Columns

It was bound to happen. Sri Lanka’s career diplomatic service has long had a troubled past. That is not to say a really bad time away from home, particularly by incompetent and ignorant bosses from discarded political rubbish or dubious lineage that does little to improve the image of the country or those who wish to keep it clean.

But as the country’s diplomatic stature deteriorates and its reputation around the world suffers a deleterious descent, as did our economy not too long ago along with its minders, it was our proconsuls who bore the barbs aimed at them not only from the capitals of the world but also from sections of a local populace—some filled with condescension—that ask what our diplomats are doing, unaware (one thinks) that foreign residences often seem to the visitor they have run into what might be mistaken for a pending corpus delicti instead of diplomatic high-ups.

These are fabrications to denigrate those who have been planted into positions that were clearly unsuited for them or well above their stature. Having known our diplomats from Sri Lanka’s first batch, among whom were very good friends with whom one made long-time friendships at home and ‘in situ’, and later groups of interns—close friends, several contemporaries at the university, many of whom entered the foreign service—it was quite a cross-section of coveted diplomats for those early years of a rather newly independent, relatively speaking, state.

But even before those like Jayantha Dhanapala made their presence felt on the international stage as emerging career diplomats, there were other Ceylonese/Sri Lankans who shone internationally.

The difference, however, was that they were from outside the formal career service, men such as Hamilton Shirley Amerasinghe, the country’s Permanent Representative to the UN in New York, with whom I had the honour of working as he headed a three-member subcommittee investigating Israeli violations of human rights in the occupied territories, taking me under his wing, as it were, for a good 10 days.

I was invited by the Arabs to visit the neighbouring countries, probably to learn about plans to hopefully outsmart Israel at the UN. But if I learnt—and it was quite a lot for less than 14 days—it was from our own Shirley Amerasinghe, who showed me how to outwit the smartest of diplomats and even an armed Palestinian guerrilla group, who stopped us in the middle of a busy street and ordered us out of the vehicle until we talked them out of whatever they intended doing and invited the four guards to dinner.

Perhaps they were not as hungry as we thought they were. The unperturbed diplomat had a good laugh and ordered what must have been the most expensive wine in that cellar for Shirley, as I was reluctantly told to call him all the way back to New York.

All this is not to dismiss the common perception that political and other often not-so-culturally tutored people who desire to sit around a bottle of wine or, rather, a more inebriating drink, are what makes our politically appointed turn diplomacy into epilepsy.

That would be to take a supercilious view when we have amongst our career diplomats such distinguished personalities as Neville Kanakaratna, who was more than our ambassador to Washington, D.C., and Gamani Corea, the internationally respected economist who the politically anointed would likely claim as their own to denigrate those who have at long last pocketed their diplomatic niceties and opened fire on those who are lacking the qualifications to eat their soup gracefully and conduct themselves with dignified etiquette.

If the disgruntled career diplomats have spent years trying to clear the hurdles of foreign language examinations to qualify for the next step in the career ladder, perhaps those who rush to the support of the defeat and discarded might pick up the hammer and sickle and present a credible case instead of throwing these discarded tools who seek justice from those who deserve justice.

A little over two months ago, an unusually silent and non-belligerent association of professions decided to issue a sharp statement over the mistreatment of career diplomats despite the pledges made by the NPP government in power.

Quite understandably, the professional association has raised the issue of recruitments to the career service, which the NPP and its leaders promised to clean up in both their campaign speeches and the manifesto.

But it is not just the career diplomats who have turned their guns; though their weapons are of low calibre. Frankly, those who voted for or supported the AKD clan are now starting to ask what happened to the promises. Personally, one can give the government a couple of months to sort things out.

But what is galling is that it is not stalling but backtracking and planting their feet across the pitch.

(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).