Some inside stories from Anandatissa de Alwis

Alice Kotelawela persuaded Sir. John to makeup with Dudley

“The finest victory is one achieved by guile alone” – Sun Tzu

With the establishment of the Executive Presidency in 1978, JRJ while elevating himself to the post of the first President of the Second Republic had to appoint a new Prime Minister. Accordingly Premadasa was made the PM giving a strong signal that JRJ’s UNP was merit based and not kinship and caste based as it was under the Senanayakes.

He thereby broke the Goigama hold on the Premiership which had been a live issue in the case of CP de Silva who could have been PM under both the SLFP and UNP led Governments. It was this caste impasse which dogged the SLFP that helped to bring the reluctant Mrs. B into politics. She first entered politics as an independent and chose the Senate instead of the lower house to show her contempt for the fawning politicians who had abandoned her husband at a difficult time leading to his murder by SLFP stalwarts.

Caste was one of the considerations which brought the ‘weeping widow’ into national politics and her regimes had a soft spot for Goigama Kandyans. Premadasa also made use of this opportunity to build up his own coterie of supporters in Parliament which had more than a fair share of non-Goigama MPs. Though this was not made public Gamini and Lalith burnished their Goigama credentials with MPs though it was ‘sotto voce’.

From the day he sat on the PM’s chair Premadasa made it crystal clear that his upward trajectory was towards the Presidential throne. With this in mind he cultivated JRJ assiduously and also won the confidence of Mrs. Jayewardene who became his strongest supporter. It is in this reshuffle that JRJ brought Anandatissa de Alwis, his former Secretary and confidante in the struggle to resuscitate the UNP, into the Cabinet as Minister of State perhaps with the idea of counterbalancing Premadasa.

Ananda certainly thought so and was keen to play a more dynamic role. He asked me to remain as Secretary to the Ministry under the new dispensation. For Ananda it was like coming home for he had been at the helm of this Ministry from 1965 to 1970. He was an efficient and friendly person and we got on like a house on fire. This was an apt comparison for our Minister was a chain smoker and cigarette smoke would constantly emanate from his office room which was strewn with cigarette butts and match sticks.

After long meetings with him my clothes smelled of cigarette smoke and I had to hurry home to change. But that was a minor hiccup in a wonderfully exciting relationship between me and my Minister who was a generous human being. However, Ananda soon developed heart problems and had to give up his lifelong smoking habit. He told me that his cardiologist had told him not to waste his time and money in medical consultations if he was not willing to give up smoking. Without quitting, his days were numbered. Fortunately Ananda heeded his doctor’s advice and cigarette smoking was banned in the State ministry premises.

Anandatissa de Alwis

By bringing Ananda into the Cabinet JRJ was also strengthening his own hand in the light of jockeying for position among several of his ambitious ministers. Premadasa as Prime Minister lost no time in exerting his authority, though he took good care to be on the right side of the President. He began to gather more functions under the PM such as Buddhist and Cultural Affairs for which he set up his own media operations.

Ananda, as the President’s man and a party grandee, was looked upon by his supporters as a credible rival to Premadasa and a potential Prime Minister. It was Ananda as Assistant Secretary of the UNP who was JRJ’s right hand man in resuscitating the party after Dudley’s death. There was not much love lost between him and Premadasa.

At this stage there occurred an incident, not publicized before, which devastated Ananda. On leaving the Speaker’s chair he had been accommodated by the Parliament staff on the front benches of the House along with senior ministers. This arrangement went on for some time till Gamini and Lalith, who were accommodated in the second row complained to JRJ that they were senior to Ananda as Ministers and that he should be moved to a seat behind them.

The staff of Parliament had perhaps erred in trying to accommodate their affable former boss but now their decision was canvassed by two ambitious juniors. Ananda was confident that JRJ would back him and confirm his status as the ‘President’s Man’. But that was not to be. Asked to follow tradition, the parliamentary staff had to relocate the former Speaker to the second row. The embarrassment caused by this move affected Ananda deeply and he began to lose confidence and interest in his work.

He avoided going to Parliament and began to concentrate on building up his advertising company. He also began to lose hope of preferment within the UNP and started to cynically criticize his colleagues, especially the Prime minister who had his spies everywhere. The disappointed Ananda did not actively intervene in Parliamentary debates even though he was one of the best speakers in the country.

The story of Anandatissa is a great tragedy about which I am entitled to write because for some time I was his favourite and was a preferred listener to his fascinating tales. I must say in gratitude that I have learnt much from him and have benefited from his generosity. His was a lonely battle, as he confided in me. He was a bright student at Ananda College when he lost both his parents. His father, who was a post master, and the only breadwinner of a large family, died in a most unfortunate way.

He was returning on foot after work and was swept away by a flash flood. The young Ananda had to follow his studies as well as look after a number of sisters since he was the only boy in the family. He told me that he was so poor that he had to walk barefoot up to his school, shoes in hand and wear them only in the class room since he could not spend money on another pair. Some of his sisters had to be handed over to a Catholic orphanage and they grew up into becoming good Roman Catholics.

But he struggled and became a good school leader, an orator and a school cadet. Fortunately for him he was employed by Sir John Kotelawala (JK) who became a father figure to him. He was fanatically devoted to Kotelawala and became his trouble shooter not only in his political work but also in his personal entanglements. JK’s mother Alice Kotelawala treated him like a son and Ananda became a celebrity in Colombo circles because he was a protege of JK.

He described to me so many instances of his boss’s generosity. Once when he was invited to join his boss on a foreign tour he declined. The real reason for that decision was that Ananda did not have the money to buy warm clothing. JK let the matter drop. Three days later when Ananda opened his cupboard at Kandawela there was a full suit, shirts, shoes and a winter coat hung up for him. It was an unsolicited gift from his boss who never even mentioned it. Ananda joined in the tour thanks to JK’s humanity which I was told was the big man’s real nature. Ananda was a devotee of Kotelawala till the last.

Let me recount some of the stories which I learnt from Ananda about JK which may be of interest to historians of that period. It is well known that when D.S. Senanayake died of a heart attack while out riding in Galle Face green, JK expected to succeed him. But the inner circle of the UNP, including Esmond -Wickremesinghe, had been informed earlier by DS’s doctors that `The Old Man’ had not much longer to live and this top UNP cabal had persuaded Lord Soulbury to ask DS tactfully about his successor, before the Governor-General went on leave to the UK.

DS had nominated his son Dudley because JK was a fractious character who would split the party. He had already done enough damage by fighting with S.W.R.D. Bandaranaike and pushing him out of the UNP. The inside story is that Bandaranaike had befriended Dudley who was promoting his Horagolla friend with his father. Dudley was carrying sunshine stories to his father about Banda while JK looked on it as an act of treachery against a cousin – himself.

These dealings of Dudley have not been revealed before by our historians and journalists. A fact that can now be revealed is that Dudley had a longtime love affair with Freida Corea, his cousin and JK’s sister. Freida was Gamani Corea’s mother and the latter was treated as a son by Dudley. In this tangle JRJ stood by his lifelong friend Dudley and thereby earned the wrath of JK. It was with this ‘tangled web’ in the background that Dudley was persuaded with some difficulty by JRJ to accept the post of PM in 1951 to the obvious frustration of JK, who with the able assistance of Ananda, had built up the propaganda and Youth Affairs departments of the party by spending his time and money.

At first, he refused to join Dudley’s Cabinet. Then after being pressurized to accept his old portfolio, particularly by his mother, he made his displeasure well known to Dudley as well as the general public in inimitable Kotelawala style. Sometime later there appeared a document among Colombo political circles entitled ‘Premier Stakes’ which was a frontal attack on Soulbury, Dudley, JRJ and a host of others for unfairly depriving Kotelawala of his due.

This caused a furore and Dudley was forced to sack JK while on a visit to the UK. Many years later Tissa Wijeratne told me that his father Sir Edwin, our High Commissioner in the UK, was terrified to inform Sir John of his sacking based on a cable sent by Dudley to him in London. JK decided to come back to Colombo and the local political and social elite breathlessly awaited a showdown between the two cousins.

It was at this stage that Ananda was brought into the picture to play an important role. With JK’s return expected in a day or two, Mrs. Alice Kotelawala asked Ananda to see her immediately. She told Ananda to meet JK on arrival and to bring him straight to her house before anything else. Accordingly Ananda went to Ratmalana airport and positioned himself on the tarmac so that he would be the first to greet his boss. He bundled JK into a car before he could talk to the press and took him to meet his mother.

He had scarcely fallen at her feet when she told her son, “Lionel, I hear you are fighting with Dudley But remember that when we were orphaned by your father’s death in prison it was the Senanayakes who looked after us. We cannot be ungrateful. Make up and help Dudley”. She prevailed and JK, `tongue in cheek’ issued a statement that he had nothing to do with ‘Premier Stakes’. Everybody who mattered knew that it was written by JK’s secretary, P Nadesan with the able assistance of Anandatissa de Alwis.

Another story about JK is that when Dudley became PM in 1965 Kotelawala sent for Ananda and asked him to go on a mission to Dudley His task was to ask Dudley to appoint JK as the Governor General. Ananda met the PM with trepidation and conveyed his master’s message. Dudley flatly refused. He said that if JK entered Queen’s House he would try to run the country from there and the PM would become a cipher. If that happened his Government would not last six months. Ananda had the unenviable job of conveying that message to his boss. JK and Dudley were not even on talking terms with each other.

It was Dudley who directed the Buddhist Commissioners to seek Bandaranaike’s support for their ten commandments’ which was the bed rock of the SLFP/MEP victory of 1956. Dudley was so angry with Ananda for hanging out with JK that he removed him from the Kotte UNP organizers post and gave it to Niyathapala. After 1977 JK decided to return permanently to Sri Lanka and Ananda helped in bringing him and the President JRJ together.

I know that a key role in this ‘rapprochement’ was played by Colonel Dharmapala who was a reliable friend of both parties. JRJ trusted Dharmapala implicitly and accepted his advice. JK who was a military man was elevated to the rank of General of the Army on his deathbed by Presidential decree. General JK announced the donation of his palatial Kandawela Walawwa with its chequered past, to the Sri Lankan army. Today it is the Kotelawala Defence University and is maintained by the army in spotless condition.

This is in contrast to the pathetic condition of ‘Braemar’ and ‘Woodlands’ which are about to collapse. JK who was a bad diabetic died soon after. I accompanied Ananda to the old Parliament where his body lay in state. Ananda broke down and started to sob uncontrollably. I have a vivid memory of him resting his head on the stockinged feet of his late boss and thanking him for making him a man. JK was given a fitting military funeral. My view is that history will be kind to this stalwart whose predictions, ridiculed then, are becoming truer by the day.