring this up during TV and radio debates and keep it fresh in the minds of the people. At least the UPFA and the JVP have the political maturity to understand that making this attack less subtle than it is might just backfire. Wimal occasionally calling Ranil a 'ponnaya' is more than enough for them.

Initially the campaign focused on the idea that Ranil was impotent, which is why he did not have any children, and the idea that an impotent person would not make a good leader. Then the focus began to shift to the idea that since Ranil had no children, he did not understand what it was like to love a child and to want to provide for their future. Therefore he did not make a good leader because he did not care about the future.

Now thise whole argument has sprung up to a whole new level with the film director Inoka Sathyangani being reported to the National Child Protection Authority.

Here's the story: There's a TV spot which is a part of the Ranil campaign which shows a child crying because the mother has no milk in the house. It's in sepia all this while. The mother goes out and buys a little bit of powdered milk from the shop and brings it back home and makes some milk for the kid, and then it cuts to color, and there's a child drinking a full glass of milk smiling and all that. This is about that insane Ranil promise to give free milk to children below the age of 5.

God knows what the the UPFA goons did, or how they pressurised the mother of the child, but she has now come forward and stated that the director said the child was going to be used to a powdered milk advertisement and not a political ad and that the child was mistreated and tortured to make him cry for the shots. Abusing a child for any reason is wrong, and if Inoka Sathyanganee did abuse the child she needs to be severely punished for it. But why do I find this story a little hard to believe?

Inoka did not make this ad on her own. She would at least have had a crew of 20. And I don't think I could find 20 people in a crew who would stand around and watch a child being tortured to make it cry. And why hurt the child to make it cry when you can just use some glycerine to fake the tears? That's what everyone in the industry does. Duh! It would be a serious crime indeed if Inoka did lie to the mother of the child and say that it was going to be for a powdered milk commercial, but I doubt it. One of the main reasons I say this is because if the mother had been on the set then she would have known exactly hat was being shot and she would not have allowed her child to be abused.

So anyways, whether Inoka tortured this child during the production of the ad is not the issue, how it is being played out in the media is. A leading Sinhala daily ran an editorial on this a few days ago. They referred back to an old interview with Inoka where she had said she has no time to be a parent because of her career and that's why she doesn't have children. They're nailing her to the wall with this and calling her a heartless child-hating bitch.

The only conclusion that I can come to is that in all probability the mother of the child has been forced to make these allegations against Inoka Sathyanganee and the UNP by UPFA goons who see this as a good way to elaborate and sharpen an argument they've been using against Ranil for quite some time. I believe that the UPFA's use of the child as a political tool is as disgusting as what the UNP is supposed to have done.

But what they're really hoping is that some of this image will rub off on Ranil. They're actulally trying to take the rhetoric from 'he doesn't love children' to 'he hates children'. He hates political dissent and is willing to use force to crush it. He hates people who ask too many questions about his past.But I don't think he hates children.

Sad innit? How we all get distracted from the issues?



Read the Inoka story on the Daily News (A state owned newspaper that has a very clear pro-Mahinda stand).

posted by Morquendi @  12:32 AM   || 2 opinion/s ||