Murtaza Jafferjee  00:04
President Chandrika Kumar Tunga Bandar Nayak, welcome to the Advocata Conversation.

Speaker 1  00:09
Thank you.

Murtaza Jafferjee  00:10
Just to give context of why we are having this conversation, most of Advocata's audience are younger people between the ages of 16 and 35, and your presidency ran from 1995 to something like 2005. 94 to 2005, and many of that audience may not have been born, or they may have not been in adulthood to recollect the kind of economic policies and economic reform that was done during your your time, and Advocata is primarily an economic policy think tank. And I thought that it was an opportune time to have this conversation. So, for the benefit of the audience, can you tell us a little bit about your story, about your childhood, about your education, your family life? Of course, we know that your father was former prime minister, your mother was, but what's your story?

Speaker 1  01:19
It's a long one, but I'm not going to spend a lot of time on it because we don't, we can't go on and on. Usually, I don't talk about my childhood because it's so chequered and so long, so much to say. But if I try to be brief, I haven't thought about how to be brief. But yes, we had a. My parents were in politics from the time my father was in politics from the time we were born, because he was a minister in the British Legislative Council. Also, by the way, I was born across the road here, okay, in a house belonging to Lionel Went, which my parents had first rented when they married, and then they my grandfather bought international for them. Anyway, my all my childhood memories from the beginning is of my father doing politics, people coming to the house, discussions, dialogues, and all that kind of thing, my mother tending on them, but she also was in social service in the Mahila Samiti and so on. But all our basics were looked after well, and I'll just skip many things. But it was it was a calm and nice childhood. We had all kinds of extracurricular activities, not a lot like now. But I must also tell you that our parents-I don't know whether they discussed and came to this decision, but they did certain things. They didn't sit us down and lecture to

Speaker 2  02:53
us.

Speaker 1  02:54
You must do this and you must do that. But by watching the way they lived, I learned a lot. I'm speaking for myself now, and I'm sure my siblings also. For example, we had my sister and I. I mean, that was not the modern age where girls from who had whose parents had some means, had 1001 dressers. You know, every year we had two dressers, maximum three, for party dressers. We were never given more. We were told just repeat it and wear it, and we were not allowed to go everywhere. My mother and father were very strict about it, especially my mother, because she was very strictly brought up in in in a village area in the in the hills in Ratnapura. So that's one that I don't remember, and I'm very happy about it. We used to be given rupees 350 pocket money per week, and everything we wanted, we had to buy from that. And we were encouraged not to buy sweets and this and that. And at that time, we didn't have all these various types of rubbish food, even if you wanted to buy them, once in a we we had a chocolate that somebody would have brought in a box. But my father used to always say, "Now go and buy books. And we used to go and buy books, and he used to always look at the books we bought.

Murtaza Jafferjee  04:16
So did did you have a tradition in your house of reading?

Speaker 1  04:20
Yes.

Murtaza Jafferjee  04:21
And what did you read?

Speaker 1  04:22
My father read a lot, and you know his educational background, and he loved reading. And the one memory I have of him is he liked to have his he he looked after his health very well, as many of his doctors said. If he was not shot dead, he would have lived up to a good 100 years, like most of the Bandar Nakers, and went very well. You know, they didn't have all these NCDs and and all these things, and used to play tennis till after he became prime minister. He hardly had the time, but every morning he would do one to one and a half hours of yoga and exercise. Even the day he was shot. Dead in the front veranda of our house, he had finished his exercise and come down. So he was very conscious of, you know, keeping fit. So,

Murtaza Jafferjee  05:09
so what was the dinner table conversation like? I mean, what were you discussing, and what was his vision for Sri Lanka, or then then Ceylon?

Speaker 1  05:19
Before that, I will finish what I was going to say. I went into unnecessary details. You can read that. One memory I have is my father used to have an afternoon nap, part of his health thing. I think if he had the time, just 1520 minutes sometimes, and we used to find him. We used to go even for that 15 minutes to bed with a book, and we used to find him fast asleep with a book on his stomach, open like that. So you know this was the kind of culture we had, and my sister and I used to. We were older than my brother. We used to just delve into his books on the shelves. So

Murtaza Jafferjee  05:49
what did he read?

Speaker 1  05:50
Oh, very serious things, and he must have been reading political things also. By the time I was 11, I was beginning to read Tolstoy and Pushkin, and I didn't understand any any of it, but we were reading it, so we must have absorbed something. But we also read in Blight and Dennis Robbins. There was a sort of romantic stories, but I got very bored with those romantic stories. So that's the kind of thing Shakespeare, of course. We did Shakespeare at school also. So dinner table conversations. My father, at least half the week, he would have dinner with us, and my brother was too young. He was given dinner and sent off to bed, but my sister and I and the parents, they would be discussing politics, and I was avidly I used to avidly listen and sometimes pipe in also, but I was never told just shut your mouth that you have nothing to do with this. My father would engage with me, and sometimes my mother would say, "That's not your business. My father said, "No, no, no, no! Come on, come on! Yes, say that. What did you say? Well done, and all that. So, and the last his last dinner at home, he was shot the next morning. Finally, I was the only person who was at the table with him because my mother had dinner and rushed off to some COVID to do a puja because astrologers had told her his time was not good, and my sister had dinner with us and went off upstairs because she was also avid reader, must have been to read or something, and I sat there and I was eating slowly, and must have been in my dreams, and my father started talking with me, and I was angry with him because they were going to New York in two days' time, two or three days' time, and for the UN UNGA, and I we we wanted to go. We had never been abroad.

Murtaza Jafferjee  07:39
Okay,

Speaker 1  07:40
we had never been abroad till my father died, because at that age,

Murtaza Jafferjee  07:43
what was your age? I

Speaker 1  07:44
was 14 when he was killed.

Murtaza Jafferjee  07:45
Okay,

Speaker 1  07:46
but we were never taken in the sense very few people went abroad at the time, Murtaza, and we could have gone. You know, government could have. My mother and father refused to let the government pay for

Speaker 2  07:57
us.

Speaker 1  07:57
Whenever we went with her, I tell you another story about that, anyway. So that that was the last. And he said he knew I was angry, so he said you are angry that we are not taking you. Said I don't have the money to take you this time, but next time I'll do that. And I sort of didn't answer and showed that I was angry. Next next morning he was gone. And about travelling, these are just little anecdotes. The first time we went abroad was just as I finished my O levels at age 15. I was underage for my class, always precocious. So, and my sister had finished her A level. She was just two years older to me, still is, and my mother had just assumed the premiership, and Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru invited us to India. He was very quite friendly, very friendly with my father. They had been fighting for Indian Sri Lankan independence even when my father was at Oxford and he was at Cambridge, but he had left Cambridge, but he was in some movement, and they knew each other when they were in power, and he was very sad about what happened. And he wanted to just sort of, I think, be nice to my mother. So he invited her on a private visit to India, just as we finished the exams. And he said, "Bring all three children. So my mother has told the Indian High Commissioner, whoever, no, I can't because I can't afford to pay for all three children. I'll bring one. Then you know what Pandit Nehru did. He sent his private plane to Colombo to take all of us. So that was my first trip to India, and we went and stayed with them in Delhi at Thin Murthy, and every morning we used to have breakfast with the family, and that was a gorgeous experience. And we could see him every morning. He would go and sit on the steps of Tien Murthy, and people could come with their petitions and talk to him. Then only he would go to office and do the formal things.

Murtaza Jafferjee  09:56
So, what was your father's? Economic philosophy. Did he ever discuss when I asked you about his vision for Sri Lanka? But it would have had a development angle. What did he believe in, in terms of economic ideology?

Speaker 1  10:13
I must tell you, he had. I was too young to discuss economics with him, and at that point, I didn't care about it. I don't know. He was not an economist. He was a classics scholar and a great democrat. So I think he wanted to. He wanted the people of Sri Lanka to enjoy the fruits of independence in every way, and he was very much for minority rights till to till 1955. Okay, they came into parliament 56 in Parliament. They are they are in Hansard. It is recorded where he always fought for parity of you know the Tamil demand was parity of status for languages. They didn't ask for Ilam and separate states and all. And he always spoke about it. The one leader who opposed it right through, I have speeches and such from 45 was Judge Award. He always spoke of Singhala only, so then obviously, unfortunately, my father was forced into accepting Singhala only as a slogan for the elections to win the elections because they brought in all kinds of refraction into the coalition in order to win against a very powerful UNP, but soon after, what is interesting is that he signed the Bandar Nagar Charunayagam Pact, and he was going to implement it one year later when all these Buddhist monks started walking on the roads, encouraged by Jaya Jawadarna. Radhisenagam minded his business, and he didn't get involved. He was the leader of the UNP, but JR was the power behind the throne, and then finally, you know what happened. The rest of it, I would, I don't need to repeat. So I think his main point was actually give the fruits of independence to the people, to our people. Singhala only was also a way of giving an identity, and thereby empowering the majority of the people at that time, 75% of the population were Sinhalese. So, but soon after, because the Tamil and Muslim people had to get their rights, he brought in the VC Pact. But that was not to be. Economics, I think, obviously being very intelligent, he was for socialist economics. He certainly wasn't a Marxist, you know. Like, and that was in vogue at that time, very much in vogue, and many many countries in the world were following it. The government owning major economic enterprises and all that, and and then giving doling out to the people.

Murtaza Jafferjee  12:39
Because when your father was at Oxford, this Fabianism movement would have been very active. Very active, right? So that would have probably shaped him.

Speaker 1  12:50
Yes, he read a lot, so he would have read all these things, and also the he believed that his time-he only was prime minister for three years, three and a half. His time was spent in nationalising and the state taking over foreign assets, where Sri Lankan assets and the foreigners had grabbed. So you know that was the phase. So to sort of start new structures of the economy, like open market economy and all, there was no time, and the open market wasn't at all known in the whole third world, and at that time, 150 out of 200 countries were in the third world. So, but you know, starting the People's Bank, the Paddy Lands Act, giving paddy back to I mean the Paddy lands back to the farmers, maybe even

Murtaza Jafferjee  13:37
the EPF, right? ETF was

Speaker 1  13:39
started

Murtaza Jafferjee  13:40
enduring his

Speaker 1  13:41
workers' rights, so he was more interested in giving the people their basic rights, which he didn't have.

Murtaza Jafferjee  13:47
So you go to Saint Bridges Convert, and then what happens after that? What did you? I mean, then you go to university, and you go to the subord.

Speaker 1  14:00
Yes,

Murtaza Jafferjee  14:02
and what did you study?

Speaker 1  14:04
Political science and economics.

Murtaza Jafferjee  14:05
Right.

Speaker 1  14:06
I did my degree in political science.

Murtaza Jafferjee  14:08
Right.

Speaker 1  14:09
At the school of political science, you know the French system is very different. The the more elitist, sorry to say that, and top level subjects were called they they were in the form the faculties were called colleges. It wasn't a political science. There was no other political science faculty. The political science college was in Paris, part of the University of Paris. But it was a private college which was started during the time of Napoleon Bonaparte to train children of the elite into administration and politics. Even now, almost every single president and prime minister of France has gone through that college, and then you do other things. The French avocado doing three, four degrees at the same time, they do economics, law. So you did economics, I did economics as a side subject, but from a PhD which I started. After the degree, it was developed. Economics,

Murtaza Jafferjee  15:00
right? And where was that?

Speaker 1  15:02
At a part of the University of Paris, which is called Ecole Pratik des Otstitute. Once again, another college, the Higher College of the Practical College of Higher Studies, but it's not practical. People do their PhDs. They are now more and more. I've nearly finished. I did about 75% of

Murtaza Jafferjee  15:22
it. Right, and what what were you researching?

Speaker 1  15:25
Strange things, the socio-economic structures of ancient Iran, that is from the time of the kings, and its transformation during colonialism into commercial capitalism.

Murtaza Jafferjee  15:42
Okay,

Speaker 1  15:43
so into commercial capitalist structures. So it's not only economics; it's also social.

Murtaza Jafferjee  15:48
Majority of people in that generation who had the means probably would have gone to the UK. Some maybe to the United States. Why did you go to France?

Speaker 1  16:02
Because I was a rebel.

Murtaza Jafferjee  16:04
Did you know French in school? You had. I

Speaker 1  16:07
did French. My my strongest subjects were languages. Right. I did Latin, French, English. I used to give the prices for all those subjects. Singhalis English to be equally good is rather rare, but I was, and so was my sister. Because our parents insisted on speaking to us in Singal is at home, but we came from an English background, and we read all these books and and all that, and we were in the Singapore stream at school. That was the Kanangar reforms, but we had the English background. We heard the parents speaking English, and blah blah. But why I chose Paris, is another interesting story, because I was the rebel in the family. I used to be punished eternally at school. If I didn't get punished a few times every month, I was not happy, and I used to be called off on the platform, escorted by the nuns. It was a Catholic school by run by Irish nuns, so you can't get anything more conservative and and narrow-minded. So I wanted to always stir up the pot, and I did my I did science for my O levels, and I did science for my A levels too. I wanted to become a doctor, but at that time there was only one medical college in the country, and that year I still remember they took only 100 and 113 students, I missed the entrance by about five marks because I didn't study. That was just after my father was, my father died, and my mother had come into politics. And rather than studying, I would go and eavesdrop into the political conversations in the home, and sometimes even participate by force. So I hadn't studied anyway. Whatever the reason, I didn't get enough marks, and my all my other friends did it just a content sometimes third time. So most of my classmates are doctors. I said I'm not going to do it again. I feel insulted that I failed. I had not failed an exam before that, so I switched along and went to Aquinas to do the law degree. I did my first in-laws, just at the end. But in the meantime, I I had done French in school, Latin. I did, but that's a dead language, as you know. And while waiting for results, those days the A-level results took about one year to be given. Wow! So while hanging around, and we did, we were not allowed to go to nightclubs and things. With a group of girlfriends, I went to the Alliance. Sorry, my throat is bad. To the Alliance Française. And two years I did spoken French. Then while I was there, I was told by our the tutor that the French government was that year going to give scholarships for undergraduates. Until then, you know, a lot of countries gave scholarships to Sri Lanka because we had only one or two universities, and our students didn't have many chances of doing the university degree. Russia gave about 150 at the time. Then some of the Soviet bloc countries gave a whole lot, and England was very stingy about giving scholarships. But France gave, Germany gave, Eastern and Western and like that. So the French were giving a few for postgraduate studies, masters and PhDs. But that year they decided to give for undergraduate studies only once once call, and I was told this. I applied. My mother was the leader of the opposition, so she had no way of influencing. And we were interviewed by the you know it was handled by the education ministry and the and the French embassy. A group of those two institutions interviewed us. About 100 students applied. I got the scholarship because I had got a fairly good credit in the A levels, in the Sri Lankan A levels and the London A levels in in French, and I could speak a little bit and all that, so I got it. But my decision to go to France and not to England. Is because having switched from science to arts, I did history also as a subject for the London A levels, or by and also Sri Lankan A levels. But the London A levels at that time, as the special subject for history, you always had to do a special, had the French Revolution. So I chose that several specials.

Speaker 1  20:18
I chose that, and then I read quite whatever was available in Colombo and the French Revolution, in addition to the one textbook, and I was very much enamoured by this whole revolution, the people rising up against absolute power of the monarchy and all that, and I was always against monarchy and elites. That was my father's influence, I think. So I thought these people was a great fun, so I must go there, and I never looked back, nor did I regret. And I found then in between my I went once to after India, after we were invited by Jawaharlal Nehru, as I said. Four years later, I accompanied my mother to the Commonwealth Conference in London. I loved all the museums and you know all those things, but I thought the the British people were staid and stolid, so I thought these people will be much more interesting and I I liked it, so that's how I chose it, and I was hugely rewarded for that because nine months after I went to university there. There was the famous 1968 student rebellion. You must have heard about it. That was the most powerful, largest student rebellion in the world. I think after after the Russian revolutions and that revolution period. So the the barricades where they put up barricades against the police. I was on the barricades.

Murtaza Jafferjee  21:43
Okay, so this echoes the visualisation of Lame Miserable. I mean, the barricades and protesters and the military coming.

Speaker 1  21:57
The French are very very good at that.

Murtaza Jafferjee  22:00
Right. So you're in France, then you do your PhD, and then you say, "No, I

Speaker 1  22:06
didn't. I didn't finish it.

Murtaza Jafferjee  22:08
You didn't finish it. I didn't finish 5%

Speaker 1  22:09
of it. I came back to Sri Lanka.

Murtaza Jafferjee  22:11
What prompted you to come back

Speaker 1  22:12
to do my research because it was on Sri Lanka. Right.

Murtaza Jafferjee  22:14
Okay.

Speaker 1  22:15
For one year, I sort of asked for vacation from the scholarship of Annia, I was going to be at home. I didn't need their money, and I was going back for a year. I was dragged into the Land Reforms Commission by Minister Hector Kobakaduwa.

Murtaza Jafferjee  22:29
This is in the early 70s. 72.

Speaker 1  22:30
I came back in 72, and never went back.

Murtaza Jafferjee  22:35
So the Land Reform Commission. I'm sure that lots of people have thrown brick pads at you.

Speaker 1  22:42
Those are the land. Landowners.

Murtaza Jafferjee  22:44
So, what was the intention of the land reform commission? Is it that the landed genteel in Sri Lanka owned a lot of the land?

Speaker 1  22:54
Yes. And and foreign companies. I had nothing to do with the conceptualization of the land reforms. I was still in Paris,

Murtaza Jafferjee  23:00
right?

Speaker 1  23:01
I came back just after the law was passed, but don't forget there were the leftist parties in government. So

Murtaza Jafferjee  23:08
we we know now that the government owns something like 83 or 84% of all the land in Sri Lanka.

Speaker 1  23:15
Still,

Murtaza Jafferjee  23:15
now yes now

Speaker 1  23:16
because they they don't

Murtaza Jafferjee  23:18
occupy but they own. At that time, what was it? Do you remember?

Speaker 1  23:24
Well, we took over about a million acres of land owned by Sri Lankan landowners, and over a million acres of foreign-owned plantation land.

Murtaza Jafferjee  23:35
So it's 2 million. Just to give the context, two

Speaker 1  23:38
point something million.

Murtaza Jafferjee  23:39
Sri Lanka's land mass is about 16 point 3 million acres, so about 2 million acres,

Speaker 1  23:44
two to two and a half,

Murtaza Jafferjee  23:45
and that would have been fairly productive land.

Speaker 1  23:48
Right, it was obvious because it was all in the form of plantations. Right, and we lost all our all our assets. Right, and that I think I must say this year. I don't. I'm normally rather modest. Even foreign leaders have told me probably my mother is the only leader in the world who gave up the only assets that she and her family had for the sake of the government and the country. The land reform was prompted after the 1971 insurrection of the JPP because you see the LSSP, the Communist Party, and all were in government, in my mother's government, and they had understood it as that it was partially, well, mainly true, that the poor, educated young people at that time, 7572, point something percent of the population were rural, that they were educated, but they had no jobs, because economy was very very poor, so this was a jobless, educated youth who did the revolution. But of course, there was a terrorist murderer like Rohan Avijay Vira who jumped in there and became the leader. But he was followed by all these you know innocent young children who thought they could change the whole. System, regime change for the country for the better of the country and themselves, so they understood this and they said we have to give them some assets. We can't give them all jobs because the government is poor, and they looked around and realised that the assets were with with the rich Sri Lankans and and the companies. So they took them all and distributed them to the people.

Murtaza Jafferjee  25:20
So you were in the Land Reform Commission for how long?

Speaker 1  25:24
Five years.

Murtaza Jafferjee  25:25
Five years

Speaker 1  25:25
till the change of government, and what we did there, once again, I like to create. You know about BALP and all these other things I do, and they were just taking this over. They they were going to create various corporations of government for the government to run a lot of it, and there is to be distributed to the people, and that had that was beginning. Then I said no. I want to do something more creative for the young people. Can you give me if you want me to work there? Kobe had to drag me there. He shouted at me. I said no, and that was that's another story. And I said okay, I'll do it for three years, but I must be given the freedom to take some of this land and create some new venture for the young people. So I said, "Okay, you tell us what you want to do. So I went in there and got the job and looked at it, and we created this thing, which was a form of cooperative farms where educated young people, O level, A level. We had about 1015, graduates also in it. They they owned the land through the cooperative society. There was a special act that was brought to Parliament, and we formed cooperative societies for these things that were called Janavasa. Jana Awasas, people's habitation, and they were trained to manage their own, to do the cultivation. They were the farmers. They tilled the land. They managed it. They did their own accounts, and so on. And this was going on, and this was very very successful. As usual, I got the country's top experts into a committee to help me: agriculturists, soil scientists, professors were so happy, and strangely, all of them were Marxists at the time. So they were very happy that I was trying to put into into action what they thought should happen, and they used to come with me, spend whole days on these farms, training the young people, and we had 275 units with 30,000 young people working in them.

Murtaza Jafferjee  27:24
Has any of the most successful cooperatives survived today?

Speaker 1  27:29
Unfortunately, not because as soon as Jaya Javier came in, his MPs barged into the into the cooperative farms, chase hit and chase the young people. We had even built houses for them. I mean, we didn't build it; they built it themselves. The housing block was owned by them. We gave them deeds separate, so that was their own land. I have gone and even built houses with them, Matika Hanuwabisters with them for these houses, cooked and eaten with them, and all that. So they were thrilled, and they chase them all out. In some places where they refuse to go and dug their heels in, they send the army to chase them out. And quite a lot of those lands, the MPs, the UNP MPs assigned to themselves.

Murtaza Jafferjee  28:12
So going back to that era, I believe in 71 or 72 there was a new constitution.

Speaker 1  28:18
7272, the Republican Constitution.

Murtaza Jafferjee  28:22
Now, besides the politics and why we needed to be a republic, one crucial element of that Constitution, which is relate related to economic governance, was the independence of the civil service was changed. That secretaries would be appointed by the cabinet subsequently in the 1978 constitution was that it would have been appointed by the president. I mean, lots of commentators say that that was a big mistake. I agree. Do you remember why they did it?

Speaker 1  29:01
I don't know. I wasn't here when that constitution came. I told you I came end of 72.

Murtaza Jafferjee  29:06
But this was early part of 72. The

Speaker 1  29:09
constitution came in in July.

Murtaza Jafferjee  29:11
July. I came

Speaker 1  29:12
back in August, and I didn't get into the debate of it, but I think it was wrong. But don't forget that, or the constitution was done by Dr. Kalina Adi Silva. They were people who believed believed in governments directing everything.

Murtaza Jafferjee  29:31
In fact, some other actor from that era actually told me is that they believed in socialism and they felt that the civil service, which was an elite, would stand in the way. The

Speaker 1  29:44
civil service in some places was standing in the way, and don't forget, civil servants got together with the police and a few army leaders and tried to topple my mother's government in 1971. No, sorry, that was a coup. In 62, a coup d'état, her first government, two year two years after it came in, and the plan was to kill her and all that. Right, but so the civil service at the time was very elitist. All the top elite people, families, children went into civil service, and the the best husband that parents could find for their daughters was a civil servant, so they were quietly, not you know, not openly, but they were quietly sabotaging various things. I don't know the details because I wasn't in government then, and I haven't studied that. I have heard it being said, so that would have been why. And anyway, the the Marxist parties who were in power were very dirigist controlling, so they wanted to control the public service, which is not right. But what would have been the solution, I don't know.

Murtaza Jafferjee  30:50
So during that era, ideologically, I was told you were left of centre, that you had a certain. So what was your belief at that time?

Speaker 1  31:03
Well, democratic socialism.

Murtaza Jafferjee  31:06
Right.

Speaker 1  31:06
I believed in democracy passionately.

Speaker 3  31:08
Right.

Speaker 1  31:08
Not these Stalinist kind of governments, you know, or Trump kind of governments, where the people have total freedom and fundamental rights and all that, but where the elite will not own the entire economy, where the people, the masses, will also have a right to the economy. Will also have a right to participate in governance, and so on. This is why when I first came in, now I am jumping. Otherwise, will take a long time. I believe very much in socialist economy, but not not the Salinas kind of economy, or the Chinese type of economy, democratic social, more like the socialist party in France, but there we believed in the state owning industries and all that, and state controlling the industries and then giving handouts to the people, kind of thing. I can remember. I'll give you one example. I can give you many. After my husband was assassinated by the JVP, and I had to run away because the JVP kept sending me letters saying, "If you stay in, remain in Sri Lanka, we will kill you and the two children also. So I was made to run away in the dark of the night one day by my family, and I was hanging around there looking after my children, and mr. Ronnie Dimel had also left the government because he didn't get on with President Premadasa, and he was living in London. I knew him because he had served my mother's government also. He was

Murtaza Jafferjee  32:34
General Secretary of the Celebrity. General

Speaker 1  32:35
Secretary of the Celebrity, but he was a Deputy Minister. He was a Deputy Minister in one of our cabinets, in one of our later cabinets, so I knew them well. So he would invite me for lunch and take me to posh places that I couldn't afford for lunch, and have long chats. And I enjoyed having. He was a very, very, very clever man. And at the end of it, his main goal was always to persuade me that the socialist economy will not work in Sri Lanka. It is a capital. So I used to say no, but I mean, you stay with your ideas. I'll stay with mine. Don't try to force me. Then he would say no, no. And one fine day he said, Chandrika, one fine day you are going to lead Sri Lanka, and we had to get these ideas right, get these ideas straight. So I said who told you that? People are beginning to say that, but I said I will never do that because I was convinced I didn't want it. I was dragged in, screaming and cricking. Finally, and then anyway, those I had a lot of discussions with him. I didn't sort of refuse to discuss. And when I came back to Sri Lanka, I had already looked at the free market economy. The free market economy was taking over the world. The socialist economies had failed, and I began to study that even further, you know, my professor, for my development economics, the my doctorate, he was also a Marxist. He was a development economist, but very very liberal Marxist, not Marxist political in politically, but economically. But he was also moving towards a free market economy, and he used to talk to us and lecture to us and all that, so then I began to look at this and I realised that the free market economy had more positives than the other one.

Murtaza Jafferjee  34:07
So Ronnie Dibel influenced you. Anybody else? Anybody else you met? Or I mean, even the world was changing, right? During that year, but we

Speaker 1  34:20
used to always have. This is a sort of leftist habit. We used to have groups of young people, my friends and some of my relations also. We used to get together and have regular dialogues, discussion groups. Quite a few. Even Nima Sandra Ratna was in that, in one of our groups, and he wasn't there for a long time. We had highly educated economists, sociologists, anthropologists like Senegal Bandar Nak and all that. So we were all sort of like having doubts if you were hard Marxists by the others. So we used to discuss a lot. And as to read when

Murtaza Jafferjee  34:54
Niman Sandratna once, when I asked him this question, he says, "No, we believe in socialism, in that." Era, of course. Then exactly, so I can say the same thing. And when

Speaker 1  35:04
the eras changed, I was trying to be stubborn because I was being loyal to my beliefs. And then suddenly I began to realise, don't be so stupid. Things are moving in a different direction. I studied. Then I started studying what was happening, and I realised that.

Murtaza Jafferjee  35:16
So when did you move to the UK? Well, I

Speaker 1  35:18
went to France in 1967 for my studies came back in 72. Then I had to run away in 70. Sorry, I had to run away in 88 after Vijay was assassinated.

Murtaza Jafferjee  35:31
And you were based in London. So Maggie Thatcher had coming in 79. And

Speaker 1  35:37
while I was there, she was chased. She was chased away by her party.

Murtaza Jafferjee  35:40
Right, but there was a lot of reform that free market movement in the. I was studying

Speaker 1  35:45
that also.

Murtaza Jafferjee  35:45
Yeah, so that would have rubbed off on you, right? Because UK

Speaker 1  35:50
and also Murtaza, I my professors were all all left socialist or Marxists in Paris.

Murtaza Jafferjee  35:56
Right,

Speaker 1  35:57
and I used to hop across to Paris all the time.

Murtaza Jafferjee  35:58
Right,

Speaker 1  35:59
from London, even now when I go, I always go there. So I would have long chats with them, and I love dialoguing, dialogues and all that. And even they were moving towards, you know, they were sort of reluctantly moving towards the free market economy. So I had a lot of dialogue like that.

Murtaza Jafferjee  36:17
So you come back into politics round about 1993, you become chief. I came back in

Speaker 1  36:24
91. 91. I was in London with my three children. They were going to school there, and they were and from the SLFP groups, various groups, and from the VJS party, the SLMP was a breakaway from the SLFP, isn't it? So they were all all already at heart SLMP, and that SLMP was in pieces after I left and Vijay was Vijay disappeared. Anyway, so they groups of them used to send the hat round. They didn't have money for tickets, collect money and come to London and say, Madam, please come back. There's no leader and all that, and I chase them away. I don't want to come back into politics. I'll just help you all and all that. Then finally, situation became so bad when the third group came and told me, "Come, come, come, I said, "I come back, because they said there is no other leader. And at that time, I was very committed to the country, and I wanted to help the country, you know, from outside, like the land reforms thing and all that. That was politics that I was doing, but not, you know, contestant coming to parliament. So I said, okay, I'll come and see if there are no leaders. And I came for one month, leaving my children with friends, and they were terrified even at that time. You know, both of them were witness to their father's father getting murdered, and they were crying and saying, don't go, they kill you when you get to Sri Lanka and all that. So I lied to them. I said I was going for a conference to some other country, and I went, came for a month, and I realised there was no one. And my mother was getting various people to talk to me. She talked to me, saying your brother just cannot do it. He has gone off the mark, and you have to take over your fathers and mother's party and all that. I said I don't care about that, but if we can do something for the country, I'll think about it. So then I went there, and I did a lot of thinking on my own, and through a lot of tears, I used to think and think, and my children said, "Don't go. And I knew it was bad for them. When finally I thought, "Okay, I'll go and see. So I came back in January '91. I went in '88 and came back in '91,

Murtaza Jafferjee  38:22
and then you become the chief minister of the Western Province in '93. '93, and then you run for the presidency and you win in 1994, ending one

Speaker 1  38:32
and a half years later.

Murtaza Jafferjee  38:33
Yeah, 17 years of UNP government. So, what from an economic perspective, we know about the LTT issues, which was the burning issue, but what were the economic issues you were confronted with? Do you remember?

Speaker 1  38:49
Of course. At that time, the economy was doing quite well. Under the Jayajavadha system had continued for 17 years. President Premadas, I don't think dismantled it, but he was taking some of the goodies and giving it to the people, which was also a good thing in my opinion. And I I came in saying we are. I was feeling very guilty that I had become moved from socialism to towards capitalism, the free market economy. So I coined something called capitalism with a human face. I said we are going to establish capitalism with a human face. The positives of capitalism and the negatives we will put aside, and we will take some of the profits and distribute to the poor people. Distribute in different ways. So the economy was not. I mean, was fairly stable, but inflation was at about. If I remember right, I didn't look it up today. Was at about 13% and actually, Ranil Vikram Singh was running the economy the last three years before we I came in, because he was deputy minister of finance. And mr. D. B. Jayathunga, the president, didn't know a bean about economics, so he had left Rani to do it all. There were some there are some issues, like for example, they had privatised 39 state-owned enterprises, not the big ones, small factories, small, you know, all of them started during my mother's time, all gifts from the socialist world, the four or five textile factories, Pu Goda, Tulhiria, Veangoda, and all that, the hardware corporation, the steel corporation, and so on and so forth. 39 ceramics, three three ceramics corporations. But I don't know whether you know this. You would have been a small boy. They privatised it, not at all transparently, and the people who got it were, for example, the steel corporation was given to a man who was a who was giving selling rice packets to the to the port workers and such people who could not run this, and by the time I came in, three or four years later, we came in all those factories. Some had closed down completely, others were just struggling and wanting to sell off or give it back to the government. That is when we took those 39, and I had them all investigated. I have the I had I have the files, and if I went, I did what this government is doing. Ronald Cromwell Singh would have been injured many times over because he led it, but I said my my policy is also important, is not to harass the opposition, because as I said, as I came in, I said the country is wounded, the country is divided, between the Sinhalese and the Tamil people, the Tamils and the Muslims, within parties. Jaya Jawadar had split his own party into three or four groups in order for him to remain in power. So I said we, and he split our party into two, between brother and sister. So I said my job, I think, is to heal, heal the wounds of our society and bring the country together as one united country. And I kept on saying that in all my speeches. So I said I am not going to punish the opposition if they have done something wrong. We start an investigation, and some things are proved. I'm not going to say that again because these people are trying to find out, and I have the evidence. In one case, the main witness was killed, just as the case was filed in courts. Then we had to arrest the main culprit, who was a political leader, and I said, "No, this is a lead, lead, a main leader of the opposition, and it looked very bad that I come in suddenly trying to heal the nation and then start arresting and putting people in jail. Let them be. Let us go ahead. But those people didn't realise it, and they sabotaged everything I tried to do in government.

Murtaza Jafferjee  42:57
So when you become the president, you would have had to craft an economic team. So, who were the principal actors in your economic team?

Speaker 1  43:05
Yes. Now that was very important because my cabinet and the deputy ministers. I had nobody who had experience except three experience of government or managing anything. I wasn't in government. I had. I had been chief minister and prime minister for at least one and a half years, and I had managed various things, institutions like the Land Reform Commission and all this. My mother, Lakshman Jayakudi, who was not a very clever economist or anything, and Ratnasri Vikrama Nayaka was a clever man. He who had been in my mother's cabinet before. Everybody else were absolute well starters, and they didn't have a clue. And I didn't have highly educated people. Certainly, I had some graduates who who had better degrees and who were cleverer than some of the people in the government now, but they were few. So I knew I had to get the experts around me. I actually invited. I had a sys. I started a system where I invited loads of experts from the private sector and from the universities to come for discussions to the president's office, and I said, "Would you like to help the government? They all said yes, most of them, and we divided them up into separated them out into different groups: economy, education, this and that. And I got their help. Now, for for the economy, I had what I call the expert advisory committee on the economy, and it grew from from you know two three people. You want to know the names?

Murtaza Jafferjee  44:41
Some of them. Yeah.

Speaker 1  44:43
I had Dr. Lal Jawadar, who was a very, very clever, able economist. mr. S Jawadan, who was in the central bank, about to become the governor, I persuaded him under duress. To take over the finance ministry as the secretary because I was I made myself the finance minister because I knew nobody in my cabinet could have done it.

Murtaza Jafferjee  45:06
It's told that Ash Jawadinav was with you in the Land Reform Commission. Was he there? He was just

Speaker 1  45:12
a director. He was. I didn't know him.

Murtaza Jafferjee  45:14
You didn't know him. I knew

Speaker 1  45:15
of him.

Murtaza Jafferjee  45:16
Right.

Speaker 1  45:16
But I hadn't even had a chat with him once except once in a blue moon. He was an active SLF peer, LSS peer.

Murtaza Jafferjee  45:22
Okay.

Speaker 1  45:23
When he was in university and very left, but he also had moved long before me to the centre and slightly central.

Murtaza Jafferjee  45:30
The people you selected, did you know them before?

Speaker 1  45:33
Well, I Lal I knew very well.

Murtaza Jafferjee  45:35
Right.

Speaker 1  45:36
I used to go and have long chats with him and all that. He

Murtaza Jafferjee  45:38
was in the wider, right?

Speaker 1  45:40
He was in the wider. He was no, no. I knew him in Sri Lanka also.

Murtaza Jafferjee  45:43
Okay.

Speaker 1  45:44
I used to go to their house and Kumar Jawad. It's a lady I'm very fond of. She's still there. I go and see her once in a blue moon. I used to go and ask their advice. I used to sit at their feet literally. And Kumari was a sociologist and know all that. Then with him on the economy, AS I knew a little, and Ace was very close to Rail. He was Secretary Industries, and Ranil was Minister of Industries or some such thing. And people were telling me he's UNP. I said I don't care what P he is. He's a very clever economist, and I'm sure he loves the country more than the UNP, and he will work for me. And he did. So that's how I took people. Unlike this government, which is only taking the accachers and not taking any experts, so I had quite so who else?

Murtaza Jafferjee  46:27
You had larger, more than a job than a.

Speaker 1  46:29
How did Mano Titavela come? Mano came in later. Right. I was headhunting. You were headhunting. He was working at the MBSL, and somebody told me, you know, there's a young chap who's very smart. I didn't know he's married to a cousin of mine. Why? I don't know nine tenths of my cousins because my mother had loads of Rattwate cousins. She's a Miss Ratwata, and then I invited him to come and have a chat with me. That's how. That's what I did, and I liked liked him as a person, and I invited him into Perk first when we set up Perk for the privatisations, and little by little he came into the committee also. And I never brought him a young person who we gave some position to into the top position at once. They had to prove themselves through a fire and you know hill and whatever, because also that caused a lot of jealousy with the senior would have caused with the seniors. Then there was Thiran Vijay Singh. Thilan also somebody talked to me about him and I asked him to come and see me when I was chief minister, and I was impressed with him and invited him to be the BOI chairman, the youngest ever, people were thought, can he do it and all that. But I used to review what was going on in the BOI every week. I had a meeting with the BOI two, three hours every week, and facilitated things. Land, the ministers wouldn't give land. I would become ministers. I said, you are going home tomorrow unless you release this, things like that. And I got a lot of foreign investment going, and I suppose you know this. Even with a fierce war going on, we were able to move the economy forward hugely. Our economic indicators are very good. We reduced inflation from 13% to 6% or something like that. Per capita income from and growth, growth. We had a constant growth rate of four and a half to five, except the one year that the LTT attacked the airport. 2021,

Murtaza Jafferjee  48:28
2001. One, but again, it went back to a good figure. So, if I can, because I did some homework before this interview, one of the things that I was told was you took a very bold decision to pay some of these people who were attracted from the private sector market salaries or closer to market salaries. I mean, even today we are grappling with the same problem where government said, "No, no, we can't pay. We we are restricted by AR or FR. We cannot pay. I mean, what went through your mind? I believe you were president at 48, right?

Speaker 1  49:07
4949.

Murtaza Jafferjee  49:08
How did you make such a relatively bold decision, knowing that it would create ripples?

Speaker 1  49:16
Because I knew I had to run the government properly, and I I realised that the government had few, only a few, really qualified people, and maybe a store, maybe one of the people who said, "Madam, let's call the young Sri Lankans who have run away after 1983, the riots, and see whether they will come. So we put this on social media. At that time, there were hardly any social media, and invited people, and quite a few people came, and then now, no, no, nobody around me, including Ace, would da suggest a higher salary. So I talked to these people, and they were getting huge salaries. I said, "How much? So I, I said, "Are you willing to work for the government?" Yes, maybe one year we'll sacrifice. I said, if you get a similar salary, we do sacrifice for longer. Then they will smile and you know. So I, I just told them we are going to give them similar salaries, and all of them jumped up. Even Ace was surprised. My God, you'd have strikes! I said, we'll see. You know, I had one policy. Nobody taught me that. When I wanted to do something, I had to convince myself first. So I first I make my ideas, my thoughts. Then I talk with relevant people, not loads and loads, but relevant people who I think are savvy in that particular area. Then I finalise my thoughts, and then I go hell for leather, whatever opposition there maybe for example I know you are going to ask in a little bit the privatisations telecom we had a lot of strikes but I knew it was a right thing and I had the right minister there Mangalar and and Tiran was at BOI so I put the whole team together Ace also and I said we had to convince these people of the truth. So Mangal and I had various chats with them together, separately the unions, and showed them the figures as to how much they will get more than if we were just dragging along being a tutu deke telecom company. So then we convinced them, and finally the World Bank came in. They were very happy with the way we were doing things, and they gave us funds to take the trade union leaders to countries that had done well, like Brazil and somewhere else where they had privatised and they were doing well. So they loved the trip, of course, because they had never been abroad. And then they came and said, "Yes, we agree.

Murtaza Jafferjee  51:40
So coming back to the salaries, because that is the bugbear of so many administrations and governments. I mean, as you know, state capacity is very weak, and unless you are able to recruit, you know, quality talent, especially where government does not have the skill set, did you have any fallout from from

Speaker 1  52:02
what

Murtaza Jafferjee  52:03
from paying market salaries to these individuals? No, nobody dare tell

Speaker 4  52:09
me.

Murtaza Jafferjee  52:09
Nobody. No, I

Speaker 1  52:10
must tell you, I had an iron hand, and they. You see, the point is, I came in after 17 years of dictatorial rule, so people were thrilled, and I rode the wave of popularity and did everything that had the difficult things immediately.

Murtaza Jafferjee  52:25
So if we can now, and

Speaker 1  52:27
nobody would say that, and I would all I had this habit of explaining to the people at length, I would ask the Rupa Wahini. At that time, there were very few media, 90% else, at least 80% of the media were in Raindu crossing her sand, so because he comes from a media family and all UNP stations and all that, so Rufa Hani was only one. So I would ask them to come and I would start talking, you know, one hour, two hours, explaining things, and then we would say telephoning your questions, and I believed in convincing the people.

Murtaza Jafferjee  52:57
So when your presidency was there, the Sirasa had already started, right? Maharajas had an electronic licence.

Speaker 1  53:05
Yes, Sirasa started afterwards, in 9797.

Murtaza Jafferjee  53:09
you see, but so they

Speaker 1  53:10
got their licences from my government.

Murtaza Jafferjee  53:12
But even the ABC, which today is controlled by Raila Silver, hero, hero, hero. But earlier, also

Speaker 1  53:18
9798, During that, there were many

Murtaza Jafferjee  53:21
licences given during that time.

Speaker 1  53:24
Not many, radio and television.

Murtaza Jafferjee  53:26
Yeah, but the modern modern mass media came about the private sector mass media.

Speaker 1  53:32
Oh yes, came about the telecom privatisation.

Murtaza Jafferjee  53:34
Right, right. So you opened out that sector. Okay,

Speaker 1  53:38
very much.

Murtaza Jafferjee  53:38
So let's let's talk about the SOEs because there was a peopleization drive starting for Pravidhas time, and you say that perhaps it was not done transparently. But for the benefit of some of our audience, the plantations I think they had given management to management companies, but under your watch, it was divested to private hands. I mean, if you juxtapose that with the land reform commission where I all took over the land, how did you grapple with that?

Speaker 1  54:11
My mother took over the lands. Right. All our relatives got angry with us. Some of them still don't talk to me. The elite got angry with us. Even canvassed and defeated, they went to Hector Copacado's electorate, certain big business people from here and landowners to defeat him, and things like that. So it was a difficult uphill task. Then I implemented part of it, and then to go and give back the land that we took. But you know, I think in my case, it's not that anybody taught me to do it, but if I believe something was right at a given given time, I don't think it is opportunistic. I think it is opportune to do the right thing, not for myself but for the country. And I came in and saw that they were not being run properly. The state, the two state institutions that were created to run this. The

Murtaza Jafferjee  55:00
JEDB and the State Plantation Corporation.

Speaker 1  55:02
Exactly, they were robbing not in a big way, not like during the Rajapaksa regime, but they were robbing. The lands were sort of getting depleted and not not being managed properly. And whenever somebody suggests something to me, I say, "Okay, come back with a with a paper showing me the pros and cons, the treasury. I had this committee within the treasury, also A.S. B.B. Jayasundara. B.B. was very good at studying at that time. P.B. was good. He was a good junior. A.S. is the one who introduced him to me, saying he's a nice, smart young man. So I would tell them study this and give it, and then I would look at it, and then discuss it for hours with them, and it was proved to me that if we privatise the plantations, they will be more productive, and they will bring in more money to the government, and we were selling it to them, the leasers, and actually with that money, we were able to to settle some of the foreign debt with the monies we got from that.

Murtaza Jafferjee  56:05
So you you you didn't have a problem with the diversity of the plantations. Then you went on. It

Speaker 1  56:13
had it had to be. If there was a problem, it was a problem of conscience,

Murtaza Jafferjee  56:16
right,

Speaker 1  56:17
and emotional. But the conscience told me that the right thing by the country was now to change my views, and which I did.

Murtaza Jafferjee  56:23
And and these mental battles, do you do you just write it down, or how do you have these battles? How do you make up your mind, or you you debate it in your mind, or do you write it down?

Speaker 1  56:35
Or I debate it in my mind. I dialogue a lot, then I write down also. I get others to write. I put my notes, and then take my decision.

Murtaza Jafferjee  56:44
And then, prior to Sri Lanka, it used to be called Alanka. Tell us that story, how that came about. And I think there was a Richard Branson angle also. Whether there was no, he

Speaker 1  56:56
was one of the investors who came. Okay, nothing much there. No, that's much easier to say because as soon as I came, probably it was Ace who told me, Madam, Alanka has only six planes. All six have to be pensioned off by now. Otherwise, they start crashing. We don't have the money to buy new planes. So I said, then what do we do? He said, I don't know. We'll have to discuss it and all that, and that was one of the first privatisations I decided on. I mean, I wasn't personally attached to it, like plantations and all that, telecom or something like that. And I looked at all the figures again, and the arguments, and it was obvious that we had to privatise it. I wasn't going to sell. I was not for selling at all at that stage, and this new nice formula was evolved by the my finance ministry, where we own the majority shares, and whoever who comes in owns the minority shares up to 49% At the beginning, we gave only 42 or 43 just to see, and then we we gave 49 in some instances, but 100% management rights, because I realised that the management was hopeless. Public, it was pathetic. Public servers do not know how to manage private companies, and these are private companies. So, and then in the meantime, they also rob. But there was no nothing like the Rajapakseira here, and there there were a few spill-outs, so and I knew that it could earn loads of money for the government and for the country. So I said, "Go ahead. Then we started inviting people first without advertising because we realised my economic advisory committee. We discussed that there will be a lot of strikes in Alanka and they will not fly the planes. And unlike when the CEB went on strike, I put the army there and ran the CEB. You can't run any airline with the army. You have to have trained pilots. So we did it very quietly. We started asking big airlines one to one. I myself did. I asked British Airways. British Airways was doing much better then. Yeah, France. Those are the ones I could. They said yes. They came and looked at it quietly. But then, the next within the next week, a bomb goes off in Colombo. They run away. Then I said, "No, you know this. This thing won't work. We are some American airlines also. I said this won't work. Shall we try a Middle Eastern airline? At that time, Qatar and all was small. Emirates was only big one because they are used to bombs and wars and all that. They may not be frightened. Actually, that was my my logic, and everybody said, "Ah, yes, try. So I went to Dubai on my way to somewhere or the other for some official thing, and asked to see the chairman of Emirates. Was a very nice man, Tim

Murtaza Jafferjee  59:55
Tim Clark.

Speaker 1  59:55
Tim Clark, who I got to know quite well. He's retired now, as you know. And he came to the airport to see me. They booked some posh sitting area in the airport at Emirates, and we discussed this. And he also was very, very hesitant. So I kept on trying to persuade him, and and you know I sort of put the full charm act on, and finally said, "Okay, we'll come to Sri Lanka and see. Then they came and saw we had a very good presentation for them and all that, and they said okay. So that's how it happened.

Murtaza Jafferjee  1:00:29
And I mean, in there,

Speaker 1  1:00:30
I must tell you one other thing: all these privatisations, even the port, I saw to it that not a single person was allowed to ask for bribes. There's huge possibility of bribes because there was a lot of money going around, and I led the team, and I said, any problem, come to me straight. So they identified somebody from their side, and I said, contact me through my office. So they all say, even at that time, they said this is the only deal that Emirates has done with any country, where we didn't have to pay a bribe to somebody in the government. The poor people also say that, John Keels and all of them, because I handled it myself and terrified everybody, saying if anybody is found asking for bribes, it will be hung from Goldface Green.

Murtaza Jafferjee  1:01:18
So in hindsight, we know what happened to Air Lanka, which became Sri Lankan.

Speaker 1  1:01:23
They offered only 17 million dollars, ah,

Murtaza Jafferjee  1:01:26
right,

Speaker 1  1:01:27
for Air Lanka. Then we argue, would argue, would argue with the team, my team with PB and and AS and with Manu and and even Rajan Britto. We took it up to $72 million. They were going on only with 70, and then they sent Emirates. I suppose they won't mind. They send somebody to me. They know very well if they offered money, I will have him arrested. One of their people who I know, a Sri Lankan, saying, "Madam, we know that you will not take anything else, but the boss wanted me to tell you that we will give you any number of tickets for you and your two children for all your lives till you and your children die or whatever free a first class if you don't insist on this 72 million. I mean, we went up from 17 to 25 to 30 like that. I said no, and I said get out of my office now. He was a personal friend. Otherwise, I'll call the police. So I don't get free tickets. I mean, I pay and go, but at least they look after me in the airport when I go. Somebody comes and meets me and takes me to the lounge. That's about the only only bossy I got from it.

Murtaza Jafferjee  1:02:42
So, it's it's tragic what happened thereafter that we took it over, and that's a story for another day. Sri Lanka Telecom, you touched on it, that I believe your good friend Mangala, the late Mangala minister, he led it. He led it. He led it, and he convinced the unions. Even Shell gas was under your. Oh yes, yes.

Speaker 1  1:03:08
That also I did it myself, fighting with the cabinet also.

Murtaza Jafferjee  1:03:10
Right.

Speaker 1  1:03:11
Some cabinet ministers were influenced by various people by Shell, and they were fighting in the cabinet. So I handled that myself.

Murtaza Jafferjee  1:03:21
The other SOE that it was not divested, but had y'all had a significant influence in the transformation. I remember having conversations with Les Mano, the People's Bank, and he used to say that it was insolvent, quite literally, that it was a negative net worth because the NPLs they had

Speaker 1  1:03:41
losses of 11 billion rupees

Murtaza Jafferjee  1:03:43
at that time

Speaker 1  1:03:44
in 94, and Bank of Sidon 12 billion

Murtaza Jafferjee  1:03:48
because that was

Speaker 1  1:03:49
a lot at that time.

Murtaza Jafferjee  1:03:50
As a point of reference, the non performing loans was like 21% at People's Bank.

Speaker 1  1:03:56
My gosh, how much I got involved with that? Trying to pay a little. Now you're

Murtaza Jafferjee  1:04:01
bought in a foreigner directly, XHSBC

Speaker 1  1:04:05
after advertising,

Murtaza Jafferjee  1:04:06
advertising

Speaker 1  1:04:07
and interviewing and all that.

Murtaza Jafferjee  1:04:08
I mean to bring in a World Bank

Speaker 1  1:04:10
helped us to help us to interview,

Murtaza Jafferjee  1:04:11
right? To bring in a foreigner for a state bank.

Speaker 1  1:04:15
Back of it on also.

Murtaza Jafferjee  1:04:16
He was a CFO, right? Barnett.

Speaker 1  1:04:19
Yes.

Murtaza Jafferjee  1:04:19
Yes, CFO.

Speaker 1  1:04:20
Both banks and foreigners.

Murtaza Jafferjee  1:04:21
Foreigners, I mean that also would have been quite bold. I mean you would have got resistance because these these have strong unions that are banks. But I must tell

Speaker 1  1:04:31
you, nobody said a word to me. Okay, because they knew that I was determined, and there was no point in arguing. And I was convinced. If you ask me why I did that, because I have no complexes against foreigners, or anybody. I have no complexes against people who are supposed to be of the opposition party. If they're experts, I tell them when you come to work for me, if you can tell me if you can do the job that I ask you to do. I don't ask you to do politics for me or my party. If you do it honestly for the. Of the country, I don't ask personal loyalty. Tell me yes, whether you can or not, and all of them stuck to that. So in the same way, I mean, whether it was a foreign or not, we had no Sri Lankans who could do it at that time.

Murtaza Jafferjee  1:05:11
I was told that we didn't have Sri Lankans who had expertise in turnarounds, that these were insolvent and you had to turn it around. World

Speaker 1  1:05:20
Bank kept insisting to me, and IMF because I would meet all their teams to privatise the banks, and that was entirely my personality. I said no, no, no. I had moved enough from so I didn't tell them that. I'm telling you, from socialist being a socialist economist to a to a free market economist, I was not going to privatise the family, family silver or the family gold. I said, no, we don't need to privatise the banks. Maybe the smaller ones, yes, but tell us how we should manage it better. Then every time they came, they kept saying this for many years. Then they realised with this woman we can't change her mind on this. Then they came with this, you know. If you have some, they didn't say foreigners, highly skilled managers to manage this, and you have good programme. And the World Bank worked with

Speaker 2  1:06:15
us,

Speaker 1  1:06:16
with our experts at the treasury, and some of the bankers, and formulated a programme, complete, very comprehensive programme of uplifting the two banks,

Murtaza Jafferjee  1:06:28
reviving the banks,

Speaker 1  1:06:29
and the foreign CFO or whoever was in charge of it.

Murtaza Jafferjee  1:06:33
If I can now move on to the public-private partnerships, the most landmark ones Was SAGT, which was a port terminal, and I was told that there was resistance within your own government because there was a Jaika loan and the port authority wanted to do it themselves.

Speaker 1  1:06:55
That that opposition was led by Mahindraj Baksha.

Murtaza Jafferjee  1:06:58
Okay,

Speaker 1  1:06:59
and they had all kinds of designs on the boat, as as was proved later, when he put his brother as the the minister. Yeah, but as as with everything else, I just put my foot down. You know, I the one strength I had, if I can, boast, is that I was educated on the economy. I had read a lot and discussed hugely all over the world, not only in Sri Lanka with foreign experts before I came into government, and one and so therefore I had the wherewithal to to understand what had to be done, also with advice from my expert teams, and once I did that, I was determined I wouldn't let go. So that was one strength I had, and

Murtaza Jafferjee  1:07:44
so during that time, the other PPPs were in the power sector, the first thermal power plants. I think you gave the land grant and Mahabolar loan to SLIIT, which is now supposed to be the largest university in Sri Lanka. There was the and

Speaker 1  1:08:01
BOI money. We gave some money to the BOI, which gave it.

Murtaza Jafferjee  1:08:04
Gave it to them. That time I

Speaker 1  1:08:05
say was Tilland Jaisinghar's idea.

Murtaza Jafferjee  1:08:07
Right.

Speaker 1  1:08:07
I mean there are many ideas as Tillands, and he said, Madam, we are very backward in IT, which I knew. You know the first IT was was taught in any Sri Lankan school in 1996 or 97, through my education reforms programme, which was led by Tarani, even Royal College was not teaching IT as subject, and backward India at that time, Indian economy was much further back than us. South India, they had been teaching IT for 20 or 25 years before us, so and and then this was going forward nicely. World Bank gave us a special vote for IT education in schools. We set up new IT rooms and you know equipped them and all that. Trained teachers, no teachers were trained, and then it was Tiran who suggested we need a IT university. So I said, of course we do. I hadn't thought of it. Come with the paper. So that's how that's how we

Murtaza Jafferjee  1:09:08
got set up. Now, the textile industry, that was also a very bold move of yours because my family also had some interest in textile manufacturing, and I believe the export industry wanted full liberalisation of fabric imports, and there was a large amount. There was a big record going on where fabric was being bought in for these apparel factories and leaked into the domestic economy, where the taxes were quite high, and in a very short period of time, you basically took all taxes duties off textile imports. What happened there?

Speaker 1  1:09:49
I just decided.

Murtaza Jafferjee  1:09:50
We'll

Speaker 1  1:09:51
stop. Once again, as I told you, it had to be explained to me. I said I told ASN people you had to prove to me that. Taking these taxes off will help the the textile industry and help the country to earn more, and that was not difficult to prove. So there would

Murtaza Jafferjee  1:10:10
have been a lot of vested interest. The domestic manufacturers who would have protested. There

Speaker 1  1:10:17
weren't very many big ones. There were some people who were supporters of our party and other political parties, who were smugglers of textiles.

Speaker 3  1:10:25
Why?

Speaker 1  1:10:25
But that didn't matter to me,

Murtaza Jafferjee  1:10:28
because the tragedy is that Advocata, one of its main trust areas, is to reduce protectionism against some of these industries. And you know, it's said that when foreigners come to Sri Lanka, they say your people are better dressed than what they eat, and actually clothes are quite cheap in Sri Lanka. And because of that liberalisation, you have a free market operating.

Speaker 1  1:10:52
And may I just say something else, which is related? Sri Lankan other industries, such as Dumro, and others, which are primary industries, which are exporting. I mean, Damro has is exporting in a big way, and so many other similar ones. I said Damro because the proprietor is from my hometown area. We liberalised the the tax systems also for for Sri Lankan entrepreneurs, Sri Lankan manufacturers and C.V. Gunarathna, my dear friend, lamented dearly lamented friend who was also killed by the L.C.T. He was Minister of Industries, and he came from the private sector. One of the few people who came from high level of the private sector, and we used to have discussions once a week on, on industries also because I was giving it a lot of priority. I had these discussions, you know, reviews and all that regularly. No other leader has done that, and that was very good. So CV came up with the idea. You know, we can't be giving BOI facilities to only foreign companies. Why don't we give it to us? I said yes. So come up with the paper. So then they came up with this, you know, liberalising taxation, giving them incentives. I think low interest loans also from the state banks, and they came up like anything. And a lot of those people still say it's only because of facilities, financial facilities you gave us that we are here today?

Murtaza Jafferjee  1:12:21
So as I was saying, one of Advocata's thrust areas is more about open trade, free trade, and it was under your government that the Sri Lanka-India Free Trade Agreement, the initial agreement, was signed. There is an antipathy towards India, even at that time,

Speaker 1  1:12:44
very big. Very at that time, the JVP was saying killing people just a little before that who bought Indian goods. Shop owners who sold Indian goods were being killed when they were killing loads of young people in the. That was an order given by the leadership, so that remained a little bit, yes.

Murtaza Jafferjee  1:13:01
So you nevertheless went ahead. I mean, your advisers would have been advising against this, right? Than in Sri Lanka,

Speaker 1  1:13:09
no,

Murtaza Jafferjee  1:13:10
they were for for it.

Speaker 1  1:13:11
My expert committee was very much for it, except one, VBJ. All the others very much for it. Actually, I must tell you, giving credit, I never take credit where it's not due to me, but obviously I understood what they were saying and I had the courage to go through with it. It was Lal's idea, entirely Lal's baby. Even AS had doubts because AS was close to Sri Lankan industrialists and all that and entrepreneurs. Whether it affect our businesses, This Lal was fully convinced, and Lal led the whole thing, and Lal was a university colleague of Manmohan Singh, Cambridge King's College. So he said, "Shall I go to? He was my advisor. I had only a very few advisors. Lal was the only economic adviser. Others were officials, so they were in the advisory committee. I said yes, go, and he went and met. Obviously, who had had easy access to the prime minister Manu Mohan Singh, and he talked to him. Ah, no, no, sorry. At that, it was Narasimha Rao. Manmohan was his finance minister or finance advisor. Economic Advisor, and he convinced Manmohan, who was able to convince the government. The bigger opposition we had, huge opposition from the Indian bureaucracy. They didn't allow the Indian government to sign one single FTA with any country. You know that this was the first FTA India signed with anybody.

Murtaza Jafferjee  1:14:41
I was not aware of that.

Speaker 1  1:14:43
So it was Lal and my charm working, and Manuhan was very fond of me, and so was Narasimha Rao. Oh, that young lady and all that used to say it seems. So I used to go and charm them a bit, and they said yes. Now let's look at it. So my the the officials committees they kept on dragging it, dragging it, dragging it, and Lal was not a he was a top intellectual, but he was not a schemer, so he didn't know how to handle this. Then I put in others into the committee, I can't remember who who was in it even, and finally we managed to bring it to some point, and then they said, unless you come, this the final bit is not going to be resolved. So I remember I went one Christmas because at Christmas time everything sort of half shuts down in government also, and sat down and I we were discussing till two three in the morning with the officials committee and the finance minister at that time, Manmohan was prime minister, I think, or he was finance minister, one or the other. So even the ministers would retire, and I was sitting there till 2o'clock in the morning with my team and their team, discussing, discussing, discussing for three days, and finally I said, no, this won't do. They used to agree to about some small percent of what we are suggesting, and not say the other things. I said, "Let's go. I'm leaving tomorrow morning. Then they got worried, not the officials, but the government, because we had very good relations at the time, and they had bad relations with the other neighbours. Other neighbours. So, and also strangely, I, you know, I used a lot of these things because I have the, whatever the knowledge or the brains or whatever to use whatever.

Murtaza Jafferjee  1:16:27
The fact that your family was close to the Nehru family, did it help? Oh,

Speaker 1  1:16:32
hugely, hugely. It was a Congress party in power, massively, and whenever I went, mrs. Sonia Gandhi was the sort of power behind the throne. I always called on her, and she would hug me and all this, and we had a nice long chat, exchange of nice gifts and all that. So she would, you know, tell them do whatever you can.

Murtaza Jafferjee  1:16:56
So that's the behind-the-scenes story of this Sri Lanka. Finally, I threatened

Speaker 1  1:17:01
to leave, and then they said no. Then the prime minister came in and said no, we can't do that. Just agree to it. So they agreed,

Murtaza Jafferjee  1:17:09
and that's how it came about.

Speaker 1  1:17:11
And the Sri Lankan business people were also protesting, not in a violent, aggressive way, but you know we are going to lose this and that. And AS used to go and explain to them and explain to them, and I think must be Chiran also, and P. B. to some extent at that time he was convinced, and we sort of half convinced them. But once he started working, they were very happy about it.

Murtaza Jafferjee  1:17:35
You know, one utterance of yours that I distinctly remember is you saying that you know Sri Lankan businessman, sabad businessman, tutu deke business? Why did you say that?

Speaker 1  1:17:50
No, because they were crooks. They were not honest. They should bribe everybody to get their tutu deke businessman, meaning they were not skilled business people.

Murtaza Jafferjee  1:17:59
You mean they were rent seekers. They were crony capitalists, crony

Speaker 1  1:18:02
capitalists, and corrupting the whole system. I mean, they would try to get whatever they wanted through corruption, and thereby corrupting the government systems also. And also another factor when I said to the case that they were not skilled business people. Oh, one lot of them are not educated. You know, I will say this even now. Now the younger people are different. During my time 30 years ago, a vast majority of the business people-I will tell you the names later, off the screen-they wouldn't even read a book. Most of them didn't even have their O levels. One best of one

Murtaza Jafferjee  1:18:41
sector that you have commented previously, I remember in 1996, three days we had power cuts, and you always said there's a power mafia. Would some of those businessmen be in that power mafia?

Speaker 1  1:19:00
Only one or two,

Murtaza Jafferjee  1:19:01
okay.

Speaker 1  1:19:01
Because they would sort of engineer a power power cut at times. It's always

Murtaza Jafferjee  1:19:08
alleged that they let the water out. I think I don't think

Speaker 1  1:19:11
that is true.

Murtaza Jafferjee  1:19:12
That's not true.

Speaker 1  1:19:12
I don't think.

Murtaza Jafferjee  1:19:13
Right.

Speaker 1  1:19:14
No, it was that they would wait for the droughts.

Speaker 3  1:19:16
Right.

Speaker 1  1:19:17
And then when when we had to start the power cuts, they would bring their generators and sell them at huge prices to the CEB. Give massive bribes to the CEB engineers. They are the richest public servants in this country, and and the government was obliged to take their generators, and they even bribe my ministers laterally.

Murtaza Jafferjee  1:19:38
So another interesting person.

Speaker 1  1:19:40
Yeah, during my time, only two,

Murtaza Jafferjee  1:19:42
two. Another interesting individual that you mentioned, P. B. Jayasundra, who then went on to be the undisputed economic czar, certainly under Mahindra Japaxi and Gotaba Rajapaksa's government, but P. B. J. better known as. PBJ actually came into the scene under your government. I brought

Speaker 1  1:20:04
him in.

Murtaza Jafferjee  1:20:04
Well, how did it happen?

Speaker 1  1:20:07
In the same way, I brought in a lot of young young people to run the government or to to I mean to help run the government. He was introduced to me by AS. He was a young officer in the young buck in the central bank. He was central banker, and few times I would I would have two sessions with the treasury officials every week. You know, progress reviews, problem solving, and all that. And Ace, while while managing the war and the peace discussions also, so Ace suddenly started bringing this young man, small made person without you know. He wasn't a striking personality, so he would just sit there, not talking, and after about the third time, I said right now, P. B. You can go, and I told Ace, please wait a minute. And I said, who is this person that you keep bringing, I said, no, no, he's a very talented young man. We have to build him up, and I'm going to bring more people also like that. I said, very good if you are building them up. That's how it happened, and I must say at that time, PB also must have been a socialist at university. He did what we told him to do very well,

Murtaza Jafferjee  1:21:20
because you you put him in charge of Perk, right? Or was much

Speaker 1  1:21:24
later?

Murtaza Jafferjee  1:21:25
Later, no.

Speaker 1  1:21:26
Perk chairman was Raja Nasirwadham,

Speaker 2  1:21:28
right?

Speaker 1  1:21:28
At the beginning, Raja Nasiradam, who passed away recently, he was I made appointed him the chairman of the Bank of Sidon, the first Tamil person to lead a major bank in Sri Lanka, and then while he was there, I put him in charge of perk also, and brought in Rajan Britto from England. He would come for one week every month while he was doing his job there.

Murtaza Jafferjee  1:21:53
You knew him from the UK.

Speaker 1  1:21:55
Who Rajan Britto from Rosmit Place when we were kids.

Murtaza Jafferjee  1:21:59
Okay,

Speaker 1  1:22:00
they lived down Roswell Place, and his mother and my mother was classmates. Right, so I knew him well, but I knew he was talented. Never, ever during my 11 years in government, have I actually 12 and a half? If you count the chief minister, part also have I brought in somebody known to me if they didn't have the relevant skills. I mean, though Rajan was a very dear friend, I wouldn't have invited him in if he didn't have the skills. At that time, we were very short of skills, and even AS was very happy with him. And AS interviewed him and all that, and he was actually doing it more like a favour. We were hardly paying him; he wasn't getting these huge salaries till he came to Perk. So the two of them ran Perk actually. So Mano came in later.

Murtaza Jafferjee  1:22:42
So PBJ, he comes in as the DST, right? He comes into your Ministry of Finance as the Deputy Secretary Treasury.

Speaker 1  1:22:49
No, no, he was just a junior officer in the Treasury. Right. From Central Bank, we seconded him to the Finance Ministry, while Ace was the the Secretary. You know, like his Golia, right? Because he trusted him to do confidential things. He was very, very trustworthy in that sense. He wouldn't tell anybody anything secret. Even he, you know, they threatened him with death. And then, little by little, Ace went back to the central bank, and I think his dream was to become the governor, and we made him the governor. And there was a lot of hiccups with GLPD, who was my deputy minister. So he had he wanted to leave. Then I brought in senior public servants. I wanted people who were economists. There were very few in the public service. I brought in one who was about to retire from another ministry, and I had to ask him to leave within one year because I found he was corrupt. He was being corrupted by a big firm, but I don't me beragah hagana I don't announce because I think it's not fair by their families. So just go tomorrow morning. I want your electoral resignation. He did, and I did drag him off the courts or something like that, and then I was desperate. Then I had various people acting, and then I had to choose someone. And PB was very talented. Took him, and then little by little he changed.

Murtaza Jafferjee  1:24:15
He's a very different person with

Speaker 1  1:24:17
power. You know, a lot of people change with power.

Murtaza Jafferjee  1:24:21
You touched on corruption. I mean, every taker has a giver. I mean, you've been the president for 11 years, and when you reflect on what has happened with corruption thereafter, and that has become the most important issue. What's your reflections that has

Speaker 1  1:24:44
chased away presidents and brought in new governments? The issue of corruption.

Murtaza Jafferjee  1:24:49
So when you reflect on this white literal cancer in our society, what's your reflections on corruption? Why is. Is it that Sri Lanka became so corrupt?

Speaker 1  1:25:03
So corrupt.

Murtaza Jafferjee  1:25:04
Is it that the tone is set at the top?

Speaker 1  1:25:06
Is

Murtaza Jafferjee  1:25:07
it? Is it that the tone has to be set at the top?

Speaker 1  1:25:09
Oh yes, that's one of the major factors. We were not at all. I mean, if you look at India, doesn't matter saying it. India was 1000 times more corrupt than us, and we really became impossibly corrupt. You please don't cut this out because people know this under the Rajapaksa regimes. I mean that is why there were aragalayers, and for the first time ever, presidents were chased out of power. They had to climb the back wall and run away in helicopters and all that. So we had corruption, but to some extent only. Then I came in and controlled it a lot, a lot, with various various policies and practices. But you asked a fundamental question: Why? I think

Murtaza Jafferjee  1:25:56
does the electoral system that requires a lot of money to be in politics, create power. Some people say that

Speaker 1  1:26:05
it's a very shallow, it's a very shallow logic. I think. I mean, look at all the third world countries. They are all corrupt. Africa, impossibly corrupt. Latin America, impossibly corrupt. So, and Sri Lanka was one that was shining example was a shining example in that whole caboodle that we we were very little corrupt. Corruption really began during Jayajava's time where he said let the robber barons come and open the gates, and I think the one of the major wrongs he did to our economy and our society and our government governance is bringing in the free market economy without no holds barred, with no holds barred. In a country which where we were used to control the economy, from the time of the kings, the economy was in the hands of the kings, and then the colonials did the same thing. I mean, they control the economy. Then the various Sri Lankan governments came in; they control the economy. Suddenly, when you open up after 2000 odd years, there had to be it couldn't be done in the same way as England or France or America did. You should have thought one should have thought much more creatively, and opened up not only slowly but opened up in a more, more, more creative, different fashion. We just suddenly go and open the floodgates. A floodgate comes in, and my God, suddenly you know, a bit of a canker, and they start. So then I came in, and we controlled it to some extent, bringing in lots of systems and procedures, discipline, and the iron will and the iron hand of the president. Without that, you can't do it. So, and being convinced, and and the president had to be 100% honest. So one of that, but I think the ill, the the one of the reasons I told the major reason is that we opened up like that. But the whole whole of the third world, the poor countries are corrupt. We managed to keep it under control, but then when leaders who were not who had absolutely no comms, and no conscience, and no principles took over the governments, the floodgates opened again. One

Murtaza Jafferjee  1:28:18
of the unfeeling and I think

Speaker 1  1:28:21
sorry, and I think because this is one of my special things, so I go on and on. But very briefly, that if you look at the condition of corruption now, the government is doing something very good, which is arresting the former corrupt people, but they haven't still brought in the systems and procedures required. The only way to control. I'm telling you through a lot of experience is to, of course, have the vision of the leaders, not only one leader and the government. No corruption, and this is how we are going to rule the country. Then you have to have the rules and regulations, all of which are in place. Most of it brought under my government. Then you have to have the institutions to implement those rules and regulations, and then you had to have systems and procedures of government to prevent people from going into corrupt practice, like attenders. I, for the first time in Sri Lankan history, we formulated a thing called the tender procedures document, and I, as president, sent it with with my own instructions to all the secretaries, saying hereafter every single tender of government except up to 5 million rupees or something beyond 5 million has to follow these procedures and nothing else. If it doesn't, you will you will be led to it. And they did. I mean, critical time I had to keep bringing up secretary. I heard that you are not sticking by the tender procedure. You know things like that, and it worked very well. But then Rajapaksa came and threw it straight out of the window. And you know, afterwards, when the Hapa and the government came after nine years of Rajapaksa regime, I couldn't find that document in the finance ministry, and I had to get it from the man who the DST who sat with me, and he and I did this. He had a copy at home, and then I photocopied it and gave it to various people and all that civil society people. So I think the the way to go for corruption is that this government hasn't still got that part right. The regulations they don't have to do anything. All that we had brought in is there. New the same institutions have to be studied, and they had to either upgrade, update them, or have new things in that same manner at different points to have institutions to control it. Then the systems and procedures, the leaders are seem to be honest, so that that factor is looked after. I think corruption in the third world in poor countries, when people get power. You just cannot control. And when when they have examples of other people doing it, they think, "Ah, why can't we do it? So it's all over the world. The

Murtaza Jafferjee  1:30:48
last point I wanted to touch on was one of your unfinished projects, which was a new constitution. I have. How long have you taken?

Speaker 1  1:31:00
About two hours,

Murtaza Jafferjee  1:31:01
maybe a bit less than that. On an economic governance side, was there anything specific in that constitution that would have improved economic governance?

Speaker 1  1:31:13
The only thing I, my God, I sat with that constitution for months and hours and I don't know what years that constitution, by the way, in one sentence was drafted. The draft of it was done before we came into power. I brought in GLPD into the system, and I think GL's main asset is his excellent legal thinker. And I said, GL, before you come into my government, you will have to draft the constitution, and these are the main things I want: abolition of the executive presidency, resolution of the ethnic problem, and of course transparency in government. And he had got together a whole lot of intellectuals and all that. He had been vice chancellor of the Columbia University at the time, and drafted this. I I studied before the elections, took certain bits of it. People would understood the whole thing, and we put it into our manifesto. And then, as soon as I came to government, we started discussing it. So, to put a long story short, the first draft was finalised, and I started discussing it with the political parties, where we had only one vote extra in Parliament. Otherwise, I would have asked them even when I would have gone through. I started discussions with the parties on the third of August, 1995. One year after we came in, I had already discussed with the Tamil and Muslim parties. There were nine Tamil parties at the time in Parliament, and one Muslim party which was Ashraf, which then split up. Astroff was in government and fully supportive of what I was doing, and he was in my constitutional committee also, constitution drafting committee, very able gentleman, and Nilan Tirupchuram was in the constitution drafting committee, GL and a few others, and I started discussing with the UNP on the third of August '95, and all that they did, Ryan Vikram Singh, I'm sorry to say, was filibuster, filibuster, filibuster. I'll see, we'll study it and let you know, and that went on forever, and finally, lots of other things happened. So economy, there were no specific sections on the economy. I think you must have studied its main part. But the

Murtaza Jafferjee  1:33:19
executive presidency was going to be disbandment.

Speaker 1  1:33:22
Oh, definite! There's there's one whole chapter on it.

Murtaza Jafferjee  1:33:25
Was there anything about the civil service?

Speaker 1  1:33:27
Yes, the

Murtaza Jafferjee  1:33:28
independence. First of all, the independent

Speaker 1  1:33:30
commissions. Commissions, right? The five independent commissions was in that. Right. And five or four at that time was four or something, and and the resolution of the ethnic problem by giving all communities, religious and ethnic communities, and others, caste or whatever, equal rights, and of course, good governance was very, very, very importantly in it. So unfortunately, and the economy would have benefited by if I can think now that you, I didn't expect this question. By two things. One was the stabilisation of democracy, and democratic decisions taken about the economy without decisions being taken on the basis of corruption or something, on one or two men or women's will, as they wanted, then the other way to have been benefited is that the the excessive power of the executive presidency was going to be abolished. I mean, the presidency itself was going to be abolished. We were only going to have a nominal president, and all political power was going back to parliament and the prime minister. So, hopefully, if it worked properly, the system would have been more democratic. The president couldn't decide on things by himself, as he can now, and parliament should have debated and discussed and dialogued. So the economy would have benefited by that. So,

Murtaza Jafferjee  1:34:56
with the benefit of hindsight and experience being. Two-time executive presidency, you're convinced that the executive presidency should be done away with.

Speaker 1  1:35:06
Oh, definitely, it's quite definitely.

Murtaza Jafferjee  1:35:08
It's it's it's because there's too much of power in the hands of one person. Right,

Speaker 1  1:35:13
and it has it has been abused. Probably, I'm the only one who didn't, and I must say, Rani also didn't. In those in that short time he was there.

Murtaza Jafferjee  1:35:22
Finally, if you think back, what would you have done differently? Anything?

Speaker 1  1:35:32
You mean as a political leader? If you ask me in my private life, I I will refuse to answer it.

Murtaza Jafferjee  1:35:39
Right.

Speaker 1  1:35:40
That's a difficult question to answer. I have thought about this myself since I got out of the presidency.

Murtaza Jafferjee  1:35:53
Some of these economic reforms would you have accelerated it further?

Speaker 1  1:35:57
Given that situation, it wouldn't be wouldn't have been possible.

Murtaza Jafferjee  1:36:00
Not possible.

Speaker 1  1:36:01
Don't forget, we were doing a vicious war. Yeah,

Speaker 1  1:36:03
vicious war. And all the time, my cabinet and my officials and advisers would say, "Madam, you are doing a war. You can't get the people against you doing these things. And I took the risk and we did all these things that we discussed. We couldn't have gone any further. And I have asked myself this through many painful hours, I can't think where we could have done better given the circumstances. Where we could have gone faster or something like that. The only thing I regret is that the leader of the opposition at that time there was a very strong opposition in the UNP that I couldn't get round him to do what was required for the good of the country. What I should have done, I don't know.

Murtaza Jafferjee  1:36:42
And finally, to the young audience, do you think that the more capable, the more aspirational, the more visionary people should come into politics? My

Speaker 1  1:36:54
God, yes! I'm spending my time the last about five or six years doing that,

Murtaza Jafferjee  1:37:00
and they can make change. You can change the course of country. I

Speaker 1  1:37:04
think so. If we can't, then you might as well write off Sri Lanka and put a road close for business and just go to sleep. The last chance we have is a new group, new movement, a new force of younger people coming in, but not just young. Age is not the issue. Skilled, educated, skilled, ethical.

Murtaza Jafferjee  1:37:30
So on that note, President Chandrika Kumar Tunga Bandar Nayaka, it has been a fascinating conversation, and all the best to you.

Speaker 1  1:37:38
Thank you. I was very happy discussing with you, and it was very interesting. And thank you too.


Transcribed by https://otter.ai