Sunday Times 2
Politics and PodiTricks
View(s):For most of this month, both the mainstream media and social media have been spending a lot of time and effort talking about the educational qualifications (and the lack thereof) of our ‘Honourable’ Elected Representatives.
Matters came to a head when Speaker Ashoka Ranwala—a man whose greatest claim to fame is that he was a vociferous trade unionist and the president of the Petroleum General Employees Union—was forced to resign after allegations that he had falsified his educational qualifications.
Mr. Ranwala had claimed to have earned a bachelor’s degree from the University of Moratuwa and a PhD from Waseda University (a top Japanese university that has produced no less than eight of that country’s prime ministers). He confidently went around calling himself Dr. Ranwala. Investigative journalists, however, unearthed the fact that Mr. Ranwala had never been registered as a student at Waseda. They have so far drawn a blank in establishing that he even has a bachelor’s degree from Moratuwa.
The fact that Mr. Ranwala had to resign in disgrace brings up three important points.
The first point is that one does not need any special educational qualifications to be elected Speaker in our parliament. We have had highly educated Speakers in the past (like WJM Lokubandara, who was a lawyer and had a PhD from the Kelaniya University, and Sir Waithilingam Duraiswamy, who was also a lawyer and had a double degree from Calcutta University), as well as other speakers (like Chamal Rajapaksa, Anandatissa de Alwis; and MH Mohamed).
But none of these gentlemen needed to prop themselves up by clothing themselves with false qualifications. Like our current opposition leader, who has to use words of learned length and thundering sound just to prove to the gazing rustics in his party that he has a London education, so too do some people need to clothe themselves in borrowed or stolen feathers to gain social recognition. Just like the improperly fitted wig that he wore on his first day in office, the unearned Waseda degree he was shown not to have showed up the ex-Speaker for what he is—no better than the dishonest politicians that we threw out at the last elections.
The second point is that Mr. Ranwala’s dismissal was not for the crime of falsifying his educational credentials. He did not NEED to have a PhD for the job to which he was elected. He DESIRED to show that he had a PhD to make people believe that he was better than he is—and his desire was so great that he did what was ethically and morally wrong. His crime was in betraying the trust of the people—and his parliamentary colleagues.
One does not need a PhD—or even a university degree or GCE qualification—to be elected to our parliament. Our first and much-respected prime minister, D.S. Senanayake, left school with little more than his sports qualifications; he worked as a clerk in the Surveyor General’s Department before going into politics. What is needed today is integrity—a quality that has sadly been lacking in our legislature. Our new MPs cannot claim to take the moral high ground and then be revealed to have feet of clay. Fooling all the people all the time is not possible.
The third point—which is the only bright point in this sorry saga—is that the Speaker, having been found to have done what was wrong, took the blame and resigned. Perhaps he was encouraged to do so by his leader; perhaps he acted on his own when he found that his position was untenable. In contrast to a Japanese person from Waseda caught in the same situation, Mr. Ranwala did not have to commit ritual hara-kiri. At least he had the grace to resign.
In the past, whether it was in the governments of the now-emasculated UNP, the SLPP, or the SLFP, many were crooks and robbers who were protected by their masters. In 2021, Lohan Ratwatte went to Anuradhapura in a state of intoxication and threatened some prisoners at gunpoint. He was not sacked; he was quietly shuffled to another state ministry by Gotabaya Rajapaksa. In 2023, after making several dubious deals and importing substandard and ineffective medications into this country, Keheliya Rambukwella was not sacked; he was kept in the cabinet and merely shifted from Minister of Health to Minister of Environment by Ranil Wickremesinghe.
The fact that President Dissanayake took the unprecedented step of sacking the Speaker when he was shown to have done what was wrong is a break from the traditions established by Gotabaya and Ranil.
We can only hope that Mr. Ranwala’s resignation serves as a lesson—for his parliamentary colleagues so that they do not try to fly in borrowed feathers and also for us voters so that we remain vigilant by calling out wrongdoing.
As the famous Australian politician Don Chipp said, it is our duty to “keep the rascals honest.”