Lanka’s ‘Royal’ mess explained by old boy

By NAMAL SUVENDRA

ECONOMYNEXT –The unprecedented economic crisis in Sri Lanka may have its genesis at Royal College Colombo which has produced an impressive list of politicians contributing to the country’s steady decline.

President Ranil Wickremesinghe addressing students at his alma mater this week made an unintended confession that old boys of Royal College were in the forefront of politics for 163 years.

“I have come here to address you at a very difficult time,” Wickremesinghe told students and a small group of past pupils of Royal. “A situation we have not seen in the last 400 years. A complete collapse of the economy.”

He noted that the 1972 republican constitution which shed the country’s secular nature was drafted by old Royalist Colvin R de Silva. It abolished a civil service commission dealing the first blow to the country’s independent civil service commission.His class-mate Junius Jayewardene did one better introducing the 1978 statute, blamed for much of the political, economic and social woes since.

“Royalists have done it so well that no one else can change it,” the 73-year-old Wickremesinghe said referring to his uncle Jayewardene’s constitution.

However, a few minutes after this remark Wickremesinghe appeared to contradict himself, vowing to have a new constitution that will last a century by dumping his uncle’s 1978 statute.

“Today, we are a country which has only Afghanistan below us. We don’t know what the future is. So when we build this future, it’s an economy that must last for 25 years. It must be a new Constitution that must last for 100 years.”

He said Royal College has produced four Prime Ministers and two Presidents. “This is an outstanding record for any school,” he said. Wickremesinghe and his prime minister Dinesh Gunawardena have also set their almost unbreakable record.

Both men have known each other from the age of three years and are from the “Group of 60,” the Form 1 batch of Royal College and were classmates along with the late Anura Bandaranaike, who became Speaker of the House, and a former minister, Malik Samarawickrema.

Wickremesinghe asked present-day Royalists to follow the “oath of the young men of Athens” which required them to ensure a “greater and more beautiful city” for the next generation. It would have been better to ask them to stick with the original “Disce aut discede,” (learn or depart), something the alumni seem to have forgotten.