Funday Times

A series by Gaveshaka in association with Studio Times
Where the legislators met for 52 years
As you come down towards Galle Face from the Fort clock tower, which we talked about last week, you will see the building where the Presidential Secretariat is housed. Just behind it, is the Secretariat where at one stage all the government ministries and departments offices were housed. It was in 1929 that these offices were housed in this building, which was then known as the Galle Face Secretariat.

With the expansion of ministries and government offices, there was no room to house all of them and a new secretariat was built in the Fort closer to the port area. The two came to be called the Old Secretariat and the New Secretariat respectively. Even the second building was not adequate for government offices and today most of the ministries and departments have been shifted to numerous parts of the City of Colombo, some even beyond City limits to places like Battaramulla and Kotte.

After the Galle Face Secretariat was built, a new Council Chamber was built for the Legislative Council which preceded the State Council and the House of Representatives as the legislative body in the country’s administration. The Legislative Council dates back to 1833 when official and unofficial members were nominated to serve in it. That was the time when the country’s laws were made by the Governor “with the advice and consent of the Legislative Council.” The laws thus enacted were known as “ordinances” and a duplicate copy of each ordinance was sent to England. An ordinance came into operation no sooner the Governor gave his assent but the British Government had the power to disallow it.

It was only in 1911 that elections to the Legislative Council were first held when a member called the Ceylonese Member was elected by the whole Island on a very restricted franchise. The first to be so elected was Ponnambalam Ramanathan (1851-1930), who was knighted by the British Government in 1921 and became Sir Ponnambalam.

The membership of the Legislative Council was enlarged in 1920 and 1924 and more members were elected. The Council occupied a building opposite Gordon Gardens, which became the home of the Senate when the latter was established in 1931. In 1912, the Governor, Sir Henry McCallum had made representations to the British Government that a new building should be constructed “of a type worthy of the Colony” (Ceylon was then a Colony in the British Empire) and that it should be “a handsome one provided with its own accessories and committee rooms.”

A committee appointed for the purpose recommended that the new building should be erected on reclaimed land at the northern end of Galle Face. Thus what was once a swamp adjacent to the Beira Lake was transformed into a land where an imposing building to house the country’s legislature was built facing the sea-front.

The construction of the building was undertaken by the Public Works Department (PWD) which was in charge of erecting all government buildings. P.W.D.’s chief architect at the time was one A. Woodeson, an Englishman, who designed the building on the classical Grecian style. In a note on the building, he stated that the building has been so arranged so as to have an open outlook and to have the benefit of cross breezes. The Council Chamber was located on the east side of the building away from the noise of the sea and sheltered from the afternoon sun and strong south-west breezes.

In appearance the two-storied building resembled the Parthenon, the chief temple of the Greek goddess Athena, on the hill of the Acropolis of Athens. Thirty steps each fifty feet wide led you to the main doorway seen in the middle behind majestic columns. The doors were kept open when the sittings were on.

The building, which was ceremonially opened on January 29, 1930 by the Governor, Sir Herbert Stanley (1927-1931) had a seating capacity for 49 members. With the acceptance of the Donoughmore Constitution, elections to the State Council were held on June 13, 1931 under universal adult franchise and the first meeting of the Council was held on July 10 1931. Fifty elected members and eight nominated by the Governor (58 in all) formed the State Council.

When members to the first House of Representatives were elected in 1947 following the acceptance of the Soulbury Constitution, the seating in the Chamber had to be expanded to seat 101 members. With every member being provided with a seat unlike in the House of Commons in Great Britain where every member does not have a seat, structural alterations were made internally from time to time as the numbers increased (168 with the adoption of the 1972 Constitution) until it became necessary for a new Parliament to be built at Sri Jayawardenapura Kotte.

The external appearance of the building remained the same. The statues of national leaders including the early Prime Ministers were erected in front of the building. (Seen in the picture on the right is second Prime Minister Dudley Senanayake).

After the opening of the new Parliament on April 29, 1982, the building was converted as the Presidential Secretariat by President Ranasinghe Premadasa in January 1990 when it underwent an extensive overhaul internally while retaining its main architectural and historical features. Thus when you look from outside, you can still see the building in its original form.

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