Features

A Cabinet Secretary Remembers

Published

3 years ago

2023/01/1

Thilina Walpola

Extracted from Memoirs of BP Peiris

My father, family and early days at Panadura

According to my birth certificate, I, the eldest son of my parents, was born on March 29, 1908, at our ancestral home “Gorakapola Walauwa”, Panadura.My father was Edmund Peiris, then a clerk in the Colombo Kachcheri on the princely salary of Rs. 60 a month. He used to travel from Panadura to Colombo by train, and from his home to the railway station on a push bicycle. He very early caught the eye of the Government Agent, Mr J. G. Frazer (later Sir John) who noted him for promotion on the ground of ability. My mother was Somie, the eldest daughter of C. F. S. Jayawickrama, Mudaliyar of the District Court of Kegalle.

I have no recollection at all of my paternal grandfather, Mudaliyar Romanis Peiris, Customs Mudaliyar, who died while I was quite young, nor of my paternal grandmother. A drinking fountain gifted by my grandfather to the state still stands in the premises of the Colombo Port Commission.In commemoration of the Diamond Jubilee of Her Majesty Queen Victoria, he built a school which he called the Queen Victoria Diamond Jubilee Buddhist School, which served the needs of many of the surrounding villages. My father was manager for many years and later gifted the land and the buildings to the state.

Of my maternal grandparents I have vivid memories. My grandfather Jayawickrama, whose picture used to hang in my father’s house, was a man of honesty, integrity and strength of character. His face in the picture at home showed determination, independence and a strong will. He was not a man to bend his knee to any person, however high he might be. He had, I believe, 16 children, to all of whom he gave an excellent education.

His eldest son was Sylvester, Advocate, a very respected member of the Matara Bar, who died in 1940 at the age of 54 at a time when he was District Judge of that town. On the day of his funeral all the shops in the town were closed as a mark of respect. The second child was my mother. Another of his daughters came first in French in the Cambridge Senior in the whole of the British Empire and, after her marriage taught her brother (later Jayawickrama Q. C.) French to enable him to pass the London Inter-Arts Examination. Another son was “Sargo” of cricketing fame.

My grandfather Jayawickrama dressed, as all Mudaliyars did in those days, in trousers, cloth and coat, with a sort of a Dutch helmet on his head, used to visit periodically his married son and his daughters all the way from Panadura to Matara and Tangalle. He was a keen chess player and always carried a traveling board with him, the board having suitable holes and the pieces were pegs to fit them. The pieces were of ivory and ebony.

He was a man who worked to time; he would start a game with my mother at 7.00 p.m. and play till 8.00 p.m., having a chew of betel and a cigar during the game. At 8.00 he would close the board to dine, and continue the same game from day to day till its end. I have in vain attempted to trace that chess set. My brother and I used to watch him play with my mother and we soon, at the age of about seven, picked up the game.

On one of our return trips by train from Diyatalawa to Colombo, the old gentleman was kind enough to come to Polgahawela to meet his daughter (my mother) and his grandchildren. The next day he was dead of a heart attack. His body was brought from Kegalle to my father’s house and the cremation took place at Panadura.

He was the Jayawickrama referred to in the leading Privy Council case of Jayawickrama vs Amarasuriya (1918), which he won. He had lost the case in the District Court and the Supreme Court but had faith in justice. Before appealing to the Privy Council, he had told his children to be prepared to step on to the street and beg if he lost the final appeal.

The case was instituted by my grandmother against her brother who had benefited largely by his father’s death. There was no doubt, on the evidence, that it was his father’s wish that he should provide for his sister and her large family. The sister had threatened to institute an action against him for the assignment to her of an undivided half-share of the inheritance and he had promised to pay her Rs150,000 if she refrained from instituting the contemplated action.

The decisions of the Ceylon courts were based on the concept of “Consideration” in English law. The Privy Council applied the Roman-Dutch law concept of justa causa which was wider. They held that the brother’s promise was binding and enforceable as it was made deliberately after much negotiation, in discharge of the moral obligation found to rest upon the brother to do an act of generosity and benevolence to his sister, namely, to make provision for her and her children. The Privy Council allowed the appeal with costs in all courts.

I remember my grandmother as a most simple and kindly woman, dressed not in saree, but in skirt and jacket. She also used to visit her children regularly, and once, when I was about seven years old, my mother sent me with her by train and bus to Kegalle where my grandparents were then living. From the Polgahawela railway station, the journey was completed by bus.

For my parents I have nothing but praise for the education they gave us, which has enabled my brothers and sisters and me to hold responsible positions in life. My father was a Royalist, that is to say, an old boy of the Royal College, then situated at San Sebastian. His contemporaries were B. F. de Silva, O. L. De Kretser, T. F. Garvin, V. M. Fernando, R. L. Pereira, F. H. B. Koch, all of whom rose to the Bench.

My father, later when he was Mudaliyar of the Panadura and Kalutara Totamunes, used to tell us that he rarely used the school library while the others did, and he encouraged us and insisted that we use the library as much as possible, advice by which all his sons have profited.

He was at school in the days of Hayward and Hartley and was one who received the well-known caning for taking as their right a holiday on the Royal-Thomian match day. I remember an incident years later, after he had married and had five children and the family was having a holiday at Diyatalawa, when we crossed Hartley during our morning walk. My father raised his hat and said “Good morning, Sir”. Hartley returned the greeting and said, “Let me see -Royal? Yes, I remember. Left from the Remove.” It was a marvelous memory.

Even as a student father appeared to have been very methodical. He was a boarder at the house of (later Sir) James Pieris’ mother and kept a small notebook of his daily expenditure. I remember seeing this notebook, one item in which was “tiffin 11 cents”. He was as methodical up to the day of his death when we found a document telling us exactly what we should do – where his last will was, how he should be dressed, who his pallbearers should be, a list of his assets, a valuation of his property etc., with the result that I, as his executor, had no difficulty in answering any query from the Estate Duty Department.

The printed invitation cards sent by my mother’s parents on the occasion of her wedding, a copy of which is in my possession, show that the wedding took place at 11 a.m. on Thursday, June 28, 1906, at Amaragiri Walauwa, Unawatuna, Galle, the residence of Mr Thomas Amarasuriya. The wedding photograph shows the groom and his best man, Advocate B. F. de Silva, in morning suits. A newspaper account of the wedding states that “instead of the usual cake and wine the whole assembly sat down to a sumptuous lunch when the health of the newly wedded couple was pledged.”

In 1908 my father was appointed Muhandiram of the Colombo Kachcheri. In 1913 the post of Mudaliyar of the Panadura and Kalutara Totamunes having fallen vacant, he applied for the post. In the final selection, he told us that three applicants Mr A, Mr B and he were summoned for an interview. The interview was by the Colonial Secretary. Each candidate was asked what he thought of the other two.

Mr A and Mr B had apparently nothing very pleasant or creditable to say about the others. My father, when asked the same question, had said that he had nothing to say against the other candidates but had come to speak about himself. The Colonial Secretary’s concise minute to the Governor was, I learned, something on the following lines:

Your Excellency,

I have interviewed the three candidates. Mr A is an extremely able man, painfully conscious of his ability. Mr B is another clever man almost bordering on insanity. I recommend Mr Peiris.His Excellency minuted “Approved” and my father was appointed – the youngest man to be appointed Mudaliyar of the second most important revenue district of the island, second only to Colombo.

Congratulatory meetings on his appointment were held in different parts of the District sponsored by such gentlemen of quality as Gate Mudaliyar J. E. de Silva Suriyabandara (Magistrate of Kalutara), O. G. de Alwis, Clement Wijeratne, M. H. Jayatillake, H. Meritimus Fonseka, C. P. Samarasekera and M. E. Fonseka.

He held the office for over 25 years and was honoured with the titular rank of Mudaliyar and later of Mudaliyar of The Governor’s Gate. His district extended from the Moratuwa bridge in the north to the Bentota bridge in the south. He got to know the district and people so thoroughly that in his later years he was able to write a report from his office without inspecting the scene as he appeared to know every tree and culvert in the area.

His reports to the British Assistant Government Agent were always forwarded by them to the Government Agent with the endorsement “I forward herewith a report from the Mudaliyar, with which I agree.” Some Ceylonese Assistant Government Agents used to forward my father’s reports with his name deleted and the Assistant Government Agent’s name placed at the end in substitution.

Father had a rather peculiar habit of not getting permission to leave his station when he came from Panadura to Colombo. He always took leave when he had to go south beyond the Bentota Bridge. One day, a most amusing incident took place on the Galle Road at Ratmalana. Father had come to Colombo without leave and was returning home when he found the Assistant Government Agent’s car broken down on the way. He stopped his car and the two drivers between them got the car in order again.

The Assistant Government Agent thanked the driver and then asked my father, “Mudaliyar, aren’t you out of your station without leave?” Let me say here, in an age when the foreign British civil servant is being constantly vilified, that the officer concerned in this particular case was a Ceylonese. Father replied that in 20 odd years he had never asked for leave to come from Panadura to Colombo. His superior told him that in future he had better take leave before leaving his district in either direction, and father took that as an order.

Soon after that some affray had taken place within his district in the vicinity of the Moratuwa bridge and father was asked by the Assistant Government Agent to go personally to the spot, inquire and report. He went and held the inquiry but found that to complete proceedings he had to cross the bridge and, under the previous order, had no authority to do so without prior permission. He wired accordingly, and the order regarding prior permission to leave station was promptly withdrawn.

Father was a good host: he believed in entertaining well or not at all. Although a moderate drinker himself, he had ample liquor for his guests and a good table. If you invite people, he used to say, treat them well. If you cannot afford to treat them well, don’t invite them. He used to tell us that when we grew up, we should never get into debt and put ourselves in a position to allow the tailor to say “There goes my suit”.

He regularly took leave for the whole of April each year and took the entire family up-country. As we could not afford to rent a bungalow, he arranged through a friend of his in the railway that we occupy the bungalow of a bachelor station master who would be father’s guest during our stay. The arrangement worked extremely well. And so it was that we spent delightful holidays at Ohiya, Pattipola, Haputale, Diyatalawa and other upcountry stations.

Some of these stations were, at that time, also sub-post offices and it was, in one of these stations that, as a schoolboy, I picked up the Morse Code. I am still able to send a message in Morse but, unfortunately, I never was able to get my ear attuned to receiving one. For a holiday at Diyatalawa, the Brigadier placed a military hut at our disposal and we had a grand time with the soldiers, whom father entertained.

They were nervous about eating tomato sandwiches thinking it was red pepper.At home, Father was a strict disciplinarian. Dinner was a simple meal, within his means. It was punctually at 8 p.m. At 7. 30 p.m., whether there were visitors or not, he had his first drink. At 7. 45 p.m. his second, and then dinner. Should one of us brats come to table with hands unwashed or hair uncombed, he would be driven away from the table and not taken back until he had put himself in good condition.

At that time, a Chief Headman wielded great authority in his district, and I distinctly remember that every funeral procession and perahera stopped beating the drums whilst passing the Walauwa. I feel quite sure that the Headmen’s system was abolished by the State Council because the Councillors were jealous of the power and authority exercised by the Headmen in their districts. Today, this is replaced by a transferable Divisional Revenue Officers’ Service – able men no doubt, but men without any local prestige who do not know the district in the way my father knew his.

My father retired on the first of April 1940, after having served the Government for over 40 years. He had held the office of Mudaliyar of the Panadura and Kalutara Totamunes for 27 years and filled a large place in the official and social life of the district. On his retirement, the public accorded him a farewell dinner at the Panadura Town Hall, the largest gathering ever seen at a public dinner in the town.

Tributes to him as a man and as a public servant were paid by the speakers, and covers were laid for 183. Mr (later Sir) Susantha de Fonseka presided. Among the diners were Mr and Mrs D. S. Senanayake, Mr W. O. Stevens, Government Agent of the Western Province, and Mr P. J. Hudson, Assistant Government Agent. The Urban Council moved a vote of appreciation. His portrait in oils was unveiled at the Kalutara Kachcheri.

My father died, after a very short illness, on the first of February 1961, at the age of 81. His Excellency the Governor-General, Sir Oliver Goonetileke called at the house to pay his last respects. The following appreciation appeared in the press:

“The death yesterday of Gate Mudaliyar Edmund Peiris, at the ripe age of 81, has removed a landmark from Panadura Town. Since his retirement after 42 years of active service ending up as Mudaliyar of the Panadura and Kalutara Totamunes, which post he held for 27 years, he was always at the service of his fellow citizens and participated in many public activities in the town where he resided.

“Whatever service he performed, whether it was for the town, home for the aged, or personally looking after the urgent needs of the poor who called on him for help, or mediation, he performed his part with a great deal of method, never haphazardly.

“Method in fact was the guiding principle of his life. Even at death it was a matter for wonder to those whom he left to read his detailed and precise instructions as to the manner in which his funeral was to be conducted. He had even got prepared his own tombstone inscription leaving blank only the date of death. Few think of death while they are alive. Mudaliyar Peiris was one of the few, and it may be that because he was conscious that death comes to every man sometime or other that he was always ready to forgive and forget. That also is one of the rich legacies which he has left behind not only to the large band of sons and daughters and grandchildren but to those who enjoyed and valued his friendship.

“Till his last illness struck him down, age did not mar his zest for living and many of his friends both admired and envied the short dapper Mudaliyar out on the road ‘doing his constitutional’.

Many civic activities of the town of Panadura will be the poorer by Mudaliyar Peiris’ death, but the organization which would suffer most would be the King George V Silver Jubilee Home for the Aged which he dearly loved and cared for during the last few years of his life.

“Another act of the Mudaliyar is worthy of record. He was the owner of a school built by his father, Mudaliyar Romanis Peiris, who had named it the Queen Victoria Diamond Jubilee Buddhist School. Some years ago, Mudaliyar Peiris handed over the land and the school buildings to the State, so doing what a subsequent Government of the country was to decide to do as a matter of Government policy. Not many are now spared to live to the age of 81.

“The Mudaliyar has made the most of these many years he lived not for self alone (though he must have been a happy man to see his sons in good positions and his daughters well-married) but for others as well.”

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Features

Role of identity in the making and breaking of West Asian peace

Published

3 hours ago

2026/06/25

Sahan Weerasooriya

Negotiators at the Pakistani-negotiated preliminary peace talks. BBC

The West Asian peace effort continues waveringly amid uncertainties. The world could be considered as having ‘some breathing space’ currently in this tangled situation on account of a dip in oil prices but whether such relief would be of a long term nature is left to be seen.

Meanwhile, some vital ‘details’ in the peace process are continuing to hobble it. One such factor is the nuclear issue. While US President Donald Trump is on record that Iran’s purported nuclear programme from now on will be monitored by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), this assertion is being denied by the Iranian authorities who indicate that Iran will be coming under no such regime. That is, Iran will be answerable to no one with regard to its legitimate right to defend itself.

Accordingly, an early closure to the nuclear question could not be expected and the furthering of peace in the region hinges on the principal sides being of one mind on the issue. Moreover, toll-free shipping through the Strait of Hormuz is proving to be a bone of contention between the warring sides.

However, perhaps going largely unnoticed in the Middle East region are identity questions of considerable magnitude that have stood in the way of the region making some headway towards a peace settlement and which would continue to undermine such a process going forward. Identity, or a group’s self conception, is by far the most intractable of the factors in the conflict and the main sides would do well to manage it effectively before long.

US Vice President J.D. Vance, as pointed out in this column last week, fired one of the first salvos in this regard in the current peace effort. He reportedly said: ‘Regional peace and stability includes stopping the funding of “terrorist organizations” .’ He probably had in mind the Hezbollah organization which is funded and armed by Iran but, needless to say, the latter would reject this statement out of hand because it does not see the Hezbollah as terroristic in orientation.

Accordingly, the tangled issue of ‘who is a terrorist?’ would recur to hamper the West Asian peace bid. An important corollary to this matter is that Middle Eastern militants would be branding US administrations as terroristic considering the humanly costly military interventions undertaken by the latter over the decades in the world’s war zones.

It is difficult to see the main sides taking up the issue of terror and arriving at a common understanding on the problem over the next couple of months in their peace deliberations but the unresolved question could be expected to be the proverbial ‘elephant in the room’ that could even wear the sides down. Accordingly, ‘quick fixes’ to the Middle East imbroglio would need to be ruled out.

However, paring down terror to its essentials, it needs to be found that in contemporary times it is identity and issues growing out of it that keep the question alive and render it intractable. In fact the problem should be seen as igniting and sustaining a multiplicity of conflicts world wide.

So pervasive are identity questions that they are seen by some as having played a role in leading to the recent resignation of Keir Starmer as UK Prime Minister. Among other things, the latter is seen as having been incapable of managing migration related issues besides falling short in strengthening domestic social cohesion.

Identity issues came to a head in the UK in the form of the recent anti-immigrant riots in Northern Ireland. Clearly, some immigrants continue to be seen as aliens and parasitic in nature in some parts of the UK by jingoistic elements. Thus is ignited anti-foreigner violence.

That said, some of the most laudable measures for the promotion of peaceful race relations are found in the UK today. The latter’s race relations legislation could be seen as constituting a model for the rest of the world and needs to be studied and adopted by particularly the global South where identity conflicts are rampant.

Unfortunately, racial amity is not being considered a priority by the Trump administration. Under the latter immigrants are being seen by supremacist whites as the archetypal ‘Other’ who should be violently shunned. Accordingly, social cohesion in the US too is being steadily undermined and stepped-up race hate in the country shouldn’t come as a surprise.

In the West Asian region, archetypal ‘Othering’ could prove particularly pernicious and destructive. It could lead to the unraveling of the current peace talks between the adversaries and needs to be addressed by them if the negotiations are to prove productive.

For far too long the West and Israel have been viewed as archetypal enemies by Iran and its supporters. On the other hand, Palestinian militants have been habitually seen by the Far Right in the US and by hard line Israelis as sworn enemies who are best eliminated. These seemingly unresolvable divides in the Middle East could bring down the present negotiatory process.

Even if the present round of mediated negotiations between the US and Iran lead to a substantive cessation of hostilities in West Asia, the divisive mindsets of the prime antagonists, that is, the US and its ally Israel on the one side and Iran and its supportive militant groups on the other, would need to be changed for the better if enduring peace is to be given a chance. That is, mindsets would need to be transformed on both sides of the divide from mutual hostility to mutual amicability. No doubt, a long-gestation process.

It cannot be stressed enough that those mediating in this long-running conflict, themselves need to approach peace-making with unbiased minds. It needs to be realized, for example, that Israel too has been ‘hurting’ badly in this conflict over the decades to the degree to which the Palestinian side has been victimized cruelly, dispossessed and divested of dignity.

Any negotiated peaceful settlement should seek to address this persistent mindset malaise as well and turn enmity into amicability. An equitable solution that addresses the lingering grievances of both sides could lay the basis for this process of ‘Turning Spears into Ploughshares.’

‘Land and Bread’ have been at the heart of the Middle East conflict over the decades or even centuries. An equitable solution should provide these assets in equal measure for both sides. There is no getting away from the ‘Two State Solution’.

Features

Central bankers live on Short End Street; Economic planners live on Long End Street

Published

3 hours ago

2026/06/25

Sahan Weerasooriya

Long End Street is not a summation of Short End Streets. Eighteen short-term crises and no long-term growth in sight!

For quite some time, there has been no agency of government dealing with long-term economic and social policy questions. Nor have universities been of any help. There has been a National Planning Department in the Ministry of Finance but we have not seen any worthwhile reports from them. M. D. H. Jayawardena, in 1956, presented in Parliament the Six-Year Programme of Investment. Soloman Bandaranaike established a National Planning Council and a Planning Department, with Princy Siriwardena as its Director. They wrote the Ten-Year Plan, better known for its readability than its depth of analysis or policy content. Ten years or so later Dudley Senanayake established a Ministry of Planning and Employment with Gamani Corea (later of high international repute) as its Permanent Secretary. The Ministry was responsible for some useful analytical work and the development of a bureaucracy responsible for plan implementation. The latter was the work of a brilliant member of the Ceylon Civil Service, Godfrey Gunatilleke, who also worked in the Ministry. The major pre-occupation of the Ministry turned out to be the annual government budget and the management of direly scarce foreign exchange, all short term considerations. They set up a bureaucratic mechanism to evaluate capital expenditure in the government budget. The Ministry won plaudits for its Foreign Exchange Budget, some analytical wok on the economy, including population projections as well as education, in both schools and universities. As the 1970s wore on, planning earned a bad press and the new government of 1971 disbanded most of that and created a Department of National Planning in the Ministry of Finance, which survives to date.

A part of the purpose of this narrative has been to bring out that, all along, government has had no outfit of economists and sociologists whose job was to study long term changes in our society and the economy and in the rest of the world and propose solutions for consideration by governments. (A brilliant exception was the work on education, that was directed by Jinapala Alles, who had graduated in chemistry and was a fast learner and was at great ease with numbers. He was also an effortless leader of a small team of self-selected competent and enthusiastic public servants.) The government depended on the Central Bank for advice on long term development of the economy. Princy Siriwardena was seconded for service in the Planning Secretariat; similarly, Gamani Corea was from the Bank. Later, he was replaced with H.A.de S. Gunasekera, likely the most brilliant economics teacher in the University of Ceylon. He taught monetary economics, essentially short term. (His favourite economist Keynes famously wrote, “In the long run we are all dead”.)

When the Ministry of Planning and Employment was established in 1965, government plundered the Central Bank to staff it: Gamani Corea, R. M. Seneviratne, N. Ramachandran, Nihal Kappagoda and G. Usvatte-aratchi. Later, W. M. Tillekeratne and A. S. Jayawardena both long term employees of the Central Bank, were appointed as the chief economist of government. Jayawardena still later became the Governor of the Bank. Several other employees of the Bank, including J. B. Kelegama, P. B. Karandawela, P. B. Jayasundera worked at high levels in successive governments and that practice continued when Mahinda Siriwardena became the Secretary to the Ministry of Finance when Anura Dissanayake became the Minister of Finance. It is mysterious that the government saw no need for specialist advisers who would identify long term economic and social problems and solutions therefor, look out for markets and technology and warn of impending pitfalls, in contrast to our mighty neighbour which had a Planning Commission that handled long term problems and a Central Bank which had learnt to handle masterly, monetary problems.

Pitambar Pant, Montek Singh Ahluwalia, Manmohan Singh, I. G. Patel and Raghu Ram Rajan were most distinguished economics policymakers and central bankers. Japan benefited greatly from the work of MITI. So did Korea from its counterpart. This is not to argue that had there been an outfit of that sort, Sri Lanka would now be rich but to warn that the Central Bank is neither equipped nor fit to fight those battles. If you scan the Central Bank Act of 2023, you will find stabilisation the most frequently recurring theme. Clause 6 reads ‘The primary object (objective?) of the Central Bank shall be to achieve and maintain domestic price stability.’ The most generous reading that the Bank may have anything to do with economic development is in Clause 6 (4) ‘In pursuing the primary object (objective?), the Central Bank shall take into account, inter alia, the stabilisation of output towards its potential level.’ Lawyers may have a field day with that and economists may beg for its meaning.

Amarananda Jayawardena was the last Governor of the Central Bank who had understood that the central bank was equipped to handle short term problems and that not always valiantly, and that it had neither the tools nor the resources to plan and engineer long term development. As Governor, he did not speak for the government on long term economic and social problems, although prior to assuming duties as Governor of the Bank, he had been the chief economist of the government. Jayawardena knew all too well the nature of the tools and the resources he had and how far he could confidently aim and shoot. It was simply silly to produce a Five-year Road Map (no matter how colourful the accompanying graphics), when a central bank mainly used transactions in the short-term financial assets market to move interest rates and the demand for money. The Bank of England, for most of the 20^th century, used Commercial Paper with two ‘good names’ at its Discount Window. Short-term and long-term rates of interest, normally, behave in a predictable relationship, although occasionally, and in volatile times, that relationship may become inverted. (I am not well read on recent Fed and the Riks Bank market operations.)

The economists at the Central Bank are experts in monetary policy and are rarely knowledgeable about economic growth. An exception was S. B. D. de Silva and he found writing a half page note to the Centra Bank Bulletin (monthly) stultifying. He left the Bank quite young and continued studying economics until the very end of his life. As undergraduates they may have read on economic growth and development but as professionals in the central bank, it is unlikely that they kept working on problems in that area. They may also have learned, some time, that there has been no central bank credited with spearheading economic development in any country. Therefore, to pretend that they can advise the government on economic planning, is a hobby which they would be wise to desist from.

We did a splendid job of saving our new born children and their mothers as indicated in low infant mortality and maternal mortality rates. We scored an even more resounding victory in educating all our children. If we have any claim to any civilizing missions in the 20^th century, these two stand out. Beside them, we have been mostly failures. The economy has advanced only laggardly. It has miserably failed to exploit excellent opportunities to sell in burgeoning markets, output employing a healthy and educated labour force. Japan, South Korea, China, Vietnam, south India, Ethiopia, Rwanda and several other countries, all (except Japan) late comers to the game compared to Sri Lanka, succeeded in doing just that. It is wrong to blame governments alone for poor economic growth, as many do. Most economic activity in this country is run by the private sector and leaders there have made poor use of opportunities.

When ministers of government and its employers collect bribes, private sector persons pay bribes. The markedly rapid economic growth in Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu and Keralam and poor growth in Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and many others in the north east are under the same central government dispensation, sharply pointing to differences in the quality of business leadership in the two groups. ‘Big business’ here run betting shops, supermarkets, hospitals, import and market household equipment, banks and insurance companies and, most ambitiously maintain construction companies. (In the widely watched IPL cricket matches 2026, Sri Lanka advertised regularly a Betting Centre!) Tourism in this country is the business of small-scale enterprises with low productivity. The ubiquitous kade with a stock-in-trade of less than one hundred thousand rupees, borrowed from a relative or a friend, is a sign of rampant unemployment and not of budding entrepreneurship. When you go to consult a doctor in a private hospital in Colombo and wait endless hours, count the number of men and women employees idling, supervised by a proportionately large number of idling supervisors. Where are the large-scale manufacturing and service companies, selling the world over, where economies of scale abound in the 21^st century? So far as I recall, there has been no Initial Public Offering (IPO) of shares in the Colombo Stock Market during the last 7 years. Nor have multinational companies established here any large factories or offices.

Is the air we breathe deathly to enterprise?

by Usvatte-aratchi

Features

A Requiem for Keir Starmer rule

Published

3 hours ago

2026/06/25

Sahan Weerasooriya

Starmer

By the time Sir Keir Rodney Starmer resigned, polls showed that he had become the least popular Labour Prime Minister in living memory. His fall was all the more striking because his political beginnings had once suggested a very different trajectory. As a teenager in the Labour Party Young Socialists, and later as editor of the Marxist journal Socialist Alternatives, he had stood firmly on the radical left. As a human rights lawyer he opposed the illegal invasion of Iraq, earning a reputation for principle and moral clarity.

It was this early radicalism that his supporters later weaponised, presenting him as a unifying leftwing figure in the aftermath of the coup against the Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn. The right-wing of Labour, having spent years undermining Corbyn (including through a coordinated campaign that framed him, falsely, as anti-Semitic) found in Starmer a vessel through which they could reclaim the party while reassuring the membership that continuity with the Corbyn surge remained intact.

In his resignation speech, Starmer claimed to have inherited a politically, morally and financially bankrupt Labour Party. Yet the record shows that Corbyn had revived the party’s grassroots, drawing tens of thousands of new members back to a party embodying the tradition of Keir Hardie. The oligarchy closed ranks against this leftist heavyweight, using Starmer and the Labour right wing as their weapon. Starmer’s “Changed Labour” was not a renewal but a repudiation, embracing the very Thatcherite revisionism that had hollowed Labour out in the first place.

A Britain battered by decades of neoliberal restructuring formed the backdrop to Starmer’s rise. The cumulative effects of Maggie “milk-snatcher” Thatcher’s programme, deepened by Blair, Cameron, May, and Johnson, combined with the convulsions of Brexit to produce a profound economic, social, and political crisis. The Conservative Party imploded under the weight of its own contradictions. Starmer, offering managerial calm, an a Corbyn-lite manifesto, rode the wave of Tory collapse to a landslide victory.

But once in office, he revealed himself as a Blairite in sombre tones: a Thatcherite in Labour clothing. Within weeks he slashed winter fuel payments for pensioners, inaugurating a harsh antiworkingclass agenda. He embraced the Israeli government even as it carried out genocide in Gaza. The former human rights lawyer now used antiterror legislation to suppress dissent, particularly protests against the genocide. His immigration rhetoric, invoking an “island of strangers,” echoed the poisonous cadences of Enoch Powell.

Throughout his premiership he remained pofaced, showing little emotion even when forced into humiliating Uturns by public outrage. He displayed no visible sorrow at the mass killing of children in Gaza. Only at the prospect of losing office did he appear moved. He was, in the words of Saki, a man with “the soul of a meringue,” a mediocrity whose obedience to the oligarchic class and to Zionist backers embodied what Hannah Arendt called the banality of evil. His legacy – and that of the Tories who preceded him – is a nation distrustful of politicians of whatever hue, open to the pseudo-anti-elite, deception of the billionaire-backed racist far-right

His resignation leaves Britain at a crossroads – will it follow the fascistic path of Nigel Farage’s Reform Party, or will it go down the green-red road of Zach Polanski and Corbyn? Even replacing Starmer with the newly-elected Andy Burnham will only provide more-of-the-same Tory policies – Burnham went on record saying his first foreign visit as Prime Minister would be to Israel. These are the same policies that created a visceral hatred of Starmer and opened the gates for Reform’s surge.

When news of his resignation broke, a friend told this writer that the one who had engineered the exit of Jeremy Corbyn had been unable to complete two years in office. He added, ‘Rajakam kalath kalakam palade”-– even if you reign, your deeds will bear consequences.

And, so ends the Starmer era, not with the dignity of a statesman, but with the hollow thud of a project built on betrayal, opportunism, and the abandonment of the very principles he once claimed to uphold.

by Vinod Moonesinghe