Afdhel Aziz proposes a television programme which may help relieve the ethnic tension in Sri Lanka.
The apathy among many Sri Lankans towards the country´s ethnic conflict is obvious. Jaded by years of strife and false hopes, the public now finds the fighting an abstraction far removed from the rigours and chores of daily life. It is a subject for discussion by armchair generals, the intellectual debate having shifted to the rarefied climes of academia and power politics. The conflict has lost its relevance for the average man not directly involved in it.It is only when a tragedy strikes – such as a bomb blast at the heart of the metropolis -that he is temporarily drawn out of his shell of apathy to consider the war that has been raging in the north and east.
Rather than join in the apathy, one must look for ways in which the public can once more be engaged with the ongoing tragedy. Television, in particular, can be used to do this effectively, for it is the most potent medium because of the power of the visual image. Unlike print and radio, television requires little imagination on the part of the viewer. A lively television programme can make real the numbing aftermath of a bomb blast or the panic of a newly bereaved mother or orphan. It has the power to draw the man and woman on the street into the core of the issue.
People´s show
Any media programme that hopes to address the subject of resolving the ethnic conflict of Sri Lanka has to focus on ignorance and intolerance. And while healthy dissent must be encouraged, the forum of debate should not be allowed to be turned into a party´s political broadcast or used for retelling of old arguments. Neither should it turn into a platform for demagogues out to use the television power for self-aggrandisement. The programme should instead concentrate on involving the people in every aspect – from conceptualisation to all areas of production and broadcast. For, if a show is not of and by the people, how can it claim to speak to the people and for the people?