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| Sunday, 12 December 2004 |
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Features |  |
| News Business Features Editorial
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Memoirs of Sirima R.D.Bandaranaike : My entry into active politics Contd. from 28.11.2004
"Even in the absence of direct evidence of the giving of gratifications to Members of Parliament, if there had been evidence of large-scale disbursements of money in the period immediately preceding the 3rd December, 1964, a great deal of suspicion would have been thrown on the purpose of the disbursements. The resolutions indicate that the directors were gravely concerned about the future of their business. They did entrust to the Chairman, Mr. R.S. Wijewardene, as we have detailed above, a sum of Rs. 100,000 in two equal instalments, one on 19th October, 1964, and the other on 4th November 1964, to be spent in his absolute discretion for safeguarding the freedom of the Press and the interests of the shareholders of the Company. Six days thereafter,viz, on 10th November, 1964, the same directors resolved to pay over to Mr. G.B.S. Gomes, the Managing Director, a sum of Rs. 300,000, also to be spent at his absolute discretion for the same purposes." "We examined the contents of a letter P125, written by Mr. L.C. Gooneratne on 17th December, 1964 to Mr. Cyril Ford, the Managing Director of Duckhams Limited in the course of which Mr. Gooneratne wrote:- "I presume you are aware that we went through a very trying period in the last four months when the Government introduced a Bill to take over our entire organisation. "It was a grim struggle and we had to marshal all our resources to fight the Bill. "It is heartening now to be able to breathe a little freely as we were not only able to stymy the Bill but were responsible for bringing about the defeat of the Government on the debate of The Throne Speech. I am sure you will be most interested to hear our strategy." "This is undoubtedly an interesting letter but it fell short of describing the strategy employed. We inquired from Mr. Gooneratne what the strategy 'he meant was and were given the reply that the reference was to the Bhikkhus' Campaign. "We do not think the answer correctly sets out what Mr. Gooneratne implied in the letter, but we are in no position to furnish the answer ourselves." "Having regard to the absence of direct evidence of the giving of gratifications to Members of Parliament, even if one assumes that the explanations offered are unsatisfying, or what is worse, perhaps false, we had to see how the unsatisfactory or false explanations could suffice to establish that these monies were given to bribe Members of Parliament to cross over from the Government side or as rewards to them for such crossing over. If the explanation offered is unsatisfying or is false, suspicion, even grave suspicion, does attach to the purpose of the payment..." If they were so concerned one would have expected them to denationalise Lake House after their victory but they didn't. Instead they used it to prop up the UNP. Now it has become a UNP paper no longer national. (In the context of when there memoirs were written) When the policy statement of the government was defeated in Parliament it was defeated by 1 vote. 14 of our members voted against. It is common knowledge that some of them were bribed to defeat the government commonly known as 'Throne Speech Convention.' As a respecter of democracy I decided to dissolve Parliament and go to the country. At the time 2 of our MPs including the Minister of Finance were out of the country. In fact an MP was in hospital after surgery in UK. I could have waited till they returned and taken another vote. In fact, I was advised to do so. The UNP had summoned their members who were out of the country to be in Parliament to vote. Whereas we were unaware of the plans till the last moment. I questioned CP (C.P. de Silva) about the rumours that he was going to cross over and he denied it and assured me he was not going to do so but he voted against us. That was a real stab in the back. In 1964 bringing the LSSP into the Government, it frightened CP and he crossed! He feared I might bring the Communist party also into the coalition. Why did I bring the LSSP into the Government? Every time the SLFP formed a government the left parties started their game of strikes in order to hamper the progress of the government. All the left parties for the first time got together and formed a so-called United Left Front and put forward 21 demands.
No Government could have granted all those demands without causing a terrific drain in our economy. It meant we would have had to curtail all the country's development work. If we didn't grant them too, these demands, which we possibly couldn't it meant they could have continued with their strikes and strikes weakened the economy. So I decided to invite the LSSP with their leader Dr. N.M. Perera who was a great economist and apparently appeared had all the answers to our economic problems to join the government and help to solve those problems. After negotiations of course. They wanted me to bring in Phillip too. He was also keen to come but he was not willing to join unless I removed some of my Ministers whom he said were reactionaries. I was not prepared to remove any of my Cabinet Ministers in order to bring him or any other party leaders to the Cabinet. So it was only the LSSP that joined having got 3 ministries including Finance. What happened to strikes? As a result of this many strikes fizzled out. Our Government did not face any major strikes except minor ones occasionally. When I took over the party we had no office of our own. We were in a rented building which was the third since the party was formed. Being a major party I felt we should have a building of our own. And I set upon the job of building a place. Thereafter we bought a land with an old building at Darley Road which was quite centrally situated. I decided to purchase it with some party funds we had saved. This was prior to 1970. We shifted our office there temporarily till we built a new place. Today, we probably have the largest and best office any party could have. Reproduced with the kind permission of ANCL Editorial Consultant Malalgoda Bandutilleke custodian of the manuscript and pictures. |
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