News: bail

Against the backdrop of minority voters being potential king makers in the upcoming elections, there was an announcement in Colombo today that Tissainayagam would be released on bail - the Attorney General who had been blocking bail until then announced last month that he has no objections and this opened the way to the release. It is as if the Big Bad Wolf told Red Riding Hood he had become a vegetarian after eating her grandmother. In previous lines posts, contributors have drawn attention to the Tissainayagam saga as a window into the draconian marriage of racism and authoritarianism that has been the hallmark of the Prevention of Terrorism Act (PTA). This latest development underscores the extent to which the Rakapakse government added callous opportunism to complete the trinity of crimes that accompany the PTA – it served the government’s political ends to jail Tissainayagam yesterday, and it serves its political ends to release Tissanayagam today. It is not everyday that crass opportunism coincides with a journalist’s liberty – there will undoubtedly be much celebration of the latter, along side clear sighted condemnation of the former.