Features

More on the Legal Drafgtsman’s Dept. and those who adorned it

Published

3 years ago

2023/04/23

Thilina Walpola

Legal Draftsman’s Department today

Excerpted from a Cabinet Secretary’s Memoirs by BP Peiris

(Continued from Apr. 9)

Mervyn was succeeded as Legal Draftsman by P. C. Villavarayan, a classical scholar from Oxford and a great gentleman, so polished in his manners that he never liked to hurt anyone else’s feelings. He always had a Greek and a Latin book on his table: Martial’s Epigrams, Vergil, or the Greek Anthology to check up on quotations. Apart from being a scholar, he was a philosopher and his philosophy was obviously based on and influenced by his classical training.

He was never worried; he was never flurried; and he never seemed to be in a hurry. His ordinary letters were short essays in English, polished and cultured. He was the politest of men; but when the occasion demanded, he could be the firmest also. He had integrity and strength of character and was not prepared to knuckle down to others.

When I started as a temporary draftsman, P. C. V. was asked to supervise my work. He went out of his way to help me. I worked in his room and we lunched together in an ante-room. There has always been a camaraderie among the legal profession and age did not seem to count. I had rice and curry from home. He existed on four cheese sandwiches, two plantains and an apple.

His lunch was the same every day and, as if his doctor had prescribed it, he always consumed the three items of his diet in the order mentioned, the apple coming last. He gave no explanation for this rigid habit—how could he?—for he was robust and in the best of health. In spite of the age difference between the two of us, he was a genial companion.

Colonel Halland, the new Inspector-General of Police imported from India, was an imperialist and a snob. Admiral Layton, the Commander-in-Chief, once summoned a conference to decide on the steps to be taken to impose a blackout. It was attended by senior officers of the Police, the Local Government Department, the Controller of Motor Traffic, others concerned with various aspects of the problem, and P. C. V. Decisions were reached and orders given that the necessary draft legislation should be got ready as soon as possible for the consideration of the Commander-in-Chief. The next day, while I was in P. C. V.’s room, his telephone rang. Col. Halland was on the line and the following conversation took place:

Halland – About yesterday’s conference, I have fixed a meeting in my room for 11 a.m. today and I expect to see you here. I hope the time suits you.

V. – The time suits me, Col. Halland. Meetings of this nature are always held in my chambers and I will be waiting for all of you here.

H. – But why is that? I have called this meeting.

V. – That is correct, but on yesterday’s decisions, a legal draft has to be prepared, and that is always done in my Chambers.

H. – You must remember that I am the Head of a large and important Department.

V. – I know that, Col. Halland, but you have not been long enough in this country to know that I am the head of a very small but very important department.

H. – What is the principle about this?

V. – There is no principle. It has always been the practice. But if you want to know, I suppose it is on the basis that the client comes to the lawyer, not the lawyer to the client.

H.- But you ate not putting me in the position of an ordinary client? I told you that I am the head of a very big department.

V. – Well, Col. Halland, Admiral Layton has ordered you to produce a draft of the proposed legislation. If you can prepare it, please do so. If you want me to prepare it, it will be done in my Chambers.

H. – I shall report this to the Legal Secretary.

V. – Please do so. He knows the practice.

The conference was held in the Legal Draftsman’s Chambers, but Halland did not attend. The bubble of his arrogance had been pricked by Villavarayan and he sent a subordinate officer to represent him. That was how the Defence (Blackout) Regulations came to be drafted.

I was asked to draft a set of Defence Regulations for the formation of a Women’s Auxiliary Corps. At that time we had the WRENS and the WAAFS here, and I had therefore to draft in such a way that our girls would not be mistaken for the foreigners. Following normal office routine, my draft found its way into P. C. V.’s tray. After he had been through it, he sent for me and said something like this: “Peiris, in your regulations, you have grossly insulted the women who will be the members of this Corps. Look at the name you have given to the Corps – ‘Ceylon Auxiliary Territorial Service’ – Can these women carry the letters CATS on their caps? I am altering it to ATS (C). In the second place, you are guilty of gross cruelty to the women. Look at your regulation 18, which deals with uniforms. You say here that medals shall be pinned on the left breast. I cannot possibly let that pass.” And he altered the word “breast” to “lapel of the coat.” My regulation had been taken over rather carelessly from a corresponding regulation relating to a men’s regiment.

P. C. V. retired at 55 when he could have worked till sixty because, as he said, he was disappointed with the D.S. Senanayake regime. D.S. had P. C. V.’s salary increased by £ 200 on the condition he would not ask to be considered for appointment to the Supreme Court Bench.

On his retirement, he refused a farewell by his office staff, came to the office on his last day of work, and walked out at the end of the day without saying “Good-bye” to a single one of his colleagues or the members of the staff. We were all sorry he left us in this way.

At the time when Mervyn was Draftsman, P. C. V., the senior assistant and I, a temporary assistant; the next in the line of succession was Harry Wendt, a son of Mr Justice Wendt and a brother of Lionel, a name too well known in Ceylon and abroad to need any special reference from me. Harry was a well-bred, well-read gentleman. There is one thing that a legal draftsman dislikes, and that is to be disturbed in the middle of his drafting; it breaks his train of thought.

This sort of disturbance never seemed to affect Harry. He was ever ready to put his draft away and give us, Juniors, his advice on a matter of law or drafting whenever his advise was sought. He would put his own papers away, listen to our problem, bring his mind to bear on our difficulty, and then tell us how we should proceed with our draft. A gracious, patient man.

Harry had few friends. He used to come to my house in a rickshaw, dressed in a well-starched suit. He liked informality and was in the habit of taking his coat off and making himself comfortable in my armchair. Then followed, over a drink, a very interesting conversation lasting a couple of hours. I once kept him to dinner. We had string hoppers, chicken curry and a very hot sambol, prepared by my wife at Harry’s special request. Harry enjoyed the sambol, but towards the end of the meal, tears were streaming out of his eyes and he called them tears of joy.

Harry was a slow but a very thorough draftsman. After several years of drafting, he became tired of the work; the strain was beginning to tell on him and he desired a change. Drayton said that no man ought to be kept as a draftsman for more than 10 years. Howard, who was then Legal Secretary was sympathetic, and asked Harry whether he would like to go as Additional District Judge, Nuwara Eliya, which post was at that moment vacant.

The change of work and the climate would have done Harry a world of good. Harry was happy and accepted, but Mervyn, as Head of Department said that he could not be released. Harry never forgave Mervyn for that. Later, everyone saw the reasonableness of Harry’s request for a change of work and Villavarayan saw to it that he went as Additional District Judge of Galle.

I asked Harry what he would do, never having been a judge before, if one of the lawyers suddenly rose before him and raised a preliminary objection. He said that he had been so long drafting that he had forgotten the niceties of the practice of the law. He said he would ask the lawyer under what provision of law he was objecting, would then ask counsel on the other side what he had to say, and, having listened to both sides, would be in a position to make up his own mind and make his order.

He proposed, as much as possible, to keep his mouth shut on the Bench and pretend to be wise, as any sensible judge would, and listen carefully to the arguments presented to him. He was a most popular and acceptable judge. From Galle he came fora short time as Commissioner of Requests, Colombo and, again, carried the office with great dignity.

He died suddenly while having dinner at a friend’s house, in 1945, at the early age of 41. His brother had pre-deceased him, leaving him the patrimony. They came from a very wealthy family. I was a witness to Harry’s last will. After making extremely generous legacies in favour of his servants, he left the entire residue for a trust in the name of his brother. We have today the Lionel Wendt Memorial Hall.

He himself wished to be forgotten. I believe, he left something like Rs 60,000 to his head boy, and lesser amounts to his other servants in proportion to their length of service. One servant got his motor car. This sudden windfall, entirely unexpected, turned the boys’ heads. The head boy, a married man, with a wife and children, used his money to build himself a house. The servant who received the car, ran it for hire and crashed into a bollard. The younger servants took their money to the racecourse and very soon ended up as paupers.

The usual tributes were paid to him in the District Court of Galle and the Court of Requests, Colombo. One of his friends wrote: Others will, out of their qualifications and experience, speak of the contributions which Harry Wendt made to the intellectual dignity of Ceylon, both in the draftsmanship of the law and its adjudication. But there are many who will not soon forget the incomparable quality of gentle friendship which this sensitive man had, and which, lightened by a wit and much intimacy with cultivated ideas and civilized thought, he gave out freely and with catholicity. Ceylon is much impoverished by the passing of the Wendts, Harry so soon after Lionel; but their standards are clearly there for us to see.”

Another friend said: It was only the other day that Harry Wendt and 1, after calling on a friend, drove together to the sea front and there talked, among other things, of his plan for the future. He looked forward, in the years ahead, to resuming a practice at the Bar, in which he felt there would be a field under the constitution to be, and, upon my urging, almost assented to writing a comprehensive treatise on the laws of Ceylon, written as only he could have written, with erudition, lucidity, ease, grace and a meditative balance of mind. Well, that locus classicus on the laws of Ceylon, which only Harry Wendt could have written, will now never be written. It is indeed inscrutable that glorious spirits like these should pass away while gnomes and ghouls remain and flourish.

On Harry’s death in 1945 and Mervyn Fonseka’s in 1946, each of the assistants rose two steps up the departmental ladder – Clifford Pereira’s third and fourth correct predictions. The Department now consisted of Villavarayan, Legal Draftsman, H. N. G. Fernando (now Chief Justice), myself, and the following in order of seniority – James Homer-Vanniasinkam (later acting Attorney-General, Seychelles), A. W. H. Abeysundera (later Puisne Justice), S. Namasivayam (later Parliamentary Counsel, Ghana), Percy de Silva (now Legal Draftsman) and S. Mahadeva. It is gratifying to note that views in high quarters have changed and that a legal draftsman is no longer considered merely as a quill-driver and a scissors and paste artist.

H. N. G. was the most brilliant man I have been privileged to work with. He had a brain like a razor blade, sharp and quick. When he was asked to draft a Bill, he would roll the scheme in his mind for four or five days without putting pencil to paper. He would then have the Bill firmly fixed in his mind, call the stenographer and dictate the entire Bill, a thing which no other draftsman ever dared to attempt.

We would struggle with our pencil, write something, cut it out, write again, rewrite and so on ad infinitum. To listen to him dictating a Bill was a treat. Naturally, he would go wrong on a few cross-references, but these mistakes were not many. All in all, it was an amazing piece of work and a feat of memory.

Fernando and I had, one day, to meet a deputation of three senior doctors from the Ministry of Health over an amendment of the Schedules to the Poisons, Opium and Dangerous Drugs Ordinance. The names of the Drugs specified in the Schedules were long and commuted from the Schedule. After a few hours’ discussion, we arrived at decisions, and H. N. G. asked the doctors how long they would take to send him their report and instructions.

He was surprised to hear that the doctors would need about six weeks. He asked them whether they could wait about half an hour longer, called a stenographer and dictated the doctors’ report, having told them to correct him if he was wrong, and the doctors had not a single correction to make.

Some time -after H. N. G. became Legal Draftsman on P. C. V’s retirement, he applied for silk. Alan Rose, the Attorney-General sat on the file and nothing came of it. But other honours were to come his way later. He was awarded the O.B.E., but the greatest honour was when he was made Puisne Justice and wore his late father’s scarlet robes.

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Features

Ranking public services with AI — A roadmap to reviving institutions like SriLankan Airlines

Published

2 days ago

2026/03/13

Thilina Walpola

Efficacy measures an organisation’s capacity to achieve its mission and intended outcomes under planned or optimal conditions. It differs from efficiency, which focuses on achieving objectives with minimal resources, and effectiveness, which evaluates results in real-world conditions. Today, modern AI tools, using publicly available data, enable objective assessment of the efficacy of Sri Lanka’s government institutions.

Among key public bodies, the Supreme Court of Sri Lanka emerges as the most efficacious, outperforming the Department of Inland Revenue, Sri Lanka Customs, the Election Commission, and Parliament. In the financial and regulatory sector, the Central Bank of Sri Lanka (CBSL) ranks highest, ahead of the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Public Utilities Commission, the Telecommunications Regulatory Commission, the Insurance Regulatory Commission, and the Sri Lanka Standards Institution.

Among state-owned enterprises, the Sri Lanka Ports Authority (SLPA) leads in efficacy, followed by Bank of Ceylon and People’s Bank. Other institutions assessed included the State Pharmaceuticals Corporation, the National Water Supply and Drainage Board, the Ceylon Electricity Board, the Ceylon Petroleum Corporation, and the Sri Lanka Transport Board. At the lower end of the spectrum were Lanka Sathosa and Sri Lankan Airlines, highlighting a critical challenge for the national economy.

Sri Lankan Airlines, consistently ranked at the bottom, has long been a financial drain. Despite successive governments’ reform attempts, sustainable solutions remain elusive.

Globally, the most profitable airlines operate as highly integrated, technology-enabled ecosystems rather than as fragmented departments. Operations, finance, fleet management, route planning, engineering, marketing, and customer service are closely coordinated, sharing real-time data to maximise efficiency, safety, and profitability.

The challenge for Sri Lankan Airlines is structural. Its operations are fragmented, overly hierarchical, and poorly aligned. Simply replacing the CEO or senior leadership will not address these deep-seated weaknesses. What the airline needs is a cohesive, integrated organisational ecosystem that leverages technology for cross-functional planning and real-time decision-making.

The government must urgently consider restructuring Sri Lankan Airlines to encourage:

=Joint planning across operational divisions

=Data-driven, evidence-based decision-making

=Continuous cross-functional consultation

=Collaborative strategic decisions on route rationalisation, fleet renewal, partnerships, and cost management, rather than exclusive top-down mandates

Sustainable reform requires systemic change. Without modernised organisational structures, stronger accountability, and aligned incentives across divisions, financial recovery will remain out of reach. An integrated, performance-oriented model offers the most realistic path to operational efficiency and long-term viability.

Reforming loss-making institutions like Sri Lankan Airlines is not merely a matter of leadership change — it is a structural overhaul essential to ensuring these entities contribute productively to the national economy rather than remain perpetual burdens.

By Chula Goonasekera – Citizen Analyst

Features

Why Pi Day?

Published

2 days ago

2026/03/13

Thilina Walpola

International Day of Mathematics falls tomorrow

The approximate value of Pi (π) is 3.14 in mathematics. Therefore, the day 14 March is celebrated as the Pi Day. In 2019, UNESCO proclaimed 14 March as the International Day of Mathematics.

Ancient Babylonians and Egyptians figured out that the circumference of a circle is slightly more than three times its diameter. But they could not come up with an exact value for this ratio although they knew that it is a constant. This constant was later named as π which is a letter in the Greek alphabet.

Archimedes

It was the Greek mathematician Archimedes (250 BC) who was able to find an upper bound and a lower bound for this constant. He drew a circle of diameter one unit and drew hexagons inside and outside the circle such that the sides of each hexagon touch the sides of the circle. In mathematics the circle passing through all vertices of a polygon is called a ‘circumcircle’ and the largest circle that fits inside a polygon tangent to all its sides is called an ‘incircle’. The total length of the smaller hexagon then becomes the lower bound of π and the length of the hexagon outside the circle is the upper bound. He realised that by increasing the number of sides of the polygon can make the bounds get closer to the value of Pi and increased the number of sides to 12,24,48 and 60. He argued that by increasing the number of sides will ultimately result in obtaining the original circle, thereby laying the foundation for the theory of limits. He ended up with the lower bound as 22/7 and the upper bound 223/71. He could not continue his research as his hometown Syracuse was invaded by Romans and was killed by one of the soldiers. His last words were ‘do not disturb my circles’, perhaps a reference to his continuing efforts to find the value of π to a greater accuracy.

Archimedes can be considered as the father of geometry. His contributions revolutionised geometry and his methods anticipated integral calculus. He invented the pulley and the hydraulic screw for drawing water from a well. He also discovered the law of hydrostatics. He formulated the law of levers which states that a smaller weight placed farther from a pivot can balance a much heavier weight closer to it. He famously said “Give me a lever long enough and a place to stand and I will move the earth”.

Mathematicians have found many expressions for π as a sum of infinite series that converge to its value. One such famous series is the Leibniz Series found in 1674 by the German mathematician Gottfried Leibniz, which is given below.

π = 4 ( 1 – 1/3 + 1/5 – 1/7 + 1/9 – ………….)

The Indian mathematical genius Ramanujan came up with a magnificent formula in 1910. The short form of the formula is as follows.

π = 9801/(1103 √8)

For practical applications an approximation is sufficient. Even NASA uses only the approximation 3.141592653589793 for its interplanetary navigation calculations.

It is not just an interesting and curious number. It is used for calculations in navigation, encryption, space exploration, video game development and even in medicine. As π is fundamental to spherical geometry, it is at the heart of positioning systems in GPS navigations. It also contributes significantly to cybersecurity. As it is an irrational number it is an excellent foundation for generating randomness required in encryption and securing communications. In the medical field, it helps to calculate blood flow rates and pressure differentials. In diagnostic tools such as CT scans and MRI, pi is an important component in mathematical algorithms and signal processing techniques.

This elegant, never-ending number demonstrates how mathematics transforms into practical applications that shape our world. The possibilities of what it can do are infinite as the number itself. It has become a symbol of beauty and complexity in mathematics. “It matters little who first arrives at an idea, rather what is significant is how far that idea can go.” said Sophie Germain.

Mathematics fans are intrigued by this irrational number and attempt to calculate it as far as they can. In March 2022, Emma Haruka Iwao of Japan calculated it to 100 trillion decimal places in Google Cloud. It had taken 157 days. The Guinness World Record for reciting the number from memory is held by Rajveer Meena of India for 70000 decimal places over 10 hours.

Happy Pi Day!

The author is a senior examiner of the International Baccalaureate in the UK and an educational consultant at the Overseas School of Colombo.

by R N A de Silva

Features

Sheer rise of Realpolitik making the world see the brink

Published

3 days ago

2026/03/12

Sahan Weerasooriya

A combined US-Israel attack on Iran.(BBC)

The recent humanly costly torpedoing of an Iranian naval vessel in Sri Lanka’s Exclusive Economic Zone by a US submarine has raised a number of issues of great importance to international political discourse and law that call for elucidation. It is best that enlightened commentary is brought to bear in such discussions because at present misleading and uninformed speculation on questions arising from the incident are being aired by particularly jingoistic politicians of Sri Lanka’s South which could prove deleterious.

As matters stand, there seems to be no credible evidence that the Indian state was aware of the impending torpedoing of the Iranian vessel but these acerbic-tongued politicians of Sri Lanka’s South would have the local public believe that the tragedy was triggered with India’s connivance. Likewise, India is accused of ‘embroiling’ Sri Lanka in the incident on account of seemingly having prior knowledge of it and not warning Sri Lanka about the impending disaster.

It is plain that a process is once again afoot to raise anti-India hysteria in Sri Lanka. An obligation is cast on the Sri Lankan government to ensure that incendiary speculation of the above kind is defeated and India-Sri Lanka relations are prevented from being in any way harmed. Proactive measures are needed by the Sri Lankan government and well meaning quarters to ensure that public discourse in such matters have a factual and rational basis. ‘Knowledge gaps’ could prove hazardous.

Meanwhile, there could be no doubt that Sri Lanka’s sovereignty was violated by the US because the sinking of the Iranian vessel took place in Sri Lanka’s Exclusive Economic Zone. While there is no international decrying of the incident, and this is to be regretted, Sri Lanka’s helplessness and small player status would enable the US to ‘get away with it’.

Could anything be done by the international community to hold the US to account over the act of lawlessness in question? None is the answer at present. This is because in the current ‘Global Disorder’ major powers could commit the gravest international irregularities with impunity. As the threadbare cliché declares, ‘Might is Right’….. or so it seems.

Unfortunately, the UN could only merely verbally denounce any violations of International Law by the world’s foremost powers. It cannot use countervailing force against violators of the law, for example, on account of the divided nature of the UN Security Council, whose permanent members have shown incapability of seeing eye-to-eye on grave matters relating to International Law and order over the decades.

The foregoing considerations could force the conclusion on uncritical sections that Political Realism or Realpolitik has won out in the end. A basic premise of the school of thought known as Political Realism is that power or force wielded by states and international actors determine the shape, direction and substance of international relations. This school stands in marked contrast to political idealists who essentially proclaim that moral norms and values determine the nature of local and international politics.

While, British political scientist Thomas Hobbes, for instance, was a proponent of Political Realism, political idealism has its roots in the teachings of Socrates, Plato and latterly Friedrich Hegel of Germany, to name just few such notables.

On the face of it, therefore, there is no getting way from the conclusion that coercive force is the deciding factor in international politics. If this were not so, US President Donald Trump in collaboration with Israeli Rightist Premier Benjamin Natanyahu could not have wielded the ‘big stick’, so to speak, on Iran, killed its Supreme Head of State, terrorized the Iranian public and gone ‘scot-free’. That is, currently, the US’ impunity seems to be limitless.

Moreover, the evidence is that the Western bloc is reuniting in the face of Iran’s threats to stymie the flow of oil from West Asia to the rest of the world. The recent G7 summit witnessed a coming together of the foremost powers of the global North to ensure that the West does not suffer grave negative consequences from any future blocking of western oil supplies.

Meanwhile, Israel is having a ‘free run’ of the Middle East, so to speak, picking out perceived adversarial powers, such as Lebanon, and militarily neutralizing them; once again with impunity. On the other hand, Iran has been bringing under assault, with no questions asked, Gulf states that are seen as allying with the US and Israel. West Asia is facing a compounded crisis and International Law seems to be helplessly silent.

Wittingly or unwittingly, matters at the heart of International Law and peace are being obfuscated by some pro-Trump administration commentators meanwhile. For example, retired US Navy Captain Brent Sadler has cited Article 51 of the UN Charter, which provides for the right to self or collective self-defence of UN member states in the face of armed attacks, as justifying the US sinking of the Iranian vessel (See page 2 of The Island of March 10, 2026). But the Article makes it clear that such measures could be resorted to by UN members only ‘ if an armed attack occurs’ against them and under no other circumstances. But no such thing happened in the incident in question and the US acted under a sheer threat perception.

Clearly, the US has violated the Article through its action and has once again demonstrated its tendency to arbitrarily use military might. The general drift of Sadler’s thinking is that in the face of pressing national priorities, obligations of a state under International Law could be side-stepped. This is a sure recipe for international anarchy because in such a policy environment states could pursue their national interests, irrespective of their merits, disregarding in the process their obligations towards the international community.

Moreover, Article 51 repeatedly reiterates the authority of the UN Security Council and the obligation of those states that act in self-defence to report to the Council and be guided by it. Sadler, therefore, could be said to have cited the Article very selectively, whereas, right along member states’ commitments to the UNSC are stressed.

However, it is beyond doubt that international anarchy has strengthened its grip over the world. While the US set destabilizing precedents after the crumbling of the Cold War that paved the way for the current anarchic situation, Russia further aggravated these degenerative trends through its invasion of Ukraine. Stepping back from anarchy has thus emerged as the prime challenge for the world community.