Dr. DAYAN JAYATILLEKA REPLIES TO ‘DINNER GUEST’

“A SPLENDID BUFFET DINNER FOLLOWED”

“…Was it also to mark up points with the West, just in case?”

A ‘Dinner Guest’ has written a rebuttal of a report that appeared in an English-language Sunday paper on December 26th, which I had subsequently quoted. The rebuttal appeared on Sunday January 22nd. (President’s Dinner for his Old Comrades – The Island)

The inordinate delay is puzzling. One wonders why the Presidential Media Division did not immediately issue a contradiction. One also wonders whether the contradiction by the Dinner Guest has been sent to the Sunday newspaper concerned, over the last month or even now. I for one am still unaware whether that or any contradiction regarding the same event has been carried by that Sunday newspaper which ran the offending and allegedly wildly inaccurate report.

Furthermore, one wonders why the ‘Dinner Guest’ did not use his name and rank, in rebutting, however belatedly, the story. It displays a lack of guts. Guts in the battlefield doesn’t mean guts in the social and public domain, any more than competence in combat means competence in governance—a distinction amply validated these days.

TALE OF TWO DESCRIPTIONS

He writes that “The Sunday Island of Dec. 2, 2021 had a news item by Dayan Jayatilleka that went one better.” As I am not a journalist for the Sunday Island or any other newspaper, there cannot be “a news item by Dayan Jayatilleka”. It was an opinion piece which I write occasionally and irregularly. But that’s a technicality, so let’s move on.

The Dinner Guest objects to my further misrepresenting the original story, by giving the number of guests/invitees as 1090, i.e., larger by 40, than the one contained in the original report i.e., 1050. That was an inadvertent and minor error on my part.

The ‘Dinner Guest’ refers to me as “a former minister in the EPRLF that was a IPKF stooge that made a Unilateral Declaration of Independence in the late1990s…” That choice of description is interesting because there are other ways to describe me.

Here’s one. In its 8th-14th August 2009 issue, the prestigious publication The Economist (UK) referred to “…Dayan Jayatilleka, Sri Lanka’s Ambassador to Geneva, who warded off the threatened UN war-crimes probe in May [2009] …” (‘Sri Lanka after the war: Behind the Rajapaksa Brothers’ Smiles’, p 43).

I was indeed a Minister of Northern & Eastern Provincial Council, but resigned within six months of taking office, with my letter of resignation published in all the Sunday newspapers, both English and Sinhala, and having collected only a month’s pay.

The EPRLF did not “make a Unilateral Declaration in the late 1990s”. Firstly, it was 1990, not the late 1990s. Secondly, it made the threat of a Unilateral Declaration of Independence if certain conditions were not met, and gave a deadline, a year I believe. Thirdly, a year before it made the threat in 1990, I had already resigned from my Provincial Ministry (1989) and was prominently supporting and working with President Premadasa as his nominee in the post of Director- Conflict Studies, at the Institute of Policy Studies (IPS).

“THE FIRST EVER IN SL HISTORY”

I was delighted to hear the description of the event from the “Dinner Guest”. It confirms several things.

“The only serving officers present were the tri services commanders. With their spouses a round figure of 400 invitees could have been closer to the truth…”

“It was the first ever in SL history.” This confirms that it was not a tradition that the President was following, nor had he hosted this dinner in December 2019, when he had just assumed office as the first combat officer to be elected President of Sri Lanka.

This “first ever in SL history” event was held in December 2021, i.e., just last month. It was a choice made in certain circumstances.

“A splendid buffet dinner followed” writes the Dinner Guest gushingly. I am sure that the farmers who have been expressing their fear on TV every day, that they will be unable to feed even gruel (‘kanda koppayak’) to their children when the harvest fails due to the President’s irrational policy of overnight conversion to organic fertilizer and his ban on weedicide and pesticide, as well as those great number of citizens who are struggling to make ends meet and have had to cut back from three square meals to two or even just one a day, would be delighted to know that. Little wonder there weren’t any photographs of the event in the media. I certainly didn’t see any.

The decision to hold the event, “the first ever in SL history”, at just this moment (last December) speaks volumes of the social empathy, sensitivity and sense of appropriateness and timing of our elected President. It also reveals the reality of “One Country”.

‘JUST IN CASE’ OF WHAT?

The Dinner Guest writes disapprovingly of “…his [Dayan Jayatilleka’s] latest onslaughts on the fanciful ‘militarization’ of the nation. Was it also to mark up points with the West, just in case?” “Just in case” of what? That’s a question I would like to pose to my critic.

“Just in case” of a Myanmar or Burkina Faso, and I need a visa to the West? That shouldn’t be difficult as a former Vice-President of the UNHRC, a former Chairman ILO, and a three-time Ambassador including to two member-states of the UN Security Council’s P-5.

Or “just in case” of a Jamal Khashoggi outcome, and Sanja, my wife, needs to reach out to the West? Given that she’s a UK citizen (of decades-long duration), I’d hardly need to “mark up points with the West” beforehand.