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Gamini Dissanayake the man he was and what fired the Mahaweli project

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Excerpted from volume ii of the Sarath Amunugama autobiography

Since Gamini played an important role in my career I will reproduce here an essay which was entitled; “Fifty; A Beginning”, that I wrote for a felicitation volume which was published to mark his 50th birthday. When I presented the first copy of this volume to JRJ at Braemar, he looked at the title and said, half in jest “I hope it is not the beginning of the end”. Gamini who joined me for the presentation was not amused.

My article in this volume covers Gamin’s considerable contribution to the development of both politics and economic growth in the country. Unfortunately, a few years after this book was published, he was killed by a suicide bomber of the LTTE. Gamini then was on the campaign trail as a Presidential candidate in 1994. He was becoming more and more confident of winning the top prize.

His death was a personal blow to me because I was one of his chief supporters. I was with him that fatal morning in Kandy addressing propaganda meetings. He wanted me to return with him by helicopter to Colombo for the final meeting at Thotalanga on the out skirts of Colombo. But I had an engagement in my electorate and stayed back to see my father and mother in Nugawela. That was a fateful decision since had I got back in the helicopter to Colombo I would have been with Gamini and most probably have been killed along with him.

This is what I wrote in the felicitation volume:

“My earliest recollections of Gamini go back to Trinity College. I was a part of a group of students in whom our principal Norman Walter reposed great hopes as scholars who would enter the University thereby contradicting the oft stated, and certainly ill-deserved notion, that Trinity mostly produced “flannelled fools and muddied oafs”.

“Some of us would assemble regularly at the Kandy Public Library which had an astonishing range of magazines and books. Then we would spend the evening together, walking round the Kandy Lake debating many of the issues we had read about and needed further discussion. On these walks round the lake we would often encounter the Dissanayake boys playing near their lakefront home.

“I remember Gamini most because he had the habit of probing us, his peers, for new ideas and information when we spoke to him. We had a more mundane reason also for knowing Gamini and his brothers. They were the children of the owner of -Silverdale’, Kandy’s best known cafe. After our long walks we would retire to ‘Silverdale’ for a snack and an iced coffee and envy the Dissanayake boys whom we imagined could tuck in to all that delicious food at will!

“Gamini’s father, Andrew, was a leading citizen of Kandy. He had come down from Kotmale and started several businesses, which proved to be so successful that he was a well recognized Kandyan entrepreneur of his time. He was a very affable and gentle person – characteristics which have been inherited by his eldest son. Dissanayake pere (Snr.) always had time for the people of Kandy. We would see him at public gatherings with a large circle of admirers and friends around him.

“He was involved with the politics of the hill country, of Kandy and the Nuwara Eliya regions in particular. He was the President of the All-Island Local Authorities Association and had come to know, at a personal level, the acknowledged father of local government in Sri Lanka, the charismatic S.W.R.D. Bandaranaike.

“After the departure of Dudley Senanayake into semi-retirement from national politics many leading Kandyans found no basis for supporting the ruling UNP caucus of the time. Many of them joined Bandaranaike’s SLFP. Andrew Dissanayake was nominated for the Nuwara Eliya constituency by the SLFP in 1956. He won handsomely and was appointed a deputy minister in the Bandaranaike government.

“Unlike many of his party colleagues, and very much like his son Gamini later on, Andrew was devoid of rancour and hatred. He treated all his constituents and parliamentary colleagues with consideration. This civilized approach to politics has obviously had an impact on Gamini who grew up in an atmosphere of political engagement. Many national party leaders would drop in at their home for a meal and Gamni was an avid listener to their political discussions.

“By 1970, Gamini had passed out as an advocate and was busy building a civil practice in the Chambers of Neville Samarakoon, Queen’s Counsel, another distinguished alumnus of Trinity College. The legal milieu in which he moved, Neville Samarakoon and B.J. Fernando in particular, brought him closer to the ruling circles of the UNP and at the age of 27, Gamini was nominated to stand for his father’s old constituency.

“By this time the SLFP had been rent apart by internal quarrels and Andrew, with many of his early SLFP colleagues, had retired from politics in disgust. It is worth recalling that the SLFP led by Mrs. Bandaranaike, was keen to field young Gamini Dissanayake once it became known that he would enter politics. However, it was Dudley Senanayake’s request that prevailed.

“Dudley threw his full support to the young aspirant even though Nuwara Eliya was, at that time, represented by Donald Ranaweera, a UNP Member of Parliament. It was not an easy decision, since the incumbent UNP MP was the publisher of the Times Group of newspapers and an important financier of the party. Ranaweera also had the backing of the Deputy Leader of the party, J R Jayewardene.

“However, Dudley and JRJ finally decided to field Gamini. It turned out that the decision was the right one. Though the UNP, met with a disastrous defeat in 1970, Gamini emerged as a successful candidate. If I remember right, he was the only newcomer to the UNP benches in Parliament that year. The recently formed SLFP government vented its rage on the young MP. It resented the entry of a son of one of its own stalwarts into the ranks of the UNP.

“The SLFP took the defeat of their candidate, William Fernando, Felix Dias Bandaranaike’s protege, as a major affront. Gamini had to face an election petition and a fresh election. He won again which served to enhance his image in the country and reinforce the view that the UNP was getting over its defeat and was on a ‘winning streak’.

“The 1970 to 1977 period was perhaps the best years of the UNP as a mass organization. Though small in numbers in Parliament, UNP MPs challenged the might of the SLFP and was able to outwit and out-maneuver them. Gamini was in the thick of this campaign. He emerged as a front rank speaker and organizer of the Opposition.

“There were three national level speakers of the UNP who went round the country: JRJ, Premadasa and Gamini. He drew large crowds at meetings and became a firm favourite of the party rank and file. Under the leadership of J R Jayewardene, the UNP swept back into power in 1977. They humbled the coalition government of Mrs. Bandaranaike. Gamini’s role in this historic struggle, was recognized by the party when in an internal party poll for its highest executive body, Gamini obtained 110 votes, second only to the veteran R. Premadasa, who polled 118 votes. On the basis of this watershed poll, Gamini emerged as third ranking leader of the UNP, after Jayewardene and Premadasa.

“Accordingly, he was assigned what was to be the most spectacular project of the 1977 UNP government – Mahaweli development. This was in addition to the subjects of Lands and Land development, which were the traditional focus of attention of successive UNP regimes. The Mahaweli project which was just another development programme undertaken by the SLFP, though it was inaugurated during the Dudley Senanayake regime, was expanded into the key lead project of the JRJ government.

“The UNP accelerated the Mahaweli programme which was planned to be completed in 30 years to six on the orders of JRJ. Five major dams – Kotmale, Victoria, Maduru Oya, Randenigala and Rantambe – were constructed with foreign assistance. Three hundred thousand (300,000) acres of land were irrigated and 7,500 megawatts of electrical power was generated through this giant hydro-electrical, agricultural and farmer settlement scheme, the magnitude of which was unprecedented even in Sri Lanka, a country best known for its historic hydraulic civilization.

“As acknowledged by President Jayewardene, the accelerated Mahaweli programme would not have been a reality but for the dedication, skill and perseverance of Gamini Dissanayake. I think it is fair to say that the government itself did not realize the enormity and complexity of this task when it announced the revised Mahaweli scheme.

“At first the World Bank advised against it stating that Sri Lanka did not have the expertise or the resources to undertake this project. After a stormy meeting with World Bank bureaucrats, President Jayewardene requested them to get back to Washington, saying he was going ahead with or without multi-lateral assistance. The World Bank finally relented after JRJ threatened to close down its office in Colombo.

“The Bank, now represented by its sagacious Vice President, David Hopper, undertook to back the project. It was a promise that was faithfully kept by the international community under the umbrella of the World Bank. The reservations of the World Bank were echoed by local critics who said that the accelerated scheme will never become a reality. It is here, I think, that Gamini’s natural leadership qualities, good sense and the ability to get the best out of his staff became crucial to the Mahaweli scheme.

“He did not waste time on getting cheap publicity. His officials know they could debate an issue with him without being publicly humiliated and shunted aside. He backed all his staff who could do a job of work– be they engineers or baas unnhes. He assembled a group of officials who were the envy of the Sri Lankan public service. Most of all they were enthused with the feeling that they were doing a worthwhile, patriotic task and their youthful minister was ‘a co-worker’.

“As a minister, Gamini always had his eye on the ‘grand concept’ of the Mahaweli and did not waste time nitpicking. His management style has always been to carefully select his aides and then let them get on with the task of doing the job. Sri Lankan professionals – engineers, surveyors, accountants, managers and administrators, who since independence had become pawns in political gamesmanship, found that their skills were, at long last, recognized and rewarded. An aspect of the Mahaweli Development Scheme which has not been properly recognized is that it served as a ‘hundred universities’ for engineering and scientific personnel.

“These `Mahaweli graduates’ of every rank are a tremendous manpower resource. Unfortunately their skills have not been used by our national planners. The decision to accelerate the Mahaweli scheme was perhaps the most effective decision of the Jayewardene regime. This was the peak period of international cooperation. Western regimes were launching their strategy of `rolling back socialism’. Sri Lanka was identified as a lead democratic regime which was turning its back on a controlled economy and switching to market economics. The snag, however, was that the country did not have major development schemes in the pipeline. Donors were ready to support the new government but were demanding realistic and well-designed project proposals.

“The new UNP regime came up with many hare-brained schemes. But the donors were not buying them. It was only the Mahaweli project that could interest the big donors. It was Gamin’s signal contribution that he could rally his engineering, scientific and administrative staff to come up with viable project proposals. He did not rush his staff to produce schemes which would generate cheap publicity for himself. He personally visited donor countries and argued the case for funding.

“On many occasions his detractors, both within and outside his party, would speak about delays in the early phase of the accelerated scheme. As minister in charge, however he knew that the early planning had to be perfect. He defended his planners in Parliament and gave them enough time during the ‘gestation period’ of the new scheme. This strategy paid off. International donors ranging from the USA to the USSR endorsed the Mahaweli scheme.

“The World Bank treated it as one of its `showcase’ projects. It was only after the project was launched that even its detractors realized that the timing of the young minister was near perfect. In real terms, the investment on Mahaweli could never be repeated since inflationary pressures on the world economy during the last decade and the political inwardness of western nations, has totally changed development cooperation patterns in the Third World. There will be no Mahawelis in the future.

“Just as the Mahaweli scheme was a bold initiative in the field of domestic agriculture, Gamini’s short tenure as Minister of Plantation Industries could have led to a rejuvenation of our plantation agriculture. With an intimate knowledge of planting, the socio-economic conditions of the Kandyan peasantry and a wide network of contacts in the tree-crop industry, he was ideally suited to undertake this task. He brought the same enthusiasm to his new Ministry.

“In his usual style he assembled a group of top-level professionals with whom he established a close rapport. Then, he presented a series of proposals which, as in his Mahaweli days, were accepted at all levels including international donor agencies as quite practical. The estate cluster system, decentralization of management, upgrading of professional skills and benefits, estate-village integration and the push for value-added exports and international cooperation among all primary producers, were parts of this landmark development package.

“Another area in which Gamini made a vital contribution was the Indo-Lanka Accord. It is a little-known fact that our highest military leaders requested Gamini to intercede and bring about a settlement in what they called an ‘unwinnable war’. The Generals who made this request were Attygalle, Ranatunga and Seneviratne.

“They first broached this subject with the young minister when he and I were being helicoptered together with them to the President’s House in Kandy for an urgent discussion as the northern war was taking a disastrous turn. After this meeting they flew back to Colombo and continued their plea in Gamini’s home at Alfred House Gardens. Once Gamini was convinced that it was in the national interest to negotiate with India, he set up an informal link-up with Indian policy makers.

“His greatest achievement was the beginning of a dialogue with N Ram, who had been an influential advocate of the Tamil cause. A very close personal relationship followed. While our ineffectual foreign policy establishment fretted and fumed the good relations established among three young people – Rajiv Gandhi, Ram and Gamini – became the basis of an understanding which yielded the dramatic accord of reconciliation.

“President Jayewardene and High Commissioner Dixit who were the principal negotiators could always rely on this groundwork of friendship which for the first time linked the vital triad of Colombo-Delhi-Madras. Gamini’s commitment to a fair and just solution to our ethnic problem was made manifest through his fearless defence of the Accord, when both extremist groups – the LTTE and the JVP – placed him on their ‘hit list’ for not supporting their extremist positions. Gamini is a rare politician totally devoid of racial, religious, and other prejudices.

“During the last four years Gamini has gone through many traumas. But his commitment to politics as the best way of serving the people is constant. Recently, Gamini and I were travelling by car through Dambulla to Anuradhapura. We drove through miles and miles of green paddy fields which were irrigated by Mahaweli waters. We had both known this area earlier as an arid dry zone. We were silent for a long time. Finally, Gamini said quietly, ‘This is what makes politics worthwhile’.”



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Features

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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