Early 60s in the Ministry of Defence and External Affairs and being appointed Director of Information

by Eric. J. de Silva

Sri Lanka’s constitution until the introduction of the Presidential system required that the Prime Minister should also hold the portfolio of Defence and External Affairs. I had the opportunity of serving two spells in that Ministry, and both happened to be under Prime Minister Sirimavo Bandaranaike.

My first posting to this Ministry was as Secretary to a one-man Committee of Inquiry (which was later raised to the status of a Commission) which came under its purview, appointed to investigate and report on some shootings that took place in an estate in Talawakelle (allegedly by the Police acting in collusion with the management), which resulted in the death of a number of estate workers.

Mr. M.F.de Jayaratne, CCS, was Permanent Secretary of the Ministry at the time and when he retired from service shortly thereafter, Mr. N.Q. Dias (also of the Ceylon Civil Service) succeeded him.

At the conclusion of the work of this Commission one year later, I was appointed as Assistant Secretary in charge of the Administration Division of the Ministry. This was in April 1962 just a few months after the failed coup d’etat of January that year which sought to overthrow the lawfully elected government of the day, and it goes without saying that not everyone would have been welcome in that Ministry.

It needs to be remembered that there were quite a few serving and retired senior officers of the armed services and police among the key suspects.

Consequently, the government resorted to very heavy recruitment during this period to the volunteer force under a newly appointed Commandant, Colonel Stanley Ratwatte, who happened to be a close relative of the Prime Minister. While he was a member of the preliminary interview board for selection of officers to the volunteer force if I remember right, I was made its chairman in view of the position I held in the Ministry.

We had to interview large numbers and put up only a limited number of those whom we considered suitable for the final interview held under the chairmanship of the Permanent Secretary. Similar arrangements were made in respect the other two services too. These arrangements obviously would have been with the personal approval of the Prime Minister herself.

While I was holding the position of Assistant Secretary (Administration) in the Ministry, I was called upon a couple of years later to take over as Assistant Secretary (Defence), succeeding Mr. D.B.I.P.S. Siriwardhana, many years my senior in the Civil Service, when he was appointed as D.I.G. (Administration), a very sensitive and vital position in the Police Department considering the number of serving or former Police officers who were among the suspects in the failed coup.

As Assistant Secretary (Defence), I was required to report directly to the Permanent Secretary – an arrangement which surprised many, casting a heavy burden of responsibility on my shoulders. And those who knew Mr.N.Q.Dias also knew what a hard task-master he was.

I must say that I did not have much direct contact with the Prime Minister during this period as she hardly turned up at the Ministry office, and the Permanent Secretary met her with the relevant files at Temple Trees, her official residence. This is not to say that she would have had no knowledge of the officers holding key positions in her Ministry, particularly in the Defence Division in the aftermath of the illegal attempt to overthrow the government (referred to above).

And that obviously explains why Mr. W.T. Jayasinghe found it so easy to obtain her approval to take me back to this Ministry a few years later (in September 1973) as Senior Assistant Secretary (Defence) – a position that had apparently been kept vacant since its previous incumbent left, until a suitable replacement was found.

While I was quite happy working at the Defence Ministry, I was no doubt a little concerned about missing the provincial experience that a Civil Servant was expected to have sufficiently early in his career. On a couple of occasions when the Secretary to the Treasury (as head of the public service) had asked for my release to be posted to a Kachcheri, the Defence Secretary had told him that it would be difficult to release me. This meant I had no choice.

Short spell in provincial administration, then Director of Information

At the time Parliament was dissolved and a General Election fixed for March 22, 1965, the post of Additional Government Agent, Colombo happened to be vacant, and, the Government Agent (B.H. de Zoysa), had taken up with the authorities the need to fill the vacancy urgently in view of the considerable amount of work that had to be done in respect of the Elections.

The Commissioner of Elections had been equally keen to get this position filled early, and had recommended me as a suitable person for the job, if available, having worked in his Department as an Assistant Elections Officer for a few months and being in the thick of it in Kandy during the March 1960 General Elections.

When informal inquiries were made from me by his officials as to whether I would like to take up the appointment, I gave a positive signal although Colombo was hardly the district I had looked forward to serving in when I thought it was time to move out into provincial administration. Mr. B.H. (better known as Buddhi) de Zoysa whom I had met a couple of times in the course of work had been more than happy to accept me in the vacant position.

When Mr. Dias, the Defence Secretary, inquired from me as to whether I am interested in taking up the above appointment (remembering well the previous occasions that he had refused to release me!), I answered in the affirmative. The end result was that I found myself at the Colombo Kachcheri holding the position of Additional Government Agent in mid-January 1965.

Taking my background and experience into account the GA entrusted a large part of the elections work that had to be overseen at the highest level which I was able to carry out to his satisfaction, working closely with the Assistant Elections Officer (D.S. Ratnadurai), whom I had come to know well during the period I worked in the Elections Department, before entering the Ceylon Civil Service.

Once the elections were over and a new government was sworn in under Mr. Dudley Senanayake, I eagerly looked forward to settling down in my job and making the maximum possible contribution in the areas of work entrusted to me although I never had Colombo in mind when I got interested in spending a few years in provincial administration.

It therefore came as a rude shock when I came to know that, without any prior intimation to me, a decision had been made to appoint me as Director of Information in the new Ministry of State under Mr. J.R.Jayewardene. This job did not appeal to me as it was not the type of experience or work I was looking for – at least not at that stage in my career, though it looked outwardly attractive.

When I made inquiries from the relevant officials I found that the appointment was a fait accompli and that it had already been approved by the Minister, and that nothing could be done about it at that stage. I found that I had been recommended for the job by Vincent Panditha, the new Director-General of Broadcasting and Information. Panditha was my school-mate at Mahinda College in Galle and a few years my senior both at school and in the Ceylon Civil Service.

When I got in touch with him and showed my displeasure for not having asked me before putting up my name, he was both surprised and apologetic. However, I found that there was no choice but accept the inevitable. The Information Department and Radio Ceylon had been brought together under the new dispensation and the Information Department had been physically shifted to the Radio Ceylon premises at Torrington Square (presently Independence Square), and I quickly got going with the work in hand.

One of the first things JR did after taking up duties as Minister of State was to appoint a Commission under the chairmanship of Mr. H.A.J. Hulugalle, one-time Ambassador to Italy and Greece, and well-known journalist of days gone by, to review the entire field of broadcasting and information and make suitable recommendations. One of its terms of reference was on the subject of television which had not yet come to Sri Lanka. As providence had decreed, I found myself appointed as Secretary of this Commission, in addition to my duties as Director of Information.

Once public sittings had concluded, the Chairman told me that the Minister was very keen to introduce television and had expressed a desire to have the Commission report in his hands as early as possible. This task naturally fell fairly and squarely on the shoulders of the two of us, and the demands of my substantive job stood in the way of my giving as much time as the task required.

This compelled the Chairman (with my blessings, of course) to make a request to the Minister that I be released from the Information Department to devote my full-time for work of the Commission. The Minister readily agreed to the request and Mr. Hulugalle and I worked round the clock and submitted the report in double quick time.

I then found myself as one of the two Deputy Commissioners in the Department of Agrarian Services to which I had been attached to for a short period during my cadetship in the Civil Service.