JRJ’s impulsive utterances & startling statements

Excerpted from the memoirs of Chandra Wickremasinghe, Retd. Addl. Sec. to President

President Jayewardene had an amazingly retentive memory which enabled him to make elegant speeches on varied subjects, extempore.

He often amazed foreigners with the exhaustive and detailed knowledge he possessed of their own history. He was happiest I felt, browsing in the library in his home ‘Braemar’ where he used to relax among his books dressed casually in sarong and shirt.

President Jayewardene being a UNP stalwart, had an all too well known partiality for the US which earned him the sobriquet ‘Yankee Dicky’! After the landslide electoral victory the party received in 1977, it was therefore natural for him to try to cosy up to the US and the West. The ideological shift following his party victory was underscored euphorically, with undiluted free-market epithets like – ‘Let the robber barons come’! Unlike Prime Minister Sirima Bandaranaike, whose relations with our immediate neighbour India, were most cordial, President JR by his rather uncharacteristic, impulsive utterances almost from the outset, appeared to want to distance himself from India, which he did succeed in doing somewhat dramatically, by his needlessly demeaning and unkind analogies about PM Indira Gandhi and her son.

This was something one would not have expected from an elegant and suave, worldly-wise person of the stature of President JR, who was at the time, fast reaching the level of recognition as an elder statesman in the Asian Region. The infuriated Indian PM never forgave President JR for this uncalled for personal insult and vented her rage on him and tragically on SL, by vengefully providing facilities for the training of LTTE terrorists on Indian soil. I consider this a major faux pas which President JR could never live down as long as the Indian Lady PM was living.

The Nehru and the Bandaranaike families

It will be recalled how well the Bandaranaikes got on with the Nehru family to the point where the two families became virtually close family friends. These were heady times when India and SL were literally bending over each other and generously awarding each other concessions which even entailed sensitive and far reaching ones, like ceding the island of Kachchativu to SL. This buoyant optimism and bonhomie quickly evaporated and was replaced by mutual suspicion and animosity with the assumption of President JR to office.

One factor which perhaps made Mrs. Gandhi change her attitude towards SL was in my reckoning, the abject humiliation her good friend Mrs. Sirima Bandaranaike was made to suffer when she was stripped off her civic rights. One often wonders what really prompted President JR to forget his chivalrous and magnanimous qualities and condescend to doing such an act which was widely perceived at the time, as something quite ungracious and even malicious. The talk at the time was that it was an act of revenge for the harassment and the incarceration of President JRJ’s son Ravi Jayawardene, during the earlier dispensation.

All this would only go to show how personal relationships between leaders of political parties within a country or between leaders of different countries, could either strengthen or foul up relationships between countries. In restrospect, one observes how very tragically, the failure in relations between the former Indian PM, Mrs. Indira Gandhi and President JR changed the course of Sri Lanka’s history.

After the ’83 communal riots when SL was being hauled over the coals by the international community for the atrocities committed on the minority Tamils, Mrs. Gandhi took the opportunity to upbraid SL at every turn. I was even told by people close to President JR that Mrs. Gandhi had at times taken the President to task on the telephone, for his failure to give adequate protection to the Tamils. This was a time when new ‘lows’ were reached in our rapidly deteriorating relations with India.

I recall a discussion that took place at a reception at the President’s House with the President, Mr. DBIPS Siriwardhana, Gen. Attygalla and myself being present in the group. There was at this time an imminent threat of a flotilla of vessels heading towards Jaffna from South India. The President said that such an ‘invasion’ was very likely to happen and asked how we should respond. Gen. Attygalla said with the least hesitation “We will perform satyagraha at the point they would land.” The President’s face betrayed no emotion and remained as usual, inscrutable. I really do not know whether it was a ‘tongue in cheek’ utterance of Gen. Attygalla or whether he meant it in all seriousness. Thankfully for us, the President moved away from our small group to another group.

President Jayewardene at times used to make rather out of character , startling statements, which may have been out of uninhibited hubris or sly cynicism. Right at the beginning of his assumption of office as President, he made the somewhat pretentious declaration that his Govt. would be a ‘Dharmista Rajaya’. The seasoned, worldly wise politician that he was, the President would have known in his own mind that politics and ethics are not a happy mix. If anything, they are polar opposites.

Readers will further recall how President JR on becoming the first Executive President of SL, made the baffling statement, reflecting uncharacteristic temerity on his part, that the only thing he could not do was ‘turning a man into a woman.’ Another instance was the totally out of character speech he made over the media at the height of the ’83 riots. Yet another incredibly preposterous statement he made with amazing sang froid, was that he was ‘well on his way to attaining Nirvana’! Strangely enough, even at that time, people were more amused rather than offended by these statements.

Still, President JR being so knowledgeable and politically accomplished, one found it difficult indeed to associate him with such improbably braggadocio utterances. I myself and many others in fact, wondered why such a wise man had to mouth such demotic banalities at all. He was again, in my view, too wise and politically savvy to have believed in his own mind in these extraordinary utterances of his, nor would he have for that matter expected others to believe them. This was the indeed the supreme enigma that President JR was!

An admirable side of President JR’s personality was brought out by an incident involving a visit made by me to Mr. Cyril Mathew’s residence after the latter’s removal from the post of Minister following certain differences he had had with the President. Soon after Mr. Mathew’s removal, I thought I must pay him a visit as, despite my abrupt exit from the Ministry, he had been very good to me. I however, took the precaution of telling Gen. Attygalla, Secy/Defence, about the proposed visit adding that I considered it my duty to see him particularly after he had been stripped off his ministerial portfolio, as Mr. Mathew had treated me well during my stay in his Ministry.

I waited for about three days following Mr. Mathew’s removal and dropped in to see him on the fourth day. To my surprise, there was not a soul at the time of my visit at Mr.Mathew’s residence, except for his mustachioed green shirted ‘Major Domo’, who usually acted as the ma ster of ceremonies. He seemed somewhat subdued in his demeanour and requested me the take a seat saying the ‘Minister’ would be coming to see me soon .A couple of minutes later Mr. Mathew came in and greeted me asking me somewhat cynically, I thought, how things were in the Public Service. My conversation with him was all too brief as just at the time the peon came and said that there were some Buddhist priests to see him. Mr. Mathew thanked me for coming and left the room to greet the priests.All in all,I had the feeling that he was still not too happy with me for leaving his Ministry.

On my way out, I did not fail to notice two plainclothesmen, obviously from the CID, who would have been instructed to report on the visitors coming to see the ex-Minister. My suspicions were confirmed when two days later Secy/Defence told me that my visit had been duly brought to the notice of President JR who had enquired from Gen Attygalla why I had paid the visit to Mr. Mathew’s residence. On being told by Secy./Defence that I had told him beforehand of my visit to the ex-Minister’s residence, as the latter had been good to me during my stay in that Ministry, President JR had only remarked ‘Showing one’s gratitude is a good quality’ and left things at that.

After President JR stepped down from office, Stanley Kirinde and I visited him at home where he had a long and relaxed chat with us, in the course of which he said that he had known my father- in- law, ’Edo’ as he called him, from school days, adding that the two of them had played in the Royal College cricket team which had been captained by my father- in- law in 1927.

With his storehouse of anecdotes, President JR was an excellent raconteur. Although he had a dead pan face and was impassive in public, President JR had an impish sense of humour and was quite convivial and relaxed in known company, which gave one a surprisingly revealing glimpse of this little known aspect of his personality. He was clever and at times wily in dealing with men and matters. His cleverness could be gauged by the amazing volte- face he was able to maneuver and get the Indians to do by getting them, who were the veritable creators of the LTTE fighting cadres, to come round to fighting them on Sri Lankan soil. The LTTE never forgave India’s favourite son Rajiv Gandhi who was made to pay the supreme price, for the latter’s peace endeavours.