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As though the unending teledramas played on our small-screens fail to provide enough tragic-comedies to titillate a jaded public, our Foreign Ministry has been quietly but surely making its own farcical contribution to Sri Lanka’s theatrical tradition.

It is not often that a ministry which once enjoyed a healthy reputation at home and abroad for its intellectual input to international affairs, the capabilities and professional competence of its diplomats is reduced to what Maxim Gorky called the lowest depths.
For an institution that has over the years tried to establish a hierarchical superiority over its less fortunate ministerial cousins, the Foreign Ministry has in recent times been plunging from minor disaster to disaster.

For over 50 years I have had occasion to associate with and make friends with our diplomats beginning with the first intake of Foreign Service officers and so have watched their professional performance both at the ministry and their foreign postings.
If I look today at the comedy that goes on in the name of diplomacy I am reminded of the origins of Sinhala cinema and one of the first Sinhala films called “Broken Promise” portraying the comic characters called Manappuwa and Josie Baba.

Sad to say modern day Manappuwas and Josie babas now seem to run the ministry to the detriment of the high-calibre professionalism that once characterised the affairs of the ministry.

What an experience and learning curve it was for me to spend two weeks with Ambassador Shirley Amerasinghe covering a UN mission in the Middle East in 1970 and a few days the next year with Ambassador Neville Kanakaratne (to mention just two) in Washington when I was on a media fellowship at the University of Hawaii.

Not only is today’s ministry run like a Wellawatte banana boutique as one former diplomat described it, but also the attempts made at cover-ups or to deny even the most innocuous information sought is surely embarrassing.

Here is one recent example. When a journalist from this newspaper asked the Foreign Ministry for the names and designations of the officials of our Vienna embassy who President Sirisena ordered to be recalled, the ministry refused to divulge the information.
One could understand if the ministry was asked where we were hiding our nuclear arsenal. But to play coy over the names of recalled diplomats or whoever seems as though the journalist had sought the keys to the safe with all our deepest and darkest secrets.

This surely must be the first time that mission officials were ordered to be recalled en mass-or almost. Therefore it makes news; people would like to know the whos, the whys and the wherefores. But no, the ministry wants to play it so close to its chest that it could cause atrial fibrillation.

So let me help out and let the ministry correct me if I am wrong.
Besides Ambassador Priyani Wijesekera, there is Dayani Mendis a career officer as No 2; Namal Vijithamuni Soysa (Second Secretary); Gehan Dissanayake (attache’), Shalini Edirisuriya (PA to ambassador) and embassy caretaker G.M Gamini.
One person who escaped the axe was Iresha Cooray who, according to my information, had eventually answered the phone from Sirisena’s office.

I also understand a stenographer from our embassy in Poland and an Attache’ from our consulate-general in Toronto had also been asked to return apparently for indiscriminatingly using Facebook or other social media to post articles critical of the president/government which they had picked up from other media.

This is probably why a circular letter went out from the Foreign Ministry about a month ago to all our missions warning officers to be careful of what they posted in social media. These actions were probably prompted by officials of the presidential secretariat- except the refusal to disclose the names. But there have been other occasions on which the ministry tried to cover up embarrassing developments with obfuscations and circumlocutions in the name of official responses hoping, I suppose, that those who read them will be confused by the phraseology to abandon further inquiry.

Not all, I am afraid, are fooled by such pretentions intended to gloss over the diplomatic frailties or ignorance of over ambitious officers — be they career diplomats or political appointees — with political connections or relatives of the influential or powerful.
Faithfully succumbing to even outrageous demands by relatives posted abroad is now described as Sri Lanka’s theory of relativity.
To return for a moment to the Vienna embassy fiasco — there are several unanswered questions. Foreign Secretary Prasad Kariyawasam was quoted in a state-run Sunday newspaper as saying, “The Ambassador and several other staff members who were on extended terms have been asked to conclude their tour of duty and return – that’s all”.

That’s all is it Mr Foreign Secretary? Not quite I am afraid. When he says that those who are on extensions “have been asked to conclude their tour of duty and return” does it mean that an officer with say 4 or 5 months of the extension left could stay on until he/she completes the term? What does “conclude” mean? Conclude ones stay and return immediately or stay on until the term is over?

For instance Dayani Mendis’s three-year term would only end mid-February 2019. So if she has been recalled it gives the lie to Kariyawasam’s statement that only those on extensions have been asked to return. But at what point of time is the vital question that remains vague- deliberately so some might say.

A similar resort to obfuscation related to the recall earlier this year the High Commissioner to the UK Amari Wijewardene where the Foreign Ministry tried to hide the truth from the public which pays the salaries of these highfalutin officers.
Here is what the ministry said about reports of Wijewardene’s intended departure from London.

“The reports being circulated in the media attributed to the Secretary to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, stating that Sri Lanka’s High Commissioner to the UK, Mrs. Amari Wijewardene, has resigned, are incorrect. High Commissioner Wijewardene will conclude her contract on her own volition by 31 March 2018,” the Foreign Ministry said in a brief statement”.
When the ministry says “will conclude her contract on her own volition by 31st March 2018”, it surely must mean that the decision when to “conclude” (here’s that word again!) rests entirely with her, that she makes the decision.

This is total rubbish. Wijewardene as a political appointee should be on a two-year contract. She assumed duties at the High Commission on 10th August 2016 and so her contract would have ended on 9th August 2018. She had 4 ½ months or so left of her contract.

The ministry tries to make out that it was her decision to end her contract prematurely whereas the talk in Sri Lankan circles here is that she hoped for an extension which usually means one year to begin with.

What the ministry utters is a falsehood. Even in the dying stages it was trying to hide the fact that she was recalled by the government, especially by President Sirisena. Let the ministry deny that if it can. The truth is she was called back long before her term was “concluded…..on her own volition”, partly because of her attempt to clear herself of the Sri Lanka Independence Day affair that resulted in the immediate recall of Defence Advisor Brigadier Fernando.