Features
The beginning of the end for the regime, but no new beginning for the country

by Rajan Philips
The countrywide people’s protests and the November 16 Colombo political protest have made one thing clear. The Rajapaksa brand is now irreparably damaged in the Sri Lankan political market. The regime is not going to fall tomorrow. The 160/60 budget vote in parliament proves that. For all the turmoil in the country, the Opposition Leaders cannot make all their MPs vote against the government on a budget that everyone is laughing about. But there is no mistaking the beginning of the end for the Rajapaksa hold on state power. The fall will be softened if the end and the exit are democratic and constitutional. It will turn hard and violent if extra-constitutional methods are unwisely deployed to stay in power by putting down protests. Such methods are foredoomed to fail in the end. The fury of the people is unmistakable and unstoppable. And in Sri Lanka’s social formations with myriads of kinship and old-school ties, the soldiers are more socialized than the state is militarized. Military-led Task Forces notwithstanding!
At the same time, the beginning of the end for the Rajapaksas is not automatically the start of a new beginning for the country. The prospects of the decline and fall of the Rajapaksa dynasty have triggered prognostications about who is best positioned to pick up the reins after the newest dynasty fall. In particular, the Colombo protest rally defying all attempts by the government to scuttle it, has inspired a flurry of commentaries and predictions on the political fortunes of Sajith Premadasa. In fact, the commentaries about him, be they for or against, are more cutting and colorful than what the man himself has to say about himself or his politics.
Contenders and Pretenders
Of all the opposition detractors of the regime, Mr. Premadasa has the largest parliamentary contingent and electoral following. But he is yet to make a convincing impact on the people about his own self-belief and political intentions. Among other contenders, if not pretenders, Champika Ranawaka is by far the biggest self-believer in his own qualifications, credentials, and even destiny, to become President – one day. But he also has the thinnest of a political base or presidential launch pad. The JVP/NPP leader Anura Kumara Dissanayake has been consistently scoring high marks among seasoned political observers and politically sensitized middle classes – including those who would rather have him not say anything about socialism. Recently, he has even exorcised the JVP of its 1980s (second coming) past. How that will reward the JVP in an election is still a known unknown.
Speculations and contentions are rife about who should/would take the lead in the emerging vacuum and how ‘new’ alliances are likely to be formed. There is something common about these speculations, and it is also the same thing that is missing from them. More often than not, speculations are predicated on past political experiences, on one or more versions and interpretations of past experiences. This is inevitable in political commentary and analysis. You look (longitudinally) to the past for comparison, and/or (cross-sectionally) to other societies for similarities and differences. But at times, past comparisons are becoming ‘period narratives’ of historical parallels, akin to period (historical) dramas in television entertainment.
What seems to be getting missed, or not sufficiently emphasized, is the specific set of current circumstances in Sri Lanka. Some of them are even unique, either when looked back to the past, or looked across among other societies. Apart from commentators, and among frontline political leaders, only Anura Kumara Dissanayake and Champika Ranawaka come anywhere close to formulating anything substantial in interpreting the current situation and suggesting a response to it. This is quite different from the 1950s and 1960s when Sri Lanka’s parliament dominated the national discourses on politics, political economy, and yes, the constitution. The Hansard then was the go-to reference book for academics and journalists. Now, what is produced in parliament might be too toxic to qualify even for the President’s organic fertilizer specifications. And the challenges facing parliament and the country are far more daunting than what they were facing then.
Even as parallels go, it would be a stretch to see parallels between now and say 1964 or 1970, if not 1977. When a Political Scientist contrived a parallel between SWRD Bandaranaike’s electoral defeat in 1952 and Sajith Premadasa’s in 2019, an Emeritus Engineering Professor dismissed it as trying to find parallels between skew lines in 3-D space! Inasmuch as we are discussing the displacement of the Rajapaksa alliance potentially by a new alliance led by Sajith Premadasa, it is possible to see some similarities between 1994 regime change and what might happen as the final act in the current scenario. There are also significant differences.
1994 and 2021
In 1994, the UNP government after 17 years in power was long past toppling time. The UNP had accomplished many significant feats – a new constitution, the open economy, accelerated Mahaweli development, countrywide housing schemes, Test Cricket status etc. Many of them were controversial, not all of them beneficial, and some of them patently harmful. After 1994, the SLFP, its offshoots and their allies have been in power for 27 years, but with a clear internal break that came about in 2005. For eleven years between 1994 and 2005, it was Chandrika Kumaratunga who was at the helm, and she has been the only President in 43 years of the presidential system, to serve two full elected terms and retire in accordance with JRJ’s Constitution.
From 2005 to the present, it has been the Rajapaksa dynasty, and if President Gotabaya Rajapaksa were to serve out his full term till 2024/25, the dynasty would have lasted a full twenty years, including the five-year yahapalana interregnum. In fairness, this is only President GR’s second year of his first term. But he has come at the tail end of a tired family tenure. And although his admirers have been expecting him to magically rejuvenate the family, its power and, as a side effect, even the country, President Rajapaksa is presiding over withering family power and a suffering country. As in 1994, it is getting to be past toppling time. But there is a difference. There is no People’s Alliance or anything that can be seen as a parallel.
What is crucially missing is not the absence of a figure like Chandrika Kumaratunga who was seized by charisma in 1994 and led the PA to spectacular victories. What is crucial in missing is the groundswell of politics that sustained the People’s Alliance as a movement and energized its electoral machinery at every level and in every corner in the country. In his “Analysis of the Southern Provincial Council Election in 1994,” W. A. Wisva Warnapala recounts this dynamic and its effects in the South. They were successfully carried over to the presidential and the parliamentary election campaigns later that same year. There is no denying that President Kumaratunga’s achievements in office equally spectacularly fell short of her campaign promises. That disappointment 20 years ago raises key questions for the campaigns of today.
On the one hand, the organizational strength of the PA is not there today. On the other, all the institutional and individual factors that led to President Kumaratunga’s failures are abundantly present and even multiplied today. And the challenges facing the government and the country today are far more severe than they have been for any previous government. What is unique to today’s circumstances is the anger of the people against the government, against its incompetence and its insensitivity. The government is on the ropes because of the people’s anger and their spontaneous protests. If the government’s impending fall is a given, what cannot be taken for granted is that those who replace the Rajapaksas will govern differently and start a new beginning for the country.
Let us take the three factors differentiating 1994 from today – organizational strength in the campaign; institutional and individual failings in government; and new challenges facing the government and the country. In building up its organizational strength, the PA benefited from the fact that its constituent parties have been out of government for 17 years, and from the presence of new faces among its frontline leaders. Neither is the case today. There are no new faces today. And the current opposition parties are tarnished by their association with the betrayals and blunders of the Yahapalana administration.
The Yahapalana experience also seems to be making it difficult for the opposition parties and leaders to work towards a new alliance. These shortcomings, even if an SJB-led alliance were to come to power eventually in one or the other of the next elections, will fuse with the overall institutional failings within the state apparatus and make a new government to be no different from the current government, or its immediate predecessors. It will be, as the Yogi Berra saying goes, “Deja vu all over again”!
Fundamentally, nothing will change until political parties stop behaving as if they are in the pre-1977 political system. As I have been arguing recently, there have to be changes in how political parties operate, how they nominate candidates for elections, and once elected how parties and MPs work together constructively in parliament. Simply put, nothing is going to work if political parties and parliamentarians are not prepared to work together between elections. In the current situation, this work should be started in the current parliament by opposition MPs before the next elections, if they are honest and serious about governing differently after the elections. Although Sri Lanka is world apart from Germany in political ethos and culture, it will be instructive for any serious Sri Lankan MP to look at recent developments in Germany.
After 16 years, Angela Merkel and her centre-right Christian Democrats are being replaced in government by a new ‘traffic-light coalition’ led by the centre-left Social Democratic Party (red), and including the environmental Greens (green) and the business-friendly Federal Democratic Party (amber). The process of coalition forming went on for two months since the elections on September 26, to strike a governing agreement running into 177 pages. The agreement, reportedly based on firm continuity and bold changes, will be presented for ratification by the general membership of the three parties before the new government can assume office. This is expected to be in the second week of December. No one rushed, and no one wanted more power, a new amendment, or a new constitution.
In 1994, the People’s Alliance campaigned promising a new constitution and the abolishing of the executive presidency. Today, the present government is insisting on producing a new constitution drafted by an outside Committee of Experts. The government has not explained why a new constitution is needed if it is going to retain the existing presidential system. The real question is if this government, given its record so far on everything it has touched, can be trusted with the task of producing a new constitution.
Even informed constitutional observers seem to be missing this danger. The opposition parties have not pro-actively challenged the need for a new constitution. Instead, they seem to be waiting to react to the government’s unilateral draft when it is presented in parliament for adoption. What is needed is not a new constitution, but changes to election laws which may require amendments to the constitution. The opposition parties must push for new election laws even though their leading lights have not much credibility left after their pathetic record in the yahapalana government.
As for the new challenges facing the country, public health, public finance, economic hardships and climate change effects are new problems that were not there even five years ago – on the current scale and with potential to get worse. The present government has clearly demonstrated that it does not have the wherewithal to deal with them. For that, the people have turned against the government. The opposition parties can take advantage of the people’s anger against the government. But what do they have to show as alternative approaches before they get their turn to govern? Until this question is answered there will be no start of a new beginning for the country. Only the beginning of the end for the old regime.
Features
Where are Sri Lanka’s economists?

By Uditha Devapriya
Asoka Bandarage’s Colonialism in Sri Lanka (first published in 1983) follows a long line of books on the impact of British land policies in Ceylon. The best of these books remains S. B. D. de Silva’s The Political Economy of Underdevelopment, first published by Routledge in 1982. De Silva, easily one of Sri Lanka’s finest economists – though he would have detested the genericness of such honorifics – died five years ago. His death went by almost unnoticed. But in every book that has been written and every effort that has been undertaken to appraise the country’s impoverishment at the hands of British colonialism, one notices his influence, his life’s work.
De Silva came from a generation of economists – among his contemporaries he counted were G. V. S. de Silva, H. A. de S. Gunasekara, and Gamani Corea – who remained, to their last day, profoundly concerned about the plight of their country and of the masses. They were all convinced – and none more convinced than S. B. D. – that Sri Lanka’s future lay in industrialisation, or more specifically production. Taking the famous example of the pin from Adam Smith’s The Wealth of Nations – a tract that is regurgitated in toto by Sri Lankan economists today – he contended that Sri Lanka had failed to grow: it made and sold garments, but did not even manufacture a pin. In every aspect and in every corner, Sri Lanka remained dependent on imports.
A small state located to the south of a regional hegemon, in an ocean that remains heavily contested by a wide array of superpowers and major powers, cannot thrive without industry. Contrary to those economists who offer solutions in the form of liberalising or liberating the economy – the question can be asked, liberated from whom, or what? – S. B. D. de Silva’s generation did not limit themselves to abstract theorising. They were moved, on the contrary, by practical considerations – as all thinkers and economists must – and they were convinced that before undertaking any major reform, they had to first ascertain their impact on all sectors. They did not shy away from attacking or critiquing policy orthodoxies, because they knew that before everything, policies must work. If they did not, or if they risked destabilising the country and its society, there was no point pursuing them.
Indeed, all of them questioned these orthodoxies, and none with as much zest as S. B. D. His work targeted two assumptions – that Sri Lanka’s plantation sector was modern, and that Sri Lanka’s capitalists were progressive minded – and effectively debunked both. That the country’s plantation sector is stagnating today is evident enough: the situation is so bad that when the previous regime mandated a Rs 250 hike in daily wages, no fewer than 20 companies went to courts, seeking to quash the decision. Value addition has declined in the sector since the 1980s, and much of the money spent by companies has been on marketing and advertising. Yet, instead of addressing and arresting these declines, Sri Lanka’s capitalists seem content in letting things continue. This is the gist of The Political Economy of Underdevelopment: that unless those who can reverse stagnation steps in, Sri Lanka will continue to shrink, to remain the economic basket-case it has been for a long time.
Unfortunately, for some reason – for some not entirely unknowable reason – Sri Lanka’s economic sphere has been penetrated by influential think-tanks and ideological interests which have strayed from this approach. To put it bluntly, we no longer find economic thinkers who are ready to question policy orthodoxy, who can point out the fallacies of pursuing it, who, indeed, can show just how incompatible the needs of the country are with the implementation of such orthodoxies. When the country was urged to reduce its food subsidies in the mid-1960s, Gamani Corea, then despatched to represent Sri Lanka at the World Bank, argued that given the tiny military the country possessed at the time, welfare remained an important stabilising influence: to reduce them now, he argued, would be to incur higher defence expenditures later. If it’s impossible to think of economists today, basking in their think-tank-doms, making such statements, it’s because there aren’t any.
In the foreign policy sphere, the likes of S. B. D. and Gamani belonged to that breed of intellectuals who were convinced that Sri Lanka’s future lay in the Global South. Both Corea and de Silva hailed from elite and middle-class backgrounds, yet both saw and accepted the practicality of following these principles. Their intellectual descendants today – if they can be called as such – remain, as S. B. D. himself observed, beholden to powerful interest groups, to external funding and patronage. In such a context, it is easy to understand why policies which have failed in the West, which the West is abandoning in favour of full-scale industrialisation, are still being touted, still being promoted, still being idealised, in countries like ours: because they are easier to market in places where intellectuals and policymakers, not to mention officials, accept them without question.
The solutions prescribed by these interest groups remain predictable and utterly bland: from tweaking labour laws to privatising State corporations, from floating the rupee to closing State-owned factories, these reforms have been promoted for as long as one can remember. Yet it remains intriguing, if not perplexing, as to the relevance of such policies to countries which have never, since independence, grown as much as they should have. How relevant, indeed, are they to the affluent economies of the West, which are rejecting them on the grounds that, in the words of a former US Economic Advisor, the State “had to step in” where benefits no longer flow from “the individualised decisions of those looking only at their private bottom lines”?
Or to restate the question: how relevant are these policies at all? Free market orthodoxy, or market fundamentalism, of the sort advocated by Colombo’s economic circles today, no longer holds ground. It was rightly critiqued by the likes of S. B. D. de Silva, who saw such reforms as serving the role of maintaining if not entrenching the financial establishment, with hardly any benefits at all for the key stakeholders who mattered: the people of the country.
There is an obvious paradox here. On the one hand the world is waking up to the harsh reality that austerity will not put food on their fable, that if a country is to survive it must pursue industrialisation and ensure self-sufficiency in critical sectors, food being an obvious priority. On the other hand, multilateral agencies, even those whose mandate is to provide aid and assistance, are selectively enforcing such measures in the Global South, while not bothering to pursue them in the more affluent Global North.
In this context, it is interesting to note what US trade representative said in defence of the Biden administration’s pursuit of protectionism and of a trade war in the chips and semiconductor sector with China. When asked by Foreign Policy magazine as to whether such policies were at odds with the US’s advocacy of free and open markets elsewhere, she replied,
“There is a direct through line between the state and expression in the economy. And that is a really important aspect of another shared challenge we have with our European friends and other partners around the world in terms of a sustainable path to economic growth and development. In a version of globalization where the field is not level, we are having to figure out how to adapt.”
Countries like the US will always tweak the rules and break with orthodoxy, because it serves their interests to do so. It is questionable as to why Sri Lanka cannot do the same. To rephrase that famous adage by Munidasa Cumaratunga, a country which does not produce even a pin cannot be said to prosper, and a country which excludes production from its priorities cannot hope to prosper at all. 70 years ago, Joan Robinson pondered whether Sri Lanka’s trade unions would ever witness capitalists willing to share the fruits of their enterprises with them. 70 years later. we ponder whether Sri Lanka will ever see economists and thinkers willing to think beyond policy orthodoxy, willing to think, not of external interests, but of the country they live in, and the people they live with.
Where are these economists? Where are these thinkers? Five years after the passing of Sri Lanka’s last great economist and one of its last great thinkers, these questions remain unanswered. The writing is on the wall, but no one appears to be aware of it. Not even those foundations and think-tanks which so ubiquitously display the names of these intellectuals, which claim to speak on behalf of their legacy, yet which end up maintaining the same narratives their forbearers tried so hard and valiantly to question, reform, and make more relevant to their people. This is what it is, and it should be called out as such: it is a tragedy, a national tragedy.
The writer is an international relations analyst, researcher, and columnist who can be reached at udakdev1@gmail.com
Features
Hoffmann gets involved in the over 100-year old Wild Life and Nature Protection Society

Excerpted from the authorized biography of Thilo Hoffmann by Douglas. B. Ranasinghe
One year in the early 1950s the Wildlife Protection Society of Ceylon held its Annual General Meeting at the Galle Face Hotel in Colombo. ‘Thilo went as a visitor, and watched the proceedings. He met the President of the Society, C. E. Norris, and intimated to him that he wished to join the society.
Norris promised to send an enrollment form, but it never came. The Society had no office in Colombo, and without an address it was almost impossible to contact it. Both President and Secretary were up-country planters who ran its affairs from their estate offices.
After years of trying Thilo eventually managed to become a member. He was soon asked to join the General Committee, which at the time included several prominent personalities such as Dr R. L. Spittel, Sam Elapata Sr., E. B. Wikramanayake QC, R. L. Poulier and D. B. Ellepola.
Thilo Hoffmann became the Treasurer of the Society in 1961, then was its Honorary Secretary for seven years from 1962, and finally its President for a record continuous period of eleven years from 1968 to 1979.
Some of the last Britishers in the Society did not like him. It seemed that they resented his ascendancy. They referred to him as ‘the little Swiss’, where the adjective did not apply to his build, which was about the same as most of them. One was the editor of the Society’s magazine, Loris. When Thilo Hoffmann was given the Conservation Award for the year 1965 – presented by the Soil Conservation Society and sponsored by Selwyn Samaraweera – this man wrote a critical editorial titled ‘Medals for the Meritorious’. That upset Dr Spittel, who put him in his place and obtained his resignation.
Later, things changed, as Thilo Hoffmann progressed with his ‘bridging’ function. On the occasion of a District Meeting in Kandy, Dr Nihal Karunaratne humorously referred to the time he joined the Society when he was often “the only black bugger there”. Thilo responded, to everyone’s amusement, “And now I am the only white bugger here!”
Developing and leading
When Thilo accepted the honorary job of Secretary, the office of the Society, and its single employee, Sam Rajendran, had to move to Colombo. A tiny cubicle was rented at the Friend-in-Need Society at No. 171 General Lake’s Road. Here, a small desk, a chair, some files and less than Rs 500 in cash – the total assets of the Society – were installed, with Rajendran as clerk-in- charge.
Two years later, with the Society growing, more space was needed for’ its office. A shop in Bogala Building at Upper Chatham Street close to Baurs building was taken on rent. This was used for a short period. In 1964 the office was moved to Chaitya Road, opposite the new lighthouse. This was done on Thilo’s initiative. The premises were secured for the Society by him.
The small, unoccupied structure there had been used during the last World War by an Army dhoby and belonged to the Army. The only other building along the newly constructed road, then named Marine Drive, was the Ceylon Light Infantry Headquarters, which is now part of the Navy Headquarters.
The structure was improved and enlarged from time to time, and a wall built around the premises. An article by Sam Elapata Jr. in Loris, reproduced as Appendix III, describes Thilo’s involvement in this.
For the first time, the Society had a regular place to work in, and to hold the monthly committee meetings, even the general meetings, and to house its library – started by Thilo – and files, thus serving as a central rallying point for all members. It remained the headquarters of the Society for 34 years. Recalling his early days Thilo says:
“I was young, inexperienced in public speaking and shy. I attended my first half-yearly meeting (at Kurunegala, I think) as Hony. Secretary in the role as I saw it: organizer and recorder but not active participant. The President, ‘Ted’ Norris was discussing a possibly controversial subject (I cannot remember what). When he had finished there was silence, and so he just ordered me to speak. I was, of course, not prepared, and it was the first time I spoke before a public audience, not in my mother tongue, and with a strong Swiss accent. But it did not go too badly and that gave me confidence.”
He continues: “In the course of time I learnt to speak freely in public, and occasionally I even enjoyed it. But generally I had to give myself a push. This was also the case when I had to meet powerful VIPs, such as Ministers, Prime Ministers and Presidents. My basic shyness never left me, although most people have perceived me quite differently.
“Of political and other VIPs I got to know very many in the course of my work for conservation, and a few became friends, such as Ministers Edwin Hurulle and Nissanka Wijeyeratne, Lalith Athulathmudali and also D. B. Wijetunge, who became President of Sri Lanka.”
Gradually, through purposeful and relentless work, Thilo Hoffmann built up and furthered the Society, as no one before or after him. Similarly he served its cause. Knowledge, understanding, enthusiasm and self-discipline are some of the characteristics which have made him a successful conservationist. But mainly it was his perseverance, his tenacity, which brought results. As long as there was a glimmer of hope, he would put forward again and again his ideas and proposals, never letting up, with memos, reminders and personal meetings with anyone from the Prime Minister or President downward, who would be in a position to bring a project to a successful end.
His style of work was entirely based on his own involvement. He would himself do all the hard work, investigations and field work, write reports and memos, push and cajole. Any memo from the Society submitted to any authority during the period he was Secretary or President was written by him. The fact that he knew what he was speaking and writing about, based on his intimate and detailed knowledge of the country, was a prerequisite to his success.
The Society and its General Committee would provide the necessary backing and background. He found that there were few others who could be relied upon to perform major tasks with the personal involvement, discipline and perseverance required. Hoffmann never took up extreme positions, always keeping a balanced mind and advocating reasonable and realistic solutions. He could readily see and understand contrary viewpoints as well as external constraints, e.g. political though not personal. In this he is notably different from present day `super-activists’ and ‘greens’, who in his opinion “polarize to extreme positions and exaggeration, often based on ignorance, even ill-will and mischief”.
Day-to-day problems were dealt with by correspondence or direct intervention. Thilo’s application and promptness in such matters are described in the last Chapter. There were many cases of poaching, not only by villagers but by well-to-do hunters. There was illegal timber felling, and clearing.
Complaints and reports from members had to be looked into. This often led to unpleasantness and frustration, such as in cases of drunken engine drivers ploughing their trains into elephant herds crossing the railway line at night in the Polonnaruwa area.
Once, two student members, a local and a German, verbally reported a serious case of misbehaviour and shooting by an Air Force training group in the Lahugala Sanctuary. Thilo wrote a letter. An ‘inquiry’ was held by a senior officer. The incident was denied, and Thilo was asked to apologize. When he requested the two members to confirm their report in writing both refused! The foreigner is today a professor, and organizes seminars and writes papers about Sri Lanka – like so many others, says Thilo, who use the island for easy pickings.
The institution of District Representative (“DR”) had been created in 1962, when Thilo was Secretary. The DR had to have at least two meetings per year in his District. There were DRs in many areas, including Jaffna, Ampara, Ratnapura, Kandy, Kurunegala, Puttalam, and Udawalawe. They were sent the minutes of the monthly committee meetings. Thus the members in the Districts were informed of the activities of the Society. At Udawalawe the DR was Gamini Punchihewa, and at Ratnapura it was Bennie Abeyratne, a close friend of the Hoffmanns.
Talks, film shows and discussions were regularly organized. Members and friends got together in this manner, which was a great help to Thilo in the promotion of the objects and ideas of the Society, the enrolment of new members, and to obtain support for Society activities. Thilo attended most of these meetings, which were often held in planters’ clubs, and were followed by social gatherings of members, office-bearers and guests. Mae Hoffmann’s 16 mm wildlife movie was a big attraction. A gift to the Society’s membership drive, it was shown in public over and over again, even in distant places such as Embilipitiya (Udawalawe), Passara and Inginiyagala (Gal Oya).
Jungle bungalows owned and run by the Society for members, an old proposal, were promoted. As a matter of principle, these had to be outside National Parks. Dr Uragoda in his book (see Chapter III, above) says: “In the mid 1950s the first attempts to obtain leases of crown land for building bungalows were made. After much difficulty and plenty of spade work especially by the Honorary Secretary, Mr. T. W. Hoffmann, the Society managed to obtain leases of crown land near Wilpattu and Yala.”
Thilo and the Assistant Secretary, Lalith Senanayake chose the two locations after several visits to the areas. Money was collected for putting up the buildings. The Volkart Foundation of Switzerland, no doubt on Thilo’s persuasion, made a handsome contribution of Rs 5,000 to the fund. The Wilpattu bungalow was opened to members on December 1, 1967 and the Yala bungalow on December 31, 1969. Much later, a Society bungalow was built by the boundary of the Udawalawe National Park.
At Lahugala the unused Irrigation Department circuit bungalow was managed for some time by the Society for the benefit of visiting members and guests. It was situated on the bund of the large, picturesque tank, where visitors are sure to see elephants at almost any time of the year. The area, formerly a Sanctuary, is now a National Park.
When Hoffmann took over as Secretary the number of members was less than 500, and the Society’s total assets, as mentioned, amounted to a few hundred rupees. There was no library and no proper office. Most of the members were planters, with a few of the urban elite thrown in. The Society was just ticking over, although it had in the course of time had some remarkable individuals as members and office-bearers: see the paper by Thilo in Loris titled ‘The WNPS of Ceylon: Some Historical Reflections on the Occasion of its 75th Anniversary.”
.At the end of his time as President the Society had over 5,000 members, assets worth many lakhs, and had become a force to be reckoned with.
Features
An autobigraphy of a remarkable self-made billionaire

The story of Ceylon Teamaker: MERRIL. J. FERNANDO
by Manik de Silva
Merril J. Fernando’s recently published autobiography would be considered by many to be best story of its kind coming out in recent times, if not all time, of the life and times of a business leader in Sri Lanka. Similar volumes published in recent years that come readily to mind are the life and career stories of C.P. (Chari) de Silva of Aitken Spence, Ken Balendra of John Keells, Hemaka Amarasuriya of Singer and Rienzie Weeraratne of Unilever.
Undoubtedly many more resources have been poured into this production than to its predecessors. The result is spectacular both in appearance and substance. Over 200 interesting photographs scattered throughout the well-designed volume, makes reading its 400+ pages easy. The reader cannot but be impressed about MJF’s meticulous record keeping that is a feature of the book; also the author’s deliberate decision not to pull back his punches aimed at some prominent figures in the country, many of them now dead.
Merril Fernando, undoubtedly, is the best known face in Sri Lanka’s tea industry. He’s not the biggest producer or exporter of tea in the country. But his Dilmah brand, coined from the names of his two sons, Dilhan and Malik, is also the best known Sri Lankan-owned brand worldwide. Few would know until they read the book that the original brand name was Dilma, The ‘h’ was added later to give it added punch as recommended by advertising professionals in Australia; nor would many know that Fernando served four years as a seminarian at St. Aloysius Seminary in Borella (“I was very unhappy and frequently reduced to tears”). Training a youth who had his sights on the legal profession to be a catholic priest was forced on him by his parents to whom he couldn’t say “No” at that point of time in his life and the prevailing culture.
Also that very early in his working life when he was training as a tea taster at Heath and Co., a hard to get opportunity then when that work was largely a preserve on the British, that he broke away to take up a job offer in the U.S. multinational, Mobil Oil. Fernando says the terms offered were “quite attractive,” and the offer too good to turn down at age 22-years with about Rs. 1,500 monthly on the table. He admits a “distressing lack of responsibility in suddenly abandoning my trainee tea taster programme.” Although he enjoyed the work the work at Mobil and was good at it, he says “the business was open to and driven by bribery” and he returned to tea at AF Jones, a small firm run by a British father and his two sons.
A condition of that employment was that he had to train in London at his own expense. In arranging his training slot, the head of a British firm here wrote to a friend in London recommending MJF (letter reproduced in the book) raising an interesting points about Merril (1) ” His general appearance and ways of doing business have always struck me as displaying a certain amount of integrity, which is more than I can say for most of his brethren” The second was “I have made it perfectly plain to him that in the UK there are no bottle washers or Tea Boys to wait on learners and practically all the messy work has to be done by the learners themselves.”
Fernando started at AF Jones, a company he was to later acquire, as an Assistant Tea Taster at Rs. 750 a month in May 1955. His UK experiences makes good reading including the story that he brought back pounds 325 when he returned to Ceylon at the end of five months. His landlady in London, Mrs. Butler, had tried to persuade him to buy her terraced house for pounds 750 and offered to arrange a mortgage. “I didn’t even consider it,” says Fernando. “That apartment was worth four million pounds in 2019.”
What comes out strongest in the book is Merril Fernando’s passion for “pure Ceylon tea” and his determination that this product be offered globally to discerning consumers worldwide. When strong lobbies were hard at work saying that Sri Lanka should be made an International Tea Hub like Dubai and Rotterdam by permitting the import of cheaper teas for blending, packaging and exporting, he battled unrelentingly against a move he considered would be disastrous making many enemies in the process.
Equally strong is the projection of Dilmah as a family business with his two sons figuring in both text and pictures. Merril promoted his tea using his own photo widely and with homely messages to consumers of a product coming from “us to you.” His own avuncular appearance and the excellence of the photography, perhaps an offshoot of Dilhan’s passion for the camera, played a major role in promoting Dilmah, evident in many of the photographs included in the book. Fernando’s faith in God and belief in divine intervention is a continuing thread through the publication.
There is no doubt that Merril Fernando has made a major contribution towards preserving the authenticity of Ceylon tea which had over the long period when it succeeded coffee in this country had built the reputation for unique flavour and quality that made tea drinkers worldwide recognize the product as the best available. His early training exposed him to the harsh realities of international tea export trade and he says he learned many important lessons he would never forget. These helped him to chart his business course over the next few decades. This experience and the absence of severe work pressure gave him time as a trainee in London for reflection, absorbing new impressions, acquiring new tastes and inculcate in him a lifelong passion for travel and new cultural experiences.
Attacks directed at him over the years included accusations that he was getting favours from his former father-in-law, Major Motague Jayawickreme, onetime Minister of Plantation Industries, although his marriage to Devika Jayawickreme had long ended by then. The fact that President J.R. Jayewardene made Jayawickreme dispose a small shareholding in MJF’s listed Ceylon Tea Services Ltd. (the predecessor to Dilmah Ceylon Tea Compny PLC) on a conflict of interest argument is duly recorded in the book. But Fernando makes the telling point that Jayawickreme bought the shares three years before he became minister. He also says he once refused to speak to Jayawickreme for three months when the latter called for a vote on an appointment to the new Tea Centre in New York with Fernando’s the only dissenting vote against the proposal.
The reader must not be misled by what’s written above to think that Merril Fernando has made his autobiography a platform to merely hit out at those who opposed him. On the contrary, he has been lavish in his praise of many including senior bureaucrats and political authorities that include one time Plantation Industries Minister, Dr. Colvin. R. de Silva and his former teacher and later Trade Minister Hugh Fernando. But there is another side to that coin when he discusses estrangements with business partners at AF Jones and later in his own companies.
I have known Merril Fernando for over 50 years and reported on his journey through the tea industry. One anecdote I will relate here is an occasion he took me to his home on Gower Street in Havelock Town for a string hopper dinner. That was the first time I had eaten a seer fish kiri hodda with pol sambol. I was so impressed about the meal that I mentioned it to his neighbour, my friend Mrs. Bertha Samarasinghe, the wife of the then Judge-Advocate of the Navy. A fine cook herself, Bertha responded: “Merril understands fish. I see him buying his fish from vendors at his gate.” This came to mind when I read a reference in the book to the “ever-faithful Alice, the best chef I have ever known apart from my mother.” She probably cooked the meal I enjoyed.
He could have found no better writer than Anura Gunasekera, a retired tea planter who worked for Dilmah for 10 years after he quit planting to collaborate in the writing which took all of three years to finish. With Merril Fernando completing his 92nd birthday days before the book was launched in May, there were constant challenges including covid, MJF’s hospitalization off and on during the writing and many more. But an excellent production of a compelling read has been the result.
The book is priced at Rs. 10,000 with all proceeds of sales going to MJF supported charities. But it looks as though it would have cost more to produce if all costs are factored. However that be, it’s a compelling read on the life of a remarkable man, a self-made billionaire who’s fond of saying that “business is a matter of public service” – his many charities testifying to this. It’s the history of a battle to preserve the integrity of Ceylon Tea which Merril Fernando says ought to be marketed like wine and champagne.
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