Esmond Wickremesinghe's reputation preceded him.
It was 1976; we had been flung out of our jobs at the 'Davasa' (Independent Newspapers) Group, publishers of the Sun and Weekend newspapers of which I was an insignificant cub reporter, by the then Government of Mrs. Sirimavo Bandaranaike.
One fine morning, Esmond Wickremesinghe's son, Ranil, whom I had known as my elder brother's schoolmate drove home in his Austin 1100 and asked if I would accompany him to 'Siri Kotha' the United National Party (UNP) headquarters close by. The Ja-ela by-election was coming up and the party wanted some volunteers.
Averse though I was to getting immersed in any party politics, through sheer curiosity I went along. 'Siri Kotha' was not unfamiliar terrain, for as young reporters we would often go there for stories. Equally, there was a groundswell developing against Mrs. Bandaranaike's rule and we wanted to be part of it.
I was taken straight upstairs, and into a room. I gasped when I saw the likes of J.R. Jayewardene, R. Premadasa, Paul Perera, Sirisoma Ranasinghe - and Esmond Wickremesinghe seated there.
The Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP) was in power and place, but the Government was tottering. Its chances of victory at Ja-ela were slim. A popular UNP MP, Paris Perera had died. J.R. Jayewardene had just assumed the leadership of the UNP after Dudley Senanayake's death in 1973 and was already making waves having infused the party with a fresh flush of energy.
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| Esmond Wickremesinghe: admired for his political acumen |
A world food crisis coupled with the formation of OPEC (Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries) had sent oil prices soaring, dealing a twin blow to the heavily State controlled, centralised economy that existed in Sri Lanka at the time. There was rationing of rice, textiles, sugar, foreign-exchange restrictions; the economy was in shambles. It was grist to the mill for the septuagenarian JR. The coalition between Mrs. Bandaranaike's SLFP and her Left allies, the Lanka Sama Samaja Party (LSSP) and the Communist Party, had collapsed in 1975 further weakening the Government. JR played the Marxists at their own game of political dialecticism and said that his new party was a democratic-socialist party; not socialist-democratic.
The one remaining aspect that weighed down the party was the label that it was too elitist. JR said the UNP under him was the nava (new) UNP and to prove a point he put forward the manager of the Ratnaveli Cinema and Ja-ela Urban Council Chairman Joseph Michael Perera as the party's candidate for the by-election. He said the party was a 'common man's' party now.
I found myself with the UNP's apex decision-makers of the time; the 'Brains Trust'; the team that was plotting the return of the UNP to office. It was clearly Mr. Wickremesinghe who ran the meeting. My assignment was to do some research. All I recall JR saying was something profound like; "We must convert the un-convinced and convince the converts". A man of few words, he seemed to sum it all up.
Needless to say, the UNP won that by-election -- Joseph Michael Perera going on to become a Cabinet Minister and Speaker of Parliament later in his political career. In a year's time, the UNP was returned to the seat of Government -- a landslide victory with a whopping 5/6th majority.
Thus had I heard from others about Esmond Wickremesinghe. In person he was affable and amiable and never one to lose his temper or his cool. He had been a radical undergrad of his time, a card-carrying member of the LSSP, though his radicalism may have been more intellectual than street-revolutionary. He went courting on a bicycle in white shirt, white longs and cycle clips. His brother-in-law to be, Ranjit Wijewardene, probably about seven years old then, recalls being allowed rides on the suitor's bicycle with the 'gedera kolla' doing the pedalling. Mr. Wickremesinghe took his oaths as a lawyer before marriage and it was predicted that he would have a brilliant legal career.
Having married one of the daughters of the founder of Associated Newspapers of Ceylon Ltd., (ANCL) or Lake House, D.R. Wijewardene, the two sons-in-law were made joint Managing Directors under the chairmanship of Mr. L.M. de Silva after the death of Mr. Wijewardene; one overlooking the Editorial floor, the other the business operations. Mr. Wickremesinghe himself would say "I spend all the money Gomes (his brother-in-law) finds for us". Mr. Wickremesinghe moved ANCL into the post-independence era with a new Editorial team -- Messrs. M.A de Silva, Meemana Prematilleke, Reggie Siriwardena, Cecil Graham, Tarzie Vittachi and, of course, Denzil Peiris from the earlier dispensation, and Kailasapathy as Editor Thinakaran. Concepts of Editorial independence were established as against the more direct authority of the publisher.
Networking with international newspaper organizations on a regular basis, he influenced how the Editorial floor was run, including a minimum degree qualification for all journalists. It was in every sense a modern newspaper office, its newspapers geared to inform and entertain, and mould public opinion.
Cynics claimed that Esmond Wickremesinghe shed his radicalism as soon as he married into the Wijewardene family but he was possibly too intelligent to not realise by then that the lessons of Marx, Lenin and Trotsky were not a panacea for all ills. The Lake House association with D.S. Senanayake and the independence struggle, his father (C.L. Wickremesinghe) being a most trusted and senior civil servant of DS's team, and serving under L.M. de Silva's chairmanship may have all influenced a move away from his earlier radicalism.
His close association with Sir John Kotelawela probably caught Lake House flatfooted in 1956 when S.W.R.D. Bandaranaike swept into office resoundingly defeating the UNP that had been in office since Independence. Bandaranaike's party received a little over a million votes (39.9%) while the UNP received 7 lakhs (27.4%).
Representation in Parliament may not have reflected the actual voting strengths and if these were only a fair margin vote-wise, the result may not have been as easily predictable as it was in hindsight. The official language and the forces of the Pancha Maha Balavegaya, the sangha (clergy) + veda (ayurvedic physicians) +guru (teachers) + govi (farmers) + kamkaru (workers), were emotive issues which may have been dismissed as being purely populist. The result was, however, that ANCL became vulnerable as a 'reactionary institution'. It was a point of no return for the many battles that lay ahead.
Mrs Bandaranaike's first government in 1960 proclaimed its intention to take over ANCL. Lake House had campaigned stridently for the UNP in the run-up to the election. It was a conscious decision taken at Board level, on the premise that a country with an already grossly weakened economy could not be handed over to a party whose leader had no experience in governance and economics and that a coup of the Left or Right could follow, one of which in fact was attempted.
Press Bill after Press Bill was presented in Cabinet to tame the runaway press seen as being anti-people-friendly and therefore anti-SLFP. Drafts, in various forms did not proceed further as a result of some skilful lobbying by Mr. Wickremesinghe.
With the advent of the LSSP and CP into the SLFP government, the take-over of Lake House took on more serious proportions. The strategy to overcome the renewed threat was masterminded by Mr. Wickremesinghe almost single-handedly. The legal and constitutional aspects, campaign issues which were not confined to a press take-over, the bringing together of the most disparate elements which included some of the most strident members of the Sangha who had supported SWRD Bandaranaike on the one hand and the Federal Party on the other hand, the breakaway Left with Philip Gunewardene and Lakshman Rajapakse and the breakaway SLFP headed by CP de Silva. These were all worked out by Mr. Wickremesinghe.
There was a weaning away even of strong Buddhist elements who were earlier convinced of ANCL being a stronghold of 'CA' (Catholic action).
Esmond Wickremesinghe showed himself to be hugely resourceful and resilient. He was said to have had an inner strength that his charismatic smile and affable exterior belied. Events got rough and a bomb was lobbed into the Fifth Lane garden of his private residence damaging windows in the house, but he was undeterred.
At one point in this campaign, the Lake House Take-Over Bill passed its first reading in spite of meticulous arrangements to stymie it in Parliament. Those Lake House insiders listening at a huge government meeting at Independence Square, when Dr. Colvin R. de Silva announced that the Bill had passed its first reading (to the accompaniment of loud cheers) were shocked and dejected by the turn of events. The dejected Lake House insiders instinctively returned to Mr. Wickremesinghe's Fifth Lane residence, and not the office. Mr. Wickremesinghe went straight to the telephone. A number of calls ensued and within half an hour, the fallback strategy was in place. The Take Over was averted till the re-introduction of the Press Bill was eventually taken for a vote. Mr. Wickremesinghe's imprint was evident, engineering the defeat of the SLFP/LSSP/CP coalition in Parliament.
After the UNP coalition government victory in 1965, Mr. Wickremesinghe wished to move out of active newspaper work, to work behind the scenes for the new government.
Unfortunately the Dudley Senanayake-JR Jayewardene break-up which had its newspaper overtones could not be patched up and a divided UNP government fell to Mrs Bandaranaike's 1970 juggernaut, as did ANCL. The take-over of Lake House was completed by the new coalition government of Mrs. Bandaranaike as was the introduction of the Press Council Act in 1973.
After Dudley Senanayake's death, Esmond Wickremesinghe worked solidly behind the scenes for JR Jayewardene and his plan to return to power and what the new government should do. A free economy had first been mooted in the Daily News in the late 1960s and was to be the model for the 1977 UNP government. Because Mr. Wickremesinghe had such an insight into UNP decision-making, Lake House had earned the reputation; 'what Lake House says today, the Government does tomorrow'.
He was a keen observer of the international scene, and had a razor-sharp mind coupled with enormous diplomatic skills of persuasion. A voracious reader, his was a restless spirit. But he had a soft heart, old-timers at ANCL would say, always alive to the day-to-day problems of his staff.
He was one who could walk with kings, but not lose the common touch. When I was in Belgrade in the early 1980s, the Yugoslav chauffeur of the Sri Lankan Ambassador asked me if I knew "a Mr. Esmond Wickremesinghe in Sri Lanka". I said of course I did, and asked him what made him inquire. He said "I drove him to Albania; he was the finest gentleman I have ever met".
On the debit side, perhaps his zest for life was too much. Many say he had an intellectual arrogance about him, though it was carefully concealed, as well as a cynicism born of seeing the weaknesses of the high and mighty at close range -- the latter trait shared by many of his senior Editors at Lake House.
Perhaps, it is timely to record an anecdote. I had met him infrequently since that meeting at 'Siri Kotha' in 1976. I had started a regular political column, 'Migara' in the Weekend which had re-opened in 1977 after the closure. The Communist Party organ Aththa believed the column was written by Mr. Wickremesinghe. Attha proclaimed in a headline, "raththaran panen aanduwata anniy" (Government gets jabbed by the golden pen), a reference to Mr. Wickremesinghe who had just won the coveted Golden Pen of Freedom awarded by the reputed International Press Institute (IPI).
It was 1985, the year Mr. Wickremesinghe passed away. Sri Lanka was in the throes of bi-lateral problems with neighbouring India over the separatist insurgency. Talks between President Jayewardene and Premier Rajiv Gandhi were taking place at the imposing Rashtrapathi Bhavan. Mr. Wickremesinghe was by then International Affairs Adviser to President Jayewardene and part of the official Sri Lanka delegation.
The Press Corps was closeted in one of the 340 rooms at the Indian Presidential Palace. These were large and fully carpeted, with chandeliers, big mirrors, big chairs, long tables and portraits, all the grandeur. But all we got were biscuits and tea - no news. The only useful information that came our way was that Mr. Wickremesinghe was not staying at the Rashtrapathi Bhavan where the rest of the Presidential entourage was housed, but at a hotel (the government-managed Ashok) as he had been asked to rest following a heart murmur.
After half a dozen cups of chai (tea) and more than a dozen cookies, the Press Corps realised they were not getting anywhere. To confirm this was the announcement that a formal communiqué would be released at the end of the talks that day. Clearly, the discussions were of a highly sensitive nature.
In desperation, I called Mr. Wickremesinghe at his hotel later that day. He asked me what time it was, and suggested I meet him in his hotel room at 7 o'clock. My first thought was of the print deadlines. 7 p.m. would be cutting it fine, but beggars can't be choosers. Off I went, my mind on two things; would I get 'something' - in fact 'anything' to peg my story on; would I have the time to file the copy. Those were days of telexes from the Telegraphic Office - no, no internet in 1985 in this part of the world.
When I rang the bell, Mr. Wickremesinghe ushered me inside and showed me where to sit. He asked if I would have a drink. I said "yes" purely so that I could have some time to chat him up. He gave me the drink and poured one for himself. He then told me to give him "10 minutes" to have a shower.
Glass in hand I waited. Before my very eyes on the table where I had been asked to sit, was a file. I stared at it for a while - there was nothing else on the table. I then heard the sound of the shower and Mr. Wickremesinghe singing. Surely.
I gently opened the file, and nearly dropped my glass. The heading on the two or three sheets of paper inside stated "Minutes of the meeting between President J.R. Jayewardene and Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi" or words to that effect, with the date. Point 1 to whatever.
I jotted down a few salient ones that would make headlines back home. Mr. Wickremesinghe stopped the singing, a signal that I should close the file.
I rushed to the Telegraphic Office at Janpath and filed what was to be an 'exclusive' on the talks. Esmond Wickremesinghe had given me nothing; told me nothing.
When he eventually decided on a heart bypass, a relatively new surgical procedure at the time, he made a meticulous assessment of his future health, with and without the procedure and also on the best location to have it done. Before he left for Houston, he personally visited his household staff and those who had looked after the children, who were retired and living in their respective villages with a token of appreciation for each of them.
He died on the operating table 25 years ago on September 29, 1985.
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