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| Sunday, 31 August 2003 |
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Lee Kuan Yew's impressions of Sri Lanka by Rajeev Amarasuriya Sri Lankans, especially our political leaders have epitomised the Singapore Story as an ideal for Sri Lanka's development. Some have even had visions of being the Lee Kuan Yews of Sri Lanka. On a recent visit to Singapore I purchased the second volume of the memoirs of Lee Kuan Yew, widely acclaimed as the architect of modern Singapore and titled 'From Third World To First - The Singapore Story: 1965-2000" published in 2000 by Times Media Private Limited and The Straits Times Press. Six pages of these memoirs are dedicated to Lee's impressions on the developments in Sri Lanka which I believe would be of interest to us Sri Lankans. Not only is Former Prime Minister and now Senior Minister Lee one of the few visionary leaders of South Asia but also his views and perceptions are of great importance to us as we have desperately tried since independence to emulate both his and his country's feats. Although my attempts to reproduce in verbatim the relevant section from these memoirs have so far failed with the publisher politely ignoring my emails requesting permission, I'm sure the following excerpts will be of much interest to many. A word of caution, as one must remember that these are just passing sentiments of an international figure on whose agenda Sri Lanka was a mere foreign country and who may not have had all the necessary information to form the best opinion as to what went wrong. Nevertheless it is important and thought provoking reading ! Lee begins his recount of Sri Lanka with his first visit here in 1956. Staying at the Galle Face Hotel, he had been impressed by our public buildings, many with stone facing. He emphasises that due to Mountbatten basing his Southeast Asia command in Kandy, Ceylon as we then called it had more resources and better infrastructure than Singapore. According to Lee, the start of the unravelling of Sri Lanka was in 1956 with Sinhala being made the national language and other moves to make Ceylon a more nativist society. He recounts that the leaders of that day did not seem troubled that Jaffna Tamils and other minorities would be at a disadvantage now that Sinhala was the national language, or by the unease of the Hindu Tamils, the Muslim Moors and the Christian Burghers regarding the elevated status of Buddhism as the national religion. Lee recalls the claim by Felix Dias Bandaranaike who he names as Mrs. Bandaranaike's eminence grise on international affairs, that good fortune of geography and history had blessed Ceylon with peace and security so that only 2.5 per cent of Ceylon's budget was spent on defence; and then questions the irony of this claim when in the late 1980s more than half of the budget went into arms and the Defence Forces to crush the Jaffna Tamil rebellion. According to Lee, when Ceylon gained independence in 1948, it was the classic model of gradual evolution to independence. Ceylon was Britain's model Commonwealth country. He says, after the war, Ceylon was a good middle size country with fewer than 10 million people. It had a relatively good standard of education with two universities of high quality in Colombo and Kandy teaching in English, a civil service largely of locals, and experience in representative government starting with city council elections in the 1930s. In Lee's words "Alas, it did not work out. During my visits over the years I watched a promising country go to waste". As he states, one-man-one-vote did not solve the basic problem. The majority of eight million Sinhalese could always outvote the two million Jaffna Tamils who had been disadvantaged by the switch from English to Sinhala as the official language. On another visit to Ceylon in 1966 to meet Prime Minister Dudley Senanayake he recalls playing golf with our then Prime Minister on the Royal Colombo Golf Course. Prime Minister Senanayake had apologised for the encroaching squatter huts and the goats and cows on the fairways. According to Lee our Prime Minister had said that it was inevitable with democracy and elections and that he could not justify keeping open spaces in the centre of the city. A most instructive lesson on what had happened after independence according to Lee was his visit by train to Nuwara Eliya. The food on the train (in a special carriage) had been poisonous. The Crab had been badly contaminated and stank. He had immediately gone to the toilet and spewed it all out which he believes saved him. Once in Nuwara Eliya, he had stayed in the then dilapidated former British Governor's hill residence, "The Lodge". The golf course in Nuwara Eliya recalls Lee was also encroached upon by huts, goats and cows. According to him the tea plantations were in a deplorable condition and the locals who had been promoted were not as good supervisors as their British predecessors. The coconut plantations had also suffered. As an old Sinhalese had told him, this was the price people had to pay to learn how to run the county. He then discusses the period of President J.R. Jayawardene from 1977. He says, like some of his predecessors, Jayawardene was born a Christian, converted to Buddhism and embraced nativism to identify himself with the people. Jayawardene wanted to move away from Sri Lanka's socialist policies that had bankrupted it. Lee, impressed by Jayawardene's practical approach had been persuaded to once again visit Sri Lanka in April 1978. Lee however had not seen the urgent need for an airline project which Jayawardene believed was a symbol of progress. Lee had advised that an airline should not be a priority because it required too many talented and good administrators to get it off the ground when they were more needed for irrigation, agriculture, housing, industrial promotion and development and so many other projects. An airline was a glamour project, not of great value for a developing Sri Lanka. But due to President Jayawardene's insistence, Singapore had helped launch it in six months. Lee states that it was the decision of the former Singapore Airline's employed Sri Lankan Pilot who was at the time the Chairman of the new airline to buy two second-hand aircraft against their advice that led them to withdraw their assistance and support. Lee states, faced with a five-fold expansion of capacity, negative cash flow, lack of trained staff, unreliable services and insufficient passengers, it was bound to fail. And it did. The greatest mistake Jayawardene made according to Lee was over the distribution of reclaimed land in the dry zone. With foreign aid, the ancient irrigation scheme based on "tanks" which could store water brought form the wet zone was revived but unfortunately the reclaimed land was given to the Sinhalese, not the Tamils who had historically been the farmers of this dry zone. Lee denotes, this as another cause of today's ethnic problem. Lee then criticises the move by President Premadasa who he calls a Sinhalese chauvinist to get rid of the Indian troops from the country. It was not sensible at that time. Lee says that he tried on numerous occasions to convince President Premadasa that this conflict could not be solved by force of arms and that a political solution was the only way, one considered fair by Jaffna Tamils and the rest of the world. Lee ends his note on Sri Lanka by saying "It is sad that the country whose ancient name Serendip has given the English language the word "serendipity" is now the epitome of conflict, pain, sorrow and hopelessness". I hope these thoughts will give all those who are reading this a better grasp of some of the issues faced by us as seen from the point of view of an outside perspective with no vested interests. It is strongly advocated however that we should not make use of these sentiments and expressions of Lee to gain political mileage by passing the blame on to our national leaders of the past who undoubtedly made their own contributions to our nation. What we need to do at least now is to learn from the mistakes of the past (which we must of course not forget is a natural and ordinary human failing) and work towards a more progressive and better future ! |
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