Parliament partner Vasu recaps the man in Mahinda

By Uditha Jayasinghe
Presidential Advisor and activist Vasudeva Nanayakkara and President Mahinda Rajapaksa are perhaps unusual counterparts; yet a glance at their 38 year long journey together through ardent human rights lobbying to pro-people campaigns, prove that they are just that.

Fulfilling the trying roles as champion and critic, Nanayakkara over the decades has been instrumental in supporting Rajapaksa as well as censuring his regime. Having entered Parliament together in 1970, the two built a close relationship based on the leftist leanings and middle path aspirations of the SLFP.

“Since 1970 we have jointly worked together firstly to pressure our respective Governments to take pro-people policies, and secondly as vehement opposition against decisions that would adversely affect the masses. We had a focussed vision on key issues that impact most on the poor classes including economy, living standards and livelihoods”, says Nanayakkara who was a strong stalwart of the President during various difficult times in Sri Lanka’s history.

He says he was with President Rajapaksa on many of the strongest movements against the then Government, and they had actively lobbied to end the human rights violations in the country.

Nanayakkara recalled how the duo had “felt” their way to Geneva “without money, without a place to stay, without food or even a way of getting into the United Nations,” to create awareness and draw the attention of the international community to the human rights violations in Sri Lanka.

“We had to use tricks to get into the lobby of the UN building, because no one would allow us in. It was only after we managed to talk to a few of the diplomats, that they empathised with us and even found us a roof over our heads. I am still very proud of the fact that we managed to expose the Government of that time. Our actions were not a betrayal of this nation. We felt it was our duty to protect all the citizens of this country and see that their rights are safeguarded,” Nanayakkara stated emphatically. He added that he was “sorry” to see human rights infringements still a common occurrence in this country, though admittedly not on the same vast scale as previously, under an administration led, “by a man who defended them and worked untiringly to promote ethnic harmony.”

Insisting, “there is much more the Government can do,” Nanayakkara remarked that even though a Commission For Kidnappings and Disappearances had been established, there was little it could do against, “covert operations of the State.” While the Commission had reduced the number of cases that occurred particularly in Colombo, he noted that more needed to be done.

Recalling that the President had always been a friend of the minorities, Nanayakkara stressed that being a, “good Sinhala Buddhist leader from the deep South” had not hampered him from cultivating many personal relationships with people belonging to the minorities. The rot, in Nanayakkara’s opinion, lay in the administration’s inability to adhere to the guidelines laid down by the President.

“Today we see a rather lamentable scenario, where the President says that Sri Lanka is for all people, and a Minister in his own administration saying otherwise. The President’s wishes being not carried out by the State, has created a problem. We must mobilise the people behind the President, so that their views are reflected clearly.”

Reiterating the partiality of the President towards the people, Nanayakkara related another anecdote of how he had led harassed pavement vendors to vent their grievances to Rajapaksa. This had resulted in celebrations at Temple Trees by a beaming President who announced that, “he was glad to see people with dust on their hands, in a place that is normally haunted by foreigners.”

The President had also been instrumental in solving a trade union crisis shortly after accepting his first ministerial portfolio as the Labour Minister. He commented on how the workers on hunger strike were brought to the Ministry for meetings, and even fed following satisfactory conclusions to the deliberations. “It was always the common man that he fought for,” Nanayakkara said.

From human rights picketing campaigns to Pada Yatra, Nanayakkara was by the side of the President on his long road to the Presidency. Enduring baton charges and even imprisonment together when Rajapaksa was jailed for fabricated charges of murder that he was later fully exonerated from, he recalled how his mother had died during his imprisonment, and how the former Magistrate Judge Mahanama Thilakaratne had released him from prison to attend the funeral. “Those were character forming years indeed”, he observed in retrospect.

Fighting for the protection of public assets was another passion that was shared by them. When former President Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga came into power, Nanayakkara described a “bitter internal struggle” to mitigate the strong right wing policies that were followed during her tenure of office.

“We struggled to prevent 17 privatisations during former President Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga’s tenure of office, when she in complete contrast to expectations and the political ideology of the party, went ahead with privatisations. The President as the then Minister of Labour, offered Employee Trust Fund (ETF) monies to purchase some of the public assets that were put up for sale. The salterns of Hambantota and a plantation were among the public enterprises that we managed to save,” he said.

Nanayakkara also reminisced over how the party ranks had to be assembled to nominate Mahinda Rajapaksa as the Prime Minister ahead of other plans of the Party Leader. After the latter’s triumphant journey to the President’s House, Nanayakkara says he is keen to see the same people centered policies being continued by the Rajapaksa regime. “He must continue the “Mahinda Chinthanaya” and ensure that there is more state involvement in the market. The lowest 30% population must be heard. Right now they are shunned and sidelined. They need more than a few subsidies. We must take care of our migrant workers and ensure the flow remittances towards local investment; give a fair share of the produce to the farmer and eliminate the adverse effects of middle men. It is important that we invite genuine investors and not robber barons as previous Governments did.”

The Presidential Advisor was also adamantly against the conflict insisting that military and political solutions are, “two sides of the same coin,” and that they should be implemented side by side. He questioned the wisdom of remaining until the end of the war to put in place a political solution, and urged the President to seriously consider the matter.

Along with Nanayakkara and the rest of this nation, the memories of President Mahinda Rajapaksa are still being collected. Undoubtedly the road here has been long and hard, but the way to travel is even longer. Ultimately history gives a verdict based on the entire journey and that final paragraph is finely poised but yet to be penned.