Tussle in PA over chief minister posts

By M.Ismeth and Chamintha Thilakarathna.

The PA leadership was facing a storm of protests over their proposed nominations for Chief Minister posts in four of the five provinces while four MPs who were tipped to be appointed to the posts delayed their resignation from Parliament.

Six PA provincial councillors in Uva have written to the President asking her not to appoint Samaraweera Weerawanni as the Chief Minister. In other provinces the main candidates who won the PC elections told 'The Sunday Times' , on condition of anonymity, that they were against moves to appoint persons outside the list for the top post.

In addition to Mr. Samaraweera, Nandimithra Ekana-yaka, Berty Premalal Dissanayaka and Athauda Seneviratna who were planning to resign on Friday have indefinitely delayed the move.

According to the law, the Chief Minister could be substituted only after the first sitting of the council and the appointment of his council of ministers.

Candidates vying for the chief minister's posts and having sufficient preferential votes protested against the parachuting of ministers to the posts.

After having successfully qualified to be elected chief minister the candidates expressed displeasure in having to hand the post over to some one else who was not in the fray.

One candidate who did not wish to be quoted. said, "After having sweated and toiled to win preferential votes, who would want to throw away the chief minister's post? It was not our fault that their names were not included in the list."

PA General Secretary, D.M.Jayaratna, when contacted, said that they have it all well worked out and that there wouldn't be a problem in filling the posts. Earlier, the government made proposals to the extent of passing a bill in parliament to allow substitution of candidates immediately before the PC elections, but court over-ruled it. The PA was planning to bring in Mr. Weerawanni, Mr. Seneviratne, Mr. Ekanayaka and Mr. Dissanayaka as Chief Minister candidates for Uva, Sabaragamuwa, Central and North Central provinces.

Chicken pox hits N'Eliya

Chicken pox and viral flu are spreading in the Nuwara Eliya district with the heavy rains during the week marring the New Year season.

Nuwara Eliya Base Hospital DMO Dr. Tissa Perera said, "Many patients have been admitted infected with the flu and some with chicken pox. Four of the hospital doctors treating these patients have also been infected with chicken pox". 

Dr. Perera said that the flu is likely to spread to many others in a few days. He added this was common during the festive season and heavy rains and that the district experienced a similar infection last year too.

Dr. Perera said that no precautionary measures can be taken other than treating them carefully because these were air borne diseases and would therefore spread.

Skulduggery mars elections

By Frederica Janz

Nearly 300 incidents of violence and 70 cases of election-related complaints were made on election day, SSP M. Raban, Director, Police Elections Secretariat said.

In at least four major instances, polling booths at Colombo North, Harispattuwa, Mulleriyawa and Niraviya at Anuradhapura were subjected to violence and intimidation which forced the closure of one by mid-afternoon at last Tuesday's provincial elections.

At Kandy, two incidents of intimidation by PA supporters resulted in the Senior Presiding Officer at Harispattuwa closing the polling booth by 12.30 pm and bringing the ballot boxes to Kandy. At the Peliyawatta Junior School, Harispattuwa about 30 persons stormed the polling booth and allegedly attacked the elections staff removing the ballot papers.

At Attangalla at the Ranpokunugama Junior School about 200 PA supporters allegedly tried to storm into the polling station. Police had managed to chase them away and voting continued. 

SSP Raban, Director Elections, said on election day 298 incidents of violence were reported to the police of which 19 were of a serious nature. There were also 70 cases of election-related complaints made, of storming into polling booths and intimidation and harassment of a returning officer after election duty. 

Meanwhile a last minute decision by Police Chief Lucky Kodituwakku and President Chandrika Kumaratunga made provision that the Army and STF be used in order to prevent large scale violence at the Provincial Council election.

SSP Raban told The Sunday Times that this decision left little time for battle troops withdrawn from the East, to be adequately briefed on providing security for an election. "However it acted as a moral boost for police officers, wary of yet another repeat of Wayamba," he said.

Mr. Raban asserted that this time the police had the backing of the State, maintaining that President Kumaratunga agreed that the armed forces be used to help complement police officers on election duty.

Dudley: Have we lost that gentleman's touch?

D.S. Senanayake had an idea that the best way to learn how to ride a horse was just to ride a horse. It was the modern version of learning how to play the flute.

That was how he taught his sons and nephews riding when they were yet at school. He would put the boy on a horse, tie up his reins to the saddle and whip the horse. The boy had to stick to his seat for fear of a fall and incidentally learn how to keep his balance. The theory seems to have been that if you were afraid of a fall you would never learn to master a horse.

This technique of teaching riding by the man who rode his way to death, though unorthodox, might not have been quite such a fancy as one supposes. All those who were taught to ride by him became excellent horsemen, even though some might not have had the horse sense that he possessed.

Exactly as he taught his boys riding he taught them politics.

A family of wealth and position, not bothered with earning a livelihood, the Senanayakes have always been sportsmen. Polo, cricket, golf they excelled in, led by the old man himself.

The newest game with the birth of the Donoughmore era was politics. When Siripala Samarakkody died and the ministers were faced with the challenge of presenting united demands on the question of reforms, R.G. Senanayake was brought out from his club-rooms and put on the saddle vacated by Samarakkody in order to be sure of another vote on the reforms question.

Likewise, earlier, when Dudley Senanayake had complained of a stomach disorder that cricket, polo and the doctors combined could not cure, he was put on the Dedigama Seat with the able assistance of John Kotelawala and asked to sit pretty and be cured or head for a fall and fail.

It was an unwilling young man who gave up his politics. But the unwilling patient was a willing sportsman. To him politics was another type of sport which, though unfamiliar, was all the same exhilarating.

He took his politics as seriously as he had taken his sports. Having been educated at S. Thomas' and Cambridge, he knew no Sinhalese. He got himself a Sinhalese tutor and set to work at getting at the rudiments of the language.

As soon as he had a working knowledge of Sinhalese syntax and grammar, he turned to religion. Since he had first learned in early childhood the first principles of Buddhism under Heenatiyana Dhammaloka Therunnanse, he had not paid any attention to religion. Along with his life-long friend, J.R. Jayewardene, he began a course of intensive Buddhist studies which resulted in Dudley taking it all in and JR writing "Buddhist Essays".

Then came a study course in Politics and Marxism which became so serious that it all but ended in catastrophe. The two friends became the new driving force of the moribund Ceylon National Congress and by degrees became so pink in outlook that they invited the Communists to join forces with them at the Ambalangoda Session, thus driving out D.S. Senanayake himself out of the fold.

In a way this was a blessing in disguise. When the time came for new elections after an interval of eleven years and a party had to be formed, "DS" the man without a party was able to rally round him all the parties he cared to muster.

When the "Father of the Nation" became the first Premier, the son was once again hoisted up to the vacant saddle at the Ministry of Agriculture, the reins tied and the horse whipped.

It was an unwilling rider once again who had to be cajoled and persuaded to the saddle.

The son's queasy feeling of accepting a gift from the father could be understood. But one of the most daring acts of the father was this appointment of the son as the Minister of Agriculture. The father had enough faith in the son as one who would make good on his own merits that in spite of the charge of nepotism he took the risk. And no son could have fulfilled the hopes of a father better. He studied his files. He learnt things at first hand. He pried and prodded. Soon he knew his Department almost by heart. Without any fuss and flapdodle, but slowly and surely, the son schooled himself to be a Minister for whom even the opposition came to have great regard.

In debate in the House he became a formidable foe whom the opposition feared. His previous studies of Marxism stood him in good stead and he could cut clean at the roots of an argument without clumsy hacking and uncouth rhetoric. And by the time "DS" came to the zenith of his power and prestige, the father himself saw in the son the image of a successor and made secret arrangements for the succession as it turned out.

But once again, it was with reluctance he rose to the occasion. He had almost to be forced into it. But, as in the past, luck was with him. It can almost be said it was the reluctance he displayed that made the Party sign on the dotted lines left behind by the father.

We all have a sneaking regard for the modest man, as we have for the blushing bride. Bravado is all very well in the ring; clamour fits well into the market place. But diffidence is the badge of those who are called to the highest offices.

There is an oriental tradition that in the old days when the King died without an heir a caparisoned elephant was sent out in search of a suitable candidate for the throne.

It was then a diffident, unwilling, and unknown man who was brought on the back of the sacred elephant to be elevated to the throne.

In modern democratic Ceylon, we recognise no heirs, at least in theory, but the Governor-General, perhaps, is the present day version of the old world sacred elephant. 

The selection of the son according to the wishes of the dear departed as the heir to the father combined something of the old with the new, legend with legislature.

What the father had bequeathed the son accepted unwillingly. Not only could you take this horse to water; here was a horse who would drink as well.

But Dudley Senanayake was no carbon copy of the father or cast in the same mould.

If the father's personality had the qualities of an elephant's trunk, the son's personality has the characteristics of an umbrella. It can shelter you from the sun when it is fierce or from the deluge when it pours but can be folded up and hidden away unobtrusively in the intervals between.

The son's personality, it is true, is more subdued in force and less subtle in texture.

On the other hand, what the father lacked in the finer points of cultural refinement that comes from wider reading, and polish and elegance required of a democratic Premier, the son had more than enough to make up for.

He understood not only the practice of democracy than the father did but also the theory of democracy which the father never grasped.

The father was rough hewn granite on majestic lines; the son is seasoned timber sand-papered and polished - and fashioned on modern lines. Wherever the father was, he took possession of the scene; dominated it; laid down the law. Self-effacement, that alluring modesty that goes with the highest intellects, is the keynote of the son's personality. He does not bestride the horizon. He sits in a corner and mopes. He is different from his father in his approach, manner and method. The father preferred the closed-door conclave to the open door conference. The son chose the conference in preference to the conclave.

But this also meant that the son in some kind of way was a Hamlet unable to make up his mind. If Hamlet had been the chairman of a committee that made the decisions for him there would have been no play.

If a modern Premier had not been only a Chairman of a Cabinet, resignation as a climax to a melodrama enacted by Dudley within two years would not have happened.

The disciplined intellectual virtues of justice of heart and mind, the proud shyness that comes of high mental attainments, and the sensitive dignity, the result of exceedingly good breeding, in themselves are great qualities devoutly to be wished. 

But to be able to mould events and not allow events to mould him, to impose his will and not be imposed upon, a leader needs some dynamic force from within or even some strong urge from without to give him stamina.

The intellectual calm so becoming in an impartial chairman, breaks down at moments of crisis when the man has to be also a pathfinder and explorer to point the way to others. The lack of this driving force, without which there can be no creative power in politics, was Dudley Senanayake's great limitation.

Here was a man who, the larger he grew in public life, the smaller he felt within himself.

His attempts at playing the part of his father in the same terms of Crown Colonialism without the same conditions were bound to come to disaster.

If tragedy there was in the many episodes of his career when he failed his followers it was that Dudley was the son of the Father of the Nation. 

It is always better to be the father of a famous son rather than the son of a famous father.

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