The March of Folly 39 – Old wine in new bottles

I was asked last week by the European Union to an exhibition about ‘Celebrating Partnerships’, and attended, though I left early when the speeches began. I was not sure why I was asked, since the invitation was for development partners and the TVEC was not involved in the project.

But as I looked round the exhibition, I realized that, as Charles Ryder put it in Brideshead Revisited, ‘I had been there before; I knew all about it’. And it brought back fond memories of the last public service I performed successfully, before (as I put it in Endgames and Excursions, memoirs of the last five years which Godage published), ‘I began to feel that my shelf life was over’.

I have written about how I helped the UN resurrect the project in the 6^th chapter of that book. Though I start by saying that it seemed clear in 2013 that ‘there was no hope of stopping Mahinda Rajapaksa rushing headlong into disaster, given that so many of those around him, while pursuing their own agendas, had lulled him into a false sense of security’, the way he responded to my appeal indicated he still genuinely cared about the country and the development programme he had embarked on.

In late 2013 I had been told about proposals prepared at District level for a UN project to be funded by the European Union. This had been agreed with the government, after Basil Rajapaksa suggested modifications including that it be extended to areas outside the North and East too. But then suddenly he clamped down and said it could not proceed.

The March of Folly 16 – Dealing with British duplicity

I am very sorry for what Britain is going through at the moment, and even sadder, to be parochial, that this should be happening when its leadership is more decent and straightforward than at any time in the last two decades. But poor Theresa is suffering now for the sins of her predecessors, who took Britain into wars that privileged extremists.

Britain may be shocked now about the revelations about the Libyan connection to the terrorism in Manchester. But its people should – as Corbyn as tried to point out – make the connection between that and the vicious manner in which Gaddafi was removed, making use of extremists who are obviously motivated by hate and see violence as a ready answer to whatever they think alien.

With India also now blindly following a Western line – as some of its rulers did a few hundred years back because of their fear of neighbours, only to find the British more ruthless taskmasters when they had established their hegemony – it is left only to a few brave Latin American countries to point out the wickedness as well as the absurdity of what the West is up to (as when Trump responded violently, as jihadists to, to yet another allegation of chemical warfare – which more objective observers attribute to the chosen instruments of the West, whether spurred on by them or not remaining uncertain).

I regret then the days when Dayan was in Geneva, and made common cause with the brilliant Indian diplomats there, as well as others representing a neutral perspective. Now, forbidden to intervene except to kowtow to the West, we will no longer enjoy the influence we had in those days, when for instance we were invited to take on a lead role in the Group of Fifteen (which Mangala proceeded to entrust to Gihan Indragupta, who had been attacking our forces even when he was being recruited to the Foreign Ministry).

It is a pity that we have been silenced, for recently, courtesy of one of the few Britishers to stand up for principle, we have been provided with evidence of the duplicity of the British in their efforts to convict our decent soldiery of war crimes. We have now received, although with some important areas blacked out, the reports of the then British Defence Attache, Lt Col Anton Gash, during the last period of the war. Amongst his observations was stress on the ‘compassion, respect and concern’ shown by the soldiers for those being evacuated – and mention of the fact that these had ‘release’ passes issued by the LTTE.

The March of Folly – 14. The uses and instruments of disinformation

I was sent recently a link to a bizarre article headlined ‘Retired MI5 Agent Confesses On Deathbed: “I Killed Princess Diana”’. It appeared on a site called ‘YourNewsWire.com’ and was supposed to be written by someone called Baxter Dmitry – about whom there seems to be some controversy, in that there are claims that he is the same person as writes under other names too.

The article itself is not very plausible, though it is accompanied by a splendid photograph of an old man in a hospital bed. And another website called ‘www.snopes.com’ claimed ‘There was no truth to the story, which originated with YourNewsWire, a fake news site. As is often the case with fake news, the article lacked critical details such as when and where the confession occurred or how the purported assassination took place, and no other credible news outlet (or even tabloid) reported the story.’

This last is not quite true in that the ‘Daily Star’, a tabloid founded to match the ‘Daily Mirror’ and ‘The Sun’, did report the story though it claimed that the story was found to be fake. But it gave no reason for this last assertion save stating that Snopes had said so.

All this is of a piece with the manner in which news is manufactured, not just for sensation and denigration of individuals, but for political purposes. We are all now aware of the lies that Tony Blair perpetrated so that he could support George Bush over the Iraq war. We are aware of the way in which Gaddafi was vilified with false allegations that he was planning a bloodbath in Libya, a pack of lies that was used by the West to perpetrate its own continuing bloodbath all over the Islamic world. We know of the false claims about Assad using chemical weapons some years back, when the UN made it clear that the likelihood was that these weapons had been used by the rebels the West was then backing.

More recently there was another allegation against Assad which led to Trump bombing Syria – even though now it is clear that it is the rebels who have access to chemical weapons, as a very recent article on the BBC makes clear. Quentin Sommerville records notes by a fighter in which ‘in the munitions section and in his own handwriting, he lists “chemical munitions” as a weapon. There’s been much debate over whether IS has used chemical weapons in Mosul. Here at least, we know they are trained and prepared to use them.’

But there has been no demand for accountability with regard to the public lies that have created so much mayhem in the world.

The Paranagama and the Geneva Reports: Attempts to Mislead the Public – Pt 2

The Paranagama and the Geneva Reports: Attempts to Mislead the Public – Pt 1 contd.,

• Question 10:

The Government has alleged that the Paranagama Report agrees with the Channel 4 video allegations.   Is that true?

• Answer

Not at all.  It is a deliberate misreading of the Paranagama Report.   At paragraph 428, the Paranagama Report states explicitly “ the authenticity of the video footage is not an issue that the Commission can resolve…”.

If, of course, the authenticity of the video is proved, that would establish a prima facia case.   The Paranagama Commission goes on to advocate that there should be a proper judicial inquiry.

Indeed the very same was suggested by the LLRC report, which called for an independent investigation.      Thus to say that the Paranagama Commission has validated the genuineness of the Channel 4 footage is false.  Because if it had, what would be the necessity to call for an inquiry to ascertain the authenticity of the footage?   Indeed the Paranagama Commission criticizes Channel 4 in paragraph 432 (page 105) for failing to supply the original film footage.  Why would the Paranagama Commission do this, if it had accepted the film footage as authentic?

 

• Question 11

What is the link between the OISL report and the Darusman Report with respect to the gravity of the allegations made against Sri Lanka?

• Answer

The answer to this question is to be found in paragraph 22 (page 8) of the OISL report which reads as follows:    “ Another key source of information was the United Nation’s Secretary General’s panel of experts headed by Mazuki Darusmann with experts Yasmin Sooka and Steven Ratner.”

Thus, it is quite clear, that the OISL report is firmly grounded in the grave allegations made by the Darusman Report.   Therefore it raises the question as to why the Paranagama Commission 2^nd Mandate Report which dealt with most of the allegations in the Darusman Report was not tabled in Geneva by the Government.

The Paranagama and the Geneva Reports: Attempts to Mislead the Public – Pt 1

I have refrained thus far from getting involved in the debate over the Geneva Resolution for a number of reasons. One is a commitment to finalize a few books, and in particular an account of what Sri Lanka did right, in winning the war, and then did wrong in losing the peace.

Secondly, I had long felt that the last government was destroying the country by its ostrich approach to the allegations made against us. As I told Al Jazeera on the day I expressed publicly my support for the Maithripala Sirisena candidacy, when hardly any one else who was part of the previous government took the plunge, I felt that a continuation of the Rajapaksa Presidency would lead to disaster. I was glad someone who had stood foursquare behind the President during the war years was the challenger, because while I hoped he would correct the faults that had arisen after the war, I assumed he would stand by the achievement of the first Rajapaksa Presidency in eradicating terrorism from Sri Lanka.

I was deeply disappointed that the new government did not embark on the reforms it had promised, and also disappointed that it did not move swiftly towards transparency on the question of accountability. I proposed at my first Parliamentary Group meeting that we should publish the Udalagama Commission Report, because I believed its findings would make clear that our judiciary was perfectly capable of conducting a credible inquiry. I had also long argued that justice needed to be done for the boys killed in Trincomalee, and had repeated urged the President to ensure that indictments were made.

The Prime Minister said he would look into the matter, but it was not even minuted – as opposed to mechanisms to find vehicles and provide jobs for supporters – and after I left the group it was forgotten. The same seems to have happened to the Paranagama Report, to which, belatedly, the Rajapaksa government had added value through the advice of international lawyers who were aware, unlike the Foreign Ministry, of the danger of the charges made against us.

Just as, alone of Parliamentarians, I had two years ago signed a petition about the killings at Weliveriya, I signed this year a petition asking the President to ensure that justice was done to our forces by publicizing the Report. While I had no doubt that, like the LLRC, it would demand accountability with regard to events as to which there was prima facie evidence of abuse, it would make it clear that the worst charges against us were incorrect.

Sadly my detailed defence of the errors in the Darusman Report was completely ignored by decision makers in the last government, except for the one person who understood the importance of our image. When nothing was done and we subscribed to a resolution that detracts from the very principles on which the UN had been established, I feared that the same lack of intelligence was now affecting our decision makers and those advising them. The consequences to the country will be equally disastrous. But to go on telling decision makers they are being silly did not help in the last few years, and I did not think one should continue beating one’s head against yet another brick wall.

However what seems to be subterfuge in Parliament makes me wonder whether I am wrong to assume just incompetence, and whether I should worry about an agenda that will strip this country of all self respect. After all, eight years ago, I recall those now in authority trying to stop our defeat of terrorism by invoking foreign assistance.

I have therefore engaged in some study of the issues through experts on the subject, and would like to bring the following facts into the public domain, through a simple question and answer exercise –

• Question 1:

Do you accept the statements made by the Government in relation to the 1^st and 2^nd mandate reports issued by the Presidential Commission to Investigate Missing Persons, otherwise known as the Paranagama Commission?

• Answer :

No, because the statements made are misleading, and in large measure lacking in truth.  They strike at the very heart of good governance, especially when Parliament and the country as a whole are seeking to discover the truth.

It is essential that the Government briefs Parliament correctly about the various allegations made against the Government of Sri Lanka and our Armed Forces by two key UN reports known as the “Darusman Report” and the “ OISL Report”.  The Government also has the duty to inform the nation about what it has committed to implement in terms of a judicial mechanism in the co-sponsored UN resolution.   The fact that these important reports were not translated into our National languages Sinhala and Tamil, and also there was no effort made to make them available widely, through both the release of an electronic soft copy version of it and printed versions, appears to be a deliberate strategy to keep the public in the dark.

The Government failed during the Parliamentary debate to truthfully point out the positive aspects of the recommendations contained in the 2^nd mandate report of the Paranagama Commission and how the conclusions of the international experts consulted by the Paranagama Commission have exonerated the armed forces of Sri Lanka from the suggestion of “genocide” that maligned our country after the release of the Darusman Report.   The Paranagama Report also refutes the crimes against humanity charges against Sri Lanka.

• Question 2:

Is it true or false that the Paranagama Commission recommended a hybrid court similar to the Gambian Model to be implemented in Sri Lanka as suggested by the Government?

• Answer:

It is false.    The Paranagama Commission’s Second Mandate report that was tabled in Parliament proposed ONLY a pure domestic mechanism and not a hybrid court.  Under Chapter 8 of the Report, paragraph number 625 and 626, it explicitly explains this mechanism.

In order to deal with an accountability mechanism suitable to Sri Lanka, it was incumbent upon the Commission to embark upon a review of measures taken in other countries before proposing a specific mechanism for Sri Lanka.

In paragraph 624, the Paranagama Commission lists out several different options available to the Government to consider, providing a review of all the mechanisms.   In paragraph 625, the Paranagama Commission sets out the proposed mechanism under the sub-heading “Proposed Mechanism”.   The Mechanism that the Paranagama Commission had recommended here is wholly domestic and coupled with a TRC that makes it a unique mechanism for Sri Lanka.

Thus the reference to the Gambian example being advocated by the Paranagama Commission is  misleading,   especially when a clear mechanism, purely of a domestic kind, without foreign judicial intervention of any kind had been proposed by the Paranagama Commission.

In Paragraph 616 of the Report, The Commission says “In the event Sri Lanka was to set up a purely domestic tribunal without the participation of any foreign judges, it is the view of the Commission, that there should be international technical assistance and observers”. International technical assistance does not equal foreign judges sitting in judgement over Sri Lankan citizens.

A Reform Agenda 22 – Service Delivery in Divisions

An ambassador who seems to understand this country well said recently that he thought the greatest mistake this government had made was to let me go. I have to admit though that that was probably more flattering than accurate.  One can see rather that the greatest mistake was to ignore completely the manifesto on which the President had won the election, and instead assume it was about two things and two things alone – the abolition of the Executive Presidency and having an election after 100 days.

Unfortunately now the government will be remembered for just two things, one the laudable reduction in the authoritarian powers of the Presidency, the second the Central Bank Bond Scam. But there was much else in the manifesto that could easily have been implemented in the almost six months which the government had before Parliament was dissolve.

I have already looked at the seven broken promises with regard to reform that were mentioned in the 100 day programme, viz

1)      Electoral Reform

2)      Amendment of Standing Orders

3)      The Right to Information Act

4)      The new Audit Act

5)      A Code of Conduct

6)      A Cabinet of not more than 25 members representing all political parties in Parliament

7)      A National Advisory Council including all political parties in Parliament

The last three of these did not require a Parliamentary majority, and three of the others could have been passed with a simple majority. But the failure to develop consensus on issues of common national interest, and instead concentrate on Ministries for one party, and the perks that went with these, led to disaster.

Those blunders are obvious. For the next couple of weeks I shall look at some of the excellent ideas in the manifesto that were completely ignored. The total failure of this government to entrench better systems of government, based on ideas that had been canvassed for a long time but which had not been taken forward, must be registered, and I hope the government elected in August will move swiftly on such matters.

One of the most innovative ideas in the manifesto occurred in the section entitled ‘An advanced and responsible public sector’.  The second bullet point there read, ‘The Divisional Secretariat will be made the chief unit that performs the priority tasks of the area. It will coordinate all activities such as skills development and supply of resources pertaining to the development of the economic, social, industrial and cultural sectors of the area.’

Though I used the word innovative, in fact this represents a recognition of reality. A hundred years ago, when the British began to think of appointing Sri Lankan Government Agents, the Province was obviously the practical unit of administration. But as populations grew and the business of government expanded, the District became more important and accordingly Government Agents were appointed to Districts too. Now however, with so much more to do and for so many more people, it is the Divisional Secretariat that has to initiate and oversee action in most particulars. Unfortunately we are still stuck in hidebound systems, and Divisional Secretaries do not have the decision making powers they need. In addition, many government departments are not well represented in the Division, which leads to long delays with regard to action, let alone decisions.

After the problems I had noted in the North and East, I discussed the matter with those with experience in the field including the immensely knowledgeable Asoka Gunawardena and the Secretary to the Ministry of Public Administration, Mr Abeykoon, who is now the Secretary to the President. We then approached the UN, which set up a consultancy, and last year we got a comprehensive report from Asoka on ‘Improving Service Delivery in the Divisions’. Unfortunately, when the election season set in, the Secretary put the matter on hold. Though Karu Jayasuriya was initially keen to take things forward, it turned out that he was not the responsible Minister, given the manner in which Public Administration had been carved up. I did mention the matter to the Minister responsible, but such reforms are not really his concern, and in the mad rush for elections the matter had been forgotten.

After the election I hope a concerted effort will be made to move forward in this area. It is important to make sure however that this is done with provision to consult the people, something the last President pledged which was not done. Mr Abeykoon had set the process in motion, through a circular that instructed Grama Niladharis to chair the Civil Defence Committee meetings in their GN Divisions, but this has not really taken off. Clear instructions are needed as to how the ideas brought up at consultative meetings should be taken forward (something that can be improved in Parliament too, where minutes are not promptly circulated and action points rarely recorded). This was planned, but elections intervened.

At the last meeting of the Home Affairs Consultative Committee in Parliament, this being the Ministry entrusted with District and Divisional Administration, I brought the matter up, only to find that the Minister and the new Secretary knew nothing about this. They had not been briefed, but the Minister promised to look into the matter, and I hope that he will find some time during electioneering to at least ensure that a position paper is prepared for him, or for his successor.

Meanwhile, nothing has been done in the last couple of years with regard to the other area of governance that is closest to the people. I refer to the work of elected officials, namely the Chairman of the Pradeshiya Sabha and his team. At present their functions are confused, because there have been significant changes in the manner in which these are organized – utilities for instance are supposed to be their responsibility, but both water and electricity require much central government involvement.

Because of all this a new Local Government Act was being prepared, and with the blessings of the Minister, the Secretary gave me a copy of the draft for comment. I found it a great improvement on what we have now, but thought there should be entrenchment of consultation procedures, with the advisory committees to local bodies being composed of representatives of community organizations, not appointees of those in political authority.

The Secretary, one of the brightest of our Civil Servants, Mr Ranawaka, took the ideas on board, but he was then entrusted with other responsibilities and the Act seemed to have been forgotten. But if good governance is to become a reality, the next government should study the current situation, with the help of Asoka Goonewardene’s comprehensive report, and set in place systems to ensure that people have ready access to the services government should provide at local level.

Inclusive governance will be Sri Lanka’s new mantra

There were many firsts in the election of President Maithripala Sirisena in Sri Lanka: An incumbent president was defeated; parties specifically representing different races and religious groups —  the Jathika Hela Urumaya for the Sinhalese, the Tamil National Alliance (TNA), and the Sri Lanka Muslim Congress along with the All Ceylon Muslim Congress — came together on a common political platform; corruption was a major issue in the pre-poll campaign; and now a specific timeframe has been set for reforms.

However, the most important responsibility of the new government will be settling the national question. While the country owes him a debt of gratitude for eliminating terrorism from the country, former President Mahinda Rajapaksa did nothing about the commitments he made in 2009 to ensure inclusive peace.

As a member of the Liberal Party, I urged Rajapaksa to implement the 13th Amendment, which created Provincial Councils in Sri Lanka, but met with no success. I understand that there could have been problems about some aspects of the amendment but those could have been resolved through discussions.

When we negotiated with the TNA, MA Sumanthiran and I found a solution to what had previously been considered the vexed question of powers over land. We met stakeholders, asked them about their apprehensions and assuaged those fears.

Unfortunately, two members of the government acted in bad faith, one even refusing to fulfil instructions the president gave us to act on what had been agreed with the TNA.

Reaching consensus on these matters is a priority and the new government should set a time table for this. Successive Sri Lankan governments failed because they allowed talks to drag on without any purpose.

Enemies of the President’s Promise: Mahinda Rajapaksa and the Seven Dwarfs – Doc 2

In 2011 I had personal experience of how diffident Lalith could be. After the Darusman Report came out, with its excessive attack on the manner in which Sri Lanka had dealt with LTTE terrorism, I thought it necessary to warn the President about what was going on. I saw him in his office and said we had done nothing to fulfil our own commitments. When he asked me what I meant, I cited two clear examples.

The first was the negotiations with the TNA, which had shown no progress. He understood immediately what I meant, and acquiesced straight away with the suggestion that I be put on the negotiating team. Ordinarily I would have been wary of putting myself forward, but there seemed to be no alternative, and the President seemed to agree.

The second point I made was that there had been no progress whatsoever on implementing the interim recommendations of the Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission. He evinced surprise when I said this, and declared that he had appointed a Committee which was doing its job. But I told him I thought that Committee had never met, and that he should put me on it.

He agreed again, and immediately rang Lalith and told him to appoint me to both positions. He also told the Secretary to the Ministry of External Affairs, who he thought knew about the work of the Committee, to send me all relevant papers, since I told him that I should see the minutes of meetings and find out what had been going on, if I were to contribute.

Lalith rang me in the car as I was leaving. He told me that the letter putting me on the negotiating team would be sent straight away, and added that he had spoken to Mohan Pieris, who chaired the Committee to implement the LLRC interim recommendations, and he had no objection to my appointment.

I only understood the implications of this after I had put down the phone. I realized that, when the President made a decision, there was no reason for Lalith to consult anyone else. Keeping Mohan informed as a courtesy that there would be a new member of his Committee was one thing, seeking his acquiescence was quite another.

I had every reason to worry. Lalith told me a few days later that it was felt inappropriate for me to be on the Committee since I was a Parliamentarian, and the other members of the Committee were officials. I called the President about this, but he told me he had been told it would not be proper. By then I had been told by the Secretary to the Ministry of External Affairs that there were no minutes of meetings. The only papers he had were those prepared when the Committee was first appointed, and a report was made to Geneva. Like me, he too suspected that the Committee had not done very much.

I told this to the President, who thereupon agreed that amongst my duties as his adviser on Reconciliation would be monitoring the work of the Committee and reporting to him on what was happening. Fortunately Lalith had failed for six months to send me my terms of reference (having it seems lost the original draft I had sent him, and then delayed further when I sent him a copy). So now he made no objection when I told him the President had agreed that this should be added.

I therefore duly got a fairly comprehensive list of duties. But I then found, as noted previously, that Mohan, having first admitted that the Committee had never met, but claimed he was waiting for a date from the Secretary of Defence, finally confessed six months later that the Secretary did not want there to be any meetings. There had certainly been some progress in matters pertaining to the work of the Ministry of Defence, but no measures had been taken to expedite action on other matters of urgency, such as restoration of lands, which the LLRC had highlighted.

Enemies of the President’s Promse: Mahinda Rajapaksa and the Seven Dwarfs – Sneezy (Part 3)

Basil had told me that I did not need to worry about the Peace Secretariat being closed because I had another position too, that of Secretary to Mahinda Samarasinghe’s Ministry of Disaster Management and Human Rights. That was correct, and for anyone else that would have been a full time job. But the wider dimensions of the work we did, and in particular the need to coordinate work with regard to the North, had been facilitated by my position at the Secretariat, with the authority to coordinate responses from a range of Ministries.

In theory the Ministry had a coordinating role with regard to humanitarian assistance but, during the course of that year, Basil had ensured that was eroded. The Consultative Committee on Humanitarian Assistance, which Minister Samarasinghe had chaired, hardly met in 2009, and its role was taken over by a Task Force for the North which Basil chaired. That did not initially include any Tamils, which was typical of the command structures Basil enjoyed, though after some protests Minister Douglas Devananda was included.

Still, there was enough to do, given the situation in the Welfare Centres and the need to continue to liaise with the UN, and in particular the Special Representative for the Rights of the Displaced, Walter Kalin, who visited us three times during this period and was extremely helpful, whilst also pointing out areas in which we could do better. I also continued to work on humanitarian support, and in particular tried together with Mr Divaratne, who was the Secretary to Basil’s Task Force, to introduce some cohesion into the inputs of the various Non-Governmental Organizations keen to work in the welfare centres, and then in the areas in which the displaced were being resettled.

Most important of all, though, I felt, was finishing the plans we had been tasked with formulating with regard to Human Rights. One was the National Action Plan, which we had pledged in Geneva at the Universal Periodic Review, in May 2008, that we would get ready. This was done, despite all our work in relation to the conflict, through committees chaired by professionals of great ability, and we managed in the latter part of 2009 to bring the recommendations together and produce a draft.

As important I felt was the Bill of Rights, which the President had pledged in his 2005 manifesto, and for which a Committee had been appointed under the aegis of the Ministry of National Languages and Constitutional Affairs. When Mahinda Samarasinghe crossed over to the government early in 2006 and his Ministry was created, obviously it became the body responsible, but I found when I was appointed to be its Secretary in June 2008 that there had been no progress on the matter. Together with his Consultant, Nishan Muthukrishna, whom I had known long ago as a schoolboy, through the cultural activities I had worked on while at the British Council, we went into overdrive and persuaded the Chair – a distinguished lawyer who was however close to President Kumaratunga and had little confidence in the current President’s commitment to Rights – to produce a draft. He and his committee did in the end deliver, and I had that draft too ready by the end of 2009.

A Presidency Under Threat – 25 International conspiracies and our own goals

When I read of, and hear, the President expressing concerns about an international conspiracy to destabilize his government, and topple him, I feel immensely sad. One reason is that what he fears is not entirely without foundation.

The idea was put to me, quite politely, by the head of the Sri Lanka desk at the UN, who said that, whereas Mahinda Rajapaksa had been a good leader during the War, perhaps someone else was better suited to lead during peacetime. The young man from our Embassy who had accompanied me to that meeting said the same proposition had been put to Nivard Cabraal. Both of us repudiated the idea, and indeed I recall citing Tolstoy in this connection, given the theory he had put forward in War and Peace, about the visionary Alexander having to take over after the practical soldier Kutuzov had won the war. I have no idea what arguments Nivard used, but I have no doubt that he would have shared my conclusions.

… the less polite approach of some Westerners, who put forward Sarath Fonseka for the Presidency

The Tolstoyan imagery was pertinent with regard to the less polite approach of some Westerners, who put forward Sarath Fonseka for the Presidency. This seemed to me rank wickedness, and I believe some European ambassadors shared my view, for they told me – at a farewell lunch I gave the two nicest of them – that they knew what he was like, and could not understand what some of their colleagues were up to.

I am not sure that the Americans, who were foremost in the venture (or at least some of them, for I cannot believe that thoroughly decent people like the then Social Affairs Officer Jeff Anderson were involved) were actually wicked. I have long learnt that one should never attribute to wickedness what can be put down to stupidity. I suspect then that those who still had some values but went along with the idea thought that Sarath Fonseka would split what they saw as the extreme vote, and that this would enable Ranil Wickremesinghe to win.

… the whole debacle was Ranil’s fault for having withdrawn.

Ranil however was sharper than them, and withdrew – which is perhaps what prompted Paikiasothy Saravanamuttu, at the Christmas Party given by the then Deputy British Head of Mission, to say that the whole debacle was Ranil’s fault for having withdrawn.

Sarath Fonseka lost conclusively – despite Sara’s efforts to suggest the election had been fraudulent – which is why the protests I suspect had been planned never got off the ground. But the American extremists had succeeded beyond their wildest dreams, because Mahinda Rajapaksa abandoned his visions, and a new homespun Kutuzov emerged.

For with Fonseka as his principal opponent, Rajapaksa had to cover that flank as it were, so that it was extremists who played the largest role in his campaign, not the fundamentally decent and moderate SLFP leadership. And so they have emerged as the strongest influences on policy in the government.