Features

Sirisena Cooray at 90: Still Premadasa’s Man

Published

5 years ago

2021/04/25

by Tisaranee Gunasekara

“And I think I did not disappoint him. I did not bring disrepute on him or embarrass him. Whatever I did brought credit to him. That was how I became his chief supporter. Soon I became known as Premadasa’s man.

We were friends.”

Sirisena Cooray (President Premadasa and I: Our Story)

As boy and youth, Sirisena Cooray wanted to be many things, a policeman, a journalist, a sailor and an actor, never a politician. But there was one constant which existed side-by-side with these varying dreams – a commitment to Ranasinghe Premadasa, his vision and his particular brand of politics.

Premadasa became Cooray’s hero long before they met. Premadasa was the rising star in Central Colombo, and a friend of Cooray’s older brother Nandisena. In that village-like urban centre, everyone knew and talked about Premadasa. Sirisena Cooray was barely twelve when he gathered his friends and set up an organisation modelled on Premadasa’s Sucharitha Movement. He called it Sri Sucharita Vaag Vardana Lama Samajaaya (Sri Sucharita Children’s Society for the Promotion of Speaking Arts). The same way other boys play at war and try to emulate the exploits of their favourite military heroes, Cooray and his friends played at politics, making speeches and engaging in debates.

But not politics as usual. That was what Cooray’s older brother was doing, and for young Sirisena it held no attraction. Premadasa’s brand of politics was different. He was a ‘reformer’ and it was this determination and commitment to improve things which turned into a siren song for Cooray.

In his book, President Premadasa and I: Our story, Cooray recounts how he used to listen to the discussions between his brother and Ranasinghe Premadasa. Premadasa would have known about young Sirisena’s admiration and the boyish attempts to emulate him. Premadasa would have been both touched and flattered. When he talked and argued politics with his friend, Nandisena, was he also indirectly addressing young Sirisena? Perhaps. In any case, Sirisena’s admiration for Premadasa, formed from afar, became intensified through these close encounters. “Mr. Premadasa had new ideas,” Cooray would recall; he was a ‘far more serious’ man than those around him, a man who ‘spoke sense.’ It wasn’t just the impression of a starry eyed boy. Cooray’s eminently sensible father told his young son to follow not his brother but Premadasa if he wanted to do politics. When Premadasa and Nandisena Cooray fell out, Srisiena chose not his brother, but Premadasa.

It is not only in military battlefields that trust and loyalty become the greatest virtues. It is also so in political battlefields. Premadasa, who had already planned his journey, understood that it would entail an endless struggle, no less ferocious for its non-use of physical weapons. In Cooray he found the ideal companion, a friend in whose company he could relax, a follower whose loyalty was beyond question, and a comrade who was both trustworthy and competent.

The trust was not merely political, but also personal, including life-and-death decisions. In the late 1980’s Premadasa developed a health complication and the doctors in the San Francisco hospital he was being treated at advised an immediate operation. His personal physician Dr, Nanayakkara disagreed. The argument went back and forth with no conclusion. In his book Cooray wrote about what happened next. “Finally Mr. Premadasa got up and said, ‘I leave everything to Mr. Sirisena Cooray. Whatever decision he takes I will go with it.’ Then he left the room.”

The Premadasa-Cooray partnership lasted almost four decades; in terms of longevity and intensity, it was singular in Lankan politics and rare even in the global context. It was a bond breakable only by death. And the death came sooner than either of them thought possible, when a Tiger suicide bomber killed Premadasa on the May Day of 1993.

A friendship for the books

Bromance is a Twenty First Century word for a human-relationship which is timeless. Not friendship or comradeship alone, but both together, mixed with brotherly love and something else which is indefinable and indescribable, a non-physical but intensely emotional bond between two men with shared beliefs and goals.

The first literary rendition of bromance goes back several millennia, to the great epic Gilgamesh (considered world’s first piece of literature). The bond between the poem’s eponymous hero and his friend/companion Enkidu forms the main channel along which the story flows. And in Homer’s Iliad, the relationship which drives the story to its tragic end doesn’t belong to the divinely beautiful Helen, but to ‘fleet-footed’ Achilles and ‘his own, his dear, his beloved companion’ Patroklus.

“I know I’m going to lose a part of myself,”¹ Ranasinghe Premadasa said in 1978, about Sirisena Cooray’s imminent departure to Malaysia. Cooray had been appointed as the new High Commissioner at his own request. Premadasa made the remark at a felicitation ceremony he organised for his departing friend at Temple Trees. The separation was of very short duration, rather less than a year. Premadasa wanted Cooray to be the UNP’s mayoral candidate for Colombo. Cooray dithered at first and then agreed, even though he had sold his house in Colombo and all his household items prior to his departure.

It was a pattern which ran throughout their relationship. Cooray would go away; Premadasa would let him go, knowing that he would be back, soon. Premadasa, who was known for his unforgiving attitude towards anyone who left him in the lurch, accepted Cooray’s not infrequent departures as pro forma. He didn’t regard these leavings as abandonment. He knew Cooray would never abandon him. In an untrustworthy world, Cooray was the one man, the only man, Premadasa could trust, to tell him the unpalatable truth, to turn his ideas into reality, and to always, always return.

The departures served as preludes to renewed affirmation of the importance of the relationship. Cooray, the younger partner, needed that affirmation, and Premadasa, an impatient man in all other respects, was willing to go along. A telling example was Cooray’s sudden resignation as the Minister of Housing in September 1990. In his letter of resignation, he indicates that he wants some time away from politics. The letter, at first glance, is a formal one, from a minister to the president. But allusions to the emotional connection between the two are scattered throughout the missive, hints that Premadasa, a man of unusual intelligence, would not have missed. In the last paragraph, what is hitherto implied is made explicit: “Dear Sir, you are aware after the death of my parents, there is only one person who is everything to me.”

Premadasa, reportedly read the letter three times but refused to accept the resignation; “Tell Sirisena to come back whenever he can,” he told the bearer of that letter, T Mahalingam. And Sirisena did, within weeks. He had the affirmation he was looking for, again. “What I was trying to do was to remind him that he needed me. I knew that he wouldn’t let me go… When everyone else wanted to leave he would say go to hell. I knew I was the only exception.”

He was. But that status had to be earned, and was earned, through decades of total commitment and unswerving loyalty. Perhaps this was never more in evidence than during the presidential election of 1988. A memorandum sent by Cooray to Premadasa analysing the problems faced during the campaign reveals the titanic nature of that challenge. Problems were galore, from transport (…many persons who promised us vehicles evaded us…) and propaganda (“the grass roots organisation was paralysed and no effective poster pasting campaign was carried out in many parts) to a not very cooperative party headquarters. All this was on top of a violent boycott campaign by the JVP. As Cooray wrote, “Usually you do not have to motivate your own people; they vote for you anyway; in this election we had to try and motivate our own people to at least go out and vote. Without a candidate like Mr. Premadasa we would not have been able to pull it off.” It actually required two – a candidate of the calibre of Ranasinghe Premadasa and an organiser like Cooray with his competence and commitment. It was that dual act which pulled off the most difficult win in the history of Lankan presidential elections.

Till death and beyond

Cooray was in politics not for himself but for Premadasa and Premadasa knew that. Premadasa was the reason Cooray entered politics and stayed in it. When he wrote, “The day I lost him was the end of the story,” he was not exaggerating. It was the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. It was also the explanation for much of what Cooray did (or didn’t do) afterwards, starting with resigning from the post of UNP Secretary General.

President Wijetunga had asked for Cooray’s resignation and when Cooray told a newspaper that he will not resign nor can he be kicked out, it seemed as if he would dig in and fight the anti-Premadasa forces then rapidly gaining ascendance within the UNP. Many who wished the UNP well wanted him to stay on, notably President Jayewardene. But all Cooray wanted was to remain General Secretary until the unveiling of the Premasasa statue at Hulftsdorf on Premadasa’s first death anniversary. Once the ceremony was over, he came home, wrote his letter of resignation and sent it to Wijetunga.

Sirisena Cooray was not an ambitious man, a crucial factor which cemented his bond with Premadasa. The struggle belonged to Premadasa. So long as Premadasa was alive, Cooray would stay at his side. But when Premadasa died, the main reason for Cooray’s involvement in politics vanished. Post-Premadasa, it was a drama bereft of its main actor. Cooray could have stepped into that role. Objectively he had the capacity. But the subjective factors were not present; he had no desire for the job.

Ranasinghe Premadasa was as an outsider, a man from the ‘wrong side’ of Colombo and of a non-Goigama caste. He incurred the hate and fear of those who believed that political leadership should remain an upper-class/caste monopoly, the prerogative of a few families rather than the right of any Lankan-born man or woman. When Premadasa was killed, this fear and this hate were transferred onto his political other-half, Sirisena Cooray. Every crime Premadasa had been accused of was now thrown at Cooray, plus one addition – that of causing Premadasa’s death.

Some of those who levelled these preposterous charges knew enough of Cooray to know that he was a decent human being incapable of committing such crimes; others had no knowledge of him and feared what they didn’t know. A retired judge who was brought by a mutual friend for a policy discussion said at the end of the meeting that he was so nervous about meeting this ‘notorious character’ he left instructions about what to do in case he didn’t return. Most of Cooray’s first time visitors would stare at his collection of books – which ranged from Goethe to Agatha Christie – as if they believed him to be not just a killer but an illiterate one.

Cooray would try to see humour in the horrendous accusations made against him. Their political consequences he could deal with (though they included three presidential commissions against him – and the dead Premadasa – and a spell of incarceration during CBK presidency). What was harder to handle was the personal hurt. Had there been a Premadasa to fight for, he would have borne that pain and continued. But there wasn’t, and he just didn’t see the point of going on. Had he been the man his enemies feared, he wouldn’t have refused the premiership offered to him by the party in the immediate aftermath of Premadasa’s death; nor would he have given away the two great Premadasa political legacies, the Sucharitha Movement and Colombo Central. He would have used the three to get to the top, and he could have done it. He didn’t because he wasn’t the hard, driven, and power-obsessed colossus his enemies feared, but someone much softer and kinder, someone whose political motivation came not from personal ambition or greed, not from anger or hate, but from the love he had for his leader and friend, Premadasa.

In his book, Cooray wrote, “Without me, he too would have been alone.” True, had Cooray died first, there would have been a political and a personal void in Preamdasa’s life that no other could fill. But Premadasa would have gone on, because the struggle to transform Sri Lanka was his life. Cooray couldn’t, Premadasa was his political life.

Sans

Premadasa, Cooray would dabble in politics, because he didn’t want to let down those who stayed with him, especially the activists from Colombo Central. He appreciated their loyalty, understood their utter sense of loss and was loath to abandon them. But his heart was not in it. What truly motivated him was keeping Premadas’s memory alive and defending his name from the mendacious charges levelled at him (something his family failed to do, daughter Dulanjalee being the occasional exception).

Many saw the Premadasa Centre as Cooray’s vehicle for power, but for Cooray it was a platform to defend Premadasa from the calumnies and to save his memory for posterity. It was also a kind of a time bubble where members of the political tribe of Premadasa loyalists could gather and remember. Though its activities included such forward looking measures as preparing a comprehensive national plan, informed by inputs from experts from various fields, it was more epilogue than new chapter, let alone a new book.

When Sirisena Cooray was planning some event to commemorate Ranasinghe Premadasa, one could catch a glimpse of the peerless organiser who led the presidential election battle of 1988, snatching victory from the jaws of defeat, the brilliant worker who headed the 1.5 Million Housing Programme, the doer who handled the reconstruction of the Mirisawetiya Chaitya and the raising of the Maligawila Buddha statue. In those moments he seemed inspired and was inspiring. In those moments he was the man Premadasa chose.

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Features

Educational reforms under the NPP government

Published

16 hours ago

2026/01/6

Sahan Weerasooriya

PM Amarasuriya

When the National People’s Power won elections in 2024, there was much hope that the country’s education sector could be made better. Besides the promise of good governance and system change that the NPP offered, this hope was fuelled in part by the appointment of an academic who was at the forefront of the struggle to strengthen free public education and actively involved in the campaign for 6% of GDP for education, as the Minister of Education.

Reforms in the education sector are underway including, a key encouraging move to mainstream vocational education as part of the school curriculum. There has been a marginal increase in budgetary allocations for education. New infrastructure facilities are to be introduced at some universities. The freeze on recruitment is slowly being lifted. However, there is much to be desired in the government’s performance for the past one year. Basic democratic values like rule of law, transparency and consultation, let alone far-reaching systemic changes, such as allocation of more funds for education, combating the neoliberal push towards privatisation and eradication of resource inequalities within the public university system, are not given due importance in the current approach to educational and institutional reforms. This edition of Kuppi Talk focuses on the general educational reforms and the institutional reforms required in the public university system.

General Educational Reforms

Any reform process – whether it is in education or any other area – needs to be shaped by public opinion. A country’s education sector should take into serious consideration the views of students, parents, teachers, educational administrators, associated unions, and the wider public in formulating the reforms. Especially after Aragalaya/Porattam, the country saw a significant political shift. Disillusionment with the traditional political elite mired in corruption, nepotism, racism and self-serving agendas, brought the NPP to power. In such a context, the expectation that any reforms should connect with the people, especially communities that have been systematically excluded from processes of policymaking and governance, is high.

Sadly, the general educational reforms, which are being implemented this year, emerged without much discussion on what recent political changes meant to the people and the education sector. Many felt that the new government should not have been hasty in introducing these reforms in 2026. The present state of affairs calls for self-introspection. As members affiliated to the National Institute of Education (NIE), we must acknowledge that we should have collectively insisted on more time for consultation, deliberations and review.

The government’s conflicts with the teachers’ unions over the extension of school hours, the History teachers’ opposition to the removal of History from the list of compulsory exam subjects for Grades 10 and 11, the discontent with regard to the increase in the number of subjects (now presented as modules) for Grade 6 classes could have been avoided, had there been adequate time spent on consultations.

Given the opposition to the current set of reforms, the government should keep engaging all concerned actors on changes that could be brought about in the coming years. Instead of adopting an intransigent position or ignoring mistakes made, the government and we, the members affiliated to NIE, need to keep the reform process alive, remain open to critique, and treat the latest policy framework, the exams and evaluation methods, and even the modules, as live documents that can be made better, based on constructive feedback and public opinion.

Philosophy and Content

As Ramya Kumar observed in the last edition of Kuppi Talk, there are many refreshing ideas included in the educational philosophy that appears in the latest version of the policy document on educational reforms. But, sadly, it was not possible for curriculum writers to reflect on how this policy could inform the actual content as many of the modules had been sent for printing even before the policy was released to the public. An extensive public discussion of the proposed educational vision would have helped those involved in designing the curriculum to prioritise subjects and disciplines that need to be given importance in a country that went through a protracted civil war and continue to face deep ethno-religious divisions.

While I appreciate the statement made by the Minister of Education, in Parliament, that the histories of minority communities will be included in the new curriculum, a wider public discussion might have pushed the government and NIE to allocate more time for subjects like the Second National Language and include History or a Social Science subject under the list of compulsory subjects. Now that a detailed policy document is in the public domain, there should be a serious conversation about how best the progressive aspects of its philosophy could be made to inform the actual content of the curriculum, its implementation and pedagogy in the future.

University Reforms

Another reform process where the government seems to be going headfirst is the amendments to the Universities Act. While laws need to be revisited and changes be made where required, the existent law should govern the way things are done until a new law comes into place. Recently, a circular was issued by the University Grants Commission (UGC) to halt the process of appointing Heads of Departments and Deans until the proposed amendments to the University Act come into effect. Such an intervention by the UGC is totalitarian and undermines the academic and institutional culture within the public university system and goes against the principle of rule of law.

There have been longstanding demands with regard to institutional reforms such as a transparent process in appointing council members to the public university system, reforms in the schemes of recruitment and selection processes for Vice Chancellor and academics, and the withdrawal of the circular banning teachers of law from practising, to name a few.

The need for a system where the evaluation of applicants for the post of Vice Chancellor cannot be manipulated by the Council members is strongly felt today, given the way some candidates have reportedly been marked up/down in an unfair manner for subjective criteria (e.g., leadership, integrity) in recent selection processes. Likewise, academic recruitment sometimes penalises scholars with inter-disciplinary backgrounds and compartmentalises knowledge within hermetically sealed boundaries. Rigid disciplinary specificities and ambiguities around terms such as ‘subject’ and ‘field’ in the recruitment scheme have been used to reject applicants with outstanding publications by those within the system who saw them as a threat to their positions. The government should work towards reforms in these areas, too, but through adequate deliberations and dialogue.

From Mindless Efficiency to Patient Deliberations

Given the seeming lack of interest on the part of the government to listen to public opinion, in 2026, academics, trade unions and students should be more active in their struggle for transparency and consultations. This struggle has to happen alongside our ongoing struggles for higher allocations for education, better infrastructure, increased recruitment and better work environment. Part of this struggle involves holding the NPP government, UGC, NIE, our universities and schools accountable.

The new year requires us to think about social justice and accountability in education in new ways, also in the light of the Ditwah catastrophe. The decision to cancel the third-term exams, delegating the authority to decide when to re-open affected schools to local educational bodies and Principals and not change the school hours in view of the difficulties caused by Ditwah are commendable moves. But there is much more that we have to do both in addressing the practical needs of the people affected by Ditwah and understanding the implications of this crisis to our framing of education as social justice.

To what extent is our educational policymaking aware of the special concerns of students, teachers and schools affected by Ditwah and other similar catastrophes? Do the authorities know enough about what these students, teachers and institutions expect via educational and institutional reforms? What steps have we taken to find out their priorities and their understanding of educational reforms at this critical juncture? What steps did we take in the past to consult communities that are prone to climate disasters? We should not shy away from decelerating the reform process, if that is what the present moment of climate crisis exacerbated by historical inequalities of class, gender, ethnicity and region in areas like Malaiyaham requires, especially in a situation where deliberations have been found lacking.

This piece calls for slowing-down as a counter practice, a decelerating move against mindless efficiency and speed demanded by neoliberal donor agencies during reform processes at the risk of public opinion, especially of those on the margins. Such framing can help us see openness, patience, accountability, humility and the will to self-introspect and self-correct as our guides in envisioning and implementing educational reforms in the new year and beyond.

(Mahendran Thiruvarangan is a Senior Lecturer attached to the Department of Linguistics & English at the University of Jaffna)

Kuppi is a politics and pedagogy happening on the margins of the lecture hall that parodies, subverts, and simultaneously reaffirms social hierarchies

by Mahendran Thiruvarangan

Features

Build trust through inclusion and consultation in the New Year

Published

16 hours ago

2026/01/6

Sahan Weerasooriya

Looking back at the past year, the anxiety among influential sections of the population that the NPP government would destabilise the country has been dispelled. There was concern that the new government with its strong JVP leadership might not be respectful of private property in the Marxist tradition. These fears have not materialised. The government has made a smooth transition, with no upheavals and no breakdown of governance. This continuity deserves recognition. In general, smooth political transitions following decisive electoral change may be identified as early indicators of democratic consolidation rather than disruption.

Democratic legitimacy is strengthened when new governments respect inherited institutions rather than seek to dismantle them wholesale. On this score, the government’s first year has been positive. However, the challenges that the government faces are many. The government’s failure to appoint an Auditor General, coupled with its determination to push through nominees of its own choosing without accommodating objections from the opposition and civil society, reflects a deeper problem. The government’s position is that the Constitutional Council is making biased decisions when it rejects the president’s nominations to the position of Auditor General.

Many if not most of the government’s appointments to high positions of state have been drawn from a narrow base of ruling party members and associates. The government’s core entity, the JVP, has had a traditional voter base of no more than 5 percent. Limiting selection of top officials to its members or associates is a recipe for not getting the best. It leaves out a wide swathe of competent persons which is counterproductive to the national interest. Reliance on a narrow pool of party affiliated individuals for senior state appointments limits access to talent and expertise, though the government may have its own reasons.

The recent furor arising out of the Grade 6 children’s textbook having a weblink to a gay dating site appears to be an act of sabotage. Prime Minister (and Education Minister Harini Amarasuriya) has been unfairly and unreasonably targeted for attack by her political opponents. Governments that professionalise the civil service rather than politicise them have been more successful in sustaining reform in the longer term in keeping with the national interest. In Sri Lanka, officers of the state are not allowed to contest elections while in service (Establishment Code) which indicates that they cannot be linked to any party as they have to serve all.

Skilled Leadership

The government is also being subjected to criticism by the Opposition for promising much in its election manifesto and failing to deliver on those promises. In this regard, the NPP has been no different to the other political parties that contested those elections making extravagant promises. The problem is that the economic collapse of 2022 set the country back several years in terms of income and living standards. The economy regressed to the levels of 2018, which was not due to actions of the NPP. Even the most skilled leadership today cannot simply erase those lost years. The economy rebounded to around five percent growth in the past year, but this recovery now faces new problems following Cyclone Ditwah, which wiped out an estimated ten percent of national income.

In the aftermath of the cyclone, the country’s cause for shame lies with the political parties. Rather than coming together to support relief and recovery, many focused on assigning blame and scoring political points, as in the attacks on the prime minister, undermining public confidence in the state apparatus at a moment when trust was essential. Despite the politically motivated attacks by some, the government needs to stick to the path of inclusiveness in its approach to governance. The sustainability of policy change depends not only on electoral victory but on inclusive processes that are more likely to endure than those imposed by majorities.

Bipartisanship recognises that national rebuilding and reconciliation requires cooperation across political divides. It requires consultation with the opposition and with civil society. Opposition leader Sajith Premadasa has been generally reasonable and constructive in his approach. A broader view of bipartisanship is that it needs to extend beyond the mainstream opposition to include ethnic and religious minorities. The government’s commitment to equal rights and non-discrimination has had a positive impact. Visible racism has declined, and minorities report feeling physically safer than in the past. These gains should not be underestimated. However, deeper threats to ethnic harmony remain.

The government needs to do more to make national reconciliation practical and rooted in change on the ground rather than symbolic. Political power sharing is central to this task. Minority communities, particularly in the north and east, continue to feel excluded from national development. While they welcome visits and dialogue with national leaders, frustration grows when development promises remain confined to foundation stones and ceremonies. The construction of Buddhist temples in areas with no Buddhist population, justified on claims of historical precedent, is perceived as threatening rather than reconciliatory.

Wider Polity

The constitutionally mandated devolution framework provided by the Thirteenth Amendment remains the most viable mechanism for addressing minority grievances within a united country. It was mediated by India as a third party to the agreement. The long delayed provincial council elections need to be held without further postponement. Provincial council elections have not been held for seven years. This prolonged suspension undermines both democratic practice and minority confidence. International experience, whether in India and Switzerland, shows that decentralisation is most effective when regional institutions are electorally accountable and operational rather than dormant.

It is not sufficient to treat individuals as equal citizens in the abstract. Democratic equality also requires recognising communities as collective actors with legitimate interests. Power sharing allows communities to make decisions in areas where they form majorities, reducing alienation and strengthening national cohesion. The government’s first year in office saw it acknowledge many of these problems, but acknowledgment has not yet translated into action. Issues relating to missing persons, prolonged detention, land encroachment and the absence of provincial elections remain unresolved. Even in areas where reform has been attempted, such as the repeal of the Prevention of Terrorism Act, the proposed replacement legislation falls short of international human rights standards.

The New Year must be one in which these foundational issues are addressed decisively. If not, problems will fester, get worse and distract the government from engaging fully in the development process. Devolution through the Thirteenth Amendment and credible reconciliation mechanisms must move from rhetoric to implementation. It is reported that a resolution to appoint a select committee of parliament to look into and report on an electoral system under which the provincial council elections will be held will be taken up this week. Similarly, existing institutions such as the Office of Missing Persons and the Office of Reparations need to be empowered to function effectively, while a truth and reconciliation process must be established that commands public confidence.

Trust in institutions requires respect for constitutional processes, trust in society requires inclusive decision making, and trust across communities requires genuine power sharing and accountability. Economic recovery, disaster reconstruction, institutional integrity and ethnic reconciliation are not separate tasks but interlinked tests of democratic governance. The government needs to move beyond reliance on its core supporters and govern in a manner that draws in the wider polity. Its success here will determine not only the sustainability of its reforms but also the country’s prospects for long term stability and unity.

by Jehan Perera

Features

Not taking responsibility, lack of accountability

Published

16 hours ago

2026/01/6

Sahan Weerasooriya

While agreeing wholeheartedly with most of the sentiments expressed by Dr Geewananda Gunawardhana in his piece “Pharmaceuticals, deaths, and work ethics” (The Island, 5th January), I must take exception to what he stated regarding corruption: “Enough has been said about corruption, and fortunately, the present government is making an effort to curb it. We must give them some time as only the government has changed, not the people”

With every change of government, we have witnessed the scenario of the incoming government going after the corrupt of the previous, punishing a few politicians in the process. This is nothing new. In fact, some governments have gone after high-ranking public servants, too, punishing them on very flimsy grounds. One of the main reasons, if not the main, of the unexpected massive victory at the polls of this government was the promise of eradication of corruption. Whilst claiming credit for convicting some errant politicians, even for cases that commenced before they came to power, how has the NPP government fared? If one considers corruption to be purely financial, then they have done well, so far. Well, even with previous governments they did not commence plundering the wealth of the nation in the first year!

I would argue that dishonesty, even refusal to take responsibility is corruption. Plucking out of retirement and giving plum jobs to those who canvassed key groups, in my opinion, is even worse corruption than some financial malpractices. There is no need to go into the details of Ranwala affairs as much has been written about but the way the government responded does not reassure anyone expecting and hoping for the NPP government to be corruption free.

One of the first important actions of the government was the election of Ranwala as the speaker. When his claimed doctorate was queried and he stepped down to find the certificate, why didn’t AKD give him a time limit to find it? When he could not substantiate obtaining a PhD, even after a year, why didn’t AKD insist that he resigns the parliamentary seat? Had such actions been taken then the NPP can claim credit that the party does not tolerate dishonesty. What an example are we setting for the youth?

Recent road traffic accident involving Ranwala brough to focus this lapse too, in addition to the laughable way the RTA was handled. The police officers investigating could not breathalyse him as they had run out of ‘balloons’ for the breathalyser! His blood and urine alcohol levels were done only after a safe period had elapsed. Not surprisingly, the results were normal! Honestly, does the government believe that anyone with an iota of intelligence would accept the explanation that these were lapses on the part of the police but not due to political interference?

The release of over 300 ‘red-tagged’ containers continues to remain a mystery. The deputy minister of shipping announced loudly that the ministry would take full responsibility but subsequently it turned out that customs is not under the purview of the ministry of shipping. Report on the affair is yet to see the light of day, the only thing that happened being the senior officer in customs that defended the government’s action being appointed the chief! Are these the actions of a government that came to power on the promise of eradication of corruption?

The new year dawned with another headache for the government that promised ‘system change.’ The most important educational reforms in our political history were those introduced by Dr CWW Kannangara which included free education and the establishment of central schools, etc. He did so after a comprehensive study lasting over six years, but the NPP government has been in a rush! Against the advice of many educationists that reforms should be brought after consultation, the government decided it could rush it on its own. It refuses to take responsibility when things go wrong. Heavens, things have started going wrong even before it started! Grade Six English Language module textbook gives a link to make e-buddies. When I clicked that link what I got was a site that stated: “Buddy, Bad Boys Club, Meet Gay Men for fun”!

Australia has already banned social media to children under 15 years and a recent survey showed that nearly two thirds of parents in the UK also favour such a ban but our minister of education wants children as young as ten years to join social media and have e-buddies!

Coming back to the aforesaid website, instead of an internal investigation to find out what went wrong, the Secretary to the Ministry of Education went to the CID. Of course, who is there in the CID? Shani of Ranjan Ramanayake tape fame! He will surely ‘fix’ someone for ‘sabotaging’ educational reforms! Can we say that the NPP government is less corrupt and any better than its predecessors?

by Dr Upul Wijayawardhana