The Engine Room and Powerful Bureaucrats from JRJ years

Excerpted from volume two of Sarath Amunugama’s autobiography

While JRJ with his seniority and authority was skillfully overseeing his cabinet ministers, he also set up a coterie of officials and personal friends and relatives who became the real power behind the throne. What is significant is that this group were top class professionals who could interact freely but respectfully with the leader and his minsters. JRJ was comfortable with the popular appellation of Nayakathuma or ‘’The Leader’ in public, though it also had undertones of ‘Der Fuhrer’. Only close relatives or intimate friends could address him as ‘Dickie’. The exception were the long standing Marxists, NM, Colvin, Pieter and Bernard Soysa who got on well with him even though they were political opponents.

I remember some ministers grumbling that Bernard Soysa could get anything through the `Old Man’. The core triumvirate of officials was G.V.P. Samarasinghe, Menikdiwela and Sepala Attygalle. Associated with them were Colonel Dharmapala, Harry Jayewardene, Ranjan Wijeratne, Esmond Wickremesinghe, Roly Jayewardene and N.G.P. Panditaratne. This was a powerful clique which had the ear of the leader and together was more powerful than the Cabinet.

They had easy access to JRJ and their views often prevailed over that of ministers, though it never came to an open conflict. Ambitious young ministers sought to curry favour with these advisors as a way of getting into the good books of the leader. Samarasinghe and Menikdiwela’s influence was strong because they had immediate access to JRJ, having their offices close to that of the President. No public servant could see the President without Menik knowing about it.

GVP was the strategist while Menikdiwela was the enforcer. The latter was the President’s link to the public servants and the backbenchers. As Secretary to the President he managed his boss’s diary. In all Presidencies the diary keeper plays a crucial role as gate keeper, since he decides who will or will not meet the big man. Ministers, Diplomats, Permanent Secretaries and other high ups had to wait on him to get an appointment.

This was particularly so in JRJ’s case as he tended to interact with officials through Menikdiwela. He was a vintage political figure and had little personal contact with younger officials. JR was not a micro manager as many Presidents tend to be. As senior officials it was a pleasure to work with JRJ as he was precise, clear and willing to listen. Interviews with him on official matters were quite short. After listening to a narration of a problem he would invariably ask the official to indicate his solution.

On most occasions he would give his approval immediately endorsing the suggested solution and standing by it. He disliked officials who took a long time to explain a problem and was not ready with a solution. Most of his decisions were highly predictable because he had been advocating such measures over a long period of time. For instance he had spoken of changing the Constitution and introducing an executive Presidential system many years before he became President.

In power he carefully drafted a new republican constitution with the help of specialists like A.J. Wilson, Kingsley de Silva and lawyers J.A. Cooray and Harry Jayewardene. He had advocated the issue of free school books when he was in the State Council. As President he implemented it without counting the cost. He backed Ronnie to the hilt in liberalizing the economy, while strengthening the safety net for the poor. Both were not unreconstructed capitalists; they both had a streak of socialism and refused to follow the dictates of the multilateral organizations like the IMF and the World Bank. When the World Bank was imposing unacceptable conditions regarding the funding of the accelerated Mahaweli scheme, JRJ threatened its Vice President David Hopper that he would go to commercial banks.

Indeed, he undertook the building of all the Mahaweli dams on bilateral credit with friendly donors. Some were outright grants. This predictability may have had its drawbacks. He depended heavily on the US and the West, leading to disenchantment with him by India. This pained him because of all the local politicians he was the great ‘India lover’. In his own words he was “a lover of India and a follower of her greatest son.

The new economy became a liability when it came to managing ethnic relations in the country. India wielded the big stick and Sri Lanka got embroiled in an ethnic conflict which blighted JRJ’s achievements and spilt over to paralyze his successors. As I shall show later this was exacerbated by the inefficiency and lack of realism on the part of our Foreign Ministry which continuously gave him bad advice concerning India.

Hameed the Foreign Minister was not popular in India. De Silva and Wriggins refer to JRJ telling them that Morarji Desai asked him to have a Sinhalese as the Foreign Minister. Later on in this chapter there will be discussion on the role of the Foreign Ministry which exacerbated the Indo-Lanka conflict.

G.V.P. Samarasinghe

The lynch pin of JRJs ‘engine room’ was G.V.P. Samarasinghe, who was a top bureaucrat and a star of the CCS. He had joined the CCS in the halcyon days of that service and was proud of his achievements in it from the time of his cadetship in the forties. He was quite fond of me. It was probably because he too was a maverick official, who liked to work in the provinces and had a distinguished record as the Director of Rural Development when he was taken under the wing of DS Senanayake.

He was a supporter of the UNP because he liked its rural approaches under the Senanayakes. Though he graduated with a good degree in English he knew Pali and Sanskrit. His father had been a wellknown Ayurvedic physician in Colombo and was a member of the Vidyadhara Sabha which was the governing body of Vidyodaya Pirivena. Once when the seniormost priest at Maligakanda died, GVP asked me to accompany him and represent him on the funeral organizing committee.

He was a strong believer in the supremacy of the CCS and was contemptuous of the other services though he enjoyed the company of a few senior DROs like Stanley Maralande who had worked under him when he was GA Kegalle. He was proud of his role as the Chairman of the State Trading Corporation where he completely reorganized this commercial institution into a profit making national venture.

He told me that from his desk in Colombo he could instantly oversee all the operations of the STC. This was facilitated by his network of underlings from all over the country coming from the Rural Development field and the State Trading Corporation who would visit him in his Jawatte road home and provide him with information about what was going on in the countryside. He was fiercely loyal to these former employees and would help in getting their children into schools and into minor jobs in the Government service.

Once he explained his personnel policy to me in the following way. As a cadet in the CCS he had been trained in administration by Sir Velupillai Coomaraswamy, who was then Government Agent of a district which was of top priority to the British, Trincomalee. Coomaraswamy had told GVP, “Do not worry about a job; worry about the man you assign to do that job. If he is good he will do it. Even if he cannot, he will try his level best to succeed.”

GVP relished challenges and his political bosses came to depend heavily on him. He would invite a few of us to his house for a drink of his favourite ‘pol arrack’ and chain smoking “Three Rose” cigarettes reminisce about his days as a young civil servant in the provinces. While he had many friends among leftist leaders, he was a dedicated UNPer and a super-efficient implementer of the President’s decisions.

Another super-efficient administrator was my University friend Wickreme Weerasooria. He ran the Ministry of Plan Implementation and together with Planning Officers who adored him, took that Ministry to perform very efficiently in rural development much to the envy of the SLAS, which was losing its pre-eminent position due to the open market policies of the new government and the rise of a new phalanx of entrepreneurs who were supported by the Government and did not need to go behind bureaucrats.

Also large scale recruitment to the SLAS led to a rapid decline in quality which made it only one cut above the clerical service. While the new business elite was encouraged by JRJ they naturally were more comfortable with the younger Ministers like Gamini Dissanayake and Lalith Athulathmudali much to the suspicion of Premadasa who thought, perhaps rightly, that he was a crucial factor in winning the 1977 election and deserved to be treated as a special favourite.

To this must be added JRJs personal preference for an upper class westernized life style which had marked both him and Dudley. Having being dowered with a fortune which made his living comfortable, JRJ was never a spendthrift or a show off. But he liked to spend evenings in his house, or President’s House, with his friends enjoying a brandy and a quality cigar after a western meal with wine.

Being very methodical and forthright, while being very democratic in the public arena – with no inhibitions about food and companionship – he was very choosy when it came to his personal life and associates. After he wrapped up his busy official duties during the day, in the evenings he was a private person and meetings were by invitation only. He was not a workaholic like Premadasa who was politicking day and night.

JRJ had time for his wife and family, especially his grandchildren to whom he was a tolerant ‘Seeya’ being both guardian and companion. Only a few favourites like Gamini, Wickreme, Esmond and Ranil Wickremesinghe, Upali Wijewardene, Ranjan Wijeratne, Menikdiwela and Bodinagoda could see him without prior appointment. This led to much heartburn among senior ministers like EL Senanayake and Hameed who felt that their activities were put under the scanner at these informal meetings.Ronnie and Lalith on the other hand were more relaxed about these cabals because the leader went out of his way to consult them on technical matters. All in all while there was a creative tension and Premadasa was surreptitiously building up his forces, the towering personality of JRJ and his proven success of delivering a five sixth majority in Parliament, held the party together.

The Opposition was in tatters and the old left leaders were in the wilderness though everybody knew that JRJ would bend backwards to humor them. When they complained about some decisions regarding Mahaweli settlements on the instigation of Ernest Abeyratne, the Director of Agriculture, he sent NM and Colvin with Gamini Dissanayake by helicopter to visit the site and solve the problem. In the Information Ministry, Minister Wijetunga and I worked closely with Esmond Wickremesinghe who at that time had left Lake House management to his brother-in-law Ranjit Wijewardene, and was managing a News Agency called Lankapuwath. It was a pleasure to work with this legendary ‘backroom operator’ of the UNP who had pulled the strings of its leaders from the time of Sir John onwards, and had masterminded the defeat of the Bill to nationalize Lake House which led to the fall of the Sirimavo government in 1965.

GVP was instrumental in setting up the Development Secretaries Committee. He presided over a weekly meeting of selected Secretaries. To the best of my recollection it included Finance, Trade and Shipping, Food and Agriculture, Public Administration and Home Affairs, Plan Implementation, Industries and Tourism as well as Information that I represented. We would meet every Tuesday and go over the agenda for the Cabinet meeting which was scheduled to be held every Wednesday morning.

Observations sent by line ministries were studied and a common position was ironed out with the concurrence of the secretaries concerned. Once this meeting was concluded GVP and Menikdiwela would brief the President who would therefore be fully aware of the consensus of views of Secretaries and could add whatever he wanted to the proposals before him. Needless to say it gave GVP almost dictatorial powers and many a minister discussed their proposals with him before preparing their Cabinet papers. Since GVP was a workaholic and a master draftsman this system worked very well. I have participated in many Cabinet meetings but none have had the comprehensiveness and usefulness of GVP’s background briefings on the issues discussed.

Menikdiwela

Another important person in the new administration was W.M.P.B. Menikdiwela who kept the wheels of the administration moving. He was a DRO who had caught Dudley’s eye when he served in Dedigama. During the Dudley administration of 1965-70 he was assistan secretary to the PM and had been a fanatical Senanayake loyalist. In 1970 he had been transferred to the boondocks, but had managed to remain in Colombo as a Secretary to the Leader of the Opposition which then was an SLAS position.After Dudley’s death both he and GVP were recruited by JRJ to be his advisors. When Felix Bandaranaike tried to arrest JRJ on his return from Australia, on the eve of the 1977 election, Menikdiwela was able to mobilize his public service links to frustrate that effort. This made JRJ a great believer in his Secretary’s competence and made him his chief point man in interacting with Government officials.

These innovations made the Secretary of the Ministry of Public Administration DBIPS Siriwardhana somewhat redundant but he soldiered on unhappily. In effect this was the end of DBIPS’ career. Though much praised, I found him to be an eccentric and something of a showoff. Whenever he took a decision DBIPS made sure that his journalist sycophants were well briefed about it. He died a disappointed man a few years later.

Many senior ex- CCS officers like Balasuriya, Elkaduwe and Premawardene, who had no charges served on them, were discontinued from service in mid career and Siriwardene made no attempt to stand up for them. He never went out of his way even when he could help a fellow officer to get his entitlement. All these officials who were cut off in their mid-career from the Civil Service were unjustly treated by the Government but DBI would not lift a finger on their behalf. Since the UNP rule lasted for 17 years these victimized officers could not get redress from a successor Government. All three officers were liberal but not politically partisan. Their dismissal was a blot on the Ministry of Public Administration as well as the JRJ regime.

On the contrary Menik would help many public servants, particularly former DROs, by briefing JRJ who generally went along with his recommendations. During this period the public service was greatly improved by the rise of the Planning Service which came directly under the President and was managed by Wickreme Weerasooria as Permanent Secretary. Most of the rural development work was transferred to the Planning Service.

Radical changes came only in JRJ’s second term when the Provincial Council system was introduced and the monopoly of the central government was undermined. I found it very easy to work with Menik as I had known him as my neighbour in the Kynsey road housing complex during the Dudley era. Later when I was a minister under CBK, I made an effort to get him an appointment as an Ambassador. But many who had benefited from his kindness refused to support him and Menik died a disillusioned man.