By Rajiva Wijesinha
- From Colombo Telegraph
Undoubtedly
the most bizarre of the characters who influenced the President in the period
after the election of 2010 was Sajin Vas Gunawardena. He was not a relation,
and he did not have the professional or academic credentials of the other
characters discussed here. Indeed he had hardly any qualifications but, ever
since Mahinda Rajapaksa became President, he occupied positions of trust and
responsibility.
It was
claimed that the reason for the confidence the President reposed in him was
because, while a clerk in the Middle East, he had helped the President with the
technology during a presentation that might otherwise have been a disaster. But
it is also likely that, after they thus became acquainted, he was able to serve
the President in a variety of ways that commanded his affection and his
confidence.
The first
escapade in which he was involved under a Rajapaksa Presidency was the setting
up of a budget airline. Called Mihin Air, in honour of Mahinda, it rapidly lost
a lot of money, though Sajin himself became very wealthy during his tenure in
office. Before long Mihin Lanka was handed over to Sri Lankan Airlines to be
managed, and the losses of both together – the Board of the latter chaired by
the President’s brother-in-law Nishantha Wickremesinghe – continued a drain on
public funds for many years.
I first came
across Sajin when I was appointed to head the Peace Secretariat, and was told
that he was the point of liaison between the Secretariat and the President’s
Office. In fact he had no interest in or understanding of our work, and I
liaised mainly through the President’s Secretary Lalith Weeratunge, though in
those days I generally had immediate access to the President if this was
needed.
I met Sajin
early on in my tenure of office, and then hardly ever again, though he came I
believe to the opening of the new office which had been built for us in the
premises of the Bandaranaike Memorial International Conference Hall. When we
were deciding on the allocation of rooms in that office, my Director of
Administration suggested we keep a room there for the use of Sajin. This seemed
to me unnecessary, particularly as the room he suggested was the second best in
the building. I thought it should go to my Deputy, a retired Tamil ambassador
named Poolokasingham, whose stature I thought needed to be established. I told
the Director that, since Sajin had not come to the office for a long time, all
we needed to do if in fact he wanted a room was to set aside one of the smaller
rooms at the end of the main corridor. I heard nothing more after that about
that particular suggestion, and I think the Director was secretly relieved,
though he had thought it was his duty to keep Sajin happy and thus prevent any
recriminations against the Secretariat in general, and me in particular.
Whether this contributed to his later animosity against me I do not know, but
the experience of our High Commissioner in London, Chris Nonis, indicated that
Sajin wanted his importance to be recognized, and resented anyone else who had
a direct link to the President.
But way back
in 2007, Sajin was more interested in his own political career, and during the
next couple of years he was elected to the Southern Province Provincial
Council. Then, in 2010, he got nomination for the Galle district for the
Parliamentary election, and did reasonably well. In Parliament he was one of
the young MPs in the group around Namal Rajapaksa but initially he had no executive
responsibilities.
All that
changed with the realization that the Ministry of External Affairs was in a
mess, and he was appointed to be its Monitoring Member of Parliament. That was
the only serious Monitoring MP position, and one heard hardly anything of the
few others who had been appointed, until that is Duminda Silva, attached to the
Ministry of Defence, was involved in the death of Bharatha Premachandra,
another SLFP politician from the Colombo district.
Sajin’s
appointment to the Ministry of External Affairs raised eyebrows since it was
clear he had no understanding of foreign policy but, as the President once put
it when he was asked the purpose, at least now the Ministry sent answers to
letters it received. This was not in fact the case, given that the Ministry
failed to respond to the queries from holders of Special Mandates under the
Human Rights Council in Geneva. And more seriously, the Indian Ministry of
External Affairs noted that one contributory factor to the decision to vote against
Sri Lanka in Geneva in 2012 was the failure of Sri Lanka to respond to a letter
from the Indian Prime Minister about its plans re devolution. But presumably
Sajin was able to attend swiftly to many routine matters, that had suffered
since the first Secretary to the Ministry under GL had been dying of cancer and
unable to fulfil his duties.
Certainly
before long he was seen as the virtual decision maker at the Ministry, since GL
was not only a hopeless administrator, but was also quite ready to abdicate decision
making to someone he knew was very close to both the President and Namal. In
any case many appointments had become the prerogative of the President, a
practice begun by President Jayewardene who not only made political
appointments to ambassadorial posts, a practice that had occurred previously as
in many other countries, but also to junior positions in our missions abroad.
Under President Rajapaksa this became the norm, and all sorts of individuals
were appointed to a host of different positions all over the world. These
included relations to vital positions, in Washington and Moscow. The former
ambassador, a cousin, was a disaster, allowing relations with the United States
to deteriorate to appalling levels, whilst using expensive lobbyists with no
apparent understanding of the Sri Lankan situation or any perceptible influence
in Washington. As Head of the Peace Secretariat I met a couple of
representatives of different groups, all commanding excessive fees, but with no
positive impact. They were quite unlike a British firm that was later employed
through the influence of the Central Bank Governor, though against this
initiative there were public attacks and, after their advice had been ignored,
as with for instance the President’s absurd attempt to address the Oxford Union
in 2010, they were got rid of.
In 2014
however it became obvious that it was the American lobbyists who should have
been the object of greater scrutiny, since it was reported that the ambassador
had himself made money on the deals. It was also reported that he had profited
from the protracted hospitalization of the Prime Minister in America. All this
came on top of the story that he had been paid a commission in buying a house
for the embassy in Washington, which had led to the Americans quietly but
firmly insisting that he be removed.
The answer
of the Ministry of External Affairs had been to transfer him to Canada. This
was doubly absurd, since the government had only just received agreement for a
new High Commissioner who was a professional and highly respected diplomat. But
it was not pointed out to the President how shameful such a move was, and the
Ministry, which he claimed was now administratively on an even keel, existed,
it seemed, only to satisfy personal predilections as well as building up
fortunes. And the double standards involved were quite apparent, in the manner
in which Dayan Jayatilleka had been persecuted, when he had been scrupulous in
following established procedures, and was never thought in anyone’s wildest
dreams to have been interested in, or capable of, making money for himself. But
given the domination of the Ministry by operators such as Sajin and Kshenuka
Senewiratne, who was able to get an audit query about her conduct suppressed,
it is not surprising that anyone who felt inclined thought they had carte blanche
to profit from government positions.
In any case
the idea of a coherent sustained foreign policy had died with Lakshman
Kadirgamar, whose assassination in 2005 was, along with that of President
Premadasa in 1993, perhaps the most destructive for Sri Lanka of the many acts
of terrorism the Tigers perpetrated. Chandrika Kumaratunga appointed her
brother as Foreign Minister for the few months that remained to her of office,
and then President Rajapaksa first appointed Mangala Samaraweera, who had been
one of his predecessor’s most loyal supporters, but had, unlike her, supported
him actively in the 2005 Presidential election. But they soon fell out, and
Rohitha Bogollagama was appointed instead, and in essence allowed foreign
policy to be decided in various quarters in various ways. The most coherent of
these was the work done by Dayan Jayatilleka in Geneva, reporting direct to the
President, but with his dismissal the hopes of a constructive engagement with
the world, based on the traditional policy of Non-Alignment that had stood the
country in good stead under Mrs Bandaranaike, vanished.
Sajin’s
advent then saw, not monitoring to ensure that the Ministry was well run, but
the entrenchment of decision making on the basis of personal predilection.
Kshenuka Senewiratne, whose ability to manipulate people was brilliant, twigged
early on to his importance and nailed her colours firmly to his mast. The two
of them proceeded to work together, and indeed to giggle together, a common
phenomenon in Geneva in March 2012 when the rivalry between GL Peiris and
Mahinda Samarasinghe became obvious.
They had
seemed there to be more supportive of the latter but, after the crushing defeat
in the Council, he was abandoned, and they worked together closely with GL.
When I wrote a piece to the papers about what I saw as her pernicious
influence, GL complained to the President, who called me up and said I should
not criticize public officials who were not able to respond. I told him that,
when they were behaving in a manner that could bring the country low, I could
not keep quiet. His answer was that I should rather write in confidence to the
Minister or the Secretary. I told him that there would certainly be no
response, at which point he started laughing. This was the type of attitude
which endeared him to many, and one could not get annoyed, but it was certainly
no way to run a country.
Predictably,
though I wrote at length, there was no answer. I asked the Secretary to the
Ministry about this but he told me that, since it was a contentious issue, he
had asked the Secretary to the President for advice. Predictably again Lalith
Weeratunge ignored the letter, and there was no investigation of the various
actions that I believed had contributed to the sad situation in which Sri Lanka
found itself in 2012.
Over the
next couple of years the incoherence at the Ministry of External Affairs became
worse. Our ambassador in Rome, Asitha Perera, was suddenly recalled, and there
were allegations in the papers that he had been involved in people smuggling.
This was preposterous, for in fact he had tried to stop it, and had worked well
together with the Italian Embassy in Colombo to put a halt to visas being given
to all and sundry on the request of various officials in the Foreign Ministry. Asitha
was deeply depressed, and died shortly after he returned to Sri Lanka.
Just after
he was dismissed, he called me from Rome and said I had predicted this. I had
forgotten the matter, but indeed soon after Tamara’s dismissal I had written an
article in which I predicted that four other very good ambassadors serving in
Europe would all suffer her fate.
