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Wit, humour, law and diplomatically whatnot
View(s):DAYA PERERA
UNITED NATIONS — As one of Sri Lanka’s hot-shot criminal lawyers, Daya Perera was not only gifted with oratorical skills but also a devastating sense of humour. At the United Nations, where he had a post-legal career as Sri Lanka’s Permanent Representative (1988-1991), he had a field day unleashing both his skills with the force of a double-barreled shotgun.
By sheer accident, the very first day Daya walked into the UN, he was pressed into service on an unexpected assignment as acting President of the General Assembly since Sri Lanka was one of the vice presidents at that time. Chairing the UN’s highest policy making body on his maiden visit to the UN, Daya emerged unscathed after his baptism of diplomatic fire.
As he climbed down the podium at the conclusion of the afternoon’s session, the irrepressible Daya turned to one of his deputies and said: “This is the first time I spoke without charging a fee.” And he was dead on target. At home, he was known not only for his outstanding successes in criminal court but also for his premium legal fees. The only clients who could afford him were apparently the super-rich – and denizens of the criminal underworld.
The United Nations was perhaps the only institution where, for the first time in his professional career, he grudgingly practised the art of “free” speech — literally and metaphorically. At his farewell dinner at a five-star hotel in New York, one of the speakers jokingly said that Daya’s annual income was far higher than the entire gross domestic product (GDP) of the Maldives -even as the Maldivian ambassador present at the dinner nodded his head in mock agreement.
At one of the first diplomatic receptions he attended, he met the Ambassador from the Caribbean island of Belize. The envoy had also just arrived for his assignment at the United Nations.
Asked for his profession, the ambassador told Daya he was a dentist. And when he asked Daya for his profession, he couldn’t resist the temptation of telling the Belizean with good-humoured grace: “Ambassador, you make money out of other people’s mouths, I make money out of my own mouth.”
In the office, while conscious of diplomatic protocol, he was easy going with his staffers who adored him. But only once did he complain to a journalist about one of his deputies not paying him due respect — protocol-wise. In his characteristic outspoken language, he said: “That bugger addresses our ambassador in Washington as ‘Sir’ but calls me Daya.” And that surely was a violation of diplomatic protocol — as any career diplomat would admit.
As Sri Lanka’s Permanent Representative, Daya chaired the Ad Hoc Committee on the Indian Ocean (while being conscious of an Indian ambassador’s statement that many Americans erroneously think the Indian Ocean belongs to India) and also headed the U.N. Committee on Israeli Practices (also referred to as Israeli Malpractices Committee) dealing with human rights violations in the Occupied Territories.
As chairman of that Committee, he held court at least twice a year, in Amman, Damascus and Cairo, where Palestinians lamented the sufferings they underwent in Israeli occupied territories in Gaza and the West Bank. A strong supporter of the Palestinian cause, Daya, like all our ambassadors who chaired the same committee, was strongly critical of Israeli repression in Palestine, as reflected in his reports following visits to Arab capitals.
Perhaps one of his celebrated anecdotes is worth repeating because it was Daya at his best. A week before Daya left Colombo to take up his UN diplomatic assignment back in February 1988, so the story goes, a high powered delegation from Colombo’s nebulous underworld — comprising bookmakers, casino operators and kassippu mudalalis — arrived at his home in Siripa Lane, Thimbirigasaya, at the crack of dawn and greeted him as he returned from his daily morning swim at the SSC pool.
The head honcho of the local mafia delegation scratched his head in characteristic Sri Lankan style and said in home-spun Sinhala: “Sir, we have a small problem.” “Why, what’s the problem?” asked Daya, as he tried to figure out what crime he was being called upon to defend — this time, on the eve of his departure to New York.
“Sir, we are told you will be away in New York for three years. You have been our only savior and we really don’t know what to do? We don’t have anyone else to turn to.” Daya contemplated for a while, picked up his thoughts — and his sharp sense of humor — and replied: “My only advise to you is that you suspend all your operations (read: crimes) until I return.”
“But when I return,” he said, adding the riveting punchline, “mage gastuwa (my legal fees) will double.” And so, there were unconfirmed rumours that the crime rate in Colombo had declined during Daya’s three year ambassadorial tenure in New York.
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