Midweek Review

THE POWER OF POETIC METER

Published

4 years ago

2021/03/24

Sahan Weerasooriya

Ven. Tirikunamale Ananda Mahanayaka Thera, the author of the book, and Prof. Dissanayake.

By Prof. Wimal Dissanayake

The Venerable Tirikiunamale Ananda Maha Nayaka Thera has written a reverential commemorative poem, titled Guru Dev Samara, celebrating the life and times of his teacher the Reverend Ampitiye Rahula Maha Thera. It is a poem that deserves the critical attention of discerning readers primarily because of the dexterity with which the author has handled his chosen poetic meter and commanded it to perform a number of functions related to the vitality of the poetic text

Guru Dev Samara consists of 130 stanzas written in conformity to the drutha vilambitha meter. As I will explain later, the choice of this meter is indeed a happy one. It serves to enhance the willed intensity of the poetic text. Guru Dev Samara in clearly modelled on Munidasa Cumaratinga’s celebrated poem the Piya Samara. The title of the Reverend Ananda’s poem is reminiscent of Munidasa Cumaratunga’s poem the Piya Samara. Moreover, both poems can be termed biographical poems. The Reverend Ananda Thera has stated that he regards Munidasa Cumaratunga’s poem as an inspirational model for his own work.

Guru Dev Samara is both a lyrical poem and a narrative poem. It consists of 130 stanzas that are more or less independent, and therefore work as lyrics. On the other hand, the various incidents of the Reverend Ampitiye Rahula’s life that the author has selected for poetic representation are connected by a faint narrative outline. However, it is as a lyric poem that I value it more and hence that will be the focus of my short article.

The lyric is an expansive and inclusionary concept that shelters a number of sub-genres such as sonnets, elegies and ballads. Originally, this term signified songs performed to the accompaniment of the lyre. the music generated by sonic means and the music of ideas are vital to the ambitions of the lyric. Moreover, we can identify several other features associated with the lyric genre. The unmistakable presence of the subjectivity of the poet, the intensity of the produced emotion, the frequent deployment of apostrophe as a privileged rhetorical stratagem, the idea of performativity and the poetic articulations inhabiting a constantly unfolding present are chief among them. While these features are common across cultures, it is also important to bear in mind the fact that there are different cultural emphases and inflections as well. Reverend Ananda Thera’s Guru Devi Samara, contains many of these features linked to the lyric genre.

Throughout the poem, the author has deployed the drutha vilambitha meter with remarkable skill. It is not currently a popular meter among modern Sinhala poets; it gained wide circulation during the Matara period. It is indeed a highly demanding meter that all but the most self-assured of poets venture to harness. Gunadasa Amarasekera claims that this meter exudes an intimacy and sonic allure that is perfectly consonant with the aims of Reverend Ananda. I find this meter highly appropriate to the intentions of this poetic text. The dualism of absence and presence that courses though the poem is incarnated in the metrical movement. The Reverend Rahula, the protagonist of the poem, is dead, but he is also vitally present through the evocations of memory. As deconstructionists would find interesting, this duality is upended by generating a semiotic immortality. The movement of the drutha vilambitha meter with its interplay of speediness (drutha) and measuredness (vilambitha) aids in this effort. The focus on Time and the reflexive transcending of Time are suggested through the sonic collocation of the meter.

Few modern Sinhala poets would be able to handle this meter with the dexterity that Reverend Ananda has. It needs a great power of discipline and mastery over language. Guru Devi Samara is an exemplification of poetic discipline at its best. This is important in that the authority of discipline indexes the inordinate self-discipline that the hero pf the poem, the Reverend Ampitiye Rahula displayed in his life. Here the form enacts the theme. Gunadasa Amarasekera asserts that this poem stands out from the general run of modern Sinhala poetry. One reason for this is the extreme competence with which the poet has handled the drutha vilambitha meter in the way that Munidasa Cumaratunga had a few decades ago in his Piya Samara.

Jonathan Culler, who is one of the most consequential theorists of the lyric, has demonstrated how meter, rhythm, alliteration, assonance and other sonic effects are central to the power of the lyric. I wish to quote a passage from his book Theory of the Lyric which points this out. ‘there seems widespread agreement among poets and theorists about the centrality of rhythm to lyrics. Valery, like other poet, evokes rhythm as the key element in the genesis of a poem. It was born like most of my poems, from the unexpected presence in my mind of a certain rhythm. T S Eliot concurs, observing that a poem may tend to realize itself first as a particular rhythm before it reaches expression in words, and that this rhythm may bring to life the ides of an image. We know poetry is rhythm writes Yeats, distinguishing the rhythms that pick up and spectrally convey a tradition from the mechanistic cadences of music hall verse it is the rhythm of a poem that is the principal part of art. Statements about the fundamental character of rhythm, such as Nicolas Abraham’s claim that rhythm produces in the reader the fundamental effect of the entire poem, come from poets, critics, and historians of all stripes’. The Venerable Ananda Thera is fully aware of this fact as evidenced in the texture of his poem.

A distinguishing feature of the lyric is the frequent use of apostrophe. Jonathan Culler argues that this is a defining feature of the lyric. In poetry, an apostrophe designates a figure of speech in which the poet addresses an individual, mostly absent, an abstract idea or a thing. One of the clearest example is a nursery rhyme that we all learned in our childhood.

Twinkle, twinkle, little star
How I wonder what you are
Up above the sky so high
Like a diamond in the sky.

There are very powerful lyrics whose power derives from the deployment of apostrophe. This is evident in the following sonnet by John Donne, titled Death, Be Not Proud.

Death, be not proud, though some have called thee Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so

For those whom thou think’st thou dost overthrow

Die not, poor death, nor yet canst thou kill me

Poets in general are lured to this trope, though some like Pablo Neruda find it compellingly attractive. He has written 225 odes, addressing a broad array of subjects ranging from abstract concepts like time, poverty and happiness to mundane things like scissors, a pair of socks and a cake of soap. This is a poem addressing a cake of soap.

That’s what
You are
Soap, pure delight
Fleeting smell
That slips
And sinks like a
Blind fish
In the depths of the bathtub.

As I stated earlier the eminent theorist Jonathan Culler has made the apostrophe a cornerstone of his theory of the lyric. The Reverend Ananda has made in his poem made use of poetic apostrophe with great sensitivity. The object, the hero, of the poem is the Venerable Ampitiye Rahula Thera. He is now dead. However, the poet, throughout the poem addresses him in the unfolding present as ‘oba’ (you) as if he were alive. This plays into theme of presence and absence that animates the poetic text which I identified earlier. Munidasa Cumaratunga, too, displayed a laudable ability to press into service this rhetorical strategy to great effect.

Guru Dev Samara displays a remarkable congruence of form and vison. Although this is a slim volume consisting of 130 strophes, there is a copiousness to it that grows out of the author’s desire to select the dynamism of Buddhist culture as his chosen province. The Nobel prize winning Irish poet Seamus Heaney once made the following astute observation, ‘Technique, as I would define it, involves not only a poet’s way with words, his management of meter, rhythm and verbal texture; it involves also a definition of his stance towards life…it involves…a dynamic alertness that mediates between the origin of feeling in memory and experience and the formal ploys that express these in a work of art..,it is the whole creative effort.to bring the meaning of experience within the jurisdiction of form.’

Ven. Ananda validates this broad notion of technique and he is very skillful in bringing his experience within the jurisdiction of form. For example, his syntax is supple and persuasive; it negotiates the dictates of meter in a way that the thematic meaning is unobtrusively reinforced. Earlier I alluded to the fact that the temporal structure of this poem serves to enact its theme. The metrical energy of the poem propels the narrative and theme forward reassuringly. So Reverend Ananda is employing the idea poetic technique in the way that Seamus Heaney envisaged and promoted.

As a consequence of the able ways in which the experience and concept of Guru Dev Samara are brought under the jurisdiction of form, we see how Reverend Ananda’s deeper sub-text of affirming Buddhist values though the lived life of his poetic hero is achieved. Jonathan Culler has maintained- quite rightly in my view- that although there is an ostensible person or object that is overtly addressed by the poet, his or her real intention is to address the reader. The reader becomes a part, a character, of the communicative event. In this poem, the real and deeper intention of the poet is to convey to the reader and affirm the importance of Buddhist humanistic values. This desire to address the reader stealthily is regarded by Culler and others as a hallmark of the lyric.

Finally, I wish to touch upon a topic that I had discussed a few weeks ago under the title The Lyric as a Communicative Event in the pages of the Midweek Review. In it I asserted that the quadrangular relationship between the poet, persona, text and reader leads to a dynamic communicative event and that envisioning this is a most productive way of conceptually framing the lyric. Revered Ananda Thera’s poem is illustrative of this fact. The poet has established a vital relationship between the poet, his poetic persona, the text and reader whom he addresses as he persuades him or her to appreciate the relevance of Buddhist humanist values.

The distinguished literary critic Helen Vendler once remarked that that, ‘lyric is not narrative or drama, it is not primarily concerned to relate events, or to reify contesting issues. Rather, its act is to present, adequately and truthfully, through the mans of temporally prolonged symbolic form, the private mind and heart caught in the changing events of a geographical place and a historical epoch.’ She also claims that ‘the fundamental aim of lyric is to grasp and perpetuate by symbolic form, the self’s volatile and transient here and now. To my mind, Helen Vendler’s remarks are too restrictive. Scholars like Culler have pointed out the need to consider lyric as public discourse which derives its authority from sonic devices such as meter and rhyme. An interesting feature of reverend Ananda’s Guru Devi Samara is that it reaffirms the importance of this line of thinking.

This poem is by no means flawless; it has its own share of weaknesses and deficiencies. Some of the stanzas are too prosaic and close to reportage to carry an emotional charge. Some of the strophes are too laden with didacticism and consequently unable to lift themselves off the page. It would have been more productive to depict the protagonist of the poem in more complex terms focusing on inner tensions and the intricate workings of heart and mind. Despite these deficiencies, this is a poem that merits close attention. The poet’s indubitable gifts and his firm discipline are evident throughout. His language, for the most part, recognizes the richness of lucidity. The aspect that I wish to focus on in this article is the poet’s adroit use of a demanding meter. This poem serves to promote a useful discussion on the being of a lyric, especially the functionality of meter. As one reads Tirikunamale Ananda Maha Nayaka Thera’s poem, one is inexorably drawn into a multi-faceted conversation regarding the ontology of the lyric.

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Midweek Review

UNHRC in Mullivaikkal dirty politics

Published

2 days ago

2025/06/18

Sahan Weerasooriya

United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk is scheduled to visit Colombo later this month. The House on June 5 announced the visit, two days after the UN Resident Coordinator in Sri Lanka, Marc-André Franche, informed Speaker, Dr. Jagath Wickramaratne, of the impending visit.

A press release issued by the Parliament, dated June 5, 2025, mistakenly identified Volker Türk as the High Commissioner of the International Commission on Human Rights. Parliament never bothered to correct the statement posted on its website. Franche was accompanied by UN Peace and Development Resident Advisor Patrick McCarthy.

BTF (British Tamil Forum) General Secretary V. Ravi Kumar, in a letter dated May 27, 2025, urged the UN rights chief to visit Mullivaikkal where he alleged a genocide was committed in 2009. Kumar also requested the Austrian lawyer to visit Chemmani, where mass graves have been unearthed recently, as alleged by the BTF. Kumar, a former member of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), received British citizenship many years ago. The Tamil Diaspora, spread over Europe, Canada and various other parts of the world, includes a significant number of former members of Tamil terrorist organisations.

The National People’s Power (NPP) government, without hesitation, should allow the UN official to visit Mullivaikkal, Chemmani or any other place desired by the Tamil Diaspora. The government shouldn’t allow the BTF and other interested parties to make wild allegations on the basis of not including Mullivaikkal and Chemmani in the UN official’s itinerary. The government should also invite Volker Türk to visit Nanthikadal lagoon where the Army eliminated the LTTE leader Velupillai Prabhakaran and his remaining diehard members in a last encounter on May 19, 2009, the day after Sri Lanka brought the war to a successful conclusion.

Senior military commanders, who spearheaded the successful war against the LTTE, should declare their support for the UN Human Rights chief’s visit to Sri Lanka. Whatever the differences they may have had among themselves during the war, retired Army, Navy and Air Force officers must sink their differences to set the record straight.

The BTF shouldn’t be allowed to manipulate the forthcoming UN human rights chief’s visit here. Perhaps, they should consider seeking a meeting with the UN official to explain their position. There is absolutely no harm in making representations on behalf of Sri Lanka as all stakeholders want to ascertain the truth.

As for the impartiality of previous High Commissioners, like South African of Indian Tamil origin Navaneethan ‘Navi’ Pillai, the less said is better.

The last UN High Commissioner for Human Rights to visit Colombo was Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein. The Jordanian was here in 2016, the year after Yahapalana leaders Maithripala Sirisena and Ranil Wickremesinghe betrayed the war-winning military by co-sponsoring a US-led resolution against Sri Lanka at the Geneva-based UNHRC. A treacherous act, indeed. There had never been a previous instance of a government betraying its own war-winning military. The UN official must be reminded that a terrorist organisation had never been defeated before the way the Sri Lankan military crushed the LTTE in a relentless combined security forces campaign (August 2006 to May 2009) that brought the LTTE to its knees by January 2009.

Those who cannot stomach Sri Lanka’s victory over the LTTE conveniently forget that Prabhakaran launched Eelam War IV on August 11, 2006, with the intention of capturing the Jaffna peninsula. They tend to forget how the Nordic truce monitoring mission found fault with the LTTE for launching the war. Declaring that the LTTE advanced over the forward defence lines near Muhamalai entry/exit point and cadres landed on several beaches on Kayts and Mandaithivu islands, the Norwegian-led five-nation truce monitoring mission said: “…. considering the preparation level of the operations it seems to have been a well prepared LTTE initiative.” (SLMM blames LTTE for Jaffna battle, The Island, Sept. 08, 2006).

Human shields

The majority of those who had been demanding accountability on the part of the Sri Lankan military and war-winning political leadership never asked Prabhakaran not to compel the civilians to accompany the retreating LTTE units. After having fiercely resisted the fighting formations on the Vanni front for several months, the LTTE began gradually withdrawing and, by January 2009, Prabhakaran was in a desperate situation. The man who ordered former Indian Prime Minister and Congress leader Rajiv Gandhi’s assassination was taking cover among hapless Tamil civilians.

The then National List member and presidential advisor Basil Rajapaksa received a one-page missive on Feb. 16, 2009, from the then Norwegian Ambassador, Tore Hattrem. The following is the text of Ambassador Hattrem’s letter, addressed to Basil Rajapaksa: “I refer to our telephone conversation today. The proposal to the LTTE on how to release the civilian population, now trapped in the LTTE controlled area, has been transmitted to the LTTE through several channels. So far, there has been, regrettably, no response from the LTTE and it doesn’t seem to be likely that the LTTE will agree with this in the near future.” (Secret missive to Basil Rajapaksa revealed: Norwegians believed LTTE won’t release hostages, The Island, April 01, 2015).

Unfortunately, the war-winning government and post-war governments never made an honest attempt to use all available information to prove that the LTTE used civilian shields to hinder the advancing Army. Perhaps, the retired military commanders should bring Hattrem’s letter to UN Human Rights official’s attention.

Having succeeded Michelle Bachelet (2018 to 2022) Volker Türk may not be aware of some of the developments and some interested parties in Geneva are widely believed to have suppressed vital information contrary to their narrative.

The BTF never asked Prabhakaran not to hold civilians hostage. Tamil Diaspora never appealed on behalf of the civilians forcibly held by the LTTE. Regardless of anti-government/military propaganda, civilians sought refuge in the government-held areas at an early stage of the Vanni offensive that was launched in March 2007.

In February, 2007 the LTTE detained two UN workers for helping civilians to reach government lines (LTTE detains UN workers, The Island, April 20, 2007). The NGO community and the truce monitoring mission remained silent to protect Tiger interests. What really baffled the government was the UN Office in Colombo having secret negotiations with the LTTE for the release of its workers (UN workers in LTTE custody: “UN had talks with Tigers on the sly,” The Island, April 23, 2007).

The so called human rights defenders turned a blind eye to the developing situation. Western powers, Tamil Diaspora and the Tamil National Alliance (TNA) that infamously declared the LTTE as the sole representative of the Tamil-speaking people in the run-up to the Eelam War IV, remained silent. Had they taken a stand against holding civilians against their will, the armed forces could have eradicated the LTTE’s conventional fighting power much quicker and spared many a life on both sides.

In the wake of The Island revelation, then Defence Secretary Gotabaya Rajapaksa urged the UN not to mollycoddle terrorists. Rajapaksa questioned the rationale in the UN trying to secure the lease of its abducted workers through secret negotiations (UN workers in LTTE custody: Lanka urges UN not to shield Tigers, The Island, April 25, 2007).

The UN mission in Colombo not only kept the government in the dark, it refrained from informing the UN Secretary General’s Office of the abduction of UN workers. When the media raised the abduction of UN workers at their daily press briefing in New York, the Secretary General’s spokesman Michele Montas disclosed they weren’t alerted (The Island expose of UN employees abducted by LTTE: UN HQ admits Colombo Office kept it in the dark, The Island April 28, 2007).

In other words, the UN mission in Colombo in a way facilitated the LTTE’s sordid operations. Had the UN resorted to tough action, the LTTE wouldn’t have held Tamil civilians as human shields for their protection.

No basis for comparison with Israeli actions

UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator Tom Fletcher made reference to Sri Lanka’s war against the LTTE when he addressed the United Nations Security Council in May this year on the massive death and destruction inflicted by Israel on Gaza.

It would be pertinent to remind all concerned that the Israeli military action directed at Gaza and other countries, with the backing of the US-UK combine, cannot be compared in any way to Sri Lanka’s war against the LTTE simply because of the terrible monstrosity of Israeli actions. Top British diplomat Fletcher cannot be unaware how successive UK governments encouraged the LTTE to wage war here with covert support, especially by the partial British media that white-washed LTTE atrocities, while magnifying even the slightest transgression by the Sri Lankan security forces, with the help of NGOs funded by them.

However, the British provided critical support during JRJ’s time by allowing ex-British personnel to train Sri Lankans.

The UK allowed the LTTE to establish its International Secretariat in London at a time India sponsored several terrorist groups fighting to divide Sri Lanka on ethnic lines.

It would be pertinent to ask whether the UK at least secretly urged Prabhakaran to give up human shields as the Army pressed its dwindling fighting cadre on the Vanni east front. Instead, the UK, with the French backing, sought to pressure President Mahinda Rajapaksa to halt the offensive. The President and his brother, Defence Secretary Gotabaya Rajapaksa, steadfastly refused to bow down to combined British-French pressure. They sustained the offensive until the eradication of the terrorist organisation. The war could never have been won without their resolute leadership.

Geneva must recognise that until the eradication of the LTTE, conscription of Tamil children continued. The LTTE sacrificed thousands of children in high intensity battles with the military after a steep decline in adults joining the fighting cadre. The UN had been so concerned about deaths of children it sought to reach a consensus with the LTTE to halt deployment of child combatants.

The NGO community, or Tamil Diaspora, never asked the LTTE to stop throwing children into battle. In spite of agreeing to halt child recruitment, following talks with Olara Otunnu, the Secretary-General’s Special Representative for Children and Armed Conflict (CAAC), Prabhakaran never stopped the despicable practice (Pledge to stop using children in combat: UN, LTTE to discuss modalities, The Island, May 11, 1998). UNICEF, too, appealed to the LTTE not to forcibly conscript children. The LTTE simply ignored such requests. Otunnu travelled to the North, in May 1998, to meet Prabhakaran’s representatives, British passport holder Anton Balasingham (died and buried in the UK in December 2006) and S.P. Thamilselvam (killed in SLAF strike in November 2007). They agreed on halting children, below 18, in combat operations and stopping recruitment of those under 17 (Tigers agree to end use of children below 18 in combat, The Island, May 9, 1998).

The Tamil Diaspora never ever demanded an end to child conscription. They felt comfortable as their children were not living in northern and eastern Sri Lanka. Child recruitment had never been an issue for the Tamil Diaspora or the TNA. The child recruitment was finally brought to an end after the combined security forces eradicated the LTTE.

How many children escaped with their lives thanks to the annihilation of the LTTE militarily? The LTTE had to be destroyed at any cost. Sri Lanka paid a very heavy price to restore peace. The Gaza conflict with Sri Lanka’s war against the separatist Tamil terrorism cannot be equated as the modern massive firepower of the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) by land, air and sea is simply overwhelming in comparison to the combined Sri Lanka security forces, under any circumstances.

Sri Lanka actually fought a lone battle against the most ruthless terrorist outfit with immense conventional capability. Western covert support and availability of ship loads of arms, ammunition and equipment and a steady sea supply allowed the LTTE to wage war until Vice Admiral Wasantha Karannagoda’s Navy sunk their floating warehouses on the high seas. Intelligence provided by the Directorate of Military Intelligence (DMI), and the US, led to the total destruction of the LTTE. Therefore, the US, too, helped Sri Lanka to save children by hastening the LTTE’s destruction, albeit only to speed up its fall when it became clear that the Tigers were not invincible as they earlier tried to make them out to be.

The Air Force carried out operations in support of the Army while carrying out a strategic campaign that relentlessly targeted the enemy. That was meant to break the backbone of the LTTE.

Dhanapala’s advice disregarded

One of Sri Lanka’s famed career diplomats, the late Jayantha Dhanapala, discussed the issue of accountability when he addressed the Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission (LLRC), headed by one-time Attorney General, the late C. R. de Silva, on August 25, 2010. Dhanapala, in his submissions, said: “Now I think it is important for us to expand that concept to bring in the culpability of those members of the international community who have subscribed to the situation that has caused injury to the civilians of a nation. I talk about the way in which terrorist groups are given sanctuary; harboured; and supplied with arms and training by some countries with regard to their neighbours or with regard to other countries. We know that in our case this has happened, and I don’t want to name countries, but even countries which have allowed their financial procedures and systems to be abused in such a way that money can flow from their countries in order to buy arms and ammunition that cause deaths, maiming and destruction of property in Sri Lanka are to blame and there is therefore a responsibility to protect our civilians and the civilians of other nations from that kind of behaviour on the part of members of the international community. And I think this is something that will echo within many countries in the Non-Aligned Movement, where Sri Lanka has a much respected position and where I hope we will be able to raise this issue.”

Dhanapala also stressed on the accountability on the part of Western governments, which conveniently turned a blind eye to massive fundraising operations in their countries, in support of the LTTE operations. It is no secret that the LTTE would never have been able to emerge as a conventional fighting force without having the wherewithal abroad, mainly in the Western countries, to procure arms, ammunition and equipment.

Sri Lanka could have built its defence on Dhanapala’s statement to the LLRC. Even more importantly Sri Lanka ignored wartime US military advisor Lt. Col. Lawrence Smith’s defence of the Army that it didn’t execute surrendering LTTE cadres. In other words, the US official contradicted the then retired General Sarath Fonseka, who, with no shame whatsoever, accused the Army (that he earlier led to victory against all odds), of war crimes, to curry favour with the LTTE lackey TNA ahead of the 2010 presidential election.

Similarly Lord Naseby provided a golden opportunity to counter lies when he obtained confidential British diplomatic cables that were sent to the Foreign Office in London from Colombo during January-May 2009. In spite of them being heavily censored, the cables that had been sent by Smith’s British counterpart in Colombo, Lt. Col. Anthony Gash, effectively countered the wild UN allegation pertaining to the deaths of over 40,000 civilians on the Vanni east front.

The British estimated the number of deaths around 7,000. The British figure tallied with a survey carried out by the UN in Colombo during August 2008 to May 13, 2009, in the Vanni region. The UN recorded over 7,000 deaths but Sri Lanka never had a cohesive strategy to utilise all available information in a manner to counter lies.

****

How Geneva erred on Mannar mass graves

Michelle Bachelet

The Tamil Diaspora wants United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk to visit what they call Chemmani mass graves. There must be mass graves all over the northern and eastern provinces. Have they forgotten the large number of Tamils executed by the LTTE? Where did the LTTE bury the body of Velupillai Prabhakaran’s deputy Gopalswamy Mahendraraja alias Mahattaya? Mahattaya was executed on the mere suspicion of serving India’s interests. There can be skeletons of Indian officers and men killed in the northern and eastern regions during 1987-1990 deployment here. India altogether lost well over 1,300 personnel here.

Let me remind you of the Mannar mass grave farce. Radiocarbon dating analysis by the Beta Analytic Testing Laboratory in Florida, US, in respect of six skeletal samples sent there in January 2019 with the intervention of the Office of Missing Persons (OMP) established in accordance with October 2015 Geneva Resolution, proved that the skeletons belonged to a period that covered the Portuguese and the Dutch rule.

This was after Volker Türk’s predecessor Michelle Bachelet, typical of UN hacks negatively dealt with Mannar mass grave site in a report titled ‘Promoting Reconciliation, accountability and human rights in Sri Lanka’ submitted to the ongoing 40th session of the HRC.

The following is the relevant section bearing No 23: “On May 29, 2018, human skeletal remains were discovered at a construction site in Mannar (Northern Province), Excavations conducted in support of the Office on Missing Persons, revealed a mass grave from which more than 300 skeletons were discovered. It was the second mass grave found in Mannar following the discovery of a site in 2014. Given that other mass graves might be expected to be found in the future, systematic access to grave sites by the Office as an observer is crucial for it to fully discharge its mandate, particularly with regard to the investigation and identification of remains, it is imperative that the proposed reforms on the law relating to inquests, and relevant protocols to operationalise the law be adopted. The capacity of the forensic sector must also be strengthened, including in areas of forensic anthropology, forensic archeology and genetics, and its coordination with the Office of Missing Persons must be ensured.”

By Shamindra Ferdinando

Midweek Review

A tale of two dams and destruction of a national asset

Published

2 days ago

2025/06/18

Sahan Weerasooriya

Maussakele Reservoir

The idea in the development process, particularly where developing countries are concerned, is to keep the cost of development as low as possible. That is why most developing countries have given priority to developing the heavy construction industry, as it affects the development of infrastructure. In some developing countries, until very recently, heavy construction had been a no-go area for foreign contractors.

First Major Development Project

The Gal Oya scheme was the first major development project in post-Independence Sri Lanka. As the country did not have the ability to construct such a large project at the time, the contract was awarded to a US company Morrison-Knudsen. The total cost of the project in 1949 prices was around $100 million according to information from Hansard. The contract itself was a cost-plus contract, where the contractor was paid for all expenses plus a fee for profit and risks.

The next major scheme was the Udawalawe project which was delayed due to many reasons, including the government’s financing constraints. After the Gal Oya Project, the financial position of the government had deteriorated quite fast, which led to the 1953 Hartal and a change of government in 1956. In early 1961 the government took over the fuel distribution from the foreign companies without paying compensation. As most of them were US companies, the US government cut off aid and the World Bank stopped funding.

The government’s finances were such that undertaking a major project like Udawalawe was difficult without external funding.

In the meantime, a local company, Ceylon Development Engineering Co. Ltd. (CDE), pioneered in the field of heavy construction. CDE was set up by the late Pin Fernando, long before the state organisations, and handled over a hundred projects, including contracts for the Irrigation Department and other government agencies. Some of CDE’s projects included Chandrika Wewa, Pimburettawa, Rajangana (one of the largest projects it undertook with no foreign assistance was in the early 1960s), Bowatenna, Rathkinda and Inginimitiya.

Gal Oya reservoir

Transfer of Technology for Udawalawe

The Udawalawe project was about the same size as the Gal Oya project. Since the government had no funds, it thought of giving the contract to a local company. The only local company capable of such a project was CDE, but it had not done a project of that magnitude before and required technical expertise from outside. The transfer of technology to a local company, for the first time in Sri Lanka, happened with this project.

The Sri Lankan government had established good relations with the socialist countries, which were supporting major industrial projects in the country. The government requested technical expertise for the project from Czechoslovakia, which readily agreed to give the required technical help and supervise CDE. Skoda Export of Czechoslovakia was the main contractor, alongside Technoexport, while CDE was the approved sub-contractor. The entire project included two power houses. The project was started in the mid-1960s and was completed in 1968.

The project was completed at a cost of less than $10 million. This was almost fifteen years after Gal Oya, which had cost around $100 million. This was revealed by the late Eddie de Zilwa, who was the Commercial Director of CDE from its inception, when I became the CEO of the company in the mid-1980s.

The Mousakelle Dam

Once the Udawalawe project was off the ground the government requested assistance from Yugoslavia for technical help for the Mousakelle project, which included the dam, tunnels, and power house.

The Yugoslav government readily agreed and nominated an experienced Yugoslav company, Ingra of Zagreb to work with CDE as sub-contractor. This was Sri Lanka’s largest concrete dam until Victoria was built in the 1980s.

The cost of the project was even less than that of Udawalawe. The local company had by then gained enough experience in these types of projects and was pre-qualified to bid for projects funded by the Word Bank and Asian Development Bank. This is what technological transfer is all about!

The CDE should have been further developed. It was saving the government millions of dollars (billions in the present context) in foreign exchange. It would have been treated as a national asset if it had been in a high performing Asian economy.

The late Gamini Dissanayaka, after taking over as the Minister of Mahaweli Development, described CDE as a ‘National Asset’. However, after 1977, attitudes changed. The acceleration of the Mahaweli programme was high on President J. R. Jayewardene’s agenda. The original plan was for the project to be completed in a thirty-year period by utilising local capacity.

Instead, foreign companies invaded the heavy construction field (tied up with the development aid) leaving little room for local companies like CDE, which had built up its capacity for such work. The experience I gained from the exposure to Sri Lanka’s development effort in the 1980s and 1990s convinced me that Sri Lanka was not going anywhere with the thinking prevalent at the time. I tried to convince ministers that we were on the wrong path, but in vain.

In a serious development effort, building local ability and capacity should be the goal of any government. The opposite of this holds true for Sri Lanka. It was not only the heavy construction industry that suffered – most industries that had made some progress perished due to economic liberalisation.

A country that cannot identify the companies which are an asset to its development process and others that are a drain on its foreign reserves, it faces a serious issue. The impression one gets is that Sri Lanka expects some foreign country to come and develop it.

The Turning Point

President Jayewardene’s thinking came to light in 1981, when the Mahaweli Authority called for International Competitive Bids (ICB) for the Mahaweli system ‘C’ canal project.

CDE was the lowest bidder at Rs. 194 million, and the Technical Evaluation Committee (TEC) recommended to the Cabinet to award this tender to CDE. At the Cabinet meeting, the President took his own minister by surprise saying that the contract for the project could not be awarded to a local company and it must be given to a Japanese company, whose bid was almost double that of the local company. He probably did so, expecting to please the Japanese and beg for more aid.

In the meantime, a state bank, expecting the tender to be awarded to CDE rushed in and offered to open the Letters of Credit for machinery, which they did with no documentation being signed by the company. When the machinery started arriving, there was no work for the machines.

The cost of machinery at the time was Rs. 77 million and the company was stuck with a huge debt without sufficient revenue to service it. The company later signed the documentation in good faith, though the bank did not appreciate this fact.

The company made a request that it be considered a development loan and the Central Bank refinance this. No response was received from the Central Bank.

The fact that CDE had helped the country save millions of dollars (billions in the present context) on projects had no effect on the government.

The state bank concerned had been taken over by some neoliberal thinkers, who were happy to lend money to importers rather than development-oriented companies.

The bank earlier had visionary leaders who understood the development needs of the country and played a dual role of commercial bank as well as an unofficial development bank. However, with the ‘Washington Consensus’ of the 1980s all that changed.

The Samanalawewa Dam

Samanalawewa reservoir

When the Samanalawewa project was to be undertaken on a Japan-UK loan, the Japanese company approached me and wanted CDE to price the Japanese part of the project, which was the dam, while the tunnels and power house were to be the British part.

They promised sub-contract work for CDE, which was desperately needed at the time. However, they bid for the project at three times the price we had quoted and were awarded the tender. I immediately met President Jayewardene and briefed him on what had happened. He told me that we needed aid.

I told him that if that process continued, there would come a time when our loans would be beyond our ability to repay.

The Bottomline

The purpose of this article is to highlight the fact that Sri Lanka has not yet understood the basics of development and how to build up its capacity. The destruction of an industry in which we reached international standards and others that could be of use in the future has happened over the past 45 years.

The ultimate result of destroying the only company that had received international recognition was that our costs of development hugely increased, including part of the foreign debt and infrastructure costs. This has not been understood, and the mistakes are being repeated.

If CDE had been in any of the East Asian countries, one could imagine how they would have reacted. Innovation and research and development have yet not been identified as core areas of development. The IMF and other agencies will not encourage developing countries on these lines.

Inability to understand that we can’t depend on low-tech development anymore and that we have to move into high-tech development is far beyond the ability of the authorities to understand.

As the volume of work for local companies was dwindling, I contacted a prominent Middle-Eastern company, Abu-Dhabi National Oil Company (ADNOC) with the intention of a joint venture in West Asia. Being impressed with the track record of CDE, they agreed to form a joint venture named CDE-Al Safya, to bid for work in the region. When it came to obtaining bid-bonds, we had to cover our part. Our bank, a state-owned one, refused to issue a bid-bond, and that was the end of the joint venture. If it had supported CDE in this joint venture, it probably would have been a major foreign exchange earner for the country, with many others finding work as sub-contractors.

The negative mindset is found not only among the politicians but also those in state institutions. A campaign to change thinking is required if this country is to move forward.

(Sunil Abhayawardhana was CEO of Sri Lanka’s largest heavy construction company. He has a master’s degree from the University of Wales and is working on a PhD in economics. He is a member of the Asia Progress Forum, which can be contacted at asiaprogressforum@gmail.com).

By Sunil Abhayawardhana