(Excerpted from Rendering Unto Caesar by Bradman Weerakoon)

… the prime minister is the keystone of the Cabinet arch.

John Morley, 1889

The strongest man is never strong enough to be always master, unless lie transforms his power into right, and obedience to duty.
Rousseau,
The Social Contract, 1752

At the time my story begins, a routine civil service transfer had me moved as Assistant Secretary in the prime minister’s office which was without doubt the most exalted and powerful institution in Sri Lanka. For the first 30 years of the new state’s existence, its place in the political structure remained unchallenged and unchanged. The role of the prime minister as the keystone of the arch in a Westminster-style government was paramount. It was only much later, after the second Republican Constitution in 1978 and the creation of the Executive Presidency with its enormous concentration of power, that the position of the prime minister became as it now is, devoid of constitutional authority, largely decorative’ and what its holder is able to make of it.

I was still on my period of ‘cadetship’ after two stints of apprenticeship under the tutelage of two senior government agents, doing field inspections and observing how the provincial administration worked in Anuradhapura and Jaffna. This was the time-honoured route in the civil service. Both stations, Jaffna particularly, where the young Leonard Woolf, one of the early stars of the Ceylon Civil Service had begun his career at the turn of the century, kindled fanciful thoughts of emulation. Could one dare to aspire to walk in the footsteps of the great?

My transfer to the prime minister’s office was sudden and unexpected. On my return to Colombo after 10 months in Jaffna, I had a telegram from M Rajendra, then secretary to the treasury, posting me to the Badulla Kachcheri as an Assistant Government Agent. This at first sight seemed unfair since my first two Assignments had been to two of the more distant outposts. But one of the early pieces of advice the four of us ‘cadets’, Shanti Kumar Phillips, myself, Chandi Chanmugam and Lester Pereira – in the order of our entry to the Civil Service – had received at our orientation by Shirley Amerasinghe, who was then Deputy Secretary to the Treasury (DST) and literally our shepherd, was that ‘civil servants’ never questioned a transfer order.

Looking haughtily down his aquiline nose one day, he had informed us in an unusually severe tone that we served at the pleasure of the Crown. It was, as he seemed to imply, noblesse oblige for those of the Ceylon Civil Service’ – the CCS – and one was not to question why. The code for the chosen ones was apparently different from that for mere normal public service mortals. I took him at his word. Much later on a similar note, the late Pieter Keuneman, a respected leader of the Ceylon Communist Party, slightly parodied the predicament I was in – complain but comply was his diktat.

I had booked a railway wagon for the transport from Maradana to Badulla of my second-hand Morris Minor car, which I had bought on my first government transport loan for six thousand rupees, when the news of the change of transfer to the prime minister’s office reached me. It transpired that the need of Nadesan, then secretary to the prime minister, for someone ‘good in English who could do the ‘messages and things’, had priority. That is how I found myself, in the middle of 1955, quite routinely brought into the ‘exalted office’ and into an intimate association with a long line of Sri Lanka’s political leaders.

Sir John n Kotelawala, the first of my prime minister’s, but third in Sri Lanka’s history, was a colourful personality who was certainly not given to calling a spade an agricultural instrument. In 1954 some months before I came to his office, he had gained some notoriety by a characteristically direct remark at an international conference. It was the non-aligned summit in Bandung and Chou En-lai the urbane leader of the Peoples Republic of China was making a strong bid for China to be recognized as a leader of the non-aligned nations.

Sir John in his speech had implied that China with its close links to one of the power blocs – the Soviet Union – could hardly be regarded as non-aligned. Even more and quite deliberately, in view of his known antipathy to communism, he had referred with -ironic sarcasm to the Soviet Union’s own colonial record and China’s recent ‘annexation’ of Tibet.

Nehru, one of the architects of non-alignment and in his panchaseela mode, was anxious to mollify the rattled Chou En-lai. He had turned sharply to Sir John and inquired querulously, “Sir John, why didn’t you show me your speech before you said that.” Sir John’s celebrated riposte which warmed the hearts of even many of his local critics – most knowledgeable Sri Lankans being congenital Indophobes – was short and to the point. “Why should I, Nehru,’ he had countered, “do you show me yours before you speak?”

So I knew as I began work with him that he had a direct turn of phrase and plenty of courage. Certainly not a man to trifle with. I also learnt in those early days that Sir John was not quite the playboy and tough guy that the Press had made him out to be. Of course he enjoyed the company of pretty women and there were enough around him on most evenings at his Kandawala home for the Press to call them his ‘Purple Brigade’. But I have seen him order everyone out, including the pretty women, when the ‘party’ was over and it was time to get back to work.

He had a quick and inquiring mind and a strong sense of discipline engendered no doubt by his volunteer service in the Army. Before he became prime minister and when he was the minister of the state council in 1936 he was invariably referred to by his military rank, Major and later Colonel, and as Lionel – the L in J L – rather than John. The ‘Sir John’ came with his knighthood, a traditional parting gift after the Queen’s visit to Ceylon which he had organized with great assurance and success in 1953.

The prime minister’s father too had been named John Kotelawela and there was always a whiff of mystery surrounding `John Sr’. There had then been rumours of high intrigue, of family feuds, contract killings and near unassailable alibis. The kavi kola karayas – the wandering minstrels who preceded the radio as purveyors of news in my childhood had sung the story in racy jingles, doubtless embellishing it as time went on. But what was spoken about in whispers was that John Sr had died in prison while awaiting trial after arrest in a foreign land for killing a brother-in-law.

(To be continued next week)