24th March 1996

I have become a target, says Lakshman Kadir

Mr. Speaker, let me commence by saying this. I have heard in the course of this debate many references to me of different kinds, some outright complimentary, some left handed. But, I thank Members on both sides of the House for what they said genuinely, I believe in most cases in that respect. To the Hon. Jayawickrema Perera I will say, I do indeed recall what he said to me near the elevator some weeks ago in very complimentary terms. I am not yet deaf enough to be unable to pick up a nice compliment. But, I must tell you this Mr. Speaker with all respect. The barometer of public opinion does not concern me in the slightest. I did not come into politics at the invitation of the President of the Republic, for the pleasure of office or for monetary gain, because I have suffered enormously, financially, as a result of my decision, about which I do not complain one bit.

I was aware when I agreed to accept office as Foreign Minister that I would very quickly become a target. I am a target. Everybody knows that. Not for me Mr. Speaker, the pleasures of wining and dining in Chinese restaurants. I am not allowed to go anywhere. I am a prisoner in my own house. But I am a prisoner of honour. I do not ask for or seek the pleasures of office. When I go abroad, and a meeting is over at 6 o'clock, I catch the 9 o'clock plane back home. It is a punishing schedule. But I am honoured to be able to shoulder those responsibilities that have been cast on me. I do not fear the bullets and the bombs that are aimed at me. I will have to carry this burden to the end of my days, long after I cease to hold office. That does not frighten me, does not bother me. Therefore, Mr. Speaker, the harsh words that Mr. Anura Bandaranaike aimed at me mean nothing. It only made me sad, not for myself but for him, because my mind went back to the speeches that I have heard 40 years ago, his illustrious father made. There was a man who as a young man, adorned a great seat of learning in another country. He made speeches then which are still written about in the history books of that society, of which he was an eminent office bearer. His oratory set England aflame, but it was always oratory that was chaste, elegant, cultured. Not for the S. W. R. D. Bandaranaike was the cheap jibe, never. His weapon was the rapier, his weapon was sarcasm. His speech always well honed, well burnished. The language was all his own. He constructed his own speeches. He turned his own phrases. He did not have to rely on Pitt and Fox and Healey as verbal crutches to shore up a speech that would collapse unless it was sprinkled with little tit bits of quotations from some anthology or thesaurus. The cultured man makes his own speeches, he produces his own thoughts. His speeches were not a posy of other men's flowers. They are his own. That is what made me sad. It made me sad because I saw a younger man speaking to this House with more than a touch of arrogance. Because in those speeches and in those references to Pitt and Fox and Healey, there is a message to the very good and true ladies and gentlemen who sit behind him in the Opposition. What he was saying is, you are not worthy of hearing a normal speech because you do not understand it. So, I must tell you that I am a learned man. A learned man never says that. He never behaves like that. His most learned father, who was no mean a classics scholar, who won his spurs in the highest seats of learning was a man who by osmotic absorption, had culture in his vein. He did not have to parade his learning. He had learning.

And learning sat effortlessly on his shoulders. So, I am sad, Mr. Speaker, I am sad. Not for myself in this matter. To use a cricketing metaphor, I was facing fast bowling without a helmet on the rugged playing fields of Kandy before Anura Bandaranaike was born. So, the tennis balls that he bowled at me yesterday were not even worthy of deflection, and as for his pop gun oratory, it does not wound me in the slightest. It is not even tantamount to the bite of a fly.

I also wonder about this. People speak about honour and integrity, Mr. Speaker. It is something one must be very careful about when you speak in those terms. I ask myself this question. Where is the honour and integrity of a man who fearing to stand for election in the electorate of his birth, to face his mere sister who stood for election and won the most resounding victory ever recorded in the annals of this country, both personal and for her party. Where did Mr. Anura Bandaranaike go. He took refuge in a party which hounded his father out of it and crucified his mother. It may be a party which now consists of different people, I concede that. But what honour is there in his being a nominated MP who at this point of time represents nobody and represents nothing (Interruption). I, Mr. Speaker have absolutely no pretentions - I have no pretentions (Interruption). I will never stand for election, I belong to a minority community, I have no political ambitions at all. I am here only to do one thing and that is to help my country as best as I can to solve the gravest problem of our time and if I can make a minuscule contribution towards that effort, that will be enough for me till the end of my days. I seek nothing else.

Mr. Speaker, many questions have been asked, some foolish, some worthy of attention. I will start with my letter of l9th January, 1996 with which Mr. Ronnie de Mel made great play and others too. I ask the House, Mr. Speaker, to look at that letter objectively, calmly and analytically. When that letter was written there was no party politics involved. I am talking about my feelings in writing my letter. You can make your own judgment about what you think of it. That is your business but I want to explain the thoughts that were in my mind when I put pen to paper. It is right that on the 23rd of March, 1995 I gave an opinion at the request of the President on the Puttalam Cement matter. In that opinion, Mr. Speaker, I took what I would call a classical view, a strict view in law. What I said was that we were in a situation where because of a breach of Section 55 of the Companies Act on which question there is almost unanimity - there is the Attorney-General's opinion, there is the Securities Exchange Commission opinion, there is my opinion, there is an opinion of a Senior Lawyer, a private lawyer; we have all agreed that there was a breach of Section 55 of the Companies Act.

The question is what was the consequence of that breach? I took the view that it rendered the underlying transaction void in law. Void means that it is null and void - that it has no effect whatsoever. That is my view. I do not for one second say that I am infallible. No lawyer in his senses ever says that because one thing that we lawyers know and the judges know is how fallible we are. That is why there is litigation. That is why there is a hierarchy of Courts where legal issues go from one Court to another till they are settled by the highest Courts. Then, even the highest Courts say they are not infallible. Under certain extreme circumstances even the highest Court may revise itself. Lawyers know that they are not infallible. But they give an opinion. They may be right. They may be wrong. The opinion may be acted upon it or may be disregarded. It may be tested in a Court. Those are all the factors that come into play. I took the view that the transaction was void and I suggested that to put matters right, the Tawakkals be asked to pay the full amount of Rs. 900 million which they have refused to pay or that the matter be restarted. That is my view.

I asked myself the question, "This is very strange, could something serious have gone wrong?" Because the Chairman of PERC in his letter is talking about a subsequent decision, new conditions which I did not know anything about. Therefore, I felt, Mr. Speaker, that it was a matter that I should bring to the attention of the President.

Now, there are various ways in which a Cabinet Minister can bring something to the attention of the Head of Government. You can speak about it either physically, in the presence of the person, or on the telephone or write about it. Mr. Speaker, it is not always possible due to constraints of time for a Cabinet Minister to be able to speak to the President on a complex matter like this which requires explanation, looking at documents and recalling some past history. This could not have been a five minute casual conversation. So, I thought the best thing was to write her a letter, which is what I did, and I must say this, Mr. Speaker, and I am glad to have the opportunity of saying it this evening that with the President of the Republic I, and indeed all the Cabinet Ministers, I make bold to say, do not have the slightest hesitation or fear in speaking to the President frankly and freely about matters that concern us. That, Mr. Speaker, is something to be proud of when you are running a government. The dialogue that we have with her whenever it is possible to speak to her, which is not always and not at five minutes notice, is very free, full and frank.

Sir, before I wrote this letter, I told Mr. Kadurugamuwa that my information is that there is no second Cabinet decision. And I told him the gist of what I was going to say in my letter because it referred to him again, and he told me that there were two conversations of which he was aware between two parties in Hong Kong which referred to the payment of moneys in this connection. He referred to one as a tape recording of a conversation and another an unrecorded conversation. Mr. Speaker, that was a piece of information he gave me in the context of our discussion. In ordinary life, when you receive a piece of information from somebody, what do you do with it? All of us have our own methods of evaluating or assessing a piece of information. The first thing that I ask myself is, particularly, if it is in the realm of allegation, who is the man who is telling me this. Before getting to the truth or the falsity of the allegation, who is the person who is making it?

We all know, Mr. Speaker, that in social situations, in clubs, in bars and so on a great deal of tittle- tattle and gossip goes on. A lot of the information that passes between parties on those occasions is worthless. It is full of jealousy, envy, spite and problems of all kinds and very often many of us would not take such information seriously. It might be amusing. We might laugh. You might file it away in your mind but you do not take it seriously. In this case I must say, because this was told to me by a man whom I have known for so long, it passed the first test in my mind. It is not something I would totally disregard as being unworthy or being entertained. The second question when one is assessing information is, how credible is it. On that question, Mr. Speaker, I came to the conclusion that what I should do, the very least I should do, is pass it on to Her Excellency.

That is what I meant by relaying it, and Mr. Speaker, I ask the House to be fair in reading my letter of the 19th of January. What I am saying at the end of it is that you should urgently find out three things. I itemized them (a), (b) and (c). (a) is whether the Cabinet decision of 23rd March was reversed; if so, when. (b) is whether the letter of Mr. Asirwathan of 1st August genuine or not. (c) is whether the letter of Mr. Arittha Wickremanayake, Director-General of SEC is genuine or not.

I call them, Mr. Speaker three simple questions of fact to which I did not have the answers. So I was saying to the President. I am passing these questions on to you. Please find the answers. Now Mr. Speaker, is it not significant that I did not in that letter anywhere raise a fourth question? Very simple. I could have had a question (d) saying please investigate this allegation of bribery that has been made by party A, a Mr. Tawakkal to party B, a Mr. Martinotti which is then conveyed by party B to party C, Mr. Kadurugamuwa who then conveys it to me who is party D, and now I am conveying it to the President who is party E. At that stage I did not think that it was germane for me to raise that as a question for inquiry. It was sufficient for my purposes to pass it on to the Head of Government for her to do what she thought fit and best in the circumstances.

In other words that information only provided a sort of background to a matter that worried me greatly. What was that matter? Was there a second Cabinet decision? Was this August 1st letter authentic? Was the Secretary-General of SEC's letter authentic? Those concerned me very deeply because in the absence of any information to the contrary, I felt that perhaps there had been a forgery. What I was saying was that this whole thing might have been concocted. It is possible. So please find out. Now Mr. Speaker, that particular inquiry on those three questions could have been finished in five minutes merely by finding out whether there was a second decision by Mr. Asirwathan and Mr. Wickremanayake confirming that their letters are genuine. On those inquiries being made, that matter is closed. My fears that these letters were concocted would have been laid to rest on those simple questions of fact.

So Mr. Speaker, that was my mental process at the time that I wrote that letter. I have said what I have said. I do not say the contrary. I cannot say the contrary. Of course, I have said that in my opinion the proposal by Vanik to PERC is outrageous. It is a very serious matter and so on. Why did I say that. For two reasons. One is that, working on the assumption that there was no second Cabinet decision, it seemed to me that it was outrageous of some private body to be proposing amendments to a Cabinet decision. Of course, that is outrageous. Secondly it is outrageous because in my opinion (I may be totally wrong, I am not a prima donna, I am a team player, I am a lawyer but I am not an infallible lawyer, no such creature exists anywhere in the world, my legal friends know that very well, we are constantly being shown how fallible we are, we do not claim infallibility at all). Making adjustments in books is not a good thing. It is as simple as that. It may be a very simple way of looking at it. That is why I said this may be the classical approach. That is what I thought. There may be other answers. I am going to give some other answers now. There is another view. The view is this. Mr. Speaker, I said a moment ago that I had taken the view that this transaction was void in law. Now Mr. Speaker, there is a distinction between something that is void and something that is voidable.

Far be it from me, to give explanations on these concepts in the House today. What right have I to seek, however badly, to educate the House on these matters, particularly in the presence of distinguished colleagues who are eminent legal practitioners. But suffice it to say that this is a complex concept in law, the difference between void and voidable. Void means it is bad ab initio voidable means it stands until it is set aside.

Now Mr. Speaker, the Director General of SEC ends his letter by saying, that the decision whether or not to cook the books was entirely a decision for the Treasury and he goes on to say this in fairness to the officials of the Treasury, the Minister - that is I - should take cognizance of the circumstances that prevailed at the time and the need for them to take a pragmatic view on a deadlocked situation and one which had an immense negative impact on the investment climate in the country at that time. So I say to the Leader of the Opposition and others who are interested in this point, that seems to have been the mental process that went on at that time to assess these options and decide what way out there was.

Mr. Speaker, it is surely unarguable that it is always open to a Cabinet to review its previous decisions. A Cabinet, Mr. Speaker, you know very well, is not an academy of law. It is not a place where moot points are argued in vacuo.

I thank the House and I want to do justice to the questions that were raised. Now Mr. Bandaranaike raised a very pertinent point. He says "look at the outrageous nature of this conversation." "Because if this conversation that this man Tawakkal is supposed to have had with a man in Hong-Kong is true it even implicates the Hon. Prime Minister and he rightly took umbrage at that. Not only he, the whole country, man, woman and child will take umbrage at that. It is the most ludicrous possible suggestion that anyone can make. Of course that is so. But, I think Mr. Bandaranaike did not realise the implication of that statement that he made. The implication is that therefore the credibility of this man's statement is gravely in doubt. If this Tawakkal is really saying something true when he says that he wines and dines with all the Ministers, top people, Cabinet and so on and all of us are saying, that cannot be true because the Prime Minister is also involved in this. Then it casts grave doubt on the veracity of this man's statement.

Can I explain it Minister, Mr. Kadurugamuwa is a gentleman of the highest calibre. You said in your letter that he heard the tape. So why did you not tell Mr. Kadurugamuwa to hand over the tape to the investigators.

At that time there was no question of handing it over to investigators.

You have written in your letter of 19th January that Mr. Kadurugamuwa has heard the tape. So why did you not ask him to hand over the tape.

Well, he gave me a transcript. I handed that transcript to the President. Actually the transcript went to her on the 26th of January. About a week after my letter. At the time of my writing the letter there was no transcript. Mr. Bandaranaike, it is really expecting too much for me to go and tell him now you come and give me the tape and I will go and give it to someone else. People must use their own judgment in these matters and do what they think is right. My duty was by the head of my Government, to pass it on to her. Let anything happen thereafter.

That was after I raised it in Parliament in March.

I do not know precisely.

You say it was on March 16th (Interruption) No, I raised on March 5th, he replied on March 7th. When did the criminal investigation begin by the Police?

Towards the 1st or 2nd of March.

You said 16th of March (Interruption)

That will come to Parliament in due course, Leader of the Opposition. But, what I am saying is perhaps we can leave that point on this basis that I do not think a great deal turns on it.

Then on 26th, 28th only his reply came. Immediately after that matter was cleared then we handed over to the CID through the Secretary to the President only the transcript. Now the CID - I am told - that is what the letter said which I tabled in this House this morning that they have now taken over the tape. I have said, so in the morning and have given further details.

There are some of the inherent dubious circumstances of that transcript. These are just a few thoughts of the moment. There may be very much more analysis to be done. But, when I came to this House on the 7th of March, 1 came in order to respond to an allegation that was being unfairly made against my Cabinet colleagues. Fair is fair. Why pin it on me? I mean, if I said it I will take the responsibility for it. But, I did not say it. Sir therefore, I said you are asking for my opinion now, virtually you are asking for my opinion, so I will give you my opinion for what it may be worth. Let the CID investigate that.

Then, Mr. Bandaranaike asked one of his many rhetorical questions but I choose to answer it. Who has the power, who has the influence to smuggle this decision that the Secretary to the Cabinet and the Foreign Minister did not know? Then, he went all coy and shy because later on he says I am not saying anything about who did anything. I am not casting aspersions.

So, let us see how long the "Leader's" good behaviour will last. I think, I would say that on this particular point Mr. Bandaranaike asked this question "who is this top person" he has met. That is a rhetorical question that you repeat three pages later. "We are all children of a lesser God", he says. "There is only one top person according to the Constitution, I am not casting aspersions on any particular person. Please do not misunderstand me." We understood you very well. So, then I dealt with the other point which Mr. Bandaranaike made extremely well. He said, "I would make only one personal objection, Sir, that the aspersion has already been cast on the Prime Minister whose integrity is on the highest level of which no other person including Her Excellency the President can ever aspire to."

Now, when Twakkal brought this "bullshit" that includes the Prime Minister as well, I say, that man is damned by his own mouth. So, let the CID investigate that.

Then , there is a suggestion about the Holderbank. Mr. Bandaranaike wanted to know how the Holderbank knew or came to know that I have given the Cabinet an opinion. The answer to Mr. Bandaranaike is very simple. There was on the 25th of March, 1995 an Article in "The Sunday Times' which summarised the content of the Cabinet Memorandum that had been presented to the Cabinet a week earlier. I think it might be fair or reasonably prudent perhaps for me to table that and I accordingly table that - Sunday Times of 26th March 1995 'Puttalam Cement deal off: call for fresh bids' and a summary of my opinion - Mr. Speaker, for inclusion in Hansard. Now, the moment such information is published in a newspaper, it is very simple to surmise that the Holderbank who has a representative in Sri Lanka would have been instantly telegraphed that this whole Puttalam Cement transaction might unravel and come on to the market again. So they appeared to have written. Why do I say 'appear'? Because I, like all Cabinet Ministers, receive hundreds of letters every week. If we are to be damned by the letters we receive, I do not think this government can run at all or any government can run. But the important fact is, Mr. speaker, that I did not even reply that letter. It went into my wastepaper basket. If you ask me now, "Did you see that letter?", my honest answer is, "I do no know." But if you show me the letter, I would say "Yes. I must have received it." I can surmise where it went .

In conclusion, Mr. Speaker, once again I thank Hon. Members on both sides of the House for the kind references they have made to me in regard to what I am trying to do in my official capacity. Our approach to our national problem must surely be bipartisan because that task ahead of us is one of immense magnitude and the utmost gravity and in those circumstances you will never find, Mr. Speaker, that I will run away under fire. If I am not going to run away under fire from certain forces I am not going to run away under the fire of Mr. Bandaranaike's popgun oratory. I thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Order please! Before we adjourn may I say that this was a very important debate. We went on for three days. Every body knows that we started well and we ended very well. Of course in between you gave enough of headaches to the Chair but in future I hope specially our young Members learn by the speeches that were made on the first day and the last day and let us forget what had happened in between and try to make this an honourable place for all of us. Thank you very much.