A notable anniversary

October marks the 40^th anniversary of the Sunday Island and we celebrate this occasion today by publishing two articles, one by the first editor of this paper, Vijita Yapa, and the other, a condensed translation of another that appeared in the Irida Divayina last week. Upali Wijewardene who founded Upali Newspapers Ltd. (UNL), was a nephew of D.R. Wijewardene, the Beaverbrook of Sri Lanka, whose Associated Newspapers of Ceylon Ltd. (ANCL), best known as Lake House, publishing in English, Sinhalese and Tamil, played a significant role in winning Independence from the British; this not by bloodshed but through negotiations. Unlike India, we had no Mahatma Gandhi, nor did we go through as protracted a struggle as in the neighbouring subcontinent to win our freedom. The stakes, of course were different. Though ours was a green and pleasant land, second only to Japan in Asia in terms of development and lack of abject poverty, then Ceylon though not the jewel in the crown of the British Empire, was blessed with many resources including a largely literate population, a relatively sound infrastructure, an efficient public service as well as a favorable climate.

There is no doubt that Upali Wijewardene founded UNL in furtherance of his political ambitions. A nephew of not only D.R. Wijewardene, but also J.R. Jayewardene who had become Sri Lanka’s first executive president in 1977 with a stunning electoral landslide. JRJ was to later boast that this victory empowered him to do anything he wished to do ‘except make a man into a woman.’ Jayewardene handpicked Wijewardene, among the most successful enterpreneurs of his day, to head the Greater Colombo Economic Commission (GCEC) created to attract the ‘robber barons’ as he styled them to invest in Sri Lanka. Ours was a long-shackled, controlled economy that had been boldly opened by virtually a single stroke. Wijewardene had both the verve and the ability to deliver on that front, as well as an ambition to succeed his kinsman on the national throne. Once asked by the then Colombo correspondent of the Hong Kong based Far Eastern Economic Review whether he aspired to be president, he responded saying “what else is there to aspire to?” The publication of that remark infuriated Prime Minister Premadasa who too had presidential ambitions. Wijewardene sent a copy of the magazine to Premadasa with a mischievous note above the article saying “I hope you’ll enjoy this as much as I did.”

By the time UNL was founded, ANCL had been taken away from D.R. Wijewardene’s heirs by Mrs. Sirima Bandaranaike’s United Front Government which included both the Lanka Sama Samaja Party and the Ceylon Communist Party who had been implacable foes of the UNP (and of Lake House) from pre-Independence days. The takeover was on the pretext of broad basing the ownership of the company which has not happened over 50 years later. Lake House remains the propaganda trumpet of whoever is government. That perhaps well served Upali Wijewardene, married to a niece of Mrs. Bandaranaike, because his strategy for his new newspaper toy included recruiting as many of the country’s top journalists he could attract by offering three or four times what they were then earning. With the ANCL takeover, he didn’t have to poach talent from his cousin’s newspapers. Though he didn’t get all the people he wanted, he did get most, including Edmund Ranasinghe, who played a major role building up UNL’s Sinhala newspapers and shaping their political direction.

As last Sunday’s Irida Divayina article noted, many of the journalist that were recruited by UNL were to later become editors of other national newspapers as the news industry expanded in recent years. There were people like cartoonists WR Wijesoma, undoubtedly the country’s best since Aubrey Collette who cut his teeth at Lake House, photographer Rienzie Wijeratne and Ajith Samaranayake, a brilliant bilingual journalist who was head and shoulders above his contemporaries. There were others who are not mentioned here for reasons of space. The Irida Divayina made the point that just as much as Lake House was the mulgedera (principal home) of most of the best journalists of the time, UNL became a training ground, or a university, for others nurturing what was to become the Jatika Chinthanaya (national vision) that influenced the shaping of contemporary politics.

Despite Wijewardene’s close kinship to JRJ, he was no lapdog. What he published at times in his papers infuriated the president who once attempted to starve Upali companies of bank credit. Jayewardene also did not thwart his prime minister by allowing his nephew an opportunity to enter parliament. But he did protect Upali when Premadasa attempted to kick him out of the GCEC through a Parliamentary Select Committee. Upali Wijewardene’s life was tragically shortened when he and some companions returning in his private Lear jet to Sri Lanka from Malaysia where he had business interests, was lost somewhere over the Straits of Malacca. But UNL and its newspapers continued to soldier on and notch the present anniversary. While times have changed and the print media here, as in the broader world outside, is no longer what it was and is eclipsed by the electronic and social media, it is by no means dead. Many new entrants have come into the field with businessmen in countries like ours embarking into that space more for reasons of influence than of commerce. How Upali Wijewardene would have piloted his ship, had he been alive today, is an imponderable. His father died young and he believed that would be his lot too saying that was why he focused his later years on enjoying life.