The first years after independence were good. Ceylon was no poor country though we were not a developed country. We had enough foreign reserves and we earned more from the Korean War. Our rubber fetched good money for us. We had free education, free health and we ate wholly subsidised rice on the rice ration book. There were Peakfreen biscuits, IXL jam and Reeve’s colours for the affluent children and Ole Spice for the well groomed gentlemen. Times changed over the years and through decades with biscuits changing to Maliban, jam becoming MD and colours turning to Homerun. Foreign reserves dissolved into foreign debt and the government became the chooser. Consumers lived on state choice. It was “Jumping fish” dresses for the ladies, manioc and “pol sambol” for the hungry and “kahata tea” with “Rang keta” the sugar candy toffee afterwards.

There were other things happening too. The first year after independence saw a couple of hundred thousand people of Indian origin becoming “aliens” overnight. The first government in independent Ceylon was able to officially reduce the population by that much, without any mass deaths. Thereafter the only Tamil political party in Ceylon the All Ceylon Tamil Congress which became a partner in the government broke in two and the Tamil party popularly known as the Federal Party was formed. That was followed by the governing UNP also breaking into two, with Bandaranaike forming the SLFP three years after independence. By then the first political party in Ceylon’s history, the LSSP had broken up over World War II and was competing with the Communist Party to campaign for their type of socialism.

A country that had to forge its future development together as a united country was being divided socially and politically. The Sinhala and Tamil parties were competing for the votes, each trying to be more Sinhala or more Tamil. Everything else is history. Negotiated Pacts and Accords were achieved, only to be broken to meet the noisy Sinhala extremists. The B-C Pact and the D-C Pact thus came a cropper on fancy petty politics. The Republican Constitution of 1972 and the Executive Presidential Constitution of 1978 were engineered by the Southern majority politics. July ’83 tarnished the image of the Sinhala society and Sri Lanka becomes a “Lost Paradise”. All that paved for an unwanted, protracted war. Its now 60 years of independence and 24 years of war. Let’s not count the dead, the injured, the maimed, the widowed, the orphaned and displaced human lives on both sides of the barricade. Let’s not talk of the dehumanising of the society, the culture of savagery and the mockery of democracy that seeped into daily life. Let’s not total the rupees and cents spent on continuing the war that could have been used for more productive purposes.

Rupees and cents have become worthless. Time is more worth in a way. Time spent on the roads have become increasingly long and more expensive too. The Supreme Court has to come in to tell what the legal speed limits are, but not how you would be held up in crawling traffic. The Supreme Court has to decide on the deadlines for Grade I school admissions. And it’s also the Supreme Court that decides on LP gas prices and telecom tariffs. All other price markings are said to be made in the world market. The government is only there to draw heavy loans to settle monthly salaries and pensions. To inform that inflation at 26.5 per cent does not affect economic growth. That a special formula has been worked out to curb heavy increases of essential items and keep them increasing too. Today there are 37 per cent of our population officially under the poverty line. Today we have over 400,000 refugees labelled as displaced people who would not have anything to do with the war.  

This Head of State is said to be the third best from among all others before him, according to a survey carried out by Nielsen’s with a prestigious English Sunday broadsheet. We have had 14 regimes before headed by 12 individual Heads of State. That would picture the rest in any form one would wish to see. Ten years after independence, Lee Kwan U wanted his tiny Singapore to become a Ceylon. Thirty years after independence, JRJ wanted Sri Lanka to become another Singapore. And that provides a profile of our politics after independence.

“Shouldn’t we at least talk now?” I mean about the next 60 years?