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Colombo Hilton, Cornel Perera and developing East coast tourism

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Excerpted from volume ii of the Sarath Amunugama autobiography

As mentioned earlier there was a lull in inbound tourist traffic after the riots of 1983. Till then we were doubling the number of arrivals each year. Old companies like John Keells, Aitken Spence, Walkers and Sommervilles, which had been edged out of plantation management by land reform, entered the field of-tourism with staff and skills which compared well with their counterparts in the travel trade worldwide.

I remember the close ties that were established between them and major foreign outbound travel companies. In the Ministry and Tourist Board we adopted a private sector friendly approach which encouraged the local companies to aggressively market Sri Lanka. We knew we had the President’s backing in this approach.

There was one instance where Hurulle the Minister of Culture had arbitrarily raised the price of tickets for foreign visitors to cultural sites like Sigiriya. In the travel trade ticket prices once announced in their catalogs cannot be arbitrarily changed. The tourist pays upfront when he signs up for a package tour based on the catalog rates. Our travel representatives rushed up to me to protest as their principals were furious.

As a strategy I requested Ken Balendra and his group to get their principals to write to the President protesting at this last minute change. For convenience I provided them a draft of the letter to be sent to the President. Balendra and his associates had immediately sent this to the relevant companies in Europe. The following day JRJ sent for me.

As I went into his office he was chuckling. “Amunugama, this is very strange”, he told me “people from all Europe-Paris, London and Zurich-are apparently telepathic. They have sent me the same message word for word, protesting against Hurulle’s decision. How do you account for it?” I realized that he had seen through our ruse and quickly admitted that I had originated it in our Ministry. He laughed and picked up the phone and ordered Hurulle to rescind his order. “You can do it from the next budget after giving due notice”, he told the minister.

He had seen the need to intervene very clearly and was not at all critical of our unorthodox behavior. He was too experienced and wily an operator not to see through our strategy. He always preferred action to lethargy in his officials and was ready to join in the fun.

The genesis of the Colombo Hilton also is an example of his unorthodox style. He was a great friend of Cornel Perera partly because he liked his chutzpah and partly because Cornel was his conduit to Thondaman. Cornel was my classmate from Trinity College and he used to exchange pleasantries with me about our friends and college whenever we met. He was from Gampola and was a fluent Tamil speaker with links to Thondaman and his Ceylon Indian Congress.

He had got a scholarship to Japan to study fisheries. With his flair for languages Cornel picked up Japanese easily and was in demand by our embassy in Tokyo which at that time did not have much to do since our trade relations had not developed. Indeed our early businessmen with Japan – Cornel, Munidasa, Warnasuriya and Merrick Gunaratne, started out there as adult students with a flair for languages.

Some like Munidasa and Warnasuriya married Japanese girls. Cornel managed to secure the local agency for Hitachi power sets. At this time big Japanese Companies were struggling to enter global markets and were willing to give competitive bids as well as large commissions to their agents who had to battle the well established western companies. With hard work and his natural charm, Cornel secured the contract for power sets from the CGR and entered the inner circle of the super-rich in the country.

He remained faithful to JRJ and promoted his image in Japan resurrecting his contribution at the San Francisco Conference. Typically our Foreign Service missed this opportunity and JRJ was beholden to his young friends who were assiduously drawing attention to his links with then Japanese leaders like Sigeru Yoshida. Japanese politicians have long memories and it was not difficult to fan the dying embers of the JRJ cult in Japan.

One of the top companies in Japan – a part of the Daibatsu or economy leaders – was Mitsui – a construction Company, which won many contracts like the construction of the new Parliament in Kotte. The Mitsui agent in Colombo was JRJ’s daughter-in-law which did no harm in the competition for project contracts. Cornel was close to Mitsui at this stage and proposed the joint construction of a new five star hotel in Colombo.

Mitsui which was already well established in Colombo agreed and Cornel brought in Hilton to undertake the management as a big name was needed at this juncture. This proposal was a big deal at that time since our tourism was in the doldrums after the communal conflagration and something dramatic and big had to be done about it. We in the Ministry supported this project to the hilt because new five-star hotels were badly needed if we were to encourage high end tourism.

The UDA and the Colombo Municipality, then under Sirisena Cooray, also backed the Hilton project and the construction got under way. The UDA under Premadasa had prepared a comprehensive development plan for the city of Colombo and the suburbs. Accordingly, the area around the Presidents House was demarcated as the financial district. Banks, stock brokering houses and other financial institutions were to come up there.

Today the Bank of Ceylon headquarters building dominates that landscape. Next to it was the upmarket leisure sector, principally hotels and malls. One block in this area was set apart for the Hilton project and the adjoining block was given, at Hameed’s urging, to the Galadari brothers. They were able to finance the construction of another new five-star hotel. Initially the Galadaris went with the, prestigious Meridian group of France but later decided to run the Hotel themselves with local management.

The future seemed bright for Cornel with JRJ, Premadasa, Gamini Dissanayake, Mayor Cooray and Paskaralingam as his supporters. Premadasa provided him with land in Colpetty to set up the first supermarket in Colombo. At about this time, as I have written earlier, Lalith Athulathmudali as Minister of Trade led a delegation to Tokyo to promote trade between the two countries and setup the first Japan-Lanka Trade Council.

As outlined there, I as Secretary for Tourism, was a member of that 10-strong delegation. Meetings with the top Japanese ‘Daibatsu’ were cordial and the Hilton was presented as a successful collaboration. The hotel which was built to Japanese specifications was opened ceremonially by the President.

While it certainly added to the facilities necessary to boost tourism and soon became a hotel in great demand, changes in the political scenario brought misfortune to Cornel. In the Premadasa-Gamini conflict and the subsequent impeachment proceedings Cornel was caught in the crossfire between the two sides. Premadasa as President believed that Cornel had aided his bitter rival and no amount of pleading by Cooray and Paskaralingam would change his mind. He turned ferociously on Cornel by taking back the land for the supermarket and denying his shares in Hotel Developers, the holding Company for the Hilton.

Since then successive Governments which managed the Hilton have been unable to untangle the legal issues regarding ownership. Another project that should have boosted our tourism in a big way has been languishing. It is the Hyatt project which too was taken over by the Government but is yet to be opened. It was negotiated by Lalith Kotelawala who if left alone without political victimization would have opened this Hotel several years ago.

The tourist industry which was promoted by us as a private sector led venture has been stifled by Government interference and corruption and is today performing well below its potential. The tragedy is that Indian tourism which looked to us to provide a model of growth has far outstripped us. When the Indian travel Agents came to Colombo for their annual meeting we had more tourist arrivals than the whole of India. Today we are way down in the scale while India has become one of the largest tourist destinations of the world.

Trincomalee and Pasikudah

Under JRJ and Ananda we undertook to develop the East coast of the island which is ideally suited for ‘sun, sand and sea’ tourism. Due to our geographical location and the changes of monsoons Sri Lanka is suited for round the year tourism. When the monsoon strikes the south west of the island our east coast becomes a dry and breezy playground for the visitor. When the monsoon shifts to the north east the southern coastline is open to vacation tourism.

This beneficial climatic condition is envied by many countries which can only host short spells of tourism due to the vagaries of the weather. Our east coast also had the advantage that land by the sea was available at a relatively low cost. On the President’s instructions I surveyed the coastline to mark out the lands suitable for tourism and leave out other lands by the sea which were used by the fishermen of the same area as well as seasonal visiting fishermen from the south who set up ‘Wadiyas’ or camps in the fishing season.

Since there was plenty of land available I could accommodate the fishermen as well as the hoteliers. The MPs of the area were pleased about this demarcation because it had been a source of constant friction in their electorates. Sampanthan, the TULF leader complimented me in Parliament and the favourable sentiments of the House are enshrined in the Hansard. This was much earlier in time than July 1983, when we could amicably settle problems on the ground, with goodwill.

Unfortunately, there was an inexperienced GA in Trinco at that time, who tended to sabotage efforts at reconciliation. Many of the SLAS officers who held the position of GA tended to puff themselves up as Sinhala nationalists, at the expense of fair administration. However there were others like the veterans Tissa Devendra and Eric de Silva who repaired the damage ad won the admiration of all communities.

In the Kalkudah and Pasikudah areas Muslims predominated but at that time they were camp followers of the UNP. Devanayagam, a Colombo educated, westernized lawyer was a UNP Cabinet Minister who oversaw the Eastern Province. But Tamil militancy spreading fast in the North soon began to spread to the East. The TULF leaders strategized to include the east as part of the ‘homelands’ of the Tamil speaking people thereby roping in, willy-nilly, the Muslims who formed about half the population of the Eastern province.

As part of this strategy they co opted a Tamil leader from Batticoloa district, Rajadurai, to be the titular President of the TULF. Rajadurai was later won over by Premadasa but by then the Tamil militants had marginalized the TULF. Instead, Prabhakaran had promoted an eastern Tamil, Vinayagamoorthy alias Karuna who came from a Tamil family from Valachchenai. He became the feared LTTE commander who with his troops came to the rescue of Prabhakaran when he was encircled by the Army.

Karuna’s eastern troops were vital to the LTTE since they time and again came to reinforce the diminishing northern rebel forces. When Karuna defected the LTTE was badly damaged and their end was in sight. Karuna became a formidable foe of Prabhakaran and our armed forces were lucky that they did not have to be outflanked by Tamil fighters from the east.

After Karuna joined the SLFP we became friends and when I was assigned to oversee the party organization in the Kalkudah area I visited his home which was run by his sister who was the SLFP organizer there. She and her numerous young Tamil girls were good Sinhala speakers and were great advocates of national unity.

With the signing of the Indo-Lanka accord in 1987 Muslim supporters of the UNP were left high and dry. Led by their UNP icon Dr. Kaleel, they appealed to JRJ to safeguard their rights and privileges. Merging of the North and East would have made them a minority in their own land. JRJ who was beleaguered at that time was concentrating on arriving at a settlement with India as he did not want an Indian invasion as in the case of Bangladesh.

RAW had already drawn up plans for a takeover of the North. The only drawback for them was that unlike Indira, his mother, Rajiv was hesitant to authorize an invasion. Later I will describe the events that took place in Bangalore behind the scenes of the SAARC meeting there when JRJ met Rajiv face to face to settle their differences.

Prabhkaran was brought to Bangalore by Indian Air Force plane to agree to a settlement without the merger of eastern and Northern Provinces. He refused and earned the wrath of Rajiv who then became his adversary leading Prabhakaran to plot his assassination. This background did not appear even in the assassination inquiry and has now been buried under the sands of time.

With JRJ’s rebuff of Kaleel’s appeal the Muslims of the east began to organize themselves as a group with their own political party. They were surreptitiously helped by Hameed, the Foreign Minister who was seeking to play a larger role as a Muslim leader. I once heard him threatening President Wijetunga that unless he was put back as the Foreign Minister he would join the new Muslim Congress and contest from the Eastern Province.

Ashraff, an unknown lawyer, who was in advocate Faisz Mustapha’s chambers, was promoted to be the leader of a new party called Muslim Congress with another of Faisz Mustapha’s juniors, Rauff Hakeem, as deputy leader. Some of these maneuvers were captured by me in an article I wrote under the pseudonym of Rajasinghe following a visit to Belfast with Hakeem and Hisbullah who was a deputy Minister under the Chandrika regime, which owed its existence to Ashraff who provided her with a slim majority in Parliament.

(To be continued)



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USAID and NGOS under siege

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A file photo of the USAID signage being removed in Washington

by Jehan Perera

The virtually overnight  suspension of the U.S. government’s multibillion dollar foreign aid programme channeled through USAID has been headline news in the U.S. and in other parts of the world where this aid has been very important.  In the U.S. itself the suspension of USAID programmes has been accompanied by large scale loss of jobs in the aid sector without due notice.  In areas of the world where U.S. aid was playing an important role, such as in mitigating conditions of famine or war, the impact is life threatening to large numbers of hapless people.  In Sri Lanka, however, the suspension of U.S. aid has made the headlines for an entirely different reason.

U.S. government authorities have been asserting that the reason for the suspension of the foreign aid programme is due to various reasons, including inefficiency and misuse that goes against the present government’s policy and is not in the U.S. national interest.  This has enabled politicians in Sri Lanka who played leading roles in previous governments, but are now under investigation for misdeeds associated with their periods of governance, to divert attention from themselves.  These former leaders of government are alleging that they were forced out of office prematurely due to the machination of NGOs that had been funded by USAID and not because of the misgovernance and corruption they were accused of.

 In the early months of 2022, hundreds of thousands of people poured out onto the streets of Sri Lanka in  all parts of the country demanding the exit of the then government.  The Aragalaya protests became an unstoppable movement due the unprecedented economic hardships that the general population was being subjected to at that time.  The protestors believed that those in the government had stolen the country’s wealth.  The onset of economic bankruptcy meant that the government did not have foreign exchange (dollars) to pay for essential imports, including fuel, food and medicine.  People died of exhaustion after waiting hours and even days in queues for petrol and in hospitals due to lack of medicine.

PROBING NGOS 

There have been demands by some of the former government leaders who are currently under investigation that USAID funding to Sri Lanka should be probed.  The new NPP government has responded to this demand by delegating the task to the government’s National NGO Secretariat.  This is the state institution that is tasked with collecting information from the NGOs registered with it about their quantum and sources of funding and what they do with it for the betterment of the people.  Public Security Minister Ananda Wijepala has said he would deal with allegations over USAID funding in Sri Lanka, and for that he had sought a report from the NGO Secretariat which is operating under his Ministry.

 Most donor agencies operating in Sri Lanka, including USAID, have rigorous processes which they follow in disbursing funds to NGOs.   Usually, the donor agency will issue a call for proposals which specify their areas of interest.  NGOs have to compete to obtain these funds, stating what they will do with it in considerable detail, and the impact it will have.  Once the grant is awarded, the NGOs are required to submit regular reports of work they have done.  The donor agencies generally insist that reputed audit firms, preferably with international reputations, perform regular annual or even six-monthly audits of funds provided.  They may even send independent external monitors to evaluate the impact of the projects they have supported.

 The value of work done by NGOs is that they often take on unpopular and difficult tasks that do not have mass appeal but are essential for a more just and inclusive society.  Mahatma Gandhi who started the Sarvodaya (meaning, the wellbeing of all) Movement in India was inspired by the English philosopher John Ruskin who wrote in 1860 that a good society was one that would care for the very last member in it.   The ideal that many NGOs strive for, whether in child care, sanitation, economic  development or peacebuilding is that everyone is included and no one is excluded from society’s protection, in which the government necessarily plays a lead role.

 SELF-INTEREST

 Ironically, those who now demand that USAID funds and those organisations that obtained such funds be investigated were themselves in government when USAID was providing such funds.  The National NGO Secretariat was in existence doing its work  of monitoring the activities of NGOs then.  Donor agencies, such as USAID, have stringent policies that prevent funds they provide being used for partisan political purposes.  This accounts for the fact that when NGOs invite politicians to attend their events, they make it a point to invite those from both the government and opposition, so that their work is not seen as being narrowly politically partisan.

 The present situation is a very difficult one for NGOs in Sri Lanka and worldwide.  USAID was the biggest donor agency by far, and the sudden suspension of its funds has meant that many NGOs have had to retrench staff, stop much of their work and some have even closed down.  It appears that the international world order is becoming more openly based on self-interest, where national interests take precedence over global interests, and the interests of the wealthy segments of society take precedence over the interests of the people in general.  This is not a healthy situation for human beings or for civilisation as the founders of the world religions knew with their consistent message that the interests of others, of the neighbour, of all living beings be prioritised.

 In 1968, when the liberal ideas of universal rights were more dominant in the international system, Garrett Hardin, an evolutionary biologist, wrote a paper called “The Tragedy of the Commons”.  Hardin used an example of sheep grazing land when describing the adverse effects of overpopulation. He referred to a situation where individuals, acting in their own self-interest, overexploit a shared resource, like a pasture or fishery, leading to its depletion and eventual destruction, even though it is detrimental to everyone in the long run; essentially, the freedom to use a common resource without regulation can lead to its ruin for all users.   The world appears to be heading in that direction.  In these circumstances, the work of  those, who seek the wellbeing of all, needs to be strengthened and not undermined.

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Dealing with sexual-and gender-based violence in universities

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Out of the Shadows:

By Nicola Perera

Despite policy interventions at the University Grants Commission (UGC), university, and faculty levels, sexual- and gender-based violence (SGBV) is so entrenched in the system that victim-survivors seeking justice are more likely to experience concerted pushback than the empathetic solidarity of their peers. Colleagues and friends will often close ranks, rallying to protect the accused under misguided notions of safeguarding the reputation of, not merely the assumed perpetrator, but the institution. While gender and sexual inequalities, inflected by class, ethnicity, religion, region, and other characteristics, shape the identities of the perpetrator and victim and the situation of abuse, the hyper-hierarchised nature of the university space itself enables and conceals such violence. It’s also important to note that women are not the exclusive victims of violence; boys and men are caught in violent dynamics, too.

Similar to intimate partner violence in the private confines of home and family, violence attributed to the sex and gender of abusers and victims in our universities goes heavily underreported. The numerous power imbalances structuring the university – between staff and students; academic staff versus non-academic staff; senior academic professionals as opposed to junior academics; or, senior students in contrast to younger students – also prevent survivors from seeking redress for fear of professional and personal repercussions. Research by the UGC in 2015 in collaboration with the Federation of University Teachers’ Associations (FUTA) and CARE International Sri Lanka, and more recently with UNICEF in 2021, revealed discomfiting truths about the university as places of work and education. In naming oneself as a survivor-victim, even within whatever degree of confidentiality that current grievance mechanisms offer, the individual may also represent (to some members of the university community, if not to the establishment itself) a threat to the system.

Conversely, an accused is liable to not just disciplinary action by their university-employer, but to criminal prosecution by the state. Via the Penal Code, the Prevention of Domestic Violence Act (2005), etc., the law recognises SGBV as an offence that can take place across many contexts in the private and public spheres. (The criminalisation of SGBV is in line with state commitments to ensuring the existence, safety, and dignity of women and girls under a host of international agreements, such as the United Nations Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women, Vienna Declaration on the Elimination of Violence Against Women, the Sustainable Development Goals, International Labour Organisation conventions regarding non-discrimination in employment, etc.). Specific to the university, the so-called anti-ragging act (the Prohibition of Ragging and Other Forms of Violence in Education Institutes Act of 1998, in addition to UGC circular no. 919 of 2010, etc.) deems SGBV as a punishable offence. The rag is one site where SGBV often finds fluent articulation, but it is hardly the only one: this is not a problem with just our students.

As the apex body governing higher education in the country, the UGC has not remained insensible to the fact that SGBV harms the lives, rights, and work of students, staff, (and other parties) in university spaces. The Centre for Gender Equity/Equality sits at the UGC level, along with gender cells/committees in individual universities. Universities and faculties have elaborated their own policies and bylaws to address sexual- or gender-based harassment and sexual violence. Although variously articulated, these policies touch on issues of consent; discrimination against a person, or creation of a hostile environment, on the basis of their gender or sexuality; the spectrum of actions that may constitute harassment/violence (including through the use of technology); coerced or voluntary sexual favours as a quid-pro-quo for academic or professional benefits; procedures for making and investigating SGBV complaints; protection of witnesses to an investigation; the irrelevance of the complainant’s sexual history to the complaint at hand. And here begins the inevitable tale of distance between policy, practice, and effect.

Different faculties of the same university may or may not include SGBV awareness/ training in the annual orientation for new students. The faculty’s SGBV policy may or may not appear in all three languages and Braille in student handbooks. Staff Development Centres training new recruits in outcome-based education and intended learning outcomes may or may not look at (or even realise) the politics of education, nor include an SGBV component in its Human Resources modules. Universities may or may not dedicate increasingly stretched resources to training workshops on SGBV for staff, or cover everyone from academics, to administrative staff, to the marshals, to maintenance staff, to hostel wardens.

Workshops may in any case only draw a core of participants, mostly young, mostly women. Instead, groups of male academics (aided sometimes by women colleagues) will actively organise against any gender policy which they construe as a personal affront to their professional stature. Instead, the outspoken women academic is painted as a troublemaker. Existing policy fails to address such discourse, and other normalised microaggressions and subtle harassment which create a difficult environment for gender and sexual minorities. In fact, the implementation of gender policy at all may rest on the critical presence of an individual (inevitably a woman) in a position of power. Gender equality in the university at any point appears to rest on the convictions and labour of a handful of (mostly women) staff or officials.

The effect is the tediously heteropatriarchal spaces that staff and students inhabit, spaces which whether we acknowledge them as such or not, are imbued with the potential, the threat of violence for those on the margins. The effect, as Ramya Kumar writing earlier in this column states, is the inability of our LGBTQI students and staff to be their authentic selves, except to a few confidantes. Since the absence/rarity of SGBV complaints is no evidence that the phenomenon does not exist, perhaps a truer indication of how gender-sensitised our institutions and personnel are, comes back again to the reception of such complaints. Thus, a woman accuser is frequently portrayed as the archetypal scorned woman: abuse is rewritten not just as consent, but a premeditated transaction of sexual relations in exchange for better grades, a secured promotion, and so on. A situation of abuse becomes inscribed as one of seduction, where the accuser basically changes their tune and cries harassment or rape when the expected gains fail to materialise. Especially with the global backlash to MeToo, society is preoccupied with the ‘false accusation,’ even though there is plenty of evidence that few incidents of SGBV are reported, and fewer still are successfully prosecuted. These misogynist tropes of women and women’s sexuality matter in relation to SGBV in university, because Faculty Boards, investigative committees, Senates, and Councils will be as equally susceptible to them as any citizen or juror in a court of law. They matter in placing the burden of documenting abuse/harassment as it takes place on the victim-survivor, to accumulate evidence that will pass muster before a ‘neutral,’ ‘objective’ observer.

At the end of the day, when appointments to gender committees may be handpicked to not rock the boat, or any university Council may dismiss a proven case of SGBV on a technicality, the strongest policies, the most robust mechanisms and procedures are rendered ineffective, unless those who hold power in everyday dealings with students and persons in subordinate positions at the university also change.

(Nicola Perera teaches English as a second language at the University of Colombo.)

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

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4th Feb. celebrations…with Mirage in the scene

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Mirage: Singing the National Anthem…in the Seychelles (L) / A proud moment for Mirage (R)

There were celebrations everywhere, connected with our 77th Independence Day, and in the Seychelles, too, it was a special happening.

Perhaps, it was also the very first occasion where the group Mirage found themselves in the spotlight, at an Independence Day event, and singing the National Anthem, as well.

It all happened on Tuesday, 4th February, in Silhouette Island, in the Seychelles.

Sri Lankans, plus the locals, joined in the celebrations, which included the hoisting of the National Flag, by the General Manager of the Hilton Seychelles Labriz Resort & Spa, Marc Schumacher, the singing of the National Anthem, and the usual Sri Lankan delicacies, connected with such special occasions.

The National Anthem, led by Mirage, was sung with enthusiasm, and pride, by the crowd present, waving the National Flag.

Hoisting of the National Flag (L) / General Manager of the Hilton Seychelles Labriz Resort & Spa (R)

Mirage also did the Valentine’s Day scene, on 14th February, at the Labriz Lounge.

The group has turned out to be a favourite with the folks in the Seychelles. and the management at the Lo Brizan restaurant and pub, where the group performs six nights a week, is keen for the band to return, in December, for another stint at Lo Brizan.

This is the group’s second visit to the Seychelles and they are now due home on the 19th of this month.

They have already got a big assignment on the cards, in Colombo, where they would be seen in action at ‘Legends of Ceylon,’ scheduled for 19th March, doing the needful for some of the legends in the local music scene – Joey Lewis, Dalrene, Manilal, Gefforey Fernando, Mignonne and Sohan.

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