The JVP killed Vijaya 9 years ago on February 16th 1988. Vijaya was not a man who sought death, but he didn't fear it either. Like Che Guevara in his message to the Tricontinental, he could have said: "Wherever death may surprise us, let it be welcome provided that our battle cry may have reach some receptive ear..." Vijaya believed that his vision, his cause and his struggle will not be defeated and obliterated by his death. He believed that his death in the battle field of politics will be followed by the resurrection and the final triumph of his ideas.
When we heard that Vijaya had been killed by the JVP we felt alone, orphaned. Still there was a glimmer of hope - that nurtured by the blood he so willingly shed, the sacrifice he so unhesitatingly made, his struggle could continue. The millions of people who filed past his coffin, and gathered at the Independence Square for his funeral, gave us hope and strength in our hour of agony and despair. When Vijaya's widow Chandrika, pledged on his coffin to continue his struggle and raised her hands as a symbol of her pledge, we believed that his martyrdom had inspired her into fulfilling his tasks.
We soon found out our mistake. In opposing the decision (taken by none other than Vijaya) to field a candidate from the United Socialist Alliance at the 1988 Presidential election, Chandrika paved the way for the gradual disintegration of the Left Alliance which was Vijaya's labour of love, his precious gift to the toiling masses of the country.
Less than a year after the JVP assassinated Vijaya in front of his children, Chandrika called the JVP 'comrades' and defended them publicly. On her return to Sri Lanka she split Vijaya's party and aligned with the SLFP - the SLFP which was carrying out a campaign against Vijaya during the last years of his life.
The JVP killed Vijaya. But Vijaya could have been resurrected through his ideas and his struggle.
The Report of the Presidential Commission of Inquiry into the Assassination of Vijaya Kumaratunga distorts Vijaya's project and turns it from an unremitting struggle to build an independent anti-capitalist left formation into an anti-UNP, pro SLFP struggle! And this is about the man who said "We regard the break-up of the United Left Front in 1964 as the greatest setback suffered by the anti-imperialist, patriotic and left forces of this country. The subsequent fronts with the SLFP were unsuccessful because of the class conflict embodied in this - however invisible. Since the national bourgeois do not want to replace capitalism with socialism, it is difficult to go far with united fronts which were under the leadership of a national bourgeois with feudal thinking." (ASA' - EYE, SLMP organ 88/1/29). This man, Vijaya, is turned by the Commission into a "nice guy" who only fought against the UNP and had no problem whatsoever with the SLFP!
Secondly, the Report absolves the JVP of all blame in the Vijaya assassination - despite its own admission that Vijaya's assassin and his main accomplices were all JVP activists. According to this version, Vijaya had no problems with the JVP and the JVP had no problems with Vijaya!
Thirdly, the Report lays the blame of the assassination implicitly at the door of the UNP in general, and President Premadasa and Minister Ranjan Wijeratne in particular, despite the lack of even a scrap of proof. A few months before his death, Vijaya attended the funeral of Nandana Marasinghe, a hero of the '71 JVP uprising, who became the second victim of the JVP in its new Polpotist incarnation.
Vijaya and Marasinghe were friends. More importantly, they were comrades united in their implacable opposition to the JVP's politics of barbarism. Vijaya was deeply grieved by Marasinghe's death. But he was also inspired by it. When Marasinghe was in jail for his revolutionary activities, he wrote on the occasion of a death anniversary of Che Guevara, "Dear comrade Che, when you were killed, at that moment you became immortal; you gained eternal life." Vijaya too believed in the sentiments expressed in this poem.
That was why in his moving funeral oration for Marasinghe, at the Anuradhapura General Cemetery in November 1987 Vijaya said "They can kill the liberationist but they cannot kill the liberation struggle."
The 'satyagraha' campaign which has been organised by the students of the Colombo campus faculty of law goes on into its third week, but the issues on which the campaign is based have given rise to some very polarised opinions.
The faculty students maintain that they have been required to sit for the Law College Finals in order to qualify for enrolling as Attorneys-at-Law of the Supreme Court.
They say that a period of six months apprenticeship, which they are willing to undergo is the only preparation that is required for the Attorney-at-Law qualification after the students pass all faculty exams. The Council for Legal Education, however, has been adamant in its refusal to enrol Attorneys-at-Law from the ranks of those who only have faculty qualifications.
The faculty students, among other things, mention that they normally run out of funds to complete their required law college exams, because their Mahapola Scholarships are only valid as long as they are campus students. The financial strain which faculty students have to undergo in order to pay law college registration fees comes on top of the money they spend to maintain themselves in Colombo, students say.
Will there be an excess of lawyers if faculty students are exempt from the law college finals? Would this mean that Open University students who follow external law degrees have to be given exemptions as well?
There are two sides to the story. On the one hand, say, in England, an LL.B. degree does not enable a student to enroll as a practising lawyer, unless he has completed his barristers' or masters' degrees.
But, doctors do not have to attend a separate institution in order to qualify as professional practitioners, at least not after they have completed their university MBBS, say the faculty students.
The issue hence is one that places the authorities in a pretty uncomfortable position, because they are up against the formidable Council for Legal Education backed by the unofficial bar, and the protesting students of the faculty who have launched a radical blitzkrieg to win their demand.
There has been no official comment on the crisis so far, but faculty students are keen to say that they have no grouse against law college students and that their fight is against 'authority' represented by the Ministry of Justice.
The key demand of the faculty students, who insist that they are funded entirely by contributions from the public is that they be exempted from five subjects of the Law College final examination, and that the other four subjects be introduced to the faculty. This, they say should enable them to enrol as Attorneys- at-Law on completing their LLB degree in campus.
However, many members of the legal community insist that the legal profession should not be infiltrated by 'half-baked' lawyers. "It is like a commerce degree holder being allowed to sign in place of a chartered accountant," says one indignant lawyer.
Is there a meeting point somewhere in the middle at which the two divergent factions could meet?
Law faculty students say they are 'not interested' but the Council, at least at one point has been agreeable to grant them five exemptions, but nothing more.
But the legal community thinks that the attitude of the students, which is that they have to be granted all they ask for on demand rankles.
"There is nothing they have as of right - doing law college exams has been the system for long, why this sudden demand now?" The battle continues. It is a legal battle of attrition, but the faculty students think it's all about maintaining that old state of affairs - privilege.
The Book provides an insight into the working of the association from its very inception. It has also traced the personalities connected with the history of the growth of the tea industry from its beginnings to the present day.
"An enterprise finds solid foundations and trade begins to settle down, it has need for organised handling and trade organisations of various kinds are the outcome"
It was to fulfill this need that the Colombo Tea Traders Association was formed. In June 1894, a small Committee of tea buyers and sellers and the Chairman and Secretary of the Ceylon Chamber of Commerce was appointed "to consider the formation of an association and the rules that ought to govern that body and not in opposition but simply subsidiary to the Ceylon Chamber of Commerce and which could discuss problems affecting the tea trade specially".
The CTTA has performed its pivotal role effectively and has remained a watch dog over the marketing of tea.
The CTTA has seen both the good and bad times, but at no stage has the association been remiss in its obligations towards safeguarding the interests of its members.
The working of the association has been marked throughout its history by the ready co-operation of its members.
This has helped to surmount all the obstacles that came its way during its long life -the slump of 1901-1906 the war that followed when many intractable problems affecting the trade were effectively countered.
The questions of over production that followed the boom period of 1920-1926, were resolved by agreement between the principal producers of the crop. Tea prices in the global markets have not been always attractive, and have on many occasions threatened the very existence of the industry.
Tea auctions were suspended from 1942-1946 as a direct outcome of the World War II.
The Land Reform Acts of 1972 and 1975 vested a greater part of the tea lands with the state. With the setting up of the Consolidated Export Corporation and the State Tea Corporation, an attempt was made to control tea exports. The setting up of the Sri Lanka Tea Board in 1975 further weakened the position of the CTTA.
The CTTA has however stood like a colossus despite all assaults and intrusions, and has successfully accomplished its primary task Today, a new era has dawned for the tea industry, where the objectives of buyers and sellers are congruent both being committed to the common intent of fostering private entreprise, unlike earlier where the interests of buyers and sellers were often in conflict.
The former representing the private sector, and the latter the state sector. It actively aided the process of Ceylonisation.
The book written by Maxwell Fernando to commemorate 100 years of the CTTA, provides an insight into the working of the association from its very inception.
It has also traced the personalities connected with the history of the growth of the tea industry from its beginnings to the present day.
The author of this book has been intimately associated with the tea industry during the last 38 years.
At the instance of the CTTA he undertook to document the history of the association. He has dwelt deep into historical records and all the material available to complete this book.
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