Features

Godfrey Gunatilleke’s three-volume autobiography: a monumental work

Published

2 years ago

2025/03/9

by Rajiva Wijesinha

Godfrey Gunatilleke’s autobiography, Chaos and Pattern, is an astonishingly impressive work, a veritable tour de force. It would have been remarkable from any one of any age, but that it should have been written by someone in his late nineties, from memory without recourse to a diary, makes it the more extraordinary. It is true that he began work on it thirty years ago and more, but to have persevered over the years and finally tied it together is a mark of an outstanding character.

It is an autobiography in that it tells the story of his life. The whole book, presented to all those who attended its launch last month, is divided into three parts, the first dealing with his childhood and university days, the second with his working life in government departments, the third with his reincarnation as the head of the first major think tank in the country, the Marga Institute, when he also established himself as a leading social activist.

The book is also a comprehensive account of human relationships, relationships in the family, the one in which he was born and the one that was established through his marriage, relationships between family members including in-laws, relationships with his peers who contributed to and benefited from his intellectual development, and relationships with colleagues at work including those who were involved in his social activism. These relationships are expounded in detail, analyzed in depth, and set within the framework of a committed morality that is nevertheless constantly seeking refinement, in the light of both human emotion and human weakness.

It is an illuminating account of social changes in the near century through which he has lived, examining the different political perspectives that dominated thinking in different spheres, shifting attitudes to class and caste, changing work ethics, and the decline in moral commitment on the part of politicians and bureaucrats and their hangers on. Godfrey, whose social and intellectual standing was considerable at the time I first came across him in the early eighties, through the work of the Marga Institute, came from a middle class family which he places at the lower end of that social class. His father was a notary who cut himself off to a large extent from his own family, to some extent because they had prevented his marriage to his first love.

After an arranged marriage which ended in separation, he married his original love, who had four children, while they also looked after his oldest son. Godfrey describes a difficult man who was nevertheless a supportive father, and half way through the book, in talking about his death, he engages in a retrospective account which tries to make up for any criticism he had engaged in earlier. The very positive sense of closure is typical of the quest for truth, as Trollope said was his priority in his autobiography, combined with the personal warmth that Godfrey extends to all except the very few people he finds beyond the pale.

Then in the second volume, Godfrey talks about his working life, just over 25 years in the Civil Service. He had after university worked briefly in the Income Tax Department, but that did not stretch him. The Civil Service did, and this volume recounts in great detail the way he threw himself into his work, beginning with a cadetship that took him to Jaffna and then into the Prime Minister’s office, a sure sign of someone recognized early on as a potential highflyer.

The Prime Minister then was D S Senanayake, and the early pages of the book cover the departure from government of S W R D Bandaranaike, and then Senanayake’s sudden death. The book deals with detachment with the succession of his son Dudley, though the climate of intrigue that accompanied this comes through, as does the tensions that arose because of strange political developments in the ensuing two decades: the succession as Prime Minister of Dahanayake when Bandaranaike was assassinated, the attempted coup of 1962, the hostility between Dudley Senanayake and J R Jayewardene during the UNP government of the latter part of that decade, and the insurrection of 1971.

Godfrey is particular interesting in his dissection of the shifts in the left movement, from the idealism of the Trotskyists he had admired in his university days, through the coalition with the SLFP, to the rise of a new left in the form of the JVP. He also introduces an element that has not received much attention, the different approaches of the LSSP and the CP in Mrs Bandaranaike’s 1970 government, the latter still pursuing revolutionary changes while the LSSP was more inclined to compromise.

This was particularly true with regard to foreign aid, a fascinating topic then as now, since a nation needs this for development but has to ensure that spreading the benefits of development equitably is not stymied by the manner in which aid is obtained. Interestingly, Godfrey notes the difference between Jayewardene and Esmond Wickremesinghe, and the less doctrinaire approach of Dudley Senanayake; though he also records Jayewardene’s presumably pragmatic approaches to the Bandaranaike government whereas Senanayake wanted to stay aloof. Godfrey worked essentially in just three areas during his career, in lands and then in industries and finally in planning.

A running theme through the book is the manner in which long term plans are subverted by changes of regime. He notes too the relatively comprehensive approach to government of Bandaranaike which was beyond Dahanayake, though he does pay tribute to Mrs Bandaranaike’s qualities of leadership. Godfrey is indeed positive about almost all the Ministers he worked with, though he looks at shifting perspectives that led to the increasing personal influence with regard to professional concerns. He is highly critical of only one Minister, Philip Gunawardena, whom in his gentle fashion he presents as something of a bully.

But if the main subject of this second volume of Chaos and Pattern is Godfrey’s work as a Civil Servant, it also encompasses the seminal social changes that took place during the first two decades after independence. Chief amongst these was the development of ethnic conflict and increasing violence. This sprang from the determination to make Sinhala the only official language, though Godfrey does note how the UNP repudiated the pledge of Sir John Kotelawala, then Prime Minister, to give Sinhala and Tamil parity of status.

He records how violence developed, and the way in which many Civil Servants helped to defuse tensions, though he also relates how one Civil Servant who was under pressure permitted premature shooting which led to tragic deaths. The failure of government to deal firmly with the problem is also noted, and how the Governor General Sir Oliver Goonetilleke, with solid support from the forces, brought the situation under control.

But the animosities roused were to linger, and these were exacerbated by the determination of the UNP, then under J R Jayewardene, to stymie Bandaranake’s efforts at compromise. Godfrey also notes the brain drain that began in these years, with one of his guiding lights, Dick Hensman, deciding to leave, though he then came back. He had established Community, a journal which looked at social and political issues, and attracted distinguished writers including Godfrey himself.

And after Hensman left for the second time, Godfrey began his own journal, which he called Marga, a precursor to the think tank he then set up.Side by side with the narrative of social changes is, as in the first volume, Godfrey’s account of relations within his family. This includes the story of how he and his wife Bella fell out with her family, over an incident that might have seemed trivial, had it not seemed to both of them a mark of bad faith. Their sense of what constituted obligations was acute and though in time matters settled down, the earlier camaraderie never returned.

The family unit however continued immensely satisfying and fulfilling. And though there were the occasional disagreements between husband and wife, there is an enduring spirit of devotion, which can be quite lyrical as in the description of the trip to America they went on together through the Eisenhower Fellowship Godfrey received at the beginning of 1970. He manages too to convey the sense of intellectual excitement he felt at dealing with careful analysis of new ideas, related to his particular interests at the time, not only planning, but the role of foreign capital in ensuring development.

As Dick Hensman was Godfrey’s guru for the intellectual analysis he engaged in over the years, so his guru for his professional work was Gamani Corea, who had been the main spirit behind planning for development from the fifties on. But with political changes his plans were never followed through, and to this perhaps can be traced Godfrey’s decision to leave the Civil Service soon after the change of government in 1970. But he did wait until the Five Year Plan he had been working on was completed, even though he knew by then that it would not have the impact originally envisaged.

The last volume of the autobiography looks at his life and work after he resigned from the Civil Service, in the early seventies. He did this to set up the Marga Institute, which was the first private think tank of its kind, the only one for a couple of decades, and immensely influential in that period. It was through Marga that I first met him, in the eighties, when its Legal section organized several seminars with regard to the perversion of his own constitution that J R Jayewardene was engaged in.

These however ceased when J R became more autocratic, and at the time I thought Godfrey had been pusillanimous in drawing in his horns. I recall Radhika Coomaraswamy, who left the Marga legal section to work at the International Centre for Ethnic Studies, which was set up by Neelan Tiruchelvam (who had presided over the Marga Legal Section), telling me that Godfrey had got worried when Lalith Athulathmudali asked to see the Marga articles of association.

And later she told me that, when Godfrey had been horrified at J R’s decision to have a referendum, he had been called to a meeting and emerged white and shaking, as she put it, at the claim J R had made about the threat of violence by the opposition over the Presidential election.I have dwelt on this because these shortcomings with regard to trying to check the excesses of the government in the early eighties had contributed to my early diffidence about Godfrey, and I fear that these aspects are skated over in the book.

This was the only area in the autobiography which I found disappointing, though I have also realized that in terms of the larger picture it is understandable that he did not want to break his links with government. So too he and his associates, in the Citizens’ Committee for National Harmony, set up after the excesses of the attacks on Tamils soon after the Jayewardene government came to power, were mealy-mouthed about attributing responsibility to the government for the ethnic violence of 1983. But Godfrey does acknowledge in the book that perhaps he should have been more incisive, given the evidence he had, in particular something I did not know before, that Lalith Athulathmudali had talked beforehand about the Tamils living outside the North and East having to be taught a lesson.

Godfrey tries in his analyses to be balanced, which is a quality to be respected, but I feel that it should not lead to indulgence of those beyond the pale. I noted earlier his critique of Philip Gunawardena, alone of the Ministers with whom he worked, and I wish he had applied the save incisiveness to J R Jayewardene. The nearest he comes to exposing the man’s monumental hypocrisy is when he comments, on Jayewardene’s claim that he had protected the SLFP and ‘kept the old leadership, including Mrs Bandaranaike, in control of the party’, that he ‘could not but marvel at the way in which actions, which were being condemned by his opponents as gross violations of democratic norms, were presented as interventions designed to uphold and protect democracy’.

That failure to grasp the nettle, to refrain from affirming that the driving of Mrs Bandaranaike out of politics and the referendum with the jailing of the most effective campaigner against it, were gross violations, is why I think that I was not entirely wrong in finding the Godfrey of the eighties a disappointment.

But if he seemed complaisant in the early eighties with regard to the horrendous attacks on democracy and on Tamils perpetrated by J R Jayewardene, that should not take away from the man’s great achievements, which are presented in waves as it seems in the last few chapters of the book.

For while I was concerned then about the measures taken to in effect destroy our country, Marga was not only working on legal issues, but was concerned with development, which was Godfrey’s primary concern. And his account of what was done with regard to health issues, and the care of children, are fascinating, and make it clear perhaps why he was so wary of confronting government. For the enormous respect in which he, and through him Marga, were held internationally, meant that he could engage in studies, not only in Sri Lanka but also in the region, which required cooperation with government agencies. This may not have been possible had Jayewardene turned against him and forbidden government involvement in these studies, which was what Felix Dias Bandaranaike had tried to do in the early seventies.

These accounts figure late in the book, for much of the middle is taken up with the ethnic conflict, and the efforts Godfrey made to promote consensus and reform. He worked with other agencies on this, and I was pleased at the credit he gave to the Centre for Society and Religion, headed by Fr Tissa Balasuriya, whose social commitment he found admirable, as I did too in my interactions with him.

If this is the most significant subject in this section of the autobiography, there is also much about elections, and Godfrey’s seminal role in setting up PAFFREL, the country’s principal agency for monitoring of elections. Interestingly he notes the efforts he and many of his associates made to ensure that elections were indeed held in 1988, when Jayewardene was trying to wriggle out of them as he had done in 1982. He records though his surprise that Fr Tissa too thought the time was not ripe for these though, as we all know now, those elections were what brought the country back to life, just as the elections last year, despite Ranil Wickremesinghe’s efforts to wriggle out of them, are what has restored a sense of hope when despair was mounting as it did in the late eighties.

After his full account, with detailed reflections on questions of development, and also personal relations, of the first seventy years of his life, Godfrey says comparatively little about the next quarter century. But he does refer to his break with many of his more doctrinaire associates who, through the Friday Forum, joined with local and international elements which sought to punish the Rajapaksa government and its military forces for having dealt successfully with the Tigers. Godfrey was large enough to register his realization that the Tigers were intransigent – just as earlier he had, while criticizing the intransigence of government, noted the contribution to violence of Tamil militant groups – and describes his Third Narrative which tried to set down a balanced account of what had taken place in 2009.

That balance I found admirable, and it explains why Marga had such an impact on this country and on international agencies, whereas all successors here have tended to fall in line with the agendas of their funders. It is sad then to think, in reading this thought-provoking account of a life well spent, with its record of constant searching for justification, that we shall not look upon his like again.

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Features

Regime change and the vacuum:Strategic lessons of Iraq and Libya

Published

14 hours ago

2026/10/12

Thilina Walpola

Post-Gaddafi Civil war: the rebellion triggered by the arab spring of 2011 soon toppled the regime of Muammar Gaddafi. the power vacuum created by Gaddafi’s ouster has been exploited by local actors, as well as extraneous actors, with the only intention of making libya a war theatre for proxy wars and political disintegration

by Col. (R) Nalin Herath

There is a question that the international community must periodically ask itself: What happens to a State after its regime has been ousted?

The question is particularly relevant when examining Iraq and Libya. Saddam Hussein and Muammar Gaddafi were authoritarian rulers. Their governments were associated with political repression, human-rights violations and the suppression of political opposition. None of this should be ignored or excused. But recognising the failures of authoritarian rule does not prevent us from asking another, equally important strategic question:

Did the removal of these regimes adequately prepare for what came next?

The experience of Iraq and Libya suggests that removing a ruler is considerably easier than replacing the political, administrative and security architecture around that ruler.

Danger of confusing regime change with State reconstruction

A state is more than its leader. It consists of institutions, security forces, civil servants, courts, political structures, infrastructure, economic systems and, perhaps most importantly, an accepted monopoly over the legitimate use of force. When an authoritarian system has concentrated enormous power around one individual, removing that individual can expose weaknesses that were previously hidden. The strategic mistake is to assume that once the dictator has gone, a democratic and stable state will naturally emerge. History does not support such an assumption. The aftermath of Iraq demonstrates this particularly clearly. Following the 2003 invasion, the Coalition Provisional Authority issued Order No. 2, formally dissolving the Iraqi Ministry of Defence and the Iraqi Army, among other security institutions. A US congressional report later documented the enormous consequences of this decision, including the disappearance of hundreds of thousands of military personnel from the institutional framework of the state. Whatever the intentions behind the decision, the strategic consequence was that an established security structure had to be rebuilt while the country was simultaneously experiencing political upheaval and growing violence. That is a dangerous combination.

Iraq: Removing the structure before building the replacement

Saddam Hussein’s government was unquestionably authoritarian. It also reflected a complicated sectarian and political structure in which members of the Sunni minority occupied disproportionate positions of power despite being a demographic minority. But the question for strategic planners should not simply be whether Saddam deserved to remain in power. The question should have been:

What institutional structure would replace the system once he was removed?

An army can be politically controlled without being politically representative. A bureaucracy can serve an authoritarian government while still providing essential state functions. A security institution can be reformed without necessarily being destroyed. The distinction between reforming institutions and eliminating institutions is therefore critical. The post-2003 experience demonstrated the consequences of institutional disruption. Security vacuums contributed to insurgency and instability, while the process of rebuilding Iraq’s security forces took place amid an increasingly deteriorating security environment. The lesson is not that authoritarian institutions should never be reformed. The lesson is that state capacity should not be casually destroyed without a credible replacement.

Libya: prosperity, authoritarianism and institutional fragility

Libya presents an even more complicated case. Gaddafi’s government was authoritarian and deeply personalised. Political freedom was severely restricted, and the security apparatus was deliberately structured around regime survival. Yet Libya, under Gaddafi, also used substantial oil revenues to fund education, healthcare, infrastructure and social services. World Bank data from around the end of the Gaddafi era show life expectancy reaching approximately 75 years by 2011, skilled attendance at birth at 100 percent and measles immunisation at 98 percent. This does not prove that Gaddafi’s system was politically legitimate. It demonstrates something different: economic and social outcomes can coexist with authoritarian political structures.

The Great Man-Made River illustrates the scale of Libya’s investment ambitions. The World Bank described the project as one of the world’s largest engineering schemes, involving thousands of kilometres of planned pipelines to transport water from deep desert aquifers toward the populated coastal belt. The original project was estimated at approximately US$ 25 billion over several phases. Again, this should not become nostalgia for dictatorship. It should become a lesson in state capacity.

What happened after Gaddafi?

The post-2011 experience is perhaps the clearest illustration of the vacuum problem. Libya did not simply move from dictatorship to a consolidated democratic state. Instead, competing armed groups, political factions and institutions emerged. A UN economic and social affairs analysis concluded that the fall of the Gaddafi regime exposed weak state institutions and that the post-Gaddafi period was characterised by the proliferation of armed militias and institutional fragmentation.

The World Bank has similarly described how the security vacuum allowed armed groups to expand, while attempts to integrate them into the formal security apparatus produced a hybrid system in which state institutions and powerful armed groups operated alongside one another. This is the heart of the lesson. The consequences of regime change were also evident in Libya. The 2012 Benghazi attack, later portrayed in 13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi, illustrated the security vacuum that emerged after Gaddafi’s fall. The collapse of central authority allowed militias and competing armed groups to fill the space left by weakened state institutions. The lesson is clear: removing a regime may achieve military victory, but without a credible plan to rebuild the state, victory can quickly become a security vacuum.

When the state withdraws, something else occupies the space. If the replacement is not a legitimate national institution, the vacuum can be filled by militias, tribes, ideological movements, criminal networks or competing political authorities. The vacuum does not remain empty.

Terrorism question

There is another uncomfortable issue. Authoritarian regimes frequently suppress political and armed movements through coercive security systems. When those systems disappear abruptly, previously contained organisations can find new operating space. This does not mean that dictatorship is an appropriate method of counterterrorism. It means that counterterrorism cannot be separated from State capacity. The international community therefore needs to distinguish between defeating a particular terrorist organisation and maintaining the institutional conditions that prevent multiple armed actors from competing for power. The destruction of one regime does not automatically eliminate the forces that created insecurity. Sometimes it creates an environment in which those forces multiply.

Strategic mistake: winning the war but losing the peace

Military intervention can have a clearly defined operational objective. State reconstruction does not. A military campaign may successfully remove a government in weeks or months. Building legitimate institutions can take decades.This creates a fundamental strategic asymmetry. The shorter the planning horizon for intervention, the greater the danger of a long-term vacuum. The international community therefore needs to think beyond the first question: How do we remove the regime?

It must ask: Who governs the country the next morning? Who controls the borders? Who controls the security forces? Who pays government employees? Who maintains electricity, water and hospitals? Who protects critical infrastructure? Who administers justice? Who prevents armed groups from becoming alternative governments? Who provides political legitimacy? And perhaps most importantly: Who possesses the authority to enforce the decisions of the new state? If there are no convincing answers, regime change is only the beginning of the problem.

The lesson should not be that the United States or its allies should never intervene. Nor should it be that Saddam Hussein or Muammar Gaddafi should be rehabilitated as models of governance. The lesson is more practical. Regime change must never be confused with state-building.

Before dismantling an established political order, external powers need a credible understanding of the institutions that will replace it. Security-sector reform should normally distinguish between individuals who must be removed and institutions that must be preserved. A national army may need reform. A ministry may need restructuring. A security service may need accountability and civilian oversight. But destroying institutional capacity without having an operational replacement can create consequences far beyond the original objective.

Wider geopolitical lesson

The consequences of Iraq and Libya did not remain within their borders. State fragmentation affects neighbouring countries, migration, organised crime, arms trafficking, terrorism, energy markets and regional power competition. In today’s interconnected world, a failed transition in one country can become a security problem for an entire region. That is why intervention planning should include not only military objectives but also political, economic, humanitarian and security-sector objectives. The most important planning document may therefore not be the operational plan for removing the regime. It may be the plan for Day One after the regime has disappeared.

History should not be written as a simple choice between dictatorship and democracy. The real strategic challenge is more complicated. Saddam Hussein and Muammar Gaddafi were dictators. Their governments committed serious abuses, and their populations had legitimate grievances. But the failures of authoritarian rule do not automatically justify the destruction of state institutions without a credible plan for rebuilding them. The experience of Iraq and Libya demonstrates a fundamental principle of international security: A political vacuum is not neutral space. Someone will fill it. If legitimate national institutions cannot fill that space, armed groups, sectarian interests, extremist organisations or foreign-backed factions may do so. The ultimate lesson for the United States, its allies and the wider international community is therefore straightforward:

Removing a regime may win the immediate battle. Building a legitimate, functioning and secure state determines whether the intervention succeeds in the long term. The world should learn to ask not only “How do we remove the dictator?”. It must also ask:

“What happens to the country when he is gone?”

That may be the most important strategic question of all.

(The writer is the Secretary General of the Ceylon Chamber of Shipping, former Director General of the Institute of National Security Studies (INSS), and former Spokesman of the Ministry of Defence. He is also a Non-Resident Fellow at the London Dialogue. His areas of expertise include international relations, geopolitics, maritime affairs, national security, economic policy, and strategic governance. He is a consultant at JITT Group and a member of World Pace Board.).

Features

‘Death at the Sign of the Rook’

Published

14 hours ago

2026/10/12

Thilina Walpola

Tales of Mystery and Suspense – 23

By Prof. Rajiva Wijesinha

As I have noted with regard to the adventures of John Rebus, I am indebted to Dinali Fernando and her husband Steve for whole hosts of thrillers. The latter strongly recommended Kate Atkinson when I borrowed four books. I wondered about this, for I had not been too impressed with her debut novel, Behind the Scenes at the Museum, which was amongst the entries I had to judge for the Eurasian section of the Commonwealth Writing Prize. Two decades later, I had forgotten what it had been about.

But I am glad Steve persuaded me to read her. Kate Atkinson is distinctively British, and Death at the Sign of the Rook is set in a country house and the surrounding village, and seems a modern descendant of the laidback Agatha Christies I so much enjoy.

There are, however, many differences in that we have a policeman who can go rogue, like Rebus, with again a female sidekick who has a mind of her own, again like Rebus. But Jackson Brodie has retired and set up as a private investigator, while Reggie, a young lady, is still in the police.

There is a lesbian couple living in the converted dairy of the manor house, as has occurred in Agatha Christie too, in A Murder is Announced. But they are peripheral to the story, unlike Ben, the brother of one of them who left the army after losing a leg in Afghanistan. When he turns up at the Manor House to shelter from a snowstorm, along with its chatelaine, Lady Milton, he is asked to answer the door as various characters turn up, including Jackson and Reggie, who then starts fantasising about him.

The others who turn up are two couples, one from America, who have paid for a murder weekend at the hotel. The family is impoverished, and has sold lots of pictures to survive, but most recently a Turner had been stolen, almost certainly by Lady Milton’s housekeeper Sophie, who vanished one night along with the picture. Reggie had been involved in that investigation, but there had been no trace of either picture or young lady.

Jackson Brodie suspects a connection between that theft and the one he has been called in to investigate, which has not been reported to the police. The picture hung opposite the bed of an old woman whose carer vanished after she died, along with it. Her children, adopted twins, have asked Jackson to investigate and also try to trace the carer, though he suspects something strange in that they did not go to the police.

Kate Atkinson

Brodie, in studying the stolen art, is also struck by the disappearance of a Rembrandt from a house in Scotland, along with a member of the cleaning staff. He thinks the three women might be the same one.

But Brodie’s assumption that the three women who vanished when valuable pictures did were identical would not have helped except that Beatrice, as she was also called, kept turning up, including to the funeral home where the old lady’s body was kept. And then that picture turned up, in the village church, and was found by the local vicar, Simon Cate, whose life story is also a prominent feature of the novel. He was an aspiring actor but then smitten by faith, and became a priest, but in time he lost his faith. His wife left him after the death of their son, and he is now in this backwater, where he feels he is of no use to anyone. But he has a great feel for living beings, and his most successful service has been one in which he blessed pets. And he was deeply concerned about the bees that Ben looks after for his sister and her wife.

He too staggers into the manor house in the midst of the storm, in which everyone concerned loses their way comprehensively. But amongst those Ben lets in is a man in a tracksuit with cuts and bruises, who then vanishes after he has been led to a bedroom, when Ben went in search of brandy. We soon work out that it is the escaped murderer about whom Reggie has been alerted.

Simon also turns up, through the back door, carrying the picture and also a gun, for he has found the dead body of one of his parishioners when he went to her house in search of his mobile phone. She had been shot and he had picked up the gun he found there. But he could not tell the police, for though he called he had lost his voice, and for the last few days had communicated only through writing.

This chaotic mix of characters at the manor house is further complicated by the group of players putting on the murder mystery play though some members have either cried off or died before reaching the venue. So, there is much doubling up and confusion over who is an actor and who is not.

The grand now largely empty rooms of the manor house, and its various odd passages and multiple doors, make it a splendid set for the lunacy that runs on and on. Reggie finds herself in a pantry Atkinsonwith a dead body, though this turns out to be the nanny who fell down the stairs and was put there by Lady Milton’s younger son. And there is high drama on the roof when the murderer nearly kills Ben, but he is saved by Reggie, and when he tries to kill Brody with an axe, he is shot by Beatrice, who has been the maid who served at the dinner before the murder mystery play, and explains to Brody how she has managed all her thefts.

And then in the melee, she vanishes on a motorbike, along with the daughter of the old lady’s adopted daughter, the only person who seemed to grieve at the funeral, and to whom the old lady had left her house in a codicil to her will, which her children have not known about. She leaves the picture to the carer, but it is brought to Simon Cate as he lies in hospital, recovering from a heart attack which adds confusion to the play.

Wonderfully convoluted, but all very clear, despite the headlong pace of the book and its shifts from one scene to another, from one character to another (or rather combinations of them) and from one-time span to another. A writer and a detective well worth looking out for. e more books by her on Dinali’s shelves.

Features

Safety, security and teamwork in aviation

Published

14 hours ago

2026/10/12

Thilina Walpola

Indian Captain Smit Machchhar injured in the cockpit attack

by Capt. (Ret.).G.A. Fernando, MBA

There are three essential components to a commercial airline operation: safety, security and teamwork.

Aviation and teamwork at the ‘sharp’ end of a commercial aircraft, i.e. the flight deck, is unique. Unlike many other teams, it may be quite literally the first and the last time a particular combination of small teams of two, three, or four individual airmen (or women) will fly together. Sometimes even in the same airline that employs them.

Therefore, to make conditions safe and practical, while understanding and trusting tech other, they have to rely on a series of Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs), and ‘Normal’ and ‘Emergency’ checklists for every conceivable situation. That is, to be able to do the right things, and do things right. In fact, there is a saying in aviation to the effect that ‘if you make a mistake in aviation, be original and make a new one’.

To ensure that safety standards are constantly maintained, airline pilots’ proficiency is tested every six months, in simulators, under the supervision of examiners from the civil aviation regulator. In Sri Lanka that organisaton is the Civil Aviation Authority-Sri Lanka (CAASL). Three simulator checks are conducted every 12 months in keeping with the tenet that ‘practice makes perfect’. A pithy adage not confined to the world of aviation warns that ‘prior preparation prevents piss-poor performance’.

The simulator exercises include rejected takeoffs, including in cross-wind situations, landings, engine fires and/or engine failures from a variety of causes, cabin pressurisation failure, precision and non-precision approaches, and landings in bad visibility – amongst other conditions that could be expected in actual flight.

In addition, a flight in a real airplane, on a regular passenger service under the supervision of an examiner from the airline, is undertaken to ensure that the company’s standard practices and procedures are carried out and maintained as prescribed in the airline’s manuals. These publications are in turn approved by the national regulator.

Crash axe

Finally, flight crew members must take a written test annually, on emergency equipment locations and procedures, with 90% as the pass mark.

Since the mid-1980s it has been mandatory for airline pilots to undertake a Crew Resource Management (CRM) programme once every two years. This training essentially emphasises what to do and what not to do to, in a specific emergency situation, or even during normal operations, to make the team cohesive and effective. During the course, the CRM facilitators discuss recent incidents and accidents that have occurred. Results of those events are recorded and could be retrieved, when necessary, by the official aviation bodies.

Not unexpectedly, it is demanding on a pilot to fulfill these requirements on a regular basis throughout his/her career, along with presenting for a bi-annual medical examination, all with the objective of retaining one’s licence to operate an aircraft. It may not be understood, therefore, by persons outside the aviation industry, or even some working in other aspects of an airline organisation, that it is often the passion for flight that keeps many pilots doing what they do to earn a living.

Security

Another important factor is the challenge of maintaining security in all aspects of airline operations, not least in the cockpit. The challenges are many, with new ones surfacing almost every day. It is therefore essential to be always prepared for the activities and ‘methods’ of perpetrators seeking to wreak evil on an aircraft and its occupants. As it is impossible for any airline or national security organisation to cover all aspects, systematic management of risks to effect a safe outcome becomes imperative.

Flydubai Incident

In the recent Flydubai incident of 30 September, 2026, a first officer (co-pilot) attacked the captain of the flight with a crash axe to accomplish his sinister motives, into which investigations are continuing. For the time being, it prompts the questions: should the crash axe be easily accessible to the flight crew? Or even be there at all? I believe it is a case of assessing the greater risk.

With regard to that event, and the circumstances that led to it, other deterrents could have been applied more thoroughly. For example, more thorough screening of pilots’ and other crewpersons’ backgrounds, with emphasis on their mental health, ideological affiliations and previous employment history. Separately, during a time of conflict in the Middle East, should Flydubai have even been operating between Dubai and Tel Aviv? Notwithstanding that cost-cutting and profit maximisation are key aims of any business, an airline’s apparent failure to conduct adequate psychological profiling of flight crew members, while continuing to operate ‘profitable’ routes, regardless of potential danger, can only be regarded and condemned as greed and disregard for human lives.

( Captain. Fernando, RCyAF, SLAF, Air Ceylon, Air Lanka, Singapore Airlines (SIA), SriLankan Airlines, Former Chief Pilot, Air Lanka Boeing 737, Former Deputy Chief Pilot, Lockheed L 1011, Former Crew Resource Management (CRM) Facilitator, SIA, Former Deputy Director (Air Operations) CAASL, Former President, Aircraft Owners and Operators Association Sri Lanka (AOAOASL), President, The Colombo Flying Club, Representative for Aviation, Organisation of Professional Associations (OPA), Hony, and Member Sri Lanka Society of Transport and Logistics.)