Esmond Wickremesinghe and a trip to China as Beijing sought ties with JRJ regime

Excerpted from Volume two of Sarath Amunugama’s autobiography

Another key figure in the JRJ regime was Esmond Wickremesinghe who has been portrayed in the media as the shadowy figure behind the UNP. From 1977 to the day in 1985 when his life was cut short in a hospital in Houston USA, he became a very close professional and personal friend of mine. In fact he spent the last few days on route to Houston in my home in Paris. Nobody imagined when a few of us said goodbye to him at the Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris that we would never see him again. He was a ‘bon vivant’ and a dear friend.

Esmond played a crucial role in the politics of his time because he managed Lake House, the main newspaper group in the country. Lake House was the chief opinion maker of the time and therefore one of the most powerful institutions that was wooed by all sections of the community, in particular the politicians. Esmond was the son in law of the founder Chairman of Lake House, D.R. Wijewardene. He was married to Nalini, the eldest daughter of DR. It is also relevant to note here that JRJ’s mother was the elder sister of DR. Though there were occasional misunderstandings in the big Wijewardene family, Esmond and JRJ had become close friends, particularly after .the exit from politics of Sir. John Kotelawala.

Sir. John looked on Esmond as his foreign policy advisor and since both were great globe trotters and men of the world, they were considered as inseparable in the time of the Kotelawala premiership. For instance, it was Esmond who was sent as Kotelawala’s special envoy to Cambodia, Vietnam and Thailand to promote the Bandung Conference.In a brief life sketch written by Esmond, a copy of which he gave me, there is an interesting reference to these high level meetings. Says Esmond, “The first visit to these countries were on a letter signed by Sir John himself, much to Sir Oliver’s subsequent horror who said that only the Queen could appoint personal envoys of a Prime Minister and Ambassadors.

“Anyway King Norodom Sihanouk of Cambodia, President Diem of South Vietnam and Marshall Pibul Songgram of Thailand had discussions with me on behalf of Sir John about the forthcoming Bandung Conference.” He was by Sir John’s side when our Premier nearly wrecked the Bandung meeting. This is Esmond’s eye witness account of what happened on that day:

“Immediately after Sir John’s speech on colonialism, Nehru came up to Sir John to upbraid him. Sir John gave a sharp retort and a crushing insult to Krishna Menon who poked his mouth in and Krishna Menon ran away. Nehru thereafter in a polite tone asked him, “Sir John why did you speak of the forms of colonialism except western colonialism?” Sir John replied, “How do you and I know of the future? There may arise a new colonialism among us. For instance what if India invades Ceylon?”

Nehru immediately interrupted Sir John to say, “You know Sir John I will never let it happen”. Sir John replied, “Yes, Nehru. Under you I am confident India will never invade. But after you and I are dead and gone?”

Sir. John’s speech was crafted by Esmond who was a lawyer as well as a student of contemporary law and politics under the famous Professor Raymond Aron at the Sorbonne. According to Esmond, “Prime Minister DS Senanayake forced me from the law onto the job of becoming the Head of Lake House as my father in law DR Wijewardene was slowly dying”.

Like Raymond Aron who was a Communist who later renounced his creed, Esmond who started out as a Samasamajist later became an ideologue of the rightist UNP. There is a story from his LSSP days that when Esmond told Philip Gunawardena that he wanted to write for the party, the irascible Philip had replied, “Certainly. You can write a cheque”.

But even in the later days of political antagonism he maintained good relations with left leaders, particularly Bernard Soysa. Esmond contributed regularly to Bernard’s campaign funds. He always knew that he was only a stand-in for Ranjit Wijewardene who would eventually take over the reins of his father’s enterprise. But he modernized the management of Lake House and made It the home of outstanding journalists many of whom left after 1956.

By 1977 he had relinquished his control of Lake House but had invested in a hotel in Mount Lavinia where he spent most of the day. He also set up a small news agency which helped him to keep in touch with his newspaper friends abroad. As the winner of the ‘Golden Pen’ award he was invited to many international functions. He loved traveling abroad and would meticulously plan his visits.

After 1977 he became an unofficial advisor to our ministry and was welcomed by successive media ministers who were over awed by his reputation and proximity to the President. Later in this book I will describe how we worked closely with him and Sri Lanka became a country to be reckoned with in the global debate on the new Information and Communication order which was coming to the fore as a priority consideration of the developing countries.

This debate took Esmond and me to many global meetings organized by UNESCO and ultimately took me to Paris for a duration of close on five years, to head the now organization of the UN called The International Program for the Development of Communication [IPDC]. He was a veritable storehouse of inside information about the politics and personal affairs of the elite of the country.

Thanks to Mrs. Robert Senanayake’s hold over Dudley, Esmond was identified as JRJ’s ’eminence grise’ and advocate of JRJs interests so much so that Dudley had not been even on talking terms with him. On our many travels he would recount such stories which held me spellbound. Thus with my close relations with two of the country’s classic ‘Insiders’ -Esmond and Anandatissa de Alwis, and with plenty of time for chats with both of them here and abroad, I became privy to the ‘really real’ manner in which, the modern Sri Lankan state was managed since Independence by our leaders of different persuasions.

Esmond’s importance in the fields of diplomacy and media were recognized by the Chinese Government that was now scrambling to establish new links with the JRJ regime. It had had excellent relations with Mrs. B and her Government. All the leaders of China, especially Chou en Lai, had supported Sri Lanka to the hilt after the JVP uprising of 1971. JRJs sympathies lay elsewhere and now it became necessary for China to establish new linkages with the incoming Sri Lankan government. On the other hand China too was just emerging from its disastrous `Cultural Revolution’ that had decimated the party and dragged down economic growth. Their solution in respect of the new JRJ regime was to invite a high powered delegation of media moguls from Sri Lanka to visit China.

The visitors could see that China had recovered from the madness of the cultural revolution and were now ready to do business with the JRJ regime. The proposed leader of the delegation was Esmond Wickremesinghe, testifying to China’s estimation of him as a power behind the scenes. Besides Esmond, the delegation included W.J. Fernando [Davasa group], Wenceslaus [Virakesari], Manikkaaratchi [Lake House], Eamon Kariyakarawana [SLBC] and me.

In two weeks we were to tour many parts of China including Beijing, the Great Wall, Shanghai, Hangzou, Guangdong and Hong Kong [which at that time was a British Protectorate]. As if to emphasize the importance of the delegation the Chinese Ambassador invited us to a dinner at his residence. Recalling his earlier days of diplomacy Esmond and his wife Nalini hosted a return dinner for the Chinese Ambassador and our delegation at their home in Fifth Lane, Kollupitiya. Hameed and Ranil Wickremesinghe were also present.

In an article I wrote sometime later I recalled our first visit to China via Karachi and over the Himalayas to Beijing. Even as late as 1978 there were no direct flights to China from Singapore or Hongkong. So we had to go via Karachi taking the ‘Himalayan route’ which only a few years previously Henry Kissinger had used in his shuttle diplomacy.

At our first stop in Karachi, while our fellow delegates rested, Esmond and I were invited to lunch at the Karachi Boat Club by the owners of ‘Dawn’ – the major newspaper in Pakistan. ‘They were old friends of Esmond from the IPI days and soon they were regaling us with inside stories of the then powerful Zulfiqar Bhutto regime.

It was clear that Bhutto was unpopular with the Pakistani ‘upper crust’ who congregated at the once elegant Boat Club which was now slowly going to seed. The most spiteful were the heavily made up old Pakistani ‘Grand Dames’ who, pulling on their cigarettes in long ivory holders, were full of invective at Bhutto’s attempts ‘to take over our lands’. After a briefing by Dawn staffers on the latest developments in Beijing, we drove to the airport to catch a Chinese government plane to the Chinese capital.

The flight took us over the Himalayas and as the not very comfortable plane droned over the snow-capped peaks we could look down on parts of the autonomous region of Tibet. We were flying over the ‘roof of the world’. Esmond surrounded by his numerous travel bags, notebooks and sweaters offered us generous tots of whisky. We landed in Beijing around midday and were greeted by a bevy of schoolgirls who presented us with bouquets of paper flowers. From there we were driven to the famous Peking Duck restaurant for lunch [Sunday Island 16 June 1991].

(To be continued next week)