JRJ, The Leader of unmatched calibre

by Sarath Amunugama

Sri Lanka had not seen a leader of the calibre of JRJ. In public, he appeared to be aloof with “ice running in his veins”. But among his friends he was a hospitable and friendly person who invariably ended a conversation with a sophisticated joke. In public he was austere in a dress of his own design. At home he wore long trousers with a fashionable bush shirt. As a young minister representing his country abroad he had always dressed elegantly in Saville Row clothes. In public he was not easily accessible. But anyone visiting him at home was treated with great courtesy.

Once he told me how he dealt with wedding invitations which are the bane of politicians. Anyone who personally met him and invited him would get a cheque as a wedding gift. Anyone who sent him a mailed invitation would get a congratulatory letter. At home with his wife and grandchildren and the family dog he was relaxed and enjoyed a joke often at his expense from his near and dear.n public he invariably wore an immaculate white `national with his wife and grandchildren and the family dog he was relaxed and enjoyed a joke often at his expense, from his near and dear. He had what the French called with admiration ‘sang froid’, which means ‘cold blood’.

Nothing in the early days would faze him. When in Pasyala he was garlanded with cadjunuts, JRJ happily started eating his garland while the audience of cadjunut sellers cheered. Once when on the comeback trail his enemies garlanded him with flowers which had red ants hidden among them. JRJ endured all the ant bites without flinching till the meeting was over. He then had the bright guy who introduced the red ants thrashed. In Nawalapitiya, when he was heckled by an onlooker, who had been set up by an opponent, he told Chandra Karunaratne his electorate organizer, that unless he got rid of the nuisance in two minutes, he will appoint another organizer for Nawalapitiya in five minutes. The heckler disappeared.

In the celebrated attack on him and Anandatissa de Alwis when they were on a protest march to Kandy, JRJ had spies in Mrs. B’s camp who told him about her plans to stop him from coming to Attanagalla (The infamous Attanagalla Doctrine). He arrived incognito to a house in Attanagalla the night before and calmly held a puja in the Maha Vihara the following morning and called off the March, after getting maximum local and international publicity organized by media genius Ananda.

In the meanwhile ‘storm troopers’ from Kandy led by Anuruddha Ratwatte and Clarence Delwala had cut down trees to block the road and attack the ‘Satyagrahis’. They waited in vain because JRJ had called off the march and with his men were back in Colombo. He had achieved his objective of getting maximum publicity when the Non–aligned movement was thinking of holding its next sessions in Colombo.

JRJ was a media savvy president. Being a well read and well-informed person he knew that media would play an important role in the success of his administration. His mother’s family, the Wijewardenes, were the media Moguls of the country. As a first step he wanted to put his personal loyalists or henchmen as the bosses of the main media outlets. As Chairman of Lake House he appointed his former private secretary, the amiable Ranapala Bodinagoda, a low key operator and fanatical JRJ loyalist.

He was a personal acolyte of the President and Mrs. Jayewardene and would attend to their small tasks which were confidential and needed instant attention. He was a habitue of Braemar and would keep his boss informed of political, social, and especially personal gossip, that he picked up at embassy parties. If you fed Bodi with gossip, you could be sure that it would reach JRJ within 24 hours. It was well known that he was the conduit for JRJ’s views which would find articulation in the Lake House papers on a daily basis.

Having got his boss’s ideas printed Bodi would rush to Braemar every morning with the early editions of his papers for his approval. The rumour among the Colombo glitterati was that JRJ could not begin his morning ablutions without glancing at the Lake House papers brought to him at the crack of dawn by Bodinagoda.

When the Times group became insolvent and was acquired by Government, JRJ appointed another of his henchmen-Paul Perera who too would convey JRJ’s wishes to his journalists but in a harsher tone. When Paul was nominated to Parliament, he was succeeded by another henchman Nalliah who was a kind hearted but ineffectual gentleman. The binding thread was that the wives of Bodingoda, Paul Perera and Nalliah were all members of the inner circle of Madam Jayewardene’s friends who were constantly seated in the veranda of Braemar supplementing the gossip that was liberally passed on to Godfather JRJ.

Consequently he was in the know of everything that happened in the social, business and administrative circles in the country. Bodi was at his best recycling Embassy gossip as he and his wife attended every embassy party and were highly regarded by the diplomats who knew of his connections and wanted a quick introduction to the President.

JRJ then extended his connections to radio. During the transition he, at Menikdiwela’s urging, appointed a well-regarded civil servant and my friend from Peradeniya days, Dharmasiri Pieris, as the Chairman and CEO of the State Broadcasting Corporation. He managed to bring some order to the SLBC in a short time.

Ridgeway Tillakaratne’s departure had been followed by a period of indiscipline which became a hallmark of the transition of management in State corporations. But the newly appointed Minister of Trade and Shipping, Lalith Athulathmudali wanted Dharmasiri as his Permanent Secretary. Perhaps Dharmasiri himself preferred the less stressful assignment which showed the sagacity of the new minister who went on to be a star in the new cabinet.

When the name of Neville Jayaweera was suggested by me as Dharmasiri’s replacement at SLBC, JRJ shot down the idea on the somewhat curious grounds that Jayaweera ‘was too old’. The real reason may be that Jayaweera went around accusing JRJ of being involved in the military coup of 1962. Later it appeared that he had rushed to judgment. After interviewing Sir John Kotelawala in England on this incident Jayaweera recanted and wrote to the papers that it was Dudley who was culpable and not JRJ.

By then it was too late. No wonder then that JRJ was not enamored of his former protege who had crossed over to the Dudley camp as the Chairman SLBC in 1968. JR had a long memory of insults directed at him. As he said to Rajiv Gandhi he “can forgive but cannot forget”. For the post of Chairman of SLBC he insisted on the appointment of Eamon Kariyakarawana who was his lifelong henchman. While Lake House journalists were divided in their loyalties during the Dudley-JRJ dispute, Eamon led the JRJ faction. He was a committed UNPer, who was as the saying goes, ‘an eating, drinking man’ and a popular colleague who ranked among the best-known Lake House journalists. His brother DF, was a perennial President of the Press Association. This position gave DF much power especially in arranging freebies, including foreign trips for journalists, which were coveted by all and sundry.

Before long Eamon had charmed the distinguished Board of the Corporation which included M.J. Perera, D. Rajendra and Jezeema Ismail. He and his chief advisor Thevis Guruge maintained good relations with both JRJ and Prime Minister Premadasa. As a result we had no problems with the political authorities – a situation which was quite unusual regarding the media.

I had the closest of rapport with my Minister, Wijetunga, who was content to let me handle the affairs of the ministry as long as he did not have any issues with the President and the PM. He was not in the least insistent regarding perks such as staff, vehicles and foreign trips. In fact he abhorred foreign travel and preferred to send his deputy Chandra Karunaratne or me on those assignments. Media personnel loved him because he was accessible and ever ready to confer benefits on them.

The only privately owned newspapers at that time were of the Davasa group owned by the Gunasena family. The Managing Director of this group was our old friend from Kandy, WJ Fernando. WJ, Wijetunga and I had worked very closely during the Dudley regime. This proved to be a bonus because the Davasa group looked on our ministry as a friendly and helpful organization.

This relationship was best seen in the episode of the print supply for the Davasa newspaper. One day WJ called me in a panic saying that their shipment of newsprint was getting delayed and there was the real possibility of a shutdown. It would be a slur on the newly formed government which came to power on the slogan of freedom of the press. I immediately called my Minister and asked for his approval to mediate in this matter.

He was more than happy to oblige since WJ himself had asked for help. My solution was to ask Bodinagoda of Lake House to advance an emergency stock of their newsprint to the Davasa group till such time as they would get their own stocks and return the amount of newsprint borrowed. Though this appeared to be a horrific solution to some Lake House journalists who would have loved to see their rivals shortchanged, Chairman Bodi was willing and the transfer was made.

The Davasa and Sun newspapers in their editorials of the following day publicly praised the Minister and me saying they were publishing the .newspaper only because of our cooperation. There was an interesting sequel to these editorials. As soon as they were published, Minister Premadasa telephoned me in the early hours to thank me for my initiative. But the sting was in the tail. As an old friend he asked me to include him also as a contributor to good relations with the newspapers so that any future editorial would refer to his assistance as well.

Needless to say 1 was impressed by his dedication and attention to detail which was a hallmark of his ascent to power. The new regime also brought Esmond Wickremesinghe back to the media scene in a big way. There was early speculation that he would come to Parliament and assume the post of Foreign Minister. But JRJ had a different view. He brought in Esmond’s son Ranil to Parliament and made him the Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs under ACS Hameed who had taken his side during the Dudley–JRJ conflict in the party.

He wanted to be his own Foreign Minister relegating Hameed to activities dealing with the non-aligned movement and the Middle East. He thought correctly that the Middle East provided many opportunities and a Muslim minister would be an asset in counterbalancing of Indian interests. Since he himself had been a special envoy to the San Francisco conference in 1951 where he had won his spurs, JRJ also introduced the practice of adding roving Ambassadors and Special envoys to his foreign policy establishment. Leading these envoys were his brother Harry Jayewardene and Esmond Wickremesinghe.

On occasion he would also use Gamini Dissanayake and Lalith Athulathmudali much to the chagrin of Hameed. However Hameed was much too cunning to enter into a turf battle with these heavyweights. He managed to secure his position by proposing that Harry Jayewardene be promoted as a candidate for the International Court of Justice. This naturally elated the Jayewardene brothers and Hameed was permitted to undertake more trips abroad which he enjoyed enormously, under the guise of canvassing for Harry. In order to strengthen his credibility with JRJ he managed to get Harry in to a high level UN fact finding committee on Iran which received much publicity in the local media.

The other high profile envoy who got Hameed’s goat was Esmond Wickremesinghe who had regular meetings with the President and advised him on international affairs, especially relations with India. Soon India became a ‘no go’ area for Hameed because Esmond had set up a back channel with Indira Gandhi through his friend Ralph Buultjens who was a Professor of Political Science in New York. Indira Gandhi had requested, through Esmond, that Hameed be kept out of India as her Customs officials had briefed her that our Foreign minister was bringing gems into their country. All this meddling and trickery led to confusion in our Foreign Ministry which contributed to the bad relations with the Gandhi regime which had catastrophic consequences for Sri Lanka leading to a thirty year ethnic conflict in the island.

(Next week The JRJ Persona)
(Excerpted from the recently published Volume 2 of Sarath Amunugama’s autobiography)