Joke’s on whom?

Last week’s news that former Foreign Minister Rohitha Bogollagama will be Sri Lanka’s new high commissioner in the UK triggered an email from TM (Thalif) Deen, a veteran of the UN press corps and previously of the Ceylon Observer which is reproduced below.

I noticed Palitha (Kohonne’s) relationship with the then Foreign Minister was visibly different from other diplomats because he addressed his immediate boss by his first name Rohitha (not the customary “Sir”, as all diplomats do, with the exception of Ambassador Ernest Corea who always addressed Foreign Minister ACS Hameed by his first name “Shahul” because they were friends in a bygone era, with Hameed as a budding politician and Ernest as the editor of the Ceylon Daily News and later the Ceylon Observer in the 1960s).

Palitha told me his relationship with the Minister was on a student-teacher basis because the Minister was a student when Palitha was a lecturer at the Law College in Hulftsdorp. So, when I interviewed the Minister during the General Assembly sessions, I tried to double check whether he was in fact a student in Palitha’s class. After pondering for a while, the Foreign Minister quipped: “Yes, that was the only class in which I failed”.

I recounted this to Palitha—- and he laughed.

(Excerpted from Thalif Deen’s book No comment, and don’t quote me on that)