{"id":98135,"date":"2020-01-23T23:07:28","date_gmt":"2020-01-24T05:07:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=98135"},"modified":"2020-01-23T06:07:45","modified_gmt":"2020-01-23T13:07:45","slug":"ranjagate-scandal-what-will-it-be-its-future-impact","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2020\/01\/23\/ranjagate-scandal-what-will-it-be-its-future-impact\/","title":{"rendered":"Ranjagate scandal: What will it be its future impact?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Janaka Perera<\/strong><\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n\n\n

Following are my personal observations of the \u2018Ranjangate\u2019\nscandal.  Many years of media experience has taught me not be carried away\nby political prejudices on controversial issues like this no matter the\nleader\/party I vote for at an election (I\u2019ve always been a floating voter). <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Never before in history has a scandal of this magnitude occurred in\nSri Lanka. Thanks to modern technology now the whole country has come to know\nmany matters hitherto unknown or little known not only about certain\npoliticians but also officials and some members of the judiciary.  Some\nspeculations have been almost confirmed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But does the phone conversations so far exposed reveal the entire\ntruth and the full background story?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Over 50 years ago the issues that dominated Sri Lanka\u2019s political\nscene were mainly ideological \u2013 whether country would prosper via capitalism or\nsocialism. Corruption was not a major factor though it did prevail but to a\nlesser extent.  It seldom or never drew attention during election\ncampaigns.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But Ranjan\u2019s phone recordings have fully substantiated the views\nintelligent, unbiased citizens have been holding for a long time. Their concern\nis that today corruption, fraud, blatant falsehoods and abuse of the law have\novershadowed ideological and other issues, thus paving the way for external\nforces and their local agents to meddle in our internal affairs.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

So far the only irrefutable facts are (1<\/strong>) Ranjan has not\ndenied recording the phone conversations (whether he did so to blackmail people\nor to hound crooks \u2013 as he claims \u2013 is irrelevant here) (2<\/strong>) the UNP has\nnot denied he did so and has suspended his party membership and (3<\/strong>)\nthose who spoke to him and those whom he phoned have not denied the\nconversations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

However what is the guarantee that some of the recordings,\nespecially politically-related ones, have not been edited or doctored? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

And what about the recordings so far not publicized? Do they\ncontain \u2018dynamite\u2019 some politicians whether of the ruling party or Opposition\ndo not want exposed?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Our politicians have been always trading accusations but hardly any\nof them are paragons of virtue, especially in recent years. Many have skeletons\nin their cupboards. How many of them have clean hands \u2013 despite their glib\ntalking?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

They always try to present a black and white picture – pretend that\nthe only wrongdoers are their rivals. Yet the same politicos when in power do\nnot hesitate to make deals with their opponents when it suits them or defect\nfrom one camp to the other. They are notorious for contradicting their own\nstatements after such defections.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is the reason why to date the real culprits responsible for\ncrimes ranging from like those which occurred at Batalanda Housing complex, the\nmurders of Lasantha Wickramatunga, Wasim Thajudeen and Ekneligda to the Central\nBank Bond scam have never been brought to book and unlikely they will ever be.\nThis is also the reason why no effective steps have been taken to marginalize\nTamil separatism and Islamic extremism so far – even after 2009.  All that\nmatters to most of our politicians are votes and more votes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Needless to say Ranjan and some of his parliamentary colleagues do\nnot belong to the educated class of politicians we saw in the decades past.\nObviously Ranjan has used unethical, indecent language and made unsubstantiated\nclaims BUT he certainly has opened a can of worms the effects of which no doubt\nwill have an adverse impact on many in responsible positions including sections\nof the media.  They may be trying to cover their nudity with a fig leaf\nand might even attempt to stop a full probe on the phone conversation\nrecordings.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Not all citizens are fools to believe that the crooks and shady characters\nare only those who have been exposed in the audio recordings that were\npublicized.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The exposure of Ranjan\u2019s recordings is likely to turn a new chapter\nin our political history. I won\u2019t rule out the possibility that this scandal\nwill be reflected in the results of the next Parliamentary Election one way or\nthe other. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Janaka Perera Following are my personal observations of the \u2018Ranjangate\u2019 scandal.  Many years of media experience has taught me not be carried away by political prejudices on controversial issues like this no matter the leader\/party I vote for at an election (I\u2019ve always been a floating voter). Never before in history has a scandal of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":true,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[82],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-98135","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-janaka-perera"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/98135","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=98135"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/98135\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=98135"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=98135"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=98135"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}