Appreciations

The exemplary odyssey of Andrew Joseph's life and career has been traced by others. I focus on Andrew the Sri Lankan. He belonged to that lucky and exceptional post-colonial generation who graduated from university and took up key government positions immediately after the country regained independence in 1948 after four and a half centuries of colonial occupation. While many of the elite sent their children mainly to western universities, Andrew was quintessentially a home-grown product of a leading Sri Lankan school and the only university we had at that time.

He once told me that he wanted to be an architect and eagerly followed some college architecture courses after his retirement from the UNDP. Social pressures and the historic challenge facing his generation led Andrew to take the intensely competitive examination and enter the elite Ceylon Civil Service. He was placed first in his batch.

The task of converting the rich heritage of an ancient country's past into the political and economic viability of a modern nation state was shouldered both by the politicians and the professional class. Andrew was in the latter category, and his ambition of being an architect had to be converted to the larger task of nation building, especially in the health sector.

Sri Lanka has already overcome the scourge of malaria and the groundwork was being laid for the exemplary socio-economic indicators that were to make Sri Lanka fashionable with development economists - the high literacy rate, the long life expectancy, the low maternal and infant mortality rates and the distributive economic justice - until the prevailing fashions of the economic deities changed.

In 1959 Andrew, then newly married to Sue, moved from the national stage to the international stage - first to the WHO, where our distinguished Secretary-General began his own career in the international civil service. From there Andrew's commitment to the cause of developing countries drove him to join the UN Technical Assistance Board, which mutated into UNDP. He enjoyed serving in Asian countries as Resident Representative. Andrew's lifelong discipline of conscientious public service, precision in thought and action, his dynamism and dedication to the cause of poverty reduction were thus fully deployed.

Unsurprisingly, he was brought to headquarters, first to the African Bureau and then to the Regional Bureau for Asia and the Pacific, which became his home for over a decade. Succeeding another Sri Lankan - Raju Coomaraswamy, as Assistant Administrator for Asia and the Pacific was by any standards a remarkable feat for a national from a small developing country in the international system. But such was Andrew Joseph's reputation in the UNDP that his claims were undeniable enabling him eventually to be appointed Associate Administrator. Thus he became the second Sri Lankan to achieve Under-Secretary-General rank and, the first and so far the only, career international civil servant from Sri Lanka to do so.

Throughout his career, Andrew encouraged and guided his younger colleagues in the UNDP and his younger friends from Sri Lanka with solicitous advice and wise counsel. They responded with gratitude and admiration - as I did.

While being from both an ethnic and religious minority in Sri Lanka, Andrew remained dedicated to the cause of a united, multi-ethnic, multi-religious Sri Lanka. The fact that his last request was for family and friends to make donations, in lieu of floral tributes, to his old school to benefit needy students regardless of ethnic origin is eloquent testimony of Andrew's caring personality.

A mutual Sri Lankan friend once observed that Sri Lankan expatriates were either super patriots or super critics. Andrew was neither. Maintaining his bonds with family and friends in Sri Lanka he also remained linked to successive governments counselling and helping visiting VIPs.

My impression of Andrew will remain as when I first met him 24 years ago - clear-headed, soft-spoken and gentle, with a twinkle in his eye and a generosity of spirit that seemed inexhaustible.

As Chaucer described, Andrew's prototype in the Canterbury Tales, "he was a very perfect gentle knight".
Jayantha Dhanapala
Under-Secretary-General,
UN Dept. of Disarmament Affairs

A war hero remembered
Major Lal Hemantha Wijewardhana
"What am I to do, in an office
With my training overseas?
O, father give me permission
To join the field!"

Lal Hemantha Wijewardhana
A Major of Vijayaba 1st Regiment,
Sacrificed his life at twenty-nine
In 1995, June 1.

You were commanding a hundred
When shot in the Thiriyaya jungles
"Leave me alone and run!"
Was your last command.

But, that was not obeyed
By your faithful friends,
Bleeding and screaming in pain
You were carried home on their shoulders!

They trudged 13 kilometres in the jungles,
Those brave sons who brought you to Trinco,
Alas! a few yards ahead of the camp
You breathed your last, in their hands!

Suffering and bleeding for hours
You had called your family members -
If you were brought swiftly to Colombo,
Our darling you would have lived much longer!

Brave sons, we bow to you,
For bringing our dear one -
For us to see, his final glimpse,
For a last kiss on his loved face.

Darling son, brother, nephew,
In our hearts, you will forever live
May you be reborn in our family
And attain 'Nibbana' finally!

Those who feel the pains of war
Will always oppose the perpetuation of war!
Malini Hettige
Galle

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