Colombo Hilton, Cornel Perera and developing East coast tourism

Excerpted from volume ii of the Sarath Amunugama autobiography

As mentioned earlier there was a lull in inbound tourist traffic after the riots of 1983. Till then we were doubling the number of arrivals each year. Old companies like John Keells, Aitken Spence, Walkers and Sommervilles, which had been edged out of plantation management by land reform, entered the field of-tourism with staff and skills which compared well with their counterparts in the travel trade worldwide.

I remember the close ties that were established between them and major foreign outbound travel companies. In the Ministry and Tourist Board we adopted a private sector friendly approach which encouraged the local companies to aggressively market Sri Lanka. We knew we had the President’s backing in this approach.

There was one instance where Hurulle the Minister of Culture had arbitrarily raised the price of tickets for foreign visitors to cultural sites like Sigiriya. In the travel trade ticket prices once announced in their catalogs cannot be arbitrarily changed. The tourist pays upfront when he signs up for a package tour based on the catalog rates. Our travel representatives rushed up to me to protest as their principals were furious.

As a strategy I requested Ken Balendra and his group to get their principals to write to the President protesting at this last minute change. For convenience I provided them a draft of the letter to be sent to the President. Balendra and his associates had immediately sent this to the relevant companies in Europe. The following day JRJ sent for me.

As I went into his office he was chuckling. “Amunugama, this is very strange”, he told me “people from all Europe-Paris, London and Zurich-are apparently telepathic. They have sent me the same message word for word, protesting against Hurulle’s decision. How do you account for it?” I realized that he had seen through our ruse and quickly admitted that I had originated it in our Ministry. He laughed and picked up the phone and ordered Hurulle to rescind his order. “You can do it from the next budget after giving due notice”, he told the minister.

He had seen the need to intervene very clearly and was not at all critical of our unorthodox behavior. He was too experienced and wily an operator not to see through our strategy. He always preferred action to lethargy in his officials and was ready to join in the fun.

The genesis of the Colombo Hilton also is an example of his unorthodox style. He was a great friend of Cornel Perera partly because he liked his chutzpah and partly because Cornel was his conduit to Thondaman. Cornel was my classmate from Trinity College and he used to exchange pleasantries with me about our friends and college whenever we met. He was from Gampola and was a fluent Tamil speaker with links to Thondaman and his Ceylon Indian Congress.

He had got a scholarship to Japan to study fisheries. With his flair for languages Cornel picked up Japanese easily and was in demand by our embassy in Tokyo which at that time did not have much to do since our trade relations had not developed. Indeed our early businessmen with Japan – Cornel, Munidasa, Warnasuriya and Merrick Gunaratne, started out there as adult students with a flair for languages.

Some like Munidasa and Warnasuriya married Japanese girls. Cornel managed to secure the local agency for Hitachi power sets. At this time big Japanese Companies were struggling to enter global markets and were willing to give competitive bids as well as large commissions to their agents who had to battle the well established western companies. With hard work and his natural charm, Cornel secured the contract for power sets from the CGR and entered the inner circle of the super-rich in the country.

He remained faithful to JRJ and promoted his image in Japan resurrecting his contribution at the San Francisco Conference. Typically our Foreign Service missed this opportunity and JRJ was beholden to his young friends who were assiduously drawing attention to his links with then Japanese leaders like Sigeru Yoshida. Japanese politicians have long memories and it was not difficult to fan the dying embers of the JRJ cult in Japan.

One of the top companies in Japan – a part of the Daibatsu or economy leaders – was Mitsui – a construction Company, which won many contracts like the construction of the new Parliament in Kotte. The Mitsui agent in Colombo was JRJ’s daughter-in-law which did no harm in the competition for project contracts. Cornel was close to Mitsui at this stage and proposed the joint construction of a new five star hotel in Colombo.

Mitsui which was already well established in Colombo agreed and Cornel brought in Hilton to undertake the management as a big name was needed at this juncture. This proposal was a big deal at that time since our tourism was in the doldrums after the communal conflagration and something dramatic and big had to be done about it. We in the Ministry supported this project to the hilt because new five-star hotels were badly needed if we were to encourage high end tourism.

The UDA and the Colombo Municipality, then under Sirisena Cooray, also backed the Hilton project and the construction got under way. The UDA under Premadasa had prepared a comprehensive development plan for the city of Colombo and the suburbs. Accordingly, the area around the Presidents House was demarcated as the financial district. Banks, stock brokering houses and other financial institutions were to come up there.

Today the Bank of Ceylon headquarters building dominates that landscape. Next to it was the upmarket leisure sector, principally hotels and malls. One block in this area was set apart for the Hilton project and the adjoining block was given, at Hameed’s urging, to the Galadari brothers. They were able to finance the construction of another new five-star hotel. Initially the Galadaris went with the, prestigious Meridian group of France but later decided to run the Hotel themselves with local management.

The future seemed bright for Cornel with JRJ, Premadasa, Gamini Dissanayake, Mayor Cooray and Paskaralingam as his supporters. Premadasa provided him with land in Colpetty to set up the first supermarket in Colombo. At about this time, as I have written earlier, Lalith Athulathmudali as Minister of Trade led a delegation to Tokyo to promote trade between the two countries and setup the first Japan-Lanka Trade Council.

As outlined there, I as Secretary for Tourism, was a member of that 10-strong delegation. Meetings with the top Japanese ‘Daibatsu’ were cordial and the Hilton was presented as a successful collaboration. The hotel which was built to Japanese specifications was opened ceremonially by the President.

While it certainly added to the facilities necessary to boost tourism and soon became a hotel in great demand, changes in the political scenario brought misfortune to Cornel. In the Premadasa-Gamini conflict and the subsequent impeachment proceedings Cornel was caught in the crossfire between the two sides. Premadasa as President believed that Cornel had aided his bitter rival and no amount of pleading by Cooray and Paskaralingam would change his mind. He turned ferociously on Cornel by taking back the land for the supermarket and denying his shares in Hotel Developers, the holding Company for the Hilton.

Since then successive Governments which managed the Hilton have been unable to untangle the legal issues regarding ownership. Another project that should have boosted our tourism in a big way has been languishing. It is the Hyatt project which too was taken over by the Government but is yet to be opened. It was negotiated by Lalith Kotelawala who if left alone without political victimization would have opened this Hotel several years ago.

The tourist industry which was promoted by us as a private sector led venture has been stifled by Government interference and corruption and is today performing well below its potential. The tragedy is that Indian tourism which looked to us to provide a model of growth has far outstripped us. When the Indian travel Agents came to Colombo for their annual meeting we had more tourist arrivals than the whole of India. Today we are way down in the scale while India has become one of the largest tourist destinations of the world.

Trincomalee and Pasikudah

Under JRJ and Ananda we undertook to develop the East coast of the island which is ideally suited for ‘sun, sand and sea’ tourism. Due to our geographical location and the changes of monsoons Sri Lanka is suited for round the year tourism. When the monsoon strikes the south west of the island our east coast becomes a dry and breezy playground for the visitor. When the monsoon shifts to the north east the southern coastline is open to vacation tourism.

This beneficial climatic condition is envied by many countries which can only host short spells of tourism due to the vagaries of the weather. Our east coast also had the advantage that land by the sea was available at a relatively low cost. On the President’s instructions I surveyed the coastline to mark out the lands suitable for tourism and leave out other lands by the sea which were used by the fishermen of the same area as well as seasonal visiting fishermen from the south who set up ‘Wadiyas’ or camps in the fishing season.

Since there was plenty of land available I could accommodate the fishermen as well as the hoteliers. The MPs of the area were pleased about this demarcation because it had been a source of constant friction in their electorates. Sampanthan, the TULF leader complimented me in Parliament and the favourable sentiments of the House are enshrined in the Hansard. This was much earlier in time than July 1983, when we could amicably settle problems on the ground, with goodwill.

Unfortunately, there was an inexperienced GA in Trinco at that time, who tended to sabotage efforts at reconciliation. Many of the SLAS officers who held the position of GA tended to puff themselves up as Sinhala nationalists, at the expense of fair administration. However there were others like the veterans Tissa Devendra and Eric de Silva who repaired the damage ad won the admiration of all communities.

In the Kalkudah and Pasikudah areas Muslims predominated but at that time they were camp followers of the UNP. Devanayagam, a Colombo educated, westernized lawyer was a UNP Cabinet Minister who oversaw the Eastern Province. But Tamil militancy spreading fast in the North soon began to spread to the East. The TULF leaders strategized to include the east as part of the ‘homelands’ of the Tamil speaking people thereby roping in, willy-nilly, the Muslims who formed about half the population of the Eastern province.

As part of this strategy they co opted a Tamil leader from Batticoloa district, Rajadurai, to be the titular President of the TULF. Rajadurai was later won over by Premadasa but by then the Tamil militants had marginalized the TULF. Instead, Prabhakaran had promoted an eastern Tamil, Vinayagamoorthy alias Karuna who came from a Tamil family from Valachchenai. He became the feared LTTE commander who with his troops came to the rescue of Prabhakaran when he was encircled by the Army.

Karuna’s eastern troops were vital to the LTTE since they time and again came to reinforce the diminishing northern rebel forces. When Karuna defected the LTTE was badly damaged and their end was in sight. Karuna became a formidable foe of Prabhakaran and our armed forces were lucky that they did not have to be outflanked by Tamil fighters from the east.

After Karuna joined the SLFP we became friends and when I was assigned to oversee the party organization in the Kalkudah area I visited his home which was run by his sister who was the SLFP organizer there. She and her numerous young Tamil girls were good Sinhala speakers and were great advocates of national unity.

With the signing of the Indo-Lanka accord in 1987 Muslim supporters of the UNP were left high and dry. Led by their UNP icon Dr. Kaleel, they appealed to JRJ to safeguard their rights and privileges. Merging of the North and East would have made them a minority in their own land. JRJ who was beleaguered at that time was concentrating on arriving at a settlement with India as he did not want an Indian invasion as in the case of Bangladesh.

RAW had already drawn up plans for a takeover of the North. The only drawback for them was that unlike Indira, his mother, Rajiv was hesitant to authorize an invasion. Later I will describe the events that took place in Bangalore behind the scenes of the SAARC meeting there when JRJ met Rajiv face to face to settle their differences.

Prabhkaran was brought to Bangalore by Indian Air Force plane to agree to a settlement without the merger of eastern and Northern Provinces. He refused and earned the wrath of Rajiv who then became his adversary leading Prabhakaran to plot his assassination. This background did not appear even in the assassination inquiry and has now been buried under the sands of time.

With JRJ’s rebuff of Kaleel’s appeal the Muslims of the east began to organize themselves as a group with their own political party. They were surreptitiously helped by Hameed, the Foreign Minister who was seeking to play a larger role as a Muslim leader. I once heard him threatening President Wijetunga that unless he was put back as the Foreign Minister he would join the new Muslim Congress and contest from the Eastern Province.

Ashraff, an unknown lawyer, who was in advocate Faisz Mustapha’s chambers, was promoted to be the leader of a new party called Muslim Congress with another of Faisz Mustapha’s juniors, Rauff Hakeem, as deputy leader. Some of these maneuvers were captured by me in an article I wrote under the pseudonym of Rajasinghe following a visit to Belfast with Hakeem and Hisbullah who was a deputy Minister under the Chandrika regime, which owed its existence to Ashraff who provided her with a slim majority in Parliament.

(To be continued)