I read your Editorial in the Financial Times on Sunday, 1st March, 2009, with some astonishment. The extract that amazed me was:
“Jayaratne, a former Ceylon Chamber of Commerce (CCC) chairman and who has repeatedly bemoaned the failure of regulators, institutions, chambers of commerce, civil society and the media to correct the wrongs in society, also explained at the IT discussion the difficulty he had to bring in a Code of Ethics at the CCC”.
Earlier on February 1, 2009 the Sunday Island carried this item:
“When I was Chairman of the Ceylon Chamber of Commerce we wanted to adopt a Code of Ethics for our members. One senior member of the chamber told me that I was putting the Chamber into a glass house and heaping a pile of stones by trying to adopt the code”.
The clear implication of these two news items is that it was Mr Jayaratne who ‘brought in’ the Code of Ethics, and he did so in the face of great difficulties. This is completely untrue.
As a former Chairman of the CCC and one who played a part in drafting the Code of Ethics, I can assert that the facts are: 1. The Code of Ethics was promulgated (and published) in 1982 under the chairmanship of the late Mr P.A.Silva. This was almost twenty years before Mr Jayaratne became the chairman.
2. There was no opposition to it and it remains unchanged today.
It is difficult to understand why Mr Jayaratne would want to take the credit for a signal achievement by an illustrious predecessor. As one who expatiates at length on the need for probity, he should explain in full what Code it was that he had ‘brought in’, what opposition there was to it, from whom, and why there is no record of it in any of the Chamber’s Annual Reports.
Charitha P. de Silva |
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