Keep up with your record of service

Letter to PM Mahinda Rajapaksa:

Dear Comrade, As I am sure you would recall, it was over 50 years ago that we first met, when you were making your first successful run for Parliament, and I was tallying the vote count for Beliatta.

I have been impressed by your commitment, from early days, to justice in the land of Palestine, a subject to which I, too, have drawn attention from time to time.

Though we have met occasionally in the intervening years, it was only in the mid-1990s that I actually worked with you, when you were the Minister of Labour and Vocational Training. The hostility that the then Prime Minister had towards you, happened to cover her view of me as well, and you decided to have me develop the infrastructure for our technical education system. Among the outcomes of that, credit for which should be shared by you, are the revision for the first time of the course materials (all in English and in a dialect favoured by foreign experts) that the National Institute of Technical Education provided our Technical Colleges, and making them available in Sinhala for the use of lecturers and students alike. It was also during that period that Parliament was offered the opportunity of debating at length and of endorsing the compendium of Labour Laws that were , and still are, applicable here.

I mention such matters as elements of what would be remembered long after your passing.

Needless to say, there are more spectacular achievements during your stewardship, not least among them the protection of our country from terrorists, trained and armed by India and ensuring their ultimate defeat.

The common theme of such development of our resources, as was encouraged by you, had to do with their protection for future use by the generations to come.

You also showed from time to time an instinctive gift for recognising the strength of the public services, and the skills required for putting them to optimal use.

Looking around now, what we see are attempts at destroying our resource base not only in land, water, minerals and the like, but as importantly our human resources – those in regular employment in whatever sector including the self-employed. Critical to that of course is that we continue to control the resources on which our agriculture, manufacturing industries and fisheries rely. General education is seen as the linchpin in all this but, as you were able to perceive some three decades ago, we need to invest more on developing teaching skills and facilities for practical training in the broad area of technical education.

I also write to draw your attention to the spectacle of some Ministers in your administration, erupting from time to time with highly misleading statements that target public institutions, including the personnel in the public services.

Some months ago, it was said that we spend more on our postal services than we earn. (Where in the world is it different? – the postal service is just that, a service provided for the people by the State). Such statements show that what is being targeted is not the postal service but the ‘real estate’ required by it.

Mr. Prime Minister, there are as you would know or suspect, a whole badawela of tendentious statements issued by some of your Ministers that would lead to or themselves constitute acts of treason against our country. To put it in short-hand, one is ‘tourism’. It continues to take away our sea shore from our people. It is given a whole slew of subsidies (paid for by our people) and no guarantees of it bringing in “VFE” – Valuable Foreign Exchange) or any scrutiny of how much. And, after all our contributions to making tourists and their service providers grin from ear to ear, we the State gets much less VFE than our expatriate workers send in each month.

Another is ‘plantations’. But the fact is that company owned plantations in Nuwara-Eliya and adjacent districts produce only a fourth of our tea – the bulk is produced in small holdings in the Galle, Matara, Kalutara and Kegalle districts.

A few days ago, the sale or lease of over 4000 acres in the hill country (that was denuded of much of its topsoil by the plantation industry) for raising cattle was announced. We the people have not been told who the beneficiaries of such largesse are or how they were chosen. The conditions attached to the deals have been kept secret. It does not seem to matter to such decision makers / decision takers, that the farming communities that were hounded out by the British lusting for what was once among the richest lands in the country, remain locked into ravines.

There are moves to bring in large machinery to crush our rock for export.

All such moves could be brought under control through, say, by small groups of MPs who possess the capacity to brief themselves.

Comrade, as you and I understand, the 50 years we have known each other is a tiny sliver of time. How you are remembered may not be in your hands, but it would be good to reflect on the saying that suggests that we should bear in mind the good that people have done, and bury the rest with their bones.

As time passes it would give perspective to recall Gautama’s words on the state of all life: jati-jara-marana.

With warm good wishes.

GAMINI SENEVIRATNE