The Observer editor is still capering. On Tuesday, he began his editorial saying that "this has gone a little too far, this jousting between the Observer and the Sunday Island.'' He then proceeded to engage in the same exercise he had so joyously started. This time there was the pious assurance that Tuesday's was the last tilt on that particular subject. Let us wait and see.

What did he offer his readers? Precious little from what we can see. He tries to justify the Sunday Observer's suppression of the news that the Daily News editor had been abruptly and unceremoniously removed from his job by claiming that editorial changes must be first announced in the columns of the concerned newspaper. Pity that he has not educated his stalemates on that little bit of etiquette. Did Lake House wait for TNL to announce that Ishini Wickremesinghe Perera, their news director, had resigned? Not that it needed doing given the blaze of publicity accorded to that by the state media.

The trouble with our former colleague is that he keeps on slipping on the facts. He gave us a longer tenure as editor of the Daily News under his PA masters than we actually had. He has acknowledged his mistake and then resorted to the tactic of trying to extract some advantage from that also. His point, he says is that after the PA government came into office, "there was no decapitation of the sort'' that we had mentioned. What we had said was that nobody was decapitated or demoted to give us an editorial chair at Lake House. Can he say as much, this scribe who joined ANCL with some friendly political backing after it was nationalised, crossed over without notice to what he now calls the "fastness at Bloemendhal Road,'' and then came back to Lake House to his present position?

But we digress from his departure from the facts. He says that our successor as editor of the Daily News returned to his original position on the recommendation of a committee on political victims. We have taken the trouble to check the facts. The recommendation of the committee was that he be re-employed by the company. In fact the person concerned was to be first titled editor-in-chief of the ANCL English papers. We recall our friend in the Observer telling us that he had been consulted on the subject and had assured the management that he would have no problems. No such courtesies were extended to us. In fact, it took about a month for the final arrangement to be worked out with poor old Prof. Sarachchandra being asked to stay at home on full pay!

We were not thrown out on our ears onto the banks of the Beira and continued as a highly paid executive of Lake House, says Mr. Editor. Does he not know of the fact that we were put into a room and given no work for many long months? That our telephone was disconnected? That parliament was told we were "promoted''? That we were served with a tendentious charge sheet in an effort to do a hatchet job? That thanks to the fairness of Mr. Dharmasiri Senanayake, that at long last we were given some work to do and an assurance that the harassment would stop?

But that was not to be. Mr. Senanayake was deprived of his media ministry and we were placed on top of a hit list. So we quit Lake House after we were compensated for half the period left to us before the age of retirement. Our former colleague tries to make us into a trumpet blower for the last government. We certainly had to act within limits of a framework that existed but tried to be as fair as we could be. Perhaps that was why we were offered the chairmanship of ANCL with the change of government in 1994 as the Observer editor himself informed some guests at a recent art exhibition.

In his latest tirade, our former colleague has added to his previous epithets by calling us churlish. Name calling seems to be his specialty. We take no pleasure in talking about ourselves, but the Observer editor with his pontifical assertions on how well we were treated by his PA masters forces these disclosures. He says that the Daily News had four editors at the inception of UNP rule in 1977. Perfectly correct. It was duly reported in the press then and we do not recollect anybody quarreling about that. But our report has raised the hackles of the name caller provoking him to fling a string of epithets at us.

It is very rich that he says (Aug. 17) that his masters have ensured "freedom after expression'' (his emphasis) to those who voice dissent. The last editor of the Daily News would know all about that. His paper, after all, made some comments that the Americans did not like, though we do not say that is the whole story behind his abrupt departure. There is still no explanation on why he was axed as rightly demanded by the free media people. The Observer editor used to be on that platform, but that was before the last election!

As for the "purges'' he mentions from the bad old days, we cannot think of a single Lake House editor incumbent in 1994 who remains in his position today. In fact, even two PA appointees have been axed!