Columns

It used to be said that even a joke could be a serious thing.

I cannot remember where I first heard it, perhaps from some Sri Lankan wag on the way to inebriation or a deep thinker like our philosophy teacher at Peradeniya, Basil Mendis, who had been mistakenly thought to have the earth is flat like some jokes that emanate from so-called wits in parliament.

The reverse is also true. It happened to the UNP’s general secretary, Range Bandara, the other day when he sent a political kite into the sky and tripped on his own string, and a few of his senior party colleagues laughed him out of sight amid huge guffaws from learned members of the legal profession at Range Bandara’s adventures into constitutionalism.

So what is serious to some could be laughed at by others, reminding me of the saying, possibly by an ancient Greek philosopher: “Truth is this to me and that to thee.” To put it more blandly, what is sauce for the goose may not be sauce for the gander.

What evoked recollections from 50 years or more was seeing a report in one of our sister papers. Speaking at the recent SAARCFINANCE meeting of governors in Colombo, President Ranil Wickremesinghe was quoted as saying that “Sri Lanka has not deviated from the democratic socialist system.”

While President Wickremesinghe might well have been serious in what he said, there are some who think he is a wit, and this was probably the day he sought to be witty.

But this is not the only occasion in recent times when he appeared to hark on democracy, as though he was trying to convince himself as much as his audience that Sri Lanka was a 24-carat democracy.

Addressing the inaugural session of Sri Lanka’s First National Student Parliament, he appeared intent on impressing the student audience with what a great democracy Sri Lanka was and is.

He reportedly said that “Sri Lanka is the only country in Asia that has completely protected democracy.”

Shock and awe perhaps drove the student parliament into deathly silence. What they said when they got home, one cannot say, but it sure would have left some of them rushing to their textbooks for a definition of democracy.

He did not say how democracy was “completely protected,” but student parliamentarians could always ask those peaceful protestors who were at the wrong end of water cannons, tear gas and police batons how they felt about freedom of speech and association and the rule of law, which we are said to defend vigorously.

It was not many weeks ago that Public Security Minister Tiran Alles urged his uniformed minions to use their weapons, convincing a distraught public that Sri Lanka’s democracy will be even more well protected, like that entry visa system for which foreign tourists will pay much more now, and that this international consortium operating it could be enjoying its unsolicited venture for up to 12 years, as we have been told.

It would seem that the president is intent on telling the citizenry and the world that we are democratic and socialist and certainly not capitalist, as during Uncle Junius Richard Jayewardene’s presidency, and neoliberal now under his own.

Readers might remember that when the 1972 constitution was enacted, Sri Lanka’s name was changed to “Republic of Sri Lanka”, breaking the last links with the British Crown.

But when the 1978 constitution was adopted under President Jayewardene, he had the name changed to the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka—a little more tinkering, and we would have been mistaken for Kim Jong-il’s Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.

JRJ, who from his early days in politics was called “Yankee Dicky” for his pro-American proclivities, probably had his tongue in both cheeks when he wanted the country’s name changed.

To recall an anecdote from decades gone by, Esmond Wickremesinghe, Ranil’s father, took me to dinner at the Kandawala home of former prime minister Sir John Kotelawala, who had quit politics. That sprawling 98-acre estate is today the Kotelawala Military University.

Not having been there before, Sir John showed me around, including his extensive study. Right around the four walls and just below the ceiling were caricatures of Sri Lanka’s first cabinet, drawn by that well-known newspaper cartoonist Aubrey Collette, as Sir John told me.

One of the caricatures was of JR Jayewardene, finance minister, holding a hammer and sickle in one hand and a money bag in the other.

I could not catch the allusion, so I asked Sir John what it meant. Resorting to his racy conversational style, especially when he wishes to castigate a person or persons, Sir John burst into expletives (which I am deleting) “This so-and-so was a Marxist in the old days. Then he married a rich woman and now he is a capitalist.”

Over drinks, he had more stories to tell of the early JRJ. I have too; some were told to me by the man himself either at his Ward Place residence or over a cuppa in the canteen by the parliament by the sea.

Unfortunately, limited space precludes me from relating most of them now. But one particular incident requires to be told as it reflects the man and his commitment to democratic essentials.

I was the foreign news editor at Lake House and deputy editor of the Sunday Observer at the time. I used to come quite early to the office on Saturday, go through that day’s news, and call my contacts where necessary to write what was often the page one splash. I then returned home for lunch and a snooze before a late-night stint at the office.

One particular Saturday, I wrote my news story, left it with the chief sub-editor, and returned home. That afternoon, Prof. GL Peiris was delivering an oration on a brother of President Jayewardene’s father, A. St. V. Jayewardene, if I remember correctly, at the Sri Lanka Institute.

As my wife was keen on going to GL Peiris’ lecture, I accompanied her to the institute. During the tea break, when we were chatting with some of her lawyer friends, one of them suddenly told me, “the president is calling you”. I turned around, and there was his imperious gesture summoning me.

So I walked up to President Jayewardene and asked him what it was about.

“I had to cut two paragraphs from your article,” he said.

Nonplussed and not sure what he was referring to, I asked the president which article it was, as I had not written anything in the way of an “article.”

“The article that appears tomorrow,” he said without batting an eyelid. He had already read what I had written for the next day’s Sunday Observer and used his presidential scissors to clip my story.

As I discovered later, proof pages of the next day’s paper are taken to the president for his approval or censorship.

That is not all. He fired the editor of the Daily News, the first to be appointed by the Jayewardene regime. I was in conversation with the editor in his office when the call from the president came. President Jayewardene seemed to be bursting at the seams, as the paper had published a centre-page article by a foreign correspondent that had a reference to Lee Kuan Yew.

It was a passing reference, and nothing offensive was said. The editor defended his position, and rightly so.

I heard the president saying something like, If that is what you think, you don’t deserve to be the editor and put the phone down. Exit editor.

JRJ was neither a democrat nor a socialist, as his subsequent years after the UNP’s 1977 parliamentary victory show. One of the first things he did was appoint a presidential commission aimed at removing the civic rights of former prime minister Sirima Bandaranaike and minister Felix Dias Bandaranaike thus eliminating them from domestic politics for a time, clearing the path for an easy ride.

He was such a socialist that he threw open the economy and said, “Let the robber barons come.”

It might have taken some time for them to come, but they are here now. So much so for democracy and socialism.

(Neville de Silva is a veteran
Sri Lankan journalist who was Assistant Editor of the Hong Kong Standard and worked for Gemini News Service in London. Later, he was Deputy Chief-of-Mission in Bangkok and Deputy High Commissioner in London.)