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Remembering Dr. Neville Fernando

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This tribute is in remembrance of my father-in-law, the late Dr. Neville Fernando who would have celebrated his 90th birthday on 9th March 2021. He passed away unexpectedly on the 4th of February 2021 due to the deadly COVID-19 virus.

His birthday will be remembered with an almsgiving to the priests at the Kotikawatta temple to invoke merits on him to attain the Supreme bliss of Niravana. Religious observances on his birthday were an annual occurrence even during his lifetime.

As I ponder his memories, being ‘no more’ is the saddest thought that crosses my mind. I suspect that if you are reading this you understand what I mean logically. Death means that our loved ones never grow a year older, although logic does little to clear up our confusion when his birthday continues to happen year after year.

His memories and deeds throughout his life brought back towards the day I joined his family, when I was just a medical house-officer at the Nawalapitiya Hospital in 1982, through the marriage to his only daughter. Even then he was known to be a real legend and an honest politician. Today, I am in this position as a cardiologist due to his encouragement, loving care and continuous assistance in whatever means. My mind is full of memories of those loving moments shared together. He was a loving, kind and straight gentleman. I may also use the words handsome and charismatic leader. He will inspire us throughout our lives. His pleasant disposition will charm anyone and uplift our mood.

He led a good life and now has a left a good legacy of four children( three boys and one girl) whom any father would be proud of, nine grandchildren and five great grandchildren loved by everyone. He is now no more and no one can fill the void nor bring back the warmth and love he exuded.

We all have courage and we have our convictions, but rarely have the courage of our conviction. His kindness and compassion were his key attributes that made him so special. He had been a good general practitioner before coming to Parliament defeating a formidable leftist politician Leslie Goonewardene who represented Panadura for decades. It was a landmark victory for the UNP in 1977. He was a kind and compassionate doctor who served the rich and poor alike in Panadura for many years and was sought after by his patients for his well known ‘athguna’ (healing hands). This is where he earned his loyal fan base to enter into politics.

Among many things he achieved in Panadura establishing the “Kethumathi” Maternity Hospital, the only one of its kind outside Colombo, helping Sri Sumangala Girls College expansion programme, starting Agamathi Girls school and Janadhipathi Boys School and self funding the Sri Saugatha Vidyalaya Pirivena building at n the Rankoth Viharaya temple in Panadura. Likewise he helped many Buddhist temples during his tenure.

He also started an industrial zone in Modarawila, Panadura which was an abandoned marshy area before that. He had provided the first computer lab and two acres of additional land to expand the Sri Sumangala Vidyalaya which is spoken with gratitude by the students of his alma mater. He did not expect anything in return.

He was a fearless ,principled and honest man who opposed JRs’ motion to takeaway Mrs.Bandaranaikes’ civic rights as he never wanted to compromise his basic human qualities over politics. Very soon he left the Government before any attempt to expel him and formed a small party with few other honest politicians. Later he joined SLFP on the invitation of Mrs.Bandaranaike and worked in the party as an Assistant Secretary for the progress of the country.

He was a maverick par excellence ,an entrepreneur ,extraordinaire and a businessman with a foresight. As one of the pioneers in the hospitality industry, he built hotel Swanee, subsequently he started JF and I, one of the most modern printing and packaging factories in the country to date. He also pioneered a porcelain factory called “Royal Fernwood Porcelain” in Kosgama. Which provided so many employment opportunities and in time to come, helped to economically develop the area.

Continuing his political career, he entered Parliament again as an SLFP opposition member. Later on in 1994 he decided to give up politics.

His divestments in the Porcelain factory enabled him to purchase Asha Central Hospital which was developed with latest equipment and brought to international standards. This is the time I had to take a difficult decision to leave the Government as a Consultant Cardiologist and join Asha Central Hospital in 1998 to help him in his endeavour. He developed and managed Asha Central Hospital till 2007 and subsequently sold it to start his new venture SAITM or South Asian Institute of Technology and Medicine with the encouragement of the then Min.of Higher Education Wishwa Warnapala.

Infact I was very much concerned about the new development because of the past experience in the country with the North Colombo Medical College. He always used to tell “every child should have the right for a decent education either in a government or non-government organisation”. His main vision was to give a higher education opportunity for the students .Therefore apart from medicine he also established nursing, engineering , IT, management programmes with the help of esteemed academics who believed in his vision. He established the Dr Neville Fernando Teaching hospital (NFTH) in Malabe to provide clinical training for his students at the medical faculty .It was a impressive state of the art hospital with 1002 beds and latest medical equipment . All of this was done during his 80s which was a remarkable achievement.

SAITM gave him immense pride and a lot of pain at the same time. He was very proud of the fact that he was able to give so many scholarships to deserving students (close to Rs.600 million scholarships during his time).In addition to saving a tremendous amount of foreign exchange he was also able to give an opportunity to students to stay in Sri Lanka with their parents, without having to go overseas for their education leaving behind all family and friends.

However, he had to face many obstacles during this period and was socially and politically crushed due to SAITM. With time, he made a decision to give the NFTH to the Government in return for the clinical training of the medical students of SAITM. In 2017 SAITM was closed down by Maithripala Sirisena who gave in due to the heavy opposition made by the unions against private medical education.

At 89 years of age he was an avid Facebook warrior and used to keep abreast of what was going on in the social media. He was a big cricket fan and never missed watching a cricket match day or night.

Writing about this unique personality cannot be limited to a few words. His life is a monumental story full of new chapters. He dreamed big and his dreams were of public service, even when he was no longer a politician. He yearned to make this country a better place for people to live in, even in his eighties.

May his journey of Sansara be a short one and may he attain the supreme bliss of Nirvana!

 

Dr Mohan Jayatilake

Consultant Cardiologist

 

 



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First leftist Mayor after NM: SJB, UNP beaten at their own game

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What’s in a vote? That which we call a show of hands could still be as concealed as a secret vote. The newly elected Colombo Municipal Council has chosen the NPP’s Vraie Cally Balthazaar as the City’s new Mayor, but on a secret vote and not in an open show of hands. The secret vote route appears to have caused much consternation among the SJB-UNP opposition forces at the Town Hall. The latter openly preferred an open show and are blaming the secret vote for the defeat of their candidate Riza Zarook.

On the face of it, the NPP with 49 of the 117 Councillors has a more legitimate claim to have one of own as Mayor rather than the SJB with 29 Councillors. In what has been described as a “desperate move”, the SJB forged a mayoral united front by fusing its 29 members with the UNP’s 13, the SLPP’s five and the singular member of the People’s Alliance (whoever the PA now is).

The beefed up SJB mayoral front total of 48 was close enough to the NPP’s 49 for claims of legitimacy, and both sides needed the support at least another 11 or 10 from the remaining 20 members to get the required majority of 59 votes. In the secret vote, the NPP’s candidate presumably got 12 of the non-allied votes to get 61 votes in total. The SJB mayoral front got only six for a total 54 votes. Two votes, there’s no certainty as to whose, were rejected.

Would the result have gone the other way if this municipal conclave had decided on an open show instead of papal secrecy? You do not need supernatural powers to determine that. Let alone a clairvoyant like Gota’s Gnanaka! The commonplace supposition would be that a secret vote may have allowed secret transactions to secure support with hidden hands.

But no one is accusing the JVP-NPP of resorting to such time-(dis)honoured tactics perfected for over 75 years by the UNP and later copied by all others, and most vigorously by the Rajapaksas. If I remember right or not mistaken, the Sunday Times Political Editor made the point after the May LG elections that there was no hanky-panky meddling in the elections by the NPP government – unlike (this is my parentheses) all previous governments in all previous elections.

As well, we may turn the question around and ask about the insistence on an open show of hands as against a secret vote. Is it because the SJB is now all for keeping its hands clean and asking others to show their hands of support in the open without receiving undue incentives? OR is it because the SJB and its allies wanted to see in the open which of the NPP councillors, who may have been beneficiaries of earlier incentives, would now betray them and support the NPP candidate?

Put another way, was it a stratagem to ask for a show of hands to see the breach of loyalty in the open in spite of past IOUs? The latter hypothesis has greater credibility because of the blessings given to the SJB alliance by two former presidents representing two fallen political houses.

No matter what happened secretly and how, the eventual victory of Ms. Balthazar as NPP Mayor chalks up a rare non-UNP victory in the history of Colombo Town Hall politics. After independence there have been only two non-UNP Mayors in Colombo. The first came as a progressive breakthrough when NM Perera became Mayor in 1954. The second came as a comical farce in 2006, when Uvais Mohamed Imitiyas, the leader of an independent group put up by the UNP after its botched up list of candidates had been rejected by the Election Commissioner. Ms. Balthazar is also the City’s second female mayor in quick succession after Rosy Senanayake herself an old school UNPer.

In NM’s Footsteps

News commentaries on Ms. Balthazar’s victory have made mention of the fact that she is the first leftist Mayor of Colombo in 70 years. The first and the last leftist Mayor so far has been Dr. NM Perera, the LSSP leader. NM had been a CMC member from July 1948 and became Mayor on 13 August 1954 after the municipal election on 24 July 1954. A New York Times news report called him the world’s first Trotskyite Mayor, a tongue-in-cheek shot that was characteristic of the Cold War era.

An era that the world badly misses now with an unstoppable Netanyahu and TACO (Trump always chickens out) Trump running amok. In this instance, with Middle East burning, Trump has chickened out to the war schemes of Netanyahu.

Back to Colombo of the 1950s, the LSSP fared well in the LG elections of 1954 including Colombo, a number of Urban Councils and many village councils. In Colombo, NM was accompanied by a strong LSSP contingent that included stalwarts like Bernard Soysa Osmund Jayaratne and a well known architect of the era, J. E. Devapura. Some years ago, Stanley Abeynaike recounted the saga of NM’s Mayorship in the Sunday Observer. Last week, Nandana Weerarathne (Nandana Substack) has recalled the old NM story in the current context.

The initiatives that NM spearheaded as Mayor are worthy of emulation even today. The first order of business was ridding Town Hall of bribery and corruption and implementing a purposeful budget. He took on the private omnibus system within Colombo, replacing it by a public trolley-bus service; and started planning a public bus service for the city and suburban travellers in collaboration with the local authorities of Kolonnawa, Wattala, Dehiwela, Mount-Lavinia and Kotte. City cleanup, slum clearance, small housing schemes, upkeep of rental housing neglected by landlords, and transferring ownership of rental housing to tenants after 30 years of occupancy – were among the progressive measures that were rapidly rolled out during NM’s methodical mayorship.

But all those initiatives of NM riled up the landlords and the private bus owners, and through them the entire UNP government of Prime Minister Kotelawala. Sir John and his cabal were not going to let NM to be the Mayor of Colombo’s even as the country was heading to the general election in 1956. A conspiracy was hatched, and a resolution was passed at an emergency UNP meeting at Sri Kotha, the UNP headquarters, “to remove the Colombo Mayor, Dr. NM Perera.” Even the courts got in on the act to facilitate a resolution at Council against NM as Mayor.

When the resolution to remove NM as Mayor finally came to the floor, Bernard Soysa, Osmund Jayaratne and JE Devapura took turns speaking for hours on end against the resolution. They were hoping to run the clock until the Supreme Court ruling came. But to no avail, and the resolution was passed on October 1st, 1955 by a majority of two votes. One of them was the Communist Party’s Kotahena Member Anthony Marcellus who was brought over to the UNP to vote against NM. Orchestrating the moves was R. Premadasa (father of the current SJB leader) who was brought from outside to oversee matters inside, replacing then Deputy Mayor T. Rudra, who was obliged to resign. All of that in time for the April 1956 election that the UNP lost anyway.

Even the 2006 election of Uvais Mohamed Imitiyas, a political nondescript, as mayor, was the result of the backfiring of a UNP plan to prevent Vasudeva Nanayakkara, another LSSPer, from becoming Mayor. The UNP even got the better of Milinda Moragoda, one time Wickremesinghe confidant, when he chose to make a run for the Mayorship with the support of the Rajapaksas in 2011. UNP fielded its own candidate, AJM Muzammil, who defeated Moragoda and stayed on as Mayor until Rosie Senanayake succeeded him as the next, and now likely the last, UNP Mayor.

So, one can imagine the consternation of Ranil Wickremesinghe in seeing even the last bastion of the UNP’s power legacy being taken away by the upstart NPP. After 1977, through constitutional chicanery and electoral subterfuge the UNP established its supremacy at all levels of government and in all elections. After Chandrika Kumaratunga’s spectacular victories in 1994, the UNP’s electoral superstructure has been steadily dismantled and the only elected body that has survived this debacle is the Colombo Municipality. Until now, that is.

And all of this has been on Ranil Wickremesinghe’s watch. He has been quintessentially a Colombo politician, albeit with an elitist base like JR Jayewardene, unlike the likes of Pieter Keuneman, Bernard Soysa or R. Premadasa who reached out to a broader cross-section of people in the City. Losing Colombo would be the bitterest pill to swallow.

If you are inclined to feel sorry for Mr. Wickremesinghe, save yourself some space to feel good about the future of the City and even the country. Leaving Colombo in the hands of an opportunistically cobbled up SJB-UNP-SLPP alliance would have been both an insult and an injury. The NPP deserved to have one from its ranks as Mayor and it has beaten the UNP in its own game to seal its victory. But having won to govern, will the NPP govern to win – again? That is the question.

by Rajan Philips ✍️

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Criminalise war and work tirelessly for peace: Dr. Mahathir Mohamad

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Dr. Mahathir Mohamad

Soon to be 100-years ( July 10 th 1925) the two times former Prime Minister of Malaysia’s advice to the world is to “Criminalize War” and work tirelessly for peace.

Q: What is the secret to your healthy happy life?

A: People ask me that question all the time and I say I think its just my good luck. If I have suffered from some kind of fatal disease like cancer, of course life would be different.

I have had heart attacks, and both times I had open heart surgery, but nowadays they don’t open your heart. They use stents. I survived and I recovered and I was able to function. After that I am more careful with what I eat. I keep my weight steady. I do not increase my weight.

In this world, food is the problem. On the one hand you have people who are obese and on the other hand, we have a world that is starving. So, I avoid being obese and eat only very little every day.

Q: What is your advice to the younger generation?

A: My advice is to be active. Active means not only physically active. The brain is an amazing muscle. You need to use it every single day. If you see weight lifters, they have big muscles because they do exercise, You must not become sedentary. Brain must be constantly exercised.

Q: Now that you have retired, what is your day like?

A: I want to take it easy, but most of the time, I come to work almost daily. Usually, people try to retire at 55 or 56. But they must not do that. I keep my body and mind active all the time. I still read, write and do whatever is needed of me.

Q: About the world and with all that is going on around us, what would your advice be to all nations, specially to the nations that are at war?

A: When I stepped down from being Prime Minister, I started a movement to ‘Criminalize War” to make war a crime. There was some support, it took a long time. I believe that any conflict should be resolved. Not through killing each other. You should resolve conflicts through peaceful means like negotiations. That is what we practice here. We are a multinational country, normally there would be many conflicts, but we do not have war in Malaysia. We sit down and talk.

Q: If you had one more opportunity to be Prime Minister of Malaysia, what would you do differently this time?

A: When I stepped down after 22 years, there was still a lot of things to be done. These 22 years were a time of very high tension that came from developed countries. So, at that time, I had to know how things should be done and when things should be done. When I stepped down, unfortunately, my successors were focused on other things. In fact, making money became their priority, so the focus on the country, diminished.

Q: What is the one thing you would like to see happen in your country or in the world as a whole?

A: There are developed countries and there are under developed countries. We want to be a developed country. Developed countries have many assets. For example, economically our people have a fairly good life, our people are involved in activities that contribute to the wellbeing of each other and to other nations. Countries need to help each other, for example in the sciences. There are many areas of research that still need to be done. I would like to see developed countries, reach out to developing countries and form healthy alliances to make each other prosperous.

I have lived a fruitful life. I am happy and I wish to see all nations prosperous and live in peace.

Anusha Rayen, Freenlance Journalist (Formerly ‘The Island Newspaper’ staff member & Parliament reporter) sits for an exclusive interview with former PM of Malaysia Dr. Mahathir Mohamad in Puthrajaya.

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Price of Netanyahu’s Iran Offensive

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Nathanyahu and Khamenei

That was brutal, and predicated on years of fabricated deceit. But that is how power operates. Netanyahu is not acting in isolation; he was ushered into this calamity with calculated endorsement from the West. For both Iran and Israel, this is a zero-sum confrontation—a tragic entanglement where ancient antagonisms, contemporary geopolitics, and enduring colonial residues violently intersect. What is most intellectually arresting is the glaring paradox Western powers routinely embrace. When Netanyahu launches a premeditated and unlawful assault on Iran, it is euphemistically labelled as a measure of self-defence. Yet when Vladimir Putin deploys forces into Ukraine, the West decries it as an unprovoked invasion. This hypocrisy in moral reasoning illustrates the incoherence of Western ethical frameworks—marked by selective outrage, selective jurisprudence, and selective memory.

Netanyahu is actively courting American bombardment of Tehran, even venturing so far as to suggest the types of ordnance most suitable for maximum devastation. Trump, meanwhile, hesitates—not over Iran’s fate, but because the ensuing ramifications will inevitably encircle him. This cynical arithmetic typifies the geopolitical stage on which empires perform their cruelties. A week has now passed since Netanyahu’s incursion into Iran—a deliberate campaign tacitly sanctioned by the United States and its constellation of affluent allies, whose modern prosperity is inseparable from centuries of extraction and systemic plunder. War, whether desirable or not, remains the central mechanism by which empires assert dominion, redraw territories, and dismantle resistance. Israel’s open defiance of international law—manifest in its missile barrage on Iranian soil—lays bare an unsettling truth: if global powers truly revered international legal norms, Netanyahu’s actions would face unequivocal denunciation. Instead, one could argue—chillingly—that he affirms history’s most ominous prophecies.

Western media, complicit in sanitising this act of aggression, frames it as an “unprecedented” strike—yet again resorting to euphemism to mask illegality. This was not an improvisational operation; it was the culmination of extensive clandestine preparation by Netanyahu and his ultranationalist Orthodox coalition. Israel’s intelligence apparatus has, over decades, embedded itself within the architecture of Iranian society, executing key figures and orchestrating strategic assassinations. The latest Friday strikes were not merely military engagements—they constituted a coordinated political decapitation, targeting senior officials central to the Iranian state.

Iranian society today endures compounded crises. Their tenacity and national pride remain steadfast, yet they are economically suffocated by Western sanctions, which have induced runaway inflation and scarcity. From first-hand experience in Tehran, Iranians are not consumed by a siege mentality; rather, they display a cautious hospitality that, once trust is earned, transforms into deep generosity—qualities starkly misrepresented in Western discourse. In contrast, Israelis are socialised into a perpetual state of existential fear. “Security” is not merely policy—it is a psychological infrastructure, permeating every aspect of public and private life. Israel’s economy thrives not only through sanctioned trade but through its robust arms industry and cyber-warfare enterprises, often exported under the guise of national expertise. This divergence in societal conditioning is critical: it reflects distinct historical wounds and geopolitical compulsions.

To grasp Israel’s war on Iran, one must situate it within the long arc of Western imperial entrenchment in West Asia. This history is punctuated by covert operations, artificial borders, and a strategy of managed chaos. The 1953 CIA-backed coup in Iran—toppling the democratically elected Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh and reinstating the autocratic Shah—is emblematic of this trajectory. For decades, Western powers suppressed indigenous sovereignty while installing compliant strongmen. The 1979 Islamic Revolution was not merely theological upheaval; it was a radical assertion of national agency forged in the crucible of sustained foreign domination. In the revolution’s wake, Iranian society was reconstituted through a deep-rooted collectivism and assertive nationalism that continues to shape its resistance against external coercion.

Viewed through this prism, Netanyahu’s tenure may be remembered as one of the most corrosive in Israel’s history. By fusing religious chauvinism with militaristic expansionism, he has eviscerated Israel’s democratic ethos, transforming “security” into a tool of territorial expropriation and systemic Palestinian disenfranchisement. His escalation against Iran is not merely a tactical error; it is an incitement to regional disintegration. Framed as a crusade for “unconditional surrender,” his belligerence risks igniting a broader conflagration whose consequences will inevitably recoil upon Israel itself. Netanyahu, then, appears less as a strategist than as a provocateur, recklessly agitating the region’s deepest historical and sectarian fissures.

According to Haaretz, an independent Israeli media outlet operating despite a severely censored and often propagandistic Israeli media environment, several prominent progressive Jewish groups were notably absent from the so-called “joint unity statement” backing Israel’s strikes on Iran. These groups contend that while Iran should not acquire nuclear weapons, military action will at best delay the threat and more likely strengthen hardliners. They argue that diplomacy, not bombs, has proven effective in preventing nuclear proliferation—revealing significant divisions within the Jewish community over Netanyahu’s war.

Meanwhile, a report in the Financial Times captures the civil dimension of this confrontation. Despite sustained bombardment, millions of Iranians remain in Tehran. “Trump and Netanyahu say ‘evacuate’ as if they care about our health. How can a city of 10 million evacuate? My husband and I are not going to pave the ground for them. Let them kill us,” Shirin, a private sector employee told the newspaper. Their refusal to flee is not naïveté—it is a visceral affirmation of identity and resistance. The Iranian public consciousness, hardened by decades of war, sanctions, and subterfuge, manifests a collective defiance often misread in the West. The state’s nationalist discourse resonates beyond clerical authority; it channels a cultural memory of resistance against imperial intrusion.

Moreover, the disproportionate risk to civilians is staggering. Israeli operations ostensibly targeting senior military personnel inevitably endanger entire urban populations, as these individuals live and operate within densely populated civilian zones. The echoes of Israel’s operations in Lebanon—where missile strikes against Hezbollah figures claimed high civilian casualties—are unmistakable. The Iranian Health Ministry’s figure of nearly 1,500 casualties reveals the raw human cost beneath the rhetoric of strategic necessity.

This episode also exposes the profound hypocrisy embedded in Western narratives on nuclear proliferation. The International Atomic Energy Agency has repeatedly found no conclusive evidence that Iran is pursuing a nuclear weapon systematically. Yet, Western powers wield this unverified threat as a pretext for military aggression. The contradictory statements from US officials—from intelligence directors denying Iran’s weaponisation efforts to presidents asserting Tehran is “very close” to the bomb—reflect a politicisation of intelligence designed to justify interventionism.

History has shown the futility of liberal interventionist fantasies: that democracy can be air-dropped or imposed through market restructuring. The Arab Spring, once heralded as a democratic revival, instead expedited the collapse of fragile states and exacerbated regional instability. The supposed liberal order in West Asia has devolved into a transactional, militarised regime wherein peace is manufactured, not cultivated.

Netanyahu’s war on Iran is not an anomaly—it is the terminal result of accumulated imperial failures, ideological rigidity, and historical amnesia. It confirms a grim axiom: when utopias collapse, it is always the powerless who bleed. His offensive, cloaked in the pieties of national security, belongs to a longer, darker chronicle—one whose conclusion will define the fate of West Asia and the very contours of justice in our century.

by Nilantha Ilangamuwa ✍️

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