Sunday Times 2
The view from Sravasti
View(s):Many years ago, when I was a young reporter, I was entrusted with the task of being our paper’s political correspondent.
Although the title sounded much more impressive than the work I was tasked to do, it gave me the opportunity of putting together a weekly column and reporting on parliamentary affairs—the debates that took place in that impressive colonial-era building that still stands at the north end of Galle Face Green and now accommodates the Presidential Office.
In those days, all (or almost all) the members of parliament lived up to the title ‘Honourable Member of Parliament’. Debates and even disagreements were conducted with a sense of propriety. There was no throwing of chairs, heavy books, or even chilli powder at members of the opposing party. 
My journalistic duties often required me to interview members of parliament. Sometimes I would be asked by the MPs whom I wanted to speak with to come and see them for an evening at Sravasti, the ‘MP’s Hostel’ in Edinburgh Crescent (now Sir Marcus Fernando Mawatha). This magnificent building, now housing the offices of the Western Provincial Council, was a gift to the nation from Dr. W. A de Silva—former member of the state council, minister of health, and philanthropist—and used to be the home away from home for members of parliament who had to travel from their outstation electorates to spend five days each month to attend parliamentary sittings in Colombo.
I used to enjoy my visits to Sravasti, where I would have the chance over a cup of tea to have a one-on-one conversation with the MP and get my story. My visits also gave me the opportunity to get to know the manager of the hostel, Mr. Wijenaike, who (well aware that young journalists are almost always hungry) would sometimes invite me to share a meal with him in his quarters.
Mr. Wijenayake had started his career as a clerk in government service and had worked in places as varied as the Attorney General’s department, our embassy in the Soviet Union, and parliament itself. By the time I got to know him, he was a wise old man in his late fifties, well-versed in the ways of the world and the foibles of politicians.
One day when I was with him, one of the hostel aides came to ask him permission to leave the place to undertake an errand for one of the MPs. When he was told who the MP was, Mr. Wijenaike asked, with the ghost of a smile on his face, “Does he want you to get him a bottle of liquor?”. The young man sheepishly nodded.
“Alright, you may go—and take the bicycle for your errand; you can come back quicker that way.”
After the hostel aide had left, Mr. Wijenaike turned to me. “When this MP first came here as a newly elected member of parliament, he would regularly ask one of the hostel aides to go out and bring him a bottle of arrack. He would give the man a ten rupee note—as you know, a bottle of Gal Arrack used to cost just eight rupees and fifty cents in the good old days—and when the man returned with the bottle, this MP used to carefully count the change to make sure he received one fifty and no less. He would then give the aide fifty cents for his trouble.”
“Now that he has been an MP for over a year, he no longer drinks Gal Arrack. He now sends the man out with a large denomination note to get him a bottle of whisky, and when the bottle is brought to him, he airily tells the hostel aide, ‘Keep the change for yourself.’”
“His official salary is the same as it was when he came in as a fresh MP—so one can only wonder how he manages to supplement his income. And he is not the only one whose income has greatly increased after coming to parliament.”
Mr. Wijenaike ended his story with a look of resignation and that expressive Sinhalese comment, “Kaata kiyannade?”
I remember at the time a conversation I had with a colleague who used to visit (purely for professional reasons, he would tell me, because that is where he got some of his best stories!) the Colombo Recreation Club and the Atlanta Club. These were ‘Gaming Clubs’ (better described as gambling clubs) where card games and betting on horse races were popular. They were run by an enterprising businessman called Mubarak Thaha, who my colleague told me once said, “We don’t worry who gets elected to parliament. Within six months, we will have enough of them in our pocket to get done what we want done.”
I was musing this month, with elections round the corner, what calibre of MPs we will get after November 14. We have had more than our fill of dishonest politicians who used the opportunity of getting into parliament to enrich themselves and bankrupt our country.
The three new NPP brooms in office have so far been setting an example of moral rectitude. We all hope and pray that they will usher in a period of scrupulous governance.
But judging from past performance, many of our politicians, when elected into office, have worked on the principle said to have been enunciated by John Kotelawela: ‘When the spoon is in your hand, take the opportunity and just serve yourself’.
We can only hope that the folk we elect to parliament next week will be not like those Mr. Wijenaike got so used to seeing, not like those Mr. Thaha got accustomed to buying—but folk who will not succumb to temptation but who will govern Sri Lanka so as to enrich the nation and not themselves.