Pictures from Parliament days 46

This describes the cackhanded way in which government responded to the report, with two separate tomes that in the end proved unreadable, and did not address issues direct for government still wanted to pretend that the report had no status.

The pictures are of the book I brought out and of Nivard Cabraal who alone in government understood its importance. Then there is Mr Divaratne who prepared the first book government produced several months later, and allowed it to expand so as to be unreasonable. He did this for Basil, while Gota produced another which did not address the issues but was simply a narrative, interesting but that should have come out earlier whereas now we should have made it clear there were no war crimes in out defeat of the Tigers. And I also picture G L Peiris who did nothing as Minister of External Affairs to hold our critics at bay.

46 Incoherent responses to Darusman

I had been collecting material for the criticisms I was making of the report, and at the meeting on the 29^th I suggested that government send material that made it clear Darusman had got things wrong to the UN, but I was told that that would be inappropriate and I should send things on myself. Since I had no official status these were obviously ignored, but neither Basil nor G L Peiris as Foreign Minister had the capacity or the courage to confront the UN head on. 

What was decided instead was that a narrative of the military operation should be produced by a team nominated by Gotabhaya Rajapaksa, while Basil would oversea an account of what government had done for civilians. In the week of the 17^th I had continued with my research and my writing, which had begun to appear practically daily in the papers, with the term I had used, the Darusman Report, becoming the preferred term of government to characterize what they wanted to emphasize had no official status.

On Thursday the 21^st I had gone up to Kandy for a meeting of a Finance Supervision Committee the Board had set up because the Principal was making wild allegations against the Board Finance Committee and claiming papers were not available even though I found what he claimed was missing in the file he had with him. This set the tone for what was to follow, with the Bishop prevaricating, and later taking the Principal’s side wholly.

I stayed that night with Derrick and Ayra and went next day to the cottage, and began putting my articles together for the book that came out a couple of months later entitled ‘See No Good, Hear No Good, Speak No Good; the Perversity of the Darusman Panel.’ And then I got back to Colombo on the Sunday afternoon for both Sinhala and English interviews on Rupavahini, because obviously there was no one else with similar command of the facts as well as the language in which to express them, as opposed to ranting about the UN.

The following Wednesday there was at last some official action, with Mr Divaratne, who had been Commissioner General of Essential Services during the War and was now the Secretary now of Basil’s Task Force for the North, summoning a meeting at his office in the Twin Towers to work out how to present the services which had been supplied. L C Perera who had been in charge of Civil Affairs for the military in the Manik Farm days was there, and also some of the doctors who had done yeoman service, plus two of my former SCOPP Directors. I met again with Diva and L C the next day, and the following week we started to meet regularly at the Central Bank, for its Governor Nivard Cabraal understood the problem and was keen to ensure a swift response.