Features
Five second escape for Prez and PM
August 1987 parliament grenade attack
By Nihal Seneviratne
President J.R. Jayewardene had only a few days before, on July 29, 1987, signed the very controversial Indo- Sri Lanka Pact with Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi of India. Most observers take the view that Jayewardene fighting a JVP insurrection in the South and a LTTE insurgency in the North had little option but to sign this agreement very much loaded on Indian terms.
The LTTE were determined to win a separate state of Eelam for the Tamil people even at the expense of a long, ferocious, war by spurning all Government efforts at coming to a peaceful solution offered to them. The JVP’s second insurgency had created a near anarchy in the South. There was no possibility of engaging in war on two fronts and Jayewardene signed the agreement which brought the IPKF here.
In signing this agreement, JRJ had not consulted his Prime Minister or his Cabinet colleagues. Possibly only Minister Gamini Dissanayake knew about it. After signing the agreement at Republic Square that day, Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi was accorded a guard of honour. A naval rating who was part of the guard of honour assembled opposite President’s House, struck a heavy blow on Gandhi’s shoulder with the butt of his gun.
Very fortunately the PM was not seriously hurt but possibly suffered only a few bruises. Immediately his own Indian security and Sri Lankan naval security pushed the Indian PM forward to escape the severity of the blow and took the naval rating into custody. This single incident captured headlines all over the world. If the blow ended in the death of the Indian Prime Minister, the consequences would have been even too terrible to comprehend.
Revisiting the 1987 Parliament bomb blasts
It was just two days later that President Jayewardene was due to attend a session of Parliament as he wished before that to address his own UNP Parliamentary Group in Committee Room 1 to explain to the Members why he signed the Agreement. Parliament was scheduled to sit the same afternoon for its regular business – President Jayewardene had arrived at the Parliamentary premises that morning around 9 a.m. and was due at Committee Room 1, the longest committee room in Parliament with a seating capacity of almost 150.
But since it was the Head of State and Government summoning me, I felt obliged to go. Both President Jayewardene and Prime Minister Premadasa were seated at the polished table with Premadasa on the President’s right and Chief Government Whip Vincent Perera on his left. In front over 100 Govt Ministers and MPs were seated facing the President, PM and Chief Government Whip.
When I went to the committee room and bent down to hear the seated president, he asked me what business was due to be taken up that afternoon. Very fortunately I had taken along the Order Paper for the day and together we went through the 25 items of Government business listed on it. Once this was over I went back to my office on the second floor of the building.
Not even half an hour later, my peon rushed into my room saying excitedly, “Sir, the Prime Minister is calling for you.” In blissful ignorance of what was in store I rushed to the ground floor. At the very entrance to the lift I met Prime Minster Premadasa with his national dress partially raised, excitedly exclaiming to me, “Nihal a bomb has exploded in the Committee Room. Search the room and have the Police surround the building.”
As I rushed into the Committee Room, I saw President Jayewardene being hurriedly escorted out of the room and building to a vehicle parked outside the Members’ entrance. When I went to the Committee Room, it was in complete shambles with the room full of smoke and splintered glass from the doors and shrapnel all over the place.
Some members were lying prostrate on the floor trying to protect themselves. I then saw Minister Lalith Athulathmudali on a stretcher, bleeding very heavily and being rushed to an ambulance which I had arranged to be at the Members’ entrance. He was rushed immediately to the Sri Jayewardenepura Hospital through the back entrance of Parliament. For security reasons this gate was closed but we kept it open on sitting days as it was only a mile away from the Sri Jayewardenapura Hospital.
Very sadly, the only casualty that day was Mr. Keerthi Abeywickreme, MP for Akmeemana, who had been hit by shrapnel on his temple. His widow later told me that she had asked him to be careful, but he had replied that he was only going to Parliament which was safe and for her not to be worried.
As at that time I did not know how the explosion had occurred. I immediately rang my University colleague, Frank de Silva, IGP, and asked him to come immediately and to provide adequate security by surrounding the precincts of Parliament to prevent anyone from leaving. I then ordered the Parliament Sergeant-of-Arms and police to ensure that no MP. staff member or visitor be allowed to leave the building.
At that time an MP told me that someone had thrown the bomb from a backdoor of the committee room and said all he saw was a hand with long white sleeves throwing something at the head table. Immediately I ordered the 950 parliament staff on duty that day not to leave the building. Even after the police contingent arrived, no one was sure whether it was a bomb and how it exploded or whether it was some other missile.
I, for one, then began speculating whether it could be one of my own 950 staff or whether it was even a member of the president’s staff who had accompanied him. We did not know whom to suspect. The IGP in his conversation with me mentioned that it may have been a gunshot from a pistol and then asked me to get everyone on duty that day to have both their hands checked for possible traces of gun powder.
A search for a weapon was then undertaken by the Police. Everyone’s hands were scanned for gunpowder and no one was allowed to leave the building. It was past 9 p.m. when the meticulous checking was over. A few MPs then told me that all they saw was this hand clothed in a white sleeve throwing something onto the polished table at which the President and Prime Minister sat. It was almost midnight when I left the building.
The very next morning I asked the Sergeant-at-Arms to check whether all the staff had returned to work. All were present except for four. One was in hospital, two were on approved leave but one was missing and that was Ajith Kumara, a sweeper I had recruited. Police searched his house around Kadawatha and found it closed. Neighbours then had told the Police that the chief occupant had left the house at night taking his family with him.
So all suspicion then centered around him and Police started a nationwide search. After a few days we were able to pull the pieces of the puzzle together. It transpired that Ajith Kumara had come that morning with a hand grenade hidden in his shoe. The police at the entrance had missed it. The President’s security staff had checked all the rooms and doors leading to the committee room and locked it up.
It then transpired that Ajith Kumara, using a false key he had made, had opened the room and hidden behind a big painting standing on the ground. He had then opened the door leading to committee room and flung the hand grenade aiming at the president. The grenade ricocheted off the polished table at which the three VIPs sat and rolled under the chair Lalith Athulathmudali was sitting on in the front row of seats.
It had then exploded blasting a large hole on the ground and severely injuring Lalith’s entire back. When he was recovering at the Sri Jayewardenpura Hospital I called on him and chatted for a while. He was full of praise for Dr. K. Yoheswaran, an eminent surgeon who operated on him, saving his life. He told me he had particularly wanted Dr Yoheswaran to undertake the complicated surgery which was done so successfully.
Later on, after Lalith recovered, he walked into my room and discussed the incident with me. He told me that Ajith Kumara had made the fundamental mistake of hurling the grenade after the pin was released. With Lalith’s deep knowledge of such matters and arms, he said that after the pin is pulled, one has to count, one thousand, two thousand, three thousand and then throw the grenade. If this had been done, the grenade would have exploded on the polished table surface and all the VIPs would not have survived.
So the President, Prime Minister and Chief Whip escaped instant death by just five seconds. Instead the grenade ricocheted off the polished table and injured Lalith very badly. Six months had passed by and the Police was still looking for one of the most wanted men in Sri Lanka for nearly assassinating the President and Prime Minister.
It so happened that the police in the Kegalle district had come to a paddy field searching for those distilling kasippu, a local brew. Ajith Kumara had been in a village shed and on seeing a police team, had fled. The Police, seeing a person fleeing, gave chase and arrested him. All that time, they did not know at all that they had caught the most wanted fugitive from justice.
When the police contacted me, I was able to confirm that the person caught was none other than Ajith Kumara himself. A week later, the suspect was brought under heavy security to Parliament. He had then confessed to his crime and explained in detail how he had brought the grenade in his shoe – and how he had hidden behind the painting. After the Presidential Security had checked that very room, used a false key he had had made to surreptitiously enter the room. He confessed to throwing the hand grenade.
Two days later, Speaker E.L.Senanayake and I were summoned to appear before Cabinet. The Speaker very diplomatically refused to go saying that it was incorrect for him to appear before Cabinet. That left me with no option but to go before the Cabinet myself. I nervously walked in since I had never before been summoned like this feeling like the Christian being thrown to the wolves in Roman times.
I knew the ministers would cross-examine me on how I recruited Ajith Kumara, so judiciously I went with a Police CID report which had cleared him and allowed his recruitment. Armed with the file I sat before the entire Cabinet. Minister Montague Jayawickreme pounced on me asking how I recruited him and I politely showed the clearance file issued by the CID. Many other questions were fired at me which I politely answered.
I was then allowed to leave. It later transpired that after the clearance report had been issued by the Police, the JVP had secretly recruited him as they found in him the ideal person to carry out the mission of assassinating the president and prime minister since he was already working in Parliament and had access.
A few days later I had a request from Mrs Jayewardene to see the room in which her husband escaped assassination by seconds. She was accompanied by two grandchildren, Ravi’s two sons. They inspected the polished table from which the grenade had bounced. I was very moved by her presence and the gracious lady moved on without making any comment.
This saga has had a strange ending. When Ajith Kumara was produced as an accused before court, his counsel took up the defence that the police relied only on his confession and he was acquitted. Regrettably the Attorney General’s Department had mishandled the prosecution and the Judge acquitted Ajith Kumara who left the court a free man.
History will record how a President and Prime Minister escaped death by a few mere seconds.
(The writer is a retired Secretary General of Parliament)
It could be quite premature to claim that the US has closed ranks completely with the world’s foremost fascist states: Russia, China and North Korea. But there is no denying that the US is breaking with tradition and perceiving commonality of policy orientation with the mentioned authoritarian states of the East rather than with Europe and its major democracies at present.
Increasingly, it is seemingly becoming evident that the common characterization of the US as the ‘world’s mightiest democracy’, could be a gross misnomer. Moreover, the simple fact that the US is refraining from naming Russia as the aggressor in the Russia-Ukraine conflict and its refusal to perceive Ukraine’s sovereignty as having been violated by Russia, proves that US foreign policy is undergoing a substantive overhaul, as it were. In fact, one could not be faulted, given this backdrop, for seeing the US under President Donald Trump as compromising its democratic credentials very substantially.
Yet, it could be far too early to state that in the traditional East-West polarity in world politics, that the US is now squarely and conclusively with the Eastern camp that comprises in the main, China and Russia. At present, the US is adopting an arguably more nuanced approach to foreign policy formulation and the most recent UN Security Council resolution on Ukraine bears this out to a degree. For instance, the UN resolution in question reportedly ‘calls for a rapid end to the war without naming Russia as the aggressor.’
That is, the onus is being placed on only Ukraine to facilitate an end to the war, whereas Russia too has an obligation to do likewise. But it is plain that the US is reflecting an eagerness in such pronouncements to see an end to the Ukraine conflict. It is clearly not for a prolongation of the wasting war. It could be argued that a negotiated settlement is being given a try, despite current international polarizations.
However, the US could act constructively in the crisis by urging Russia as well to ensure an end to the conflict, now that there is some seemingly friendly rapport between Trump and Putin.
However, more fundamentally, if the US does not see Ukraine’s sovereignty as having been violated by Russia as a result of the latter’s invasion, we are having a situation wherein the fundamental tenets of International Law are going unrecognized by the US. That is, international disorder and lawlessness are being winked at by the US.
It follows that, right now, the US is in cahoots with those powers that are acting autocratically and arbitrarily in international politics rather than with the most democratically vibrant states of the West, although a facile lumping together of the US, Russia and China, is yet not possible.
It is primarily up to the US voting public to take clear cognizance of these developments, draw the necessary inferences and to act on them. Right now, nothing substantive could be done by the US voter to put things right, so to speak, since mid-term US elections are due only next year. But there is ample time for the voting public to put the correct perspective on these fast-breaking developments, internationally and domestically, and to put their vote to good use in upcoming polls and such like democratic exercises. They would be acting in the interest of democracy worldwide by doing so.
More specifically it is up to Donald Trump’s Republican voter base to see the damage that is being done by the present administration to the US’ standing as the ‘world’s mightiest democracy’. They need to bring pressure on Trump and his ‘inner cabinet’ to change course and restore the reputation of their country as the foremost democracy. In the absence of such action it is the US citizenry that would face the consequences of Trump’s policy indiscretions.
Meanwhile, the political Opposition in the US too needs to get its act together, so to speak, and pressure the Trump administration into doing what is needed to get the US back to the relevant policy track. Needless to say, the Democratic Party would need to lead from the front in these efforts.
While, in the foreign policy field the US under President Trump could be said to be acting with a degree of ambivalence and ambiguity currently, in the area of domestic policy it is making it all to plain that it intends to traverse a fascistic course. As has been proved over the past two months, white supremacy is being made the cardinal principle of domestic governance.
Trump has made it clear, for example, that his administration would be close to ethnic chauvinists, such as the controversial Ku Klux Klan, and religious extremists. By unceremoniously rolling back the ‘diversity programs’ that have hitherto helped define the political culture of the US, the Trump administration is making no bones of the fact that ethnic reconciliation would not be among the government’s priorities. The steady undermining of USAID and its main programs worldwide is sufficient proof of this. Thus the basis has been adequately established for the flourishing of fascism and authoritarianism.
Yet, the US currently reflects a complex awareness of foreign policy questions despite having the international community wondering whether it is sealing a permanent alliance with the main powers of the East. For instance, President Trump is currently in conversation on matters in the external relations sphere that are proving vital with the West’s principal leaders. For example, he has spoken to President Emmanuel Macron of France and is due to meet Prime Minister Keir Starmer of the UK.
Obviously, the US is aware that it cannot ‘go it alone’ in resolving currently outstanding issues in external relations, such as the Ukraine question. There is a clear recognition that the latter and many more issues require a collaborative approach.
Besides, the Trump administration realizes that it cannot pose as a ‘first among equals’, given the complexities at ground level. It sees that given the collective strength of the rest of the West that a joint approach to problem solving cannot be avoided. This is particularly so in the case of Ukraine.
The most major powers of the West are no ‘pushovers’ and Germany, under a possibly Christian Democratic Union-led alliance in the future, has indicated as much. It has already implied that it would not be playing second fiddle to the US. Accordingly, the US is likely to steer clear of simplistic thinking in the formulation of foreign policy, going forward.
by Upali Gamakumara,
Upali.gamakumara@gmail.com
The Clean Sri Lanka (CSL) is a project for the true renaissance the NPP government launched, the success of which would gain world recognition. It is about more than just cleaning up places. Its broader objectives are to make places attractive and happy for people who visit or use services in the country, focusing more on the services in public institutions and organisations like the SLTB. Unfortunately, these broader objectives are not apparent in its theme, “Clean Sri Lanka,” and therefore there is a misconception that keeping the environment clean is the main focus.
People who realise the said broader objectives are excited about a cleaner Sri Lanka, hoping the President and the government will tackle this, the way they are planning to solve other big problems like the economy and poverty. However, they do not see themselves as part of the solution.
From the management perspective, the CSL has a strategic plan that is not declared in that manner. When looking at the government policies, one can perceive its presence, the vision being “A Prosperous Nation and a Beautiful Life,” the mission “Clean Sri Lanka” and the broader objectives “a disciplined society, effective services, and a cleaner environment.” If the government published these as the strategy, there would have been a better understanding.
Retaining the spirit and expectations and continuing the ‘Clean Sri Lanka’ project is equally important as much as understanding its deep idea. For this, it needs to motivate people, which differs from those motivators that people push to achieve selfish targets. The motivation we need here is to evolve something involuntarily, known as Drivers. Drivers push for the survival of the evolution or development of any entity. We see the absence of apparent Drivers in the CSL project as a weakness that leads to sporadic hiccups and free flow.
Drivers of Evolution
Drivers vary according to the nature of envisaged evolution for progress. However, we suggest that ‘the force that pushes anything to evolve’ would fit all evolutions. Some examples are: ‘Fitting to survival’ was the driver of the evolution of life. Magnetism is a driver for the unprecedented development of physics – young Einstein was driven to enquire about the ‘attraction’ of magnets, eventually making him the greatest scientist of the 20th century.
Leadership is a Driver. It is essential but do not push an evolution continually as they are not sprung within a system involuntarily. This is one of the reasons why CSL has lost the vigour it had at its inception.
CSL is a teamwork. It needs ‘Drives’ for cohesion and to push forward continually, like the Quality Improvement Project of the National Health Service (NHS) in England. Their drivers are outlined differently keeping Aims as their top driver and saying: Aims should be specific and measurable, not merely to “improve” or “reduce,” engage stakeholders to define the aim of the improvement project and a clear aim to identify outcome measures.
So, we think that CSL needs Aims as defined by NHS, built by stakeholder participation to help refine the project for continuous evolution. This approach is similar to Deming’s Cycle for continual improvement. Further, two more important drivers are needed for the CSL project. That is Attitudinal Change and Punishment. We shall discuss these in detail under Psychoactive Environment (pSE) below.
Aside from the above, Competition is another driver in the business world. This helps achieve CSL objectives in the private sector. We can see how this Driver pushes, with the spread of the Supermarket chains, the evolution of small and medium retail shops to supermarket level, and in the private banks and hospitals, achieving broader objectives of CSL; a cleaner environment, disciplined behaviuor, efficient service, and the instillation of ethics.
The readers can now understand the importance of Drivers pushing any project.
Three Types of Entities and Their Drives
We understand, that to do the transformation that CSL expects, we need to identify or adopt the drivers separately to suit the three types of entities we have in the country.
Type I entities are the independent entities that struggle for their existence and force them to adopt drivers involuntarily. They are private sector entities, and their drivers are the commitment of leadership and competition. These drivers spring up involuntarily within the entity.
Type II are the dependent entities. To spring up drivers of these entities commitment of an appointed trustee is a must. Mostly in state-owned entities, categorized as Boards, Authorities, Cooperations, and the like. Their drivers do not spring up within or involuntarily unless the leader initiates. The Government of a country also falls into this type and the emergence of drivers depends on the leader.
Type III entities have neither independent nor dependent immediate leader or trustee. They are mostly the so-called ‘Public’ places like public-toilets, public-playgrounds, and public-beaches. No team can be formed as these places are open to any, like no-man-land. Achieving CSL objectives at these entities depends on the discipline of the public or the users.
Clean Sri Lanka suffers the absence of drivers in the second and third types of entities, as the appointed persons are not trustees but temporary custodians.
The writer proposes a remedy to the last two types of entities based on the theory of pSE explained below.
Psychoactive Environment (pSE) –
The Power of Customer Attraction
Research by the writer introduced the Psychoactive Environment (pSE) concept to explain why some businesses attract more customers than others who provide the same service. Presented at the 5th Global Conference on Business and Economics at Cambridge University in 2006, the study revealed that a “vibe” influences customer attraction. This vibe, termed pSE, depends on Three Distinct Elements, which can either attract or repel customers. A positive pSE makes a business more attractive and welcoming. This concept can help develop Drivers for Type II and III entities.
pSE is not an all-inclusive solution for CSL, but it lays the foundation for building Drivers and motivating entities to keep entrants attractive and contented.
The structure of the pSE
The three distinct Elements are the Occupants, Systems, and Environment responsible for making a pSE attractive to any entity, be it a person, institution, organization, or county. Each of these elements bears three qualities named Captivators. These captivators are, in simple terms, Intelligent, Nice, and Active in their adjective forms.
pSE theorizes that if any element fails to captivate the entrant’s mood by not being Intelligent, Nice, or Active, the pSE becomes negative, repelling the entrant (customer). Conversely, the positive pSE attracts the entrants if the elements are Intelligent, Nice, and Active.
For example, think person who comes to a Government Office for some service. He sees that the employees, service, and environment are intelligent, nice, and active, and he will be delighted and contented. He will not get frustrated or have any deterioration in national productivity.
The Significance of pSE in CSL
The Elements and the Captivators are universal for any entity. Any entity can easily find its path to Evolution or Progress determined by these elements and captivators. The intangible broader objectives can be downsised to manageable targets by pSE. Achievements of these targets make the entrants happy and enhance productivity – the expectation of Clean Sri Lanka (CSL).
From the perspective of pSE, now we can redefine the Clean Sri Lanka project thus:
To make the Elements of every entity in Sri Lanka: intelligent, Nice, and Active.
How Would the pSE be A Remedy for The Sporadic Hiccups?
We have seen two possible reasons for sporadic setbacks and the discontinuity of some projects launched by the CSL. They are:
The absence of involuntary Drivers for evolvement or progress
Poor attitudes and behaviors of people and leaders
Remedy for the Absence of Drivers
Setting up a system to measure customer or beneficiary satisfaction, and setting aims can build Drivers. The East London NHS principles help build the Aims that drive type II & II entities. The system must be designed to ensure continual improvement following the Deming Cycle. This strategy will create Drivers for Type I & II entities.
This process is too long to explain here therefore we refrain from detailing.
Attitudinal Change
The most difficult task is the attitudinal and behavioural change. Yet it cannot be postponed.
Punishment as a strategy
In developed countries, we see that people are much more disciplined than in the developing countries. We in developing countries, give credit to their superior culture, mitigating ours as rudimental. The long experience and looking at this affair from a vantage point, one will understand it is not the absolute truth. Their ruthless wars in the past, rules, and severe punishment are the reasons behind this discipline. For example, anyone who fails to wear a car seatbelt properly will be fined 400 AUD, nearly 80,000 LKR!
The lesson we can learn is, that in Sri Lanka, we need strong laws and strict punishment together with a type of strategic education as follows.
Psychological Approach as a Strategy
The psychological theory of attitude formation can be used successfully if some good programmes can be designed.
All attitude formations start with life experience. Formed wrong or negative attitudes can be reversed or instilled with correct attitudes by exposure to designed life experiences. The programmes have been developed using the concepts of Hoshin Kanri, Brainstorming, Cause-and-Effect analysis, and Teamwork, in addition to London NTS Quality Improvement strategies.
The experience and good responses we received for our pSE programs conducted at several institutions prove and have built confidence in our approach. However, it was a time, when governments or organisations did not pay much attention to cultural change as CSL expects in the country.
Therefore, we believe this is a golden opportunity to take the CSL supported by the pSE concept.
Although they are visually impaired youngsters, under the guidance of renowned musician Melantha Perera, these talented individuals do shine bright … hence the name Bright Light.
Says Melantha: “My primary mission is to nurture their talent and ensure their sustainable growth in music, and I’m thrilled to announce that Bright Light’s first public performance is scheduled for 7th June, 2025. The venue will be the MJF Centre Auditorium in Katubadda, Moratuwa.”
Melantha went on to say that two years of teaching, online, visually impaired youngsters, from various parts of the island, wasn’t an easy ride.
There were many ups and downs but Melantha’s determination has paid off with the forming of Bright Light, and now they are gearing up to go on stage.
According to Melantha, they have come a long way in music.
“For the past few months, we have been meeting, physically, where I guide them to play as a band and now they show a very keen interest as they are getting to the depth of it. They were not exposed to English songs, but I’ve added a few English songs to widen their repertoire.
Melantha Perera: Invented a notation
system for the guitar
“On 7th June, we are opening up for the public to come and witness their talents, and I want to take this product island-wide, giving the message that we can do it, and I’m hoping to create a database so there will be a following. Initially, we would like your support by attending the show.”
Melantha says he didn’t know what he was getting into but he had confidence teaching anyone music since he has been in the scene for the past 45 years. He began teaching in 2015,
“When I opened my music school, Riversheen School of Music, the most challenging part of teaching was correcting tone deaf which is the theoretical term for those who can’t pitch a note, and also teaching students to keep timing while they sang and played.”
Melantha has even invented a notation system for the guitar which he has named ‘MelaNota’. He has received copyrights from the USA and ISO from Australia, but is yet to be recognised in Sri Lanka.
During Covid-19, Melantha showcased MelaNota online and then it was officially launched with the late Desmond De Silva playing one of his tunes, using MelaNota.
Melantha says that anyone, including the visually impaired, can play a simple melody on a guitar, within five minutes, using his notation system.
“I’ve completed the system and I’m now finalising the syllabus for the notation system.”
Melantha has written not only for the guitar, but also for drums, keyboards, and wind instruments.
For any queries, or additional information, you could contact Melantha at 071 454 4092 or via email at thebandbrightlight@gmail.com.
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