Features

NU AT THE London School of Economics

Published

11 months ago

2025/07/20

Thilina Walpola

Sidney and Beatrice Web

CHAPTER 10

[The London School of Economics] seems to prefer intense, committed, often workaholic scholars and public figures.

(Dahrendorf, 1995, History of the LSE, p.191)

NU in London

NU’s next big break came in 1938, when aged 30, he received a scholarship and leave to pursue postgraduate studies at the London School of Economics (LSE) as an internal student. The government was in the early stages of setting up a new Commerce and Industry Department, and NU’s superiors had selected him to undertake the special one-year course of training in Business Administration offered by the LSE, to make NU’s services “more useful to the department.” He was expected to: “make a closer acquaintance with modern business methods and to acquire training in practical commerce”(N.U. Jayawardena Personal Files).

In his admissions application, NU stated that he was interested in acquiring “a close acquaintance with the foreign marketing of primary agricultural products”; and that the Sri Lankan government would make arrangements with the recently established Colonial Empire Marketing Board to enable NU to familiarize himself with their marketing surveys. His special interest was the marketing of “oil seeds,” since Sri Lanka was the leading exporter of copra and coconut oil (letter to Prof. Arnold Plant, 18 Jan. 1938).

LSE records indicate that NU received a scholarship of £300 for the year as well as half-pay as an allowance. The cost of the course was £30. Whereas his leave was for one year, NU provisionally sought permission to extend his studies for a further year. With his sights set high – as they always were – he had ideas of completing a Ph.D. in two years if the LSE allowed it. For NU, this would not have seemed an unusual goal. However, there were strict rules and he was advised that he could apply for the M.Sc. degree concurrently with the Business Administration course – which he did. He also had not given up his ambition of obtaining a law degree. Accordingly, NU almost immediately sought and obtained permission from the LSE to register and study for the (London) Bar examinations.

NU’s selection for the special Business Administration course was fortuitous. His theoretical and practical exposure to business and commercial studies at the LSE would equip him for the second half of his life as a business and financial entrepreneur. The opportunity to study at the LSE as an internal student gave him the chance to devote himself to his studies without the added pressures of work and family commitments, and to attend lectures by eminent economists and social scientists (some of whose works he had already read for his B.Sc. (Econ.) degree). Furthermore, to attend a prestigious university and to make use of its facilities, while living in London a commercial and an intellectual hub – was for him a great opportunity. NU arrived in Britain in September 1938 for the LSE term that began in October and ended in June 1939.

LSE staff and students

This was NU’s first experience as a full-time student, and the excitement he felt at that prospect is not hard to imagine. His period in London was to have a profound effect on his intellectual life and professional career. As part of the process of setting up the Department of Commerce and Industry, the Sri Lankan government had recently established Trade Commissions abroad, one of which was located at “Ceylon House” in London at 28 Cockspur Street, SW1, which served as NU’s mailing address.

The LSE

The London School of Economics and Political Science, better known as the LSE, and a part of the University of London, was founded in 1895 by a group of Fabian socialists, notably Sidney and Beatrice Webb, Graham Wallas and George Bernard Shaw. The LSE aimed to provide a theoretical understanding of the political economy of Britain and the world that could also be of use to the emerging labour movement in Britain, where there was plenty of action but less in the way of theoretical insights. Trade union militancy had developed rapidly in Britain from the 1880s onwards; and the Labour Party, formed in 1906, was composed of Fabian socialists, along with representatives of the trade unions and the cooperative movement.

The older universities of Oxford and Cambridge were elitist, and mainly geared to the humanities, classics and philosophy, with a strong emphasis on sports. They had their ancient buildings and chapels, rivers, boat races, lawns, and historic rituals. These universities had traditionally produced the ‘mandarins’ who would rule Britain and its colonies. In contrast to such ‘ivory towers’ and bastions of privilege, the LSE was down-to-earth, non-elitist, and an urban institution that reflected the shifting needs of the times. As society and the economy became more complex and industrialized, a broad classics-based education, to produce ‘cultivated’ gentlemen to help run governments, was no longer adequate.

There was a growing need for specialization and applied knowledge, as governments began to administer and build new and more complex political and economic institutions. Max Weber, the pioneer sociologist, noted this clash of the two approaches to education: the first being the traditional approach, of which “the goal consisted of “‘the quality of a man’s bearing in life,’ which was considered ‘cultivated;’” and the modern view, which valorized “specialized training for expertness” (Weber, 1948, p.243). The 1930s and 1940s were the period when this transition became more solidified, even in the colonies; and after his return from the LSE, NU, who exemplified the “specialist type of man,” would soon incur the resentment of the older type of “cultivated man” in the bureaucracy.

The LSE seemed an ideal place for a person with NU’s qualifications, outlook and work experience. It was policy-oriented and had new courses in sociology, political science, business, commerce, and other subjects, such as statistics, not taught in the longer-established universities. As a “total institution,” it had a certain vibrancy – one entered it in the morning and left at night. Apart from lectures, tutorials and discussions, students could use the library and canteen, attend lunchtime dances, participate in student societies, and listen to guest speakers – including British and foreign politicians, and from the colonies, agitators for independence.

Outside the LSE complex, students were part of the capital city of London, with its several attractions and distractions – political, social and cultural. The LSE was in the ‘heart’ of London, within walking distance of a cluster of historic monuments and institutions,

such as the BBC, the Bank of England and commercial banks (Threadneedle Street), newspaper offices (Fleet Street,) the Law Courts, Bloomsbury, the British Museum, Trafalgar Square, Whitehall, the House of Commons, the theatres of the West End, the multi-ethnic restaurants of Soho, and the great bookshops (notably Foyles) on Charing Cross Road.

Class room at the LSE

Supported by grants and bequests, the LSE developed as a part of the London University and developed a character of its own. The LSE motto was “rerum cognoscere causas” (to know the cause of things), and it had as its logo, a beaver – an animal that burrows. “The School” (as it was known) attracted teachers in the newer disciplines of economics and political science, and became associated with many famous and controversial names – which added to its attraction for students. LSE’s director from 1920 to 1937 was Lord William Beveridge – the author of the Beveridge Report, which launched the welfare state in Britain after World War II. Ralf Dahrendorf, who served as Director from 1974 to 1984 (and became author of the authoritative history of the LSE), states that it did not exactly “invent” the social sciences, but “brought them together like no other university in Europe (and) led them to full bloom in all their variety” (Dahrendorf, 1995, p.vii).

The diversity of the LSE was partly due to its internationalism, which was “one of its greatest strengths” and “widened the horizons of hundreds of students and many young members of staff” (ibid, p.223). Moreover, in the 1930s the LSE benefited from the flight of European scholars escaping Fascism, who injected “a new energy” into the university (ibid, p.296). According to economist Harry Johnson, the “essential thing” about the LSE was that it was “the one centre of economic teaching and research” in Britain that was “genuinely international”:

…it is not merely an established British university that allows itself the luxury of a few foreign staff-members and students for the sake of variety and balance, but a world university that tries both to keep in touch with whatever of intellectual importance is going on elsewhere in the world, and to admit to its scholarly fellowship students of quality whatever their origin may be. (Johnson, quoted in Dahrendorf, p.223)

In the LSE of the 1920s and 1930s, the Department of Economics was renowned and “acted as a magnet for bright students from many parts of the world” (Dahrendorf, p.215). There were African, Asian, Middle Eastern, and North and South American students at the LSE – many of them eventually becoming eminent politicians, bureaucrats, university teachers or diplomats in their countries. Among them in the 1930s were Krishna Menon, N.M. Perera, R.N. Haksar, Doreen Wickremasinghe, and B.K. Nehru. NU would have known many such students at the LSE, for as B.K. Nehru (later an Indian diplomat) remarked, “foreign students tend to form their own groups for they are all homeless and rootless and friendless” (ibid, p.190).

Fabian Society logo

The LSE possessed a remarkable diversity in terms of race and class, in contrast to the privileged old universities. B.K. Nehru commented on its “pervasive atmosphere of learning” and the “absence of distractions” (ibid, p.185). Kingsley Martin (editor of New Statesman), who studied at LSE, found it “a wonderful home of free discussion, happily mixed races, and genuine learning” (ibid, p.187). According to Dahrendorf, the LSE “did not necessarily produce well-rounded personalities,” as it seemed to attract committed single-minded and hard-working scholars and public figures (ibid,p.191). He also remarks that:

Real life was never far away… LSE was… more serious and also more seriously cherished by its students even if they were desperately poor or felt that their ‘delight’ was almost outweighed by ‘drudgery’… The school produced a particular frame of mind. (ibid, p.301, emphasis added)

Unlike the prestigious universities, many poor students attended the LSE, and others doing daytime jobs followed the evening classes. “Some students were poor, very poor,” Dahrendorf wrote, and also noted that it hurt to read how “Nell McGregor worked her way out of a Manchester working-class family in the middle of the depression to the LSE… [and] got her degree on tea and buns and baked potatoes and not much else” (ibid, p.299). NU would have empathized with the problems of such students, who struggled against all odds to pursue their studies, much like he himself had once done. Years later, in a taped interview, NU would recall walking from one end of London to the other and being struck by the contrasts of wealth and poverty he encountered along the way.

A student’s assessment of the LSE around the time that NU was there, was that, “the closed mind was alien to everything about the LSE” (ibid, p.299). The LSE economists regarded themselves as “the centre of the school, if not the universe” (ibid, p.298). Some of the great lecturers were described as “spell-binders,” “great showmen” with “beautiful speaking voices” (ibid, p.297).

Extract from Beatrice Webb’s typescript diary

The Economics Department

In the 1930s, the LSE, which had started with a social-democratic vision, veered to the right in economics and to the left in political science, whereas the older Cambridge University ironically absorbed the left-inclined economists. Controversies raged between LSE and Cambridge on the respective virtues of the ‘free market’ and of the Keynesian model (ibid, p.219). In “the second dispute between London and Cambridge,” the chief interest was “the way to combat [the Depression of 1929], by deflation or by expanding public expenditure” (ibid, p.218).

NU, who had lived through the Depression and also written about it, would have been avidly reading about these debates, and he almost certainly gravitated more towards the LSE viewpoint. These debates and polemics (and quarrels) of the 1930s were a “turbulent episode in the history of economics” (ibid, p.217). The issues were “broad, including methodology, theory, policy, ideology, and the role of the economist in public life” (ibid, p.218). Since politics was ever present at the LSE, these ‘great

debates’ reflected a political divide.

Robbins and Hayek Lionel Robbins and Friedrich von Hayek formed the bulwark in the LSE of traditional liberalism against Keynesian interventionism and socialism, which were the dominant creeds of the day. Robbins was head of the Economics Department. He was born in 1898 in a village near London, the son of a market-gardener who was a “liberal activist” and “strict Baptist.” He used to cycle five miles to a local school. In 1920 he entered the LSE as a student, and was later appointed to the staff. In 1929 he became Professor of Economics (Dahrendorf, p.214). By all accounts, he was a fine teacher, known for his “great seminar in economic theory” (ibid). Students doing other courses sat in at his seminar – and not to have attended it, was said to be as bad as not having been at the LSE (S.B.D de Silva, 2007, personal communication).

The philosophy and theories of Friedrich von Hayek, whom Robbins invited to join the department in 1931, would make one of the most significant impacts on the discipline of economics and economic policy. He was an émigré economist, formerly a citizen of the collapsed Austro-Hungarian Empire, and belonged to the Austrian School of Economics. Though scoffed at by mainstream economists at the time, his ideas gained ascendance in the 1980s, half a century later.

Hayek won the Nobel Prize in Economics in 1974, and is best known for his book on the dangers of central planning, The Road to Serfdom (1944). He came from a family of biologists, and was second cousin to the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein. As a young man serving in the army during World War I, he had felt the “compulsion to find an answer to ‘the burning question’ of how to build a ‘juster society’” ( Interestingly, NU’s 232-page economic magnum opus, written in 1977 (which coincided with the liberalization of the economy when the UNP formed the government in a landslide victory), was similarly entitled An Agenda for a Just Society.) (Yergin, 1998, p.123). According to Hayek:

The desire to reconstruct society led many of us to the study of economics. Socialism promised to fulfil our hopes for a more rational, more just world… [it was] almost inevitable… [that any] warm-hearted person, as soon as he becomes conscious of the existing misery, should become a socialist. (ibid, pp.125-26)

As an Austrian, however, his direct experience with the hyperinflation that occurred in his country after World War I, alerted him to its dangers. Hayek was wary of state interference and believed the open-market system was the most effective means, not only of promoting individual freedom, but also of regulating demand and supply – or as pithily summed up by the US economist Larry Summers, many years later – the “invisible hand was better than the hidden hand” (ibid, p.132). Hayek thought of the price system as being “nothing less than a marvel.

Lionel Robbins

” (According to Hayek: The marvel is that in a case like that of a scarcity of one raw material, without an order being issued, without more than perhaps a handful of people knowing the cause, tens of thousands of people whose identity could not be ascertained by months of investigation, are made to use the material or its products more sparingly; that is, they move in the right direction (Yergin, 1998, p.125). His main contention against Keynesian interventionism and other centrist approaches was that information was lacking about markets to enable planners to adjust them. Later, Hayek became “increasingly apprehensive about what he saw as the advance of collectivism, central planning and Keynesian interventionism” (ibid, p.125).

The famed Keynes-Hayek debates that took place between Cambridge and the LSE today still shape the two major schools of economic thought regarding the merits of the welfare state versus a market-controlled economy. The LSE’s influence upon modern economics became the basis of the modern perceptions of free-market economics, with an influence almost around the globe.

Business Administration

While the courses at the LSE were mainly ‘academic,’ the university also provided some that were of an applied and practical nature in business and commercial subjects. One of these was the special course in Business Administration, which NU followed in 1938. The Business Administration Department was set up in 1931, somewhat on the lines of the Harvard Business School programme. Bothuniversities took a less traditional, more hands-on approach to education,

centred around ‘case studies.’ The course at the LSE involved study tours of and internships with British business firms, government departments and similar organizations, and discussions led by

business leaders.

The LSE Business Administration course was unique in Britain at this time, and was a precursor to the MBA (Masters in Business Administration). Competition to enrol in it was high, with entry restricted to 20 students per year. NU was the first Asian to be admitted to the programme after its inception in 1931 (N.U. Jaywardena Personal Files). It involved an amazing range and number of subjects: Business Relations, Business Finance, Cost and Marketing Problems of Manufacturers, Cost and Marketing Problems of Distributors, Business Statistics, Management Accounting, Industrial Psychology and Personnel Management, and included factory visits. Students were also required to attend other lectures in Business Administration and in Economic Principles. The course was a “full session of daytime study” extending over 29 weeks (Pamphlet of the Dept. of Business Administration, Session 1939-40, p.6).

NU recorded that he visited many factories and firms, “with a view to studying their systems of business organization, personnel management and factory administration.” These included wellknown companies of the time such as the Ford Motor Co., Harrods, Lyon’s, and Metal Box. He also visited the Colonial Office, Department of Overseas Trade, and Colonial Empire Markets Board.

Students of the Business Studies course had full access to the LSE’s facilities, including the library and membership of the Students’ Union. The faculty was composed of some eminent teachers and its head was Arnold Plant, the Professor of Commerce and Business Administration, “an outstanding teacher” in Economics (Dahrendorf, p.205). The Business Studies students also had access to the lectures of other distinguished economists and statisticians in this ‘heroic age’ of the LSE. They included, besides Robbins and Hayek, F.W. Paish, Vera Anstey, A.M. Carr-Saunders, Professor R.H.Tawney (famed for his classic book Religion and the Rise of Capitalism), and many more illustrious persons.

Teachers from other disciplines whose lectures attracted students were Harold Laski (Political Science), A.J. Toynbee (International History), Morris Ginsberg (Sociology), B. Malinowski (Anthropology), Karl Manheim (Sociology) and Ivor Jennings (English Law) (Calendar of the LSE 1938-39, pp.24-29). The latter deserves special mention because of the important role he was to play in Sri Lanka’s university and constitutional affairs. Jennings came to Sri Lanka during the war in 1941, to serve as the Principal of Ceylon University College, and was instrumental in setting up the Universities in Colombo and later, Peradeniya. He also served as the chief legal advisor to Oliver Goonetilleke (see Chapter 11), and played a major role in helping substantially in drafting the Soulbury Constitution of independent Sri Lanka. Among the younger lecturers at the LSE of the time who later became eminent in their fields were R.G.D. Allen (Statistics), R.W. Firth and M. Fortes (Anthropology), DudleyStamp (Geography), and H. Finer (Public Administration)

NU deepened his interest in economic theory during his period at the LSE, benefiting from the lectures and seminars of eminent economists and social scientists, and from the ongoing debates on economic theory and policy. He also widened his experience through his contact with students from different countries. The LSE library contained a vast collection of nearly three quarters of a million books and journals in the social sciences (Pamphlet of the Dept. of Business Administration, Session 1939-40, p.23). NU – whose love of books dated from his early school days, when he used the Library and Reading Room of St. Aloysius’ College – would have been in his element there. One can imagine the delight and wonder that NU would have felt at having this world of knowledge laid out before him.

As mentioned earlier, during NU’s stay in London he perhaps for the first time felt a measure of freedom. His correspondence from this period shows that, while he was trying to make maximum use of this time to advance in his studies, he also took time off to visit new places. During the holidays, he travelled to Cornwall, as well as to Switzerland, where he went during his summer break. But the changing events in Europe brought his stay to a sudden end.

With war looming on the horizon in the wake of the rise of Fascism, London became a politically tense city. After the declaration of war against Nazi Germany in September 1939, the situation changed irrevocably. As a precaution, the LSE temporarily moved its campus to Cambridge. Although there was no bombing of London or fighting for the rest of that year, foreign students, for fear of becoming stranded, quickly prepared to return home. In spite of the danger, NU desired to stay on at the LSE in Cambridge for the 1939/40 term. The Colonial Office initially had no objection, but in early October 1939, it wrote a letter to the LSE informing them that NU should return “as soon as possible.” He was in Switzerland at the time this letter arrived, and could not immediately find his way back to London – he had a problem about obtaining a visa from the French authorities. However, by December 1939, he managed to obtain passage to Colombo.

The Family Back Home

While NU had been in England at the LSE, Gertrude with their children, Lal aged 4 and Nimal aged 2, moved to Colombo from Lunava (their daughter, Neiliya would be born in the year following NU’s return to Colombo). Gertrude, the boys and their nanny stayed in a guesthouse called “Killarney” in Kollupitiya. Lal attended his first school, St. Clares’, also popularly known after its principal, Ruth Marshall, as “Miss Marshall’s School.” In the evenings, the family went to Victoria (Vihara Maha Devi) Park, which had swings and other equipment for children to play on. NU’s sister Rosalind was close to Gertrude, and when NU went to Britain, Gertrude spent a day or two at Rosalind’s home in Ratmalana to observe sil for poya. Rosalind’s daughter Chandrani (born 1930), dressed in white, accompanied Gertrude to the temple. After NU’s return, as he moved up in his career, the family rented a house on Police Park Avenue. It would not have been easy for a young mother with two infant sons to cope on her own. NU later, recalling this period years later, remarked that:

I did not realize how much I had neglected my family in those distant days while I studied and fully spent my time at the London School of Economics. (Roshan Peiris, Sunday Observer, 13 Dec. 1987)

A great support to Gertrude was the nanny who worked for her, Jane Cornelia Atale, a Eurasian Christian, who was a widow. Mrs. Atale came to work for the Jayawardenas before the birth of the elder boy Lal, and stayed with the family long after Neiliya (the youngest in the family) was married. Born around 1880, her father was a British planter, and like many Eurasian ‘orphans’ she was brought up in a Catholic convent. Fluent in English, she had worked as a nanny for a planting family – the Ogilvys – and also at the “House of Joy,” an orphanage in Talava run by a missionary, Miss Evelyn Kearney. Mrs. Atale had also been a hospital attendant. She was married to a Sinhala employee in the Prisons Department, and had two daughters. She was a strong presence in the Jayawardena household helping to bring up the three children, who were greatly attached to

her. Neiliya recalls that she was the only one able to calm NU down when he lost his temper. Mrs. Atale never left the Jayawardenas, until her death in 1970, aged 90, at the home of Nimal.

A crucial phase in NU’s life began after this brief interlude in London as a student. The war and postwar years in Sri Lanka were when NU’s talents as an economist and an administrator would be increasingly recognized and utilized to the fullest. (N.U. JAYAWARDENA The First Five Decades Chapter 9 can read online on https://island.lk/in-west-asia-india-could-be-the-impartial-arbitrator/

(Excerpted from N.U. JAYAWARDENA The first five decades)

By Kumari Jayawardena and Jennifer Moragoda ✍️

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Features

The NPP’s Constitutional Reforms: Purposes and Processes

Published

4 hours ago

2026/06/14

Thilina Walpola

Participating at the All Party Conference that then President Jayewardene convened in January 1984 in the aftermath of the watershed violence of 1983, Dr. Colvin R de Silva characteristically perorated that the structure of the Sri Lankan state is incongruent with the country’s sociopolitical reality. He said it more as Historian than as a Lawyer or the architect of the 1972 Constitution.

This gap between state structure and political reality was somewhat bridged by the 13^th Amendment that came three years later, with all due credit to President Jayewardene no matter how begrudgingly he may have done it and even if it was under Indian duress as JRJ’s critics have been alleging ever since.

In this backdrop, it is fair to say that the NPP’s constitutional proposals, even if they may not have been drafted with this specific intent, could contribute to further bridging the structural-reality gap and potentially transform Sri Lanka into an ethno-equal state and an ethno-equal nation. The rub, however, is in the ability of the government, as well as its intention, to fulfill in practice what is otherwise a very laudable purpose. The experience so far with the Provincial Council elections and the absence of any manifest effort by the NPP government towards implementing any of its main constitutional proposals do not allow room for too much optimism.

As I cite below, the NPP’s Manifesto fulsomely promises to hold all provincial and local government elections within one year after coming into office. Now with all the ministerial and prime-ministerial explanations in parliament as to what and what pre-steps this overworked government is apparently constrained to take, the PC system would consider itself lucky if the next provincial elections end up being held at the same time as the next parliamentary elections. That is the reality. It could be much better and that too by a government that promised to be much better.

The NPP’s Constitutional Purpose

Section 4 of the NPP Manifesto, A Thriving Nation, A Beautiful Life, is entitled A Dignified Life – A Strong Country, and includes nine subsections, viz. 1) A new constitution – A united Sri Lankan nation; 2) An efficient public service – A skill based professionalism; 3) Rule of law – A judicial system with equal access; 4) Public security assuring – People friendly service; 5) A humanitarian prison – A lawful confinement; 6) A drug-free country – A healthier citizen life; 7) A dignified diplomacy – A sovereign state; 8) High level of national security – Secured state; and 9) A Sri Lankan Nation – The Universal Citizen. These subheadings and sections are indicative of the NPP’s vision for the Sri Lankan State, a Sri Lankan Nation, and the equality of all its citizens.

The Section specific to the constitution (Section 4.1) includes the NPP’s promise to usher in “a new constitution” for “a united Sri Lankan nation.” The process for introducing the new constitution is described thus: “A new constitution will be drafted and passed through a referendum with the necessary changes, if there any, after going through a public discourse.” In addition, Section 4.9 – A Sri Lankan Nation – The Universal Citizen, elaborates on the premise and the purpose of a new NPP Constitution which are outlined as follows:

“Introduce a new constitution that strengthens democracy and ensures equality of all citizens. This initiative will build on the constitutional reform process started in 2015 which remains incomplete. The proposed constitutional reforms will guarantee equality and democracy and the devolution of political and administrative power to every local government, district and province so that all people can be involved in governance within one country. Provincial councils and local government elections, which are currently postponed indefinitely, will be held within a year to provide an opportunity for the people to join the governance.”

Fifteen “activities” are included as making up the constitution making process: 1) Recognizing and enacting the rights mentioned in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights as basic rights; 2) Broadening the constitutional law about the rights of children, women, and people with disabilities according to international conventions; 3) Safeguarding the voting rights of immigrants within and outside of the country; 4) Abolishing the executive presidency and appointing a president, without executive powers, by the parliament; 5) Introducing a new parliamentary electoral system; 6) Limiting official presidential residences to one; 7) Abolishing the pensions and special privileges given to retired presidents and their families; 8) Appointing 25 ministers and corresponding deputy ministers to 25 logically determined ministries and abolishing State Ministerial posts; 9) An advisory council consisting of specialists on the subject will be appointed to each ministry; 10) Introducing a code of ethics, including not allowing members of parliament (MPs) and ministers to appoint their immediate family members to their personal staff; 11) Abolishing allowances made to MPs for participating in parliamentary sessions; 12) Abolishing the pension offered to MPs after 05 years; 13) Preventing MPs or their close family members from directly or indirectly engaging in businesses or contracts with the government; 14) Removing the tax-free vehicle permits for MPs; and 15) Giving only one vehicle for Ministers /Deputy Ministers to be used during their period of office.

Interestingly, while the aborted 2015 constitutional reform process that the NPP was a part of is acknowledged, there are no references in the proposals – to the 1972 Constitution or the 1978 Constitution, and missing in the proposals are some of the signature terms that were/are both the badges and burdens of the two constitutions viz., the republic; unitary state; socialist (1972) and democratic socialist (1978); and special status for Buddhism. On the other hand, the proposals (Activity #1 & #2) include the commitment to enshrine and enforce rights and freedoms of Sri Lankans in accordance with international covenants and conventions. This inclusion is refreshingly open in contrast to the 1972 and 1978 constitutions which were rather averse to embracing anything ‘foreign’ due to the misplaced fear of diluting the island’s sovereignty, which is more theoretical than concrete.

Sovereignty and territorial integrity are duly emphasized in Section 4.7 of the proposals: A Dignified Diplomacy – A sovereign State, and in Subsection 4.8: Sovereignty and Territorial Integrity. Section 4.9: A Sri Lankan Nation – The Universal Citizen, underscores national reconciliation, equality of citizens in religion and language, and the vigorous operationalization of the Provincial Council system even though the 13^th Amendment is not mentioned in the proposals. There is, however, specific reference to the 16^th Amendment and the promise to implement the National Language Policy that is enshrined in 16A. Sri Lanka’s ethnic diversity is acknowledged and various measures are identified for achieving national reconciliation and a free and equal society.

Among these measures are: establishing an Inter-Religious Council consisting of all religious leaders and religious scholars to resolve inter-religious issues; releasing all political prisoners and ensuring their free socialization; abolition of all oppressive acts including the Prevention of Terrorism Act (PTA); regularization of civil administration in a way that the civil rights of the people in all parts of the country including the North and East are guaranteed; providing educational and employment opportunities to all ethnicities based on merit without political influence; providing relief to war widows, internally displaced persons, people with disabilities and people with trauma in need of relief and shelter; settlement of existing land related issues by a National Commission on Lands and Settlements; and ending resettlement programmes that operate with the aim of changing population composition; and addressing the wages, land, housing, education, and health issues of the Malaiayaka Tamils based on the NPP’s Hatton Declaration of 2023.

This is an impressive list by any comparison and it will be all the more impressive if the NPP government were to seriously and capably set about achieving most or all of them.

The Constitutional Process

While the Manifesto indicates that “a new constitution will be drafted and passed through a referendum with the necessary changes, if there are any, after going through a public discourse,” it is not clear if the NPP intends to comprehensively amend the current (1978) constitution, or repeal and replace it based on a referendum. Similar to its 1972 predecessor, the 1978 Constitution provides for repealing and replacing itself but requires the people’s endorsement in a referendum. Although the referendum requirement is limited to specific provisions of the constitution, an interpretive judicial culture has since evolved widening the referendum net to capture other provisions that are not stipulated in Article 83 of the constitution.

Opposing and, in my view, more persuasive voices have been heard from experts like Dr. Nihal Jayawickrema, and long before that from Dr. Colvin R.de Silva during the controversy over 13A referendum requirements, that a referendum requirement should be limited to changing only the provisions that are specifically to the provisions mentioned in Article 83. By this interpretation, a referendum is required to extend the term of a president or of parliament, but not for abolishing the system of elected executive presidency itself.

At the same time, a synthesizing view has also evolved that if the constitution were to be changed in a substantial manner, let alone repeal and replace it even without changing any of the Article 83 provisions, it would be prudent to have a referendum and be done with it. The latter is also the NPP’s position but seemingly taken from a more positive and democratic standpoint than a narrow interpretive standpoint. But there are questions as to how and when the NPP government will have a constitution package ready and when will it likely call for a referendum. It is not necessary to detail the amending processes in an election manifesto, but with nearly two years in office it is time for the government to indicate what is going to be its new constitution and how is it going to be achieved.

Another technicality is that when it drafted the manifesto promising constitutional changes subject to a referendum, the NPP may not have been expecting a two-thirds majority in parliament. So, what was its thinking about meeting the initial amendment requirement of a two-thirds majority in parliament without having sufficient numbers in the government. It would have had to find common ground with opposition parties in parliament. That is the very purpose of the two-thirds majority in parliament – to achieve interparty consensus as opposed to using a steamroller single-party majority.

The question to the government is why is it not being consultative with at least some, if not all, of the parties in opposition. As well, inasmuch as the Manifesto refers to a continuation of the 2015 constitutional reform process, why is the government not consulting with those individuals and organizations who were significantly involved in that earlier process. Some of them were directly associated with the NPP. But none of them is in the scene now, while the current Minister of Justice was politically unheard and unseen at that time.

The double burden of Justice and Constitutional Affairs is too much for even the most experienced and equipped political leader. It is too much to saddle a first time MP and Minister with such heavy responsibilities. As well, there is much talk about the government inviting non-NPP experts to play lead roles in institutions and agencies involved in running the economy. Why not extend this approach to implementing the NPP’s constitutional reform process?

To hark back briefly to the making of the 1972 Constitution, neither Colvin R de Silva nor the United Front were banking on winning a two-thirds majority in the 1970 elections. Instead, they were relying on Colvin’s legal theory that the new constitution will be a total rupture from the Soulbury Constitution and that its making will follow its own path based on an electoral mandate from the people.

“Not merely despite the Queen, but in defiance of the Queen and her Crown,” was Dr. Colvin’s platform pitch. The two-thirds majority that the United Front turned out to be a curse in disguise. While the NPP is now saddled with a two-thirds majority it doesn’t have Colvin’s legal theory to ignore the amending procedures of the 1978 Constitution. JR Jayewardene faithfully followed the amending procedure of the 1972 Constitution, but created a more rigid constitution than its far more flexible predecessor.

Ushering new constitutions are easily done on the morrow of independence or a revolution. Midlife constitutional changes are extremely difficult in any country and there are only a handful of countries that have successfully achieved this feat. The successful making of the 1972 and 1977 constitutions in Sri Lanka were almost entirely due to the power and competence of their two architects, Colvin R de Silva whose power was entirely intellectual and professional, and JR Jayewardene who in addition had absolute political power after the UNP’s landslide victory in 1977.

Sri Lankan politics has not been able to replicate their circumstances ever since, and the circumstances of the NPP are no different, its two-thirds majority notwithstanding. If the government is serious about drafting a new constitution, conducting public consultation, and holding a referendum, it should have started the process the day after it was sworn into office. It could start the process right away even now. The task deserves a separate ministry and supporting expertise. It cannot be the part time job of a first time Minister of Justice.

All that said, many of the NPP’s reform proposals can be implemented without introducing a new constitution. Few have already been introduced and many more can be introduced by simple legislation or through amendments without a referendum. For the super majority the government has in parliament, its legislative record has not been sufficiently impressive. The government has given priority to implementing proposals that it considers to be more resonant with the voters at large.

They include, the taking away the manifestly undue perks and privileges of former presidents, and the proposals to end the more offensive perks and privileges of parliamentarians. The reform of parliament itself is to be achieved by implementing a new electoral system; by limiting cabinet size to 25 and appointing an advisory council for each ministry; and introducing a code of ethics for MPs. These measures will also go down well with the public, but they can all be implemented through simple legislation without having to change the constitution through a referendum.

The most glaring omission is the continuing foot dragging over the repeal of the Prevention of Terrorism Act (PTA). There are already new victims of this continuation. What is the point in indefinitely detaining people like Retired Major Gen. Suresh Sallay under the PTA? It only vitiates however plausible a case the government might have against Gen. Sallay. More importantly, it flies in the face of the NPP’s promise to abolish the PTA, and its promise of custodial and prison reforms under Section 4.5 of the Manifesto: A humanitarian prison – A lawful confinement. The PTA only keeps the door open for police abuse and overreach.

The most recognizable and much talked about proposal is for “Abolishing the executive presidency and appointing a president, without executive powers, by the parliament.” If only the NPP government can deliver on this promise during its current first term, it can justifiably claim to have fulfilled its constitutional promise almost in entirety. No one will likely ask for anything more from the NPP, constitutionally speaking. But that seems unlikely to happen and this gets clearer as each day goes by. The talk inside the NPP and outside would seem to suggest that President Dissanayake will seek a second term as an elected Executive President and renege on what was made out to be a historic promise. It will become another daydream, so to speak.

by Rajan Philips

Features

Inside Xi’s Pyongyang Doctrine

Published

5 hours ago

2026/06/14

Thilina Walpola

Soon after Pyongyang unveiled a new facility to produce nuclear bomb fuel, with Kim Jong Un reaffirming plans to expand the country’s nuclear forces “at an exponential rate”, President Xi Jinping crossed the border after seven years to visit his neighbouring state. Before his arrival, Xi published a carefully crafted message, couched in the deeply rooted lexicon of diplomacy and carrying layered meanings for a North Korean audience, in which he argued against hegemonic politics and the erosion of international rules. It was not merely a gesture of goodwill but a calculated act of strategic signaling, written in the language of stability while echoing the rhetoric of geopolitical rivalry that increasingly shapes the international order.

The visit itself, staged with extraordinary ceremony across Pyongyang’s grand civic spaces, was presented as an affirmation of friendship between socialist neighbours. Yet beneath the choreographed spectacle lies a more complicated reality. China is no longer speaking to North Korea as a problem to be solved, but as a condition to be managed within a fragmented international system. Xi’s carefully chosen phrases — “shared destiny”, “mutual assistance” and “unbreakable friendship” — were not decorative flourishes. They were assertions of permanence in a relationship that has survived war, sanctions and decades of strategic ambiguity.

At Kim Il Sung Square, where formations of soldiers, students and citizens performed beneath fluttering flags, the language of unity concealed an underlying imbalance. China’s diplomatic doctrine, repeatedly articulated in Xi’s writings, presents both states as “fellow travellers on the socialist road”; yet the material reality is more hierarchical. Beijing is not merely a partner to Pyongyang. It is the centre of gravity around which much of the North Korean system revolves economically, diplomatically and, increasingly, strategically. This is not openly acknowledged, but it is reflected in trade patterns, energy dependence and the tightly managed permeability of the border regions.

Xi’s article, published ahead of the visit and carried by North Korean and Chinese state media alike, reveals the intellectual framework behind this engagement. It speaks of “top-level strategic guidance”, a phrase that in Chinese political language denotes the primacy of leader-to-leader diplomacy over institutional negotiation. It also reiterates opposition to “hegemonism and power politics”, a formulation that simultaneously criticizes Western strategic dominance while offering ideological reassurance to Pyongyang. The brilliance of the wording lies in its dual purpose. It reassures North Korea while signaling to the United States without ever mentioning it directly.

Less visible, but widely recognized among regional specialists, is the dense network of economic activity that sustains the frontier between China and North Korea. Officially, trade remains constrained by sanctions and regulatory controls. Unofficially, the border operates through a mixture of state-approved commerce, local barter arrangements and carefully managed informal exchanges. Chinese provinces adjoining the frontier depend on this controlled permeability, particularly in sectors such as food supplies, textiles and consumer goods. In return, North Korea provides labour, access concessions and selected resource exports. This is not a “shadow economy” but a tolerated grey area maintained by both governments because it preserves stability without allowing the relationship to descend into crisis.

It is within this grey area that stories of “secret networks” frequently emerge. Yet the reality is often more bureaucratic than clandestine. Trade is driven less by rogue actors than by overlapping permissions, discretionary enforcement and shifting instructions from the centre. The notion of a handful of powerful profiteers orchestrating cross-border commerce oversimplifies a system in which benefits are dispersed through layers of administrative authority, provincial intermediaries and sanctioned enterprises. The defining feature is not secrecy but carefully managed ambiguity.

Xi’s emphasis on “jointly upholding the international system with the United Nations at its core” becomes particularly revealing when viewed alongside these frontier realities. On the surface, it is a reaffirmation of multilateral order. In practice, it reflects China’s preference for a world in which legitimacy flows through established institutions, even while bilateral relationships such as that with North Korea operate according to a different set of political calculations. This dual-track approach enables Beijing to retain strategic flexibility without formally dismantling the international framework from which it continues to benefit.

The visit also took place against a wider shift in global diplomacy. The Financial Times has noted the growing number of world leaders traveling to Beijing rather than Xi traveling abroad. Some interpret this as evidence of a China-centred diplomatic sphere. Whether viewed as modern statecraft or, more controversially, as a distant echo of tributary-era symbolism, one fact remains evident. Xi Jinping has built a diplomatic model in which China is less a participant in international gatherings and more a focal point through which bilateral relationships are channeled.

Within this arrangement, North Korea occupies a uniquely delicate position. It is at once a liability, a buffer and a strategic asset. Its nuclear programme complicates China’s relations with much of the international community, yet its existence also serves as a geopolitical barrier on the Korean peninsula. Xi’s language avoids direct reference to nuclear weapons, concentrating instead on “regional stability” and a “peaceful environment”. That omission is deliberate. Silence, in this context, is not avoidance but the management of contradiction.

One of the most closely watched questions following Xi’s visit is whether North Korea’s rapid nuclear expansion will become less visible, or simply retreat further from public view. Xi later stated that he and Kim had reached an “important consensus” and agreed to safeguard regional and global peace, a formulation that may signal a preference for restraint in presentation rather than any fundamental change in Pyongyang’s strategic ambitions.

Under Xi, Chinese foreign policy has increasingly prioritized stability over transformation and management over resolution. Nowhere is this more evident than on the Korean peninsula, where the objective is not denuclearization through coercion but the containment of escalation within predictable limits. In this sense, North Korea is not being pushed towards change.

Rather, it is being held within a carefully maintained balance that serves broader regional interests.

The wider geopolitical setting, including Russia’s deepening alignment with Pyongyang and the fluctuating approach of the United States towards Asia, further complicates this balance. Xi’s diplomatic language — with its emphasis on multi-polarity, opposition to “power politics” and the creation of a “community with a shared future for mankind” — is intended to place China at the centre of an alternative vision of international affairs. Yet that vision is not merely ideological. It is expressed through trade agreements, infrastructure investment and selective political partnerships.

What emerges from the Pyongyang visit is not a straightforward story of alliance, but one of carefully calibrated interdependence. North Korea retains leverage through its strategic unpredictability, while China retains influence through economic indispensability. The border between them is not merely geographical. It is a political and economic mechanism composed of regulated flows of goods, labour and messaging. It is this managed interdependence that allows both governments to preserve autonomy while avoiding collapse or confrontation.

Xi Jinping’s rise in global politics, therefore, cannot be understood solely through military strength or economic weight. It rests upon the construction of a diplomatic order in which China functions simultaneously as host, mediator and stabilising force. Foreign leaders travel to Beijing not as supplicants, but as negotiators entering a system where outcomes are increasingly shaped through bilateral and asymmetrical relationships. Within that framework, North Korea remains both an exception and a participant, its nuclear status complicating but not excluding its place within China’s strategic sphere.

Xi’s visit to Pyongyang reflects a world in transition, where the old certainties of alignment and isolation no longer fully apply. In their place is emerging a more complicated pattern of selective cooperation, managed tensions and carefully cultivated historical memory. Xi’s diplomacy does not resolve contradictions. It arranges them. And within that ability to arrange competing interests lies much of his contemporary influence. Whether that model ultimately proves durable or fragile remains one of the defining geopolitical questions of our age.

by Nilantha Ilangamuwa

Features

The Examiner at lunch: Nihal Jayawickrama, architect of justice

Published

5 hours ago

2026/06/14

Thilina Walpola

Illustration Hashan Ranatunga

Justice Ministry secretary and attorney-general at 33, Nihal Jayawickrama was the architect of the justice system’s most radical overhaul. Over a leisurely lunch at Tintagel we talk about the speed of justice, an independent public prosecutor, and the 1972 constitution.

“Tintagel” was Nihal Jayawickrama’s reply when I asked him where we should lunch. I smiled. The former secretary to the Justice Ministry, appointed at the tender age of 33, and now 88, hasn’t lost his mojo.

No restaurant — even Bawa’s studio, now become the Gallery Café — can claim anywhere near Tintagel’s pedigree. It was the home of the three Bandaranaike prime ministers. If the waiters’ intelligence is on point, it will be home to one of them again soon. Yes, Tintagel’s lease is up. Lunch while you can.

I’ve reserved one of two verandah tables, a few meters away from where S.W.R.D. Bandaranaike, the former prime minister, was assassinated by Talduwe Somarama, “a foolish man in robes”. Thinking Jayawickrama is a few minutes late, I wander to the sitting room. But he is waiting for me. I’m surprised that, at 88, he has come alone.

We make our way to the verandah and sit down. I break the ice, asking Jayawickrama when he first came to Tintagel.

Jayawickrama pauses to think, then with twinkling, mischievous eyes, says it was 70 years ago, in 1956. He had come to Tintagel to invite Bandaranaike to speak to the Royal College literary association. Jayawickrama said there was no security, save for maybe a sole policeman at the gate. He had walked to the verandah, and sat on one of the many chairs where the public would sit in the mornings, waiting for the prime minister to talk to them.

Bandaranaike’s response to the invitation had been clever rather than candid. He said it would be a great honour to address the Royal College literary association, and that he would be so happy to drop by. But the prime minister had only one problem: he’d have to go to the one at his own school, S. Thomas’, first. But they hadn’t invited him. Thus nothing ever came of the invitation.

We move on to more important business, lunch. Jayawickrama eschews the wine, we settle on thambili, almost always the best value drink on a Colombo resto menu. A veggie, he orders his usual, the parmesan gnocchi. I’d have ordered the pumpkin gnocchi, for many years my Paradise Road staple, but sadly they dropped it years ago. Good. For having taken up the pen, the purse won’t permit me anyway. Really wishing for Caribbean ox tail, I reluctantly settle for the osso bucco.

I’m too impatient for subtlety, so launch right into one of my burning questions: how did Jayawickrama become both secretary to the Ministry of Justice and attorney-general at such a young age. The answer is found in Balangoda, where Sirima Bandaranaike’s brother contested the 1965 election. He faced a few court cases, but the SLFP was strapped for cash. So, the party asked Jayawickrama to represent him. Jayawickrama went on to represent other members of the Ratwatte family, and then eventually, Mrs. Bandaranaike started consulting him too. He also served as her election agent and ended up drafting her prime ministerial acceptance speech in 1960.

A few days after her victory, Mrs. B called him and asked if he could be the permanent secretary to the justice ministry. Jayawickama said he was a lawyer, not a public servant. She responded:

“No no no no, you had been complaining for a long time that absolutely nothing had been done about law reform. I am telling you now come and do whatever you want to do — all the reforms you have been talking about. You have a free hand; we have got a two-third majority so the legislation can be passed. So come and do that.”

The Justice Ministry secretary’s monthly take-home at the time was around 1,800 rupees, which more than covered the 500-rupee rent onof his Park Road flat. Today, the secretary’s entire salary wouldn’t even pay for half the rent of such a flat.

Jayawickrama’s work was cut-out for him. The tale sounds familiar. The civil procedure and criminal procedure codes — the backbone of court work — were from 1880. Two distinguished commissions, chaired by Justices Noel Gratian and C. Nagalingam respectively, had already figured out what needed to be done. They produced “excellent reports” but “no government had done it”, Jayawickrama said rather ruefully.

When the attorney-general died, an acting attorney-general was identified. But he had to finish some cases he was presiding over. As the country needed to have an attorney-general, Bandaranaike appointed Jayawickrama to the office on his 33rd birthday. His contemporaries were the most junior state counsel. It was not a friendly atmosphere. Luckily for him, he had friends who warned him of the files which contained traps and snares.

He set up a research division in the Justice Ministry for law reform, consisting of five or six bright young things. The division included Dhara Wijetilleke, who became the planning ministry secretary, Suri Ratnapala, who became a distinguished constitutional law professor, and Priyani Wijesekara who became the Parliament’s secretary-general.

Unclogging justice

This team was the moving force behind the Administration of Justice Law of 1973, which overhauled the justice and courts system.

Among the many changes brought by the act was a recommendation from the Gratiaen Commission of 1952. The attorney-general’s role was almost bifurcated by creating the office for a director of public prosecutions.

The key reason Jayawickrama pushed this initiative through was to de-clog and speed-up the justice system by eliminating “non-summary proceedings”, where the police would present evidence to a magistrate to decide which court would hear a case. The public prosecutions director would instead direct the police’s inquiry and decide whether to file a case in the magistrate’s court, or at a higher court.

The team also introduced pre-trial conferences for non-criminal cases and mandated day-to-day hearings for trials, with postponement only granted in the event of family bereavement.

These initiatives faced massive protest from the Bar, as they “would change their lifestyles” and affect them financially. Not all his reforms succeeded. When he tried to regulate lawyers’ fees, the cabinet paper leaked and a lawyer representing the prime minister barged into Temple Trees, left his briefs on the breakfast table, said “you appear for yourself”, and went off. Mrs. Bandaranaike told Jayawickrama to withdraw the cabinet paper.

The Bar also refused to participate in the legal aid scheme. Jayawickrama’s response was to say that he would create a brigade of “barefoot lawyers” like barefoot doctors. Years later he said the proposal wasn’t a serious one, the remark was made in terrorem, meant to frighten the bar into becoming more generous with legal aid.