By

Tissa Devendra

(Sam Wijesinha ,Former Secretary General of Parliament and Ombudsman passed away at the age of 93 on Aug 31st in Colombo.An address by distinguished civil servant Tissa Devendra on the occasion of a book on Mr. Wijesinha being released when he turned 90 is published here as tribute)

Hon. Prime Minister, Mr. Sam Wijesinha, members of his extended family- stretching from Getamana in Ruhuna to Canada’s Great Lakes-, distinguished ladies and gentlemen,

It has been a great honour to be invited to speak at the launch of this fascinating book on Sam Wijesinha – celebrating his life of service to Sri Lanka, and Parliament in particular. It is also a wonderful tribute to the personal values he exemplifies in the civilized ambience of ‘Lakmahal’.

I was rather surprised at being asked to speak, as I had not been an insider within either of the institutions he graced – Parliament as Secretary General, nor Welikada Jail as President of the Prisoners’ Welfare Committee. However I must confess that , thanks to Mr.Wijesinha’s intervention I once escaped being hauled before Parliament for ‘Breach of Privilege’ and consigned to Welikada. So, after all, I did have a fleeting brush with both Parliament and Jail.

It was rather late in my life and career that I came to know Mr.Wijesinghe as most of my working life was spent in the provinces. Thanks to the newspapers, I had read of the significant roles he had played in Parliament and in the evolution of our Republican Constitutions. However, my acquaintance with him began in the Colombo University Alumni Association where both of us were in the Committee. His advice and suggestions went a long way towards the formulation of the Association’s own Constitution. He was a veteran alumnus of the University, one of the pioneer undergrads who bridged the transition from the University College to the University of Ceylon. He remains a good friend to that diminishing band of veterans . I am personally aware that when his good friend the perennial bachelor W.J.Fernando , legendary Commissioner of Ayurveda, passed away two decades ago, it was Mr.Wijesinghe who saw to the disposal of his estate and the welfare of his domestic staff, in keeping with WJ’s wishes.

Mr.Wijesinha’s official career has been characterized with absolute integrity. tempered with humanity. He was an exemplar of an administrative tradition where honesty and efficiency were ingrained in all officers. There was no need for the culture of sycophancy that seems to have tragically overwhelmed most public servants today – exemplified, on TV, by the servility of their body language when greeting their political bosses.To Sam Wijesinha, Mahinda Rajapaksa is no demi-god but remains ,basically, the young M.P. , from the village adjoining his own, whom he tutored in Parliamentary procedure and calls him ‘Uncle Sam’.

His truly phenomenal memory remains one of Mr.Wijesinha’s greatest assets.As Manik de Silva writes “Even today, at age 90, Sam Wijesinha is a repository of the political lore of this country He has names, facts and figures at his fingertips. He also has various publications he pulls out now and then to offer nuggets of information few are privy to.” He’ll lay his finger, unerringly, on any quotation, comment or incident in the relevant book in his extensive library. I had much to be grateful to him in this regard whenever I discussed with him the book I was writing on “Kachcheries and Commissions”. As well as entertaining me with many anecdotes about administrators of yore, he was generous enough to write a Foreword and loan me a valuable photograph of C.L.Wickremasinghe, his father-in-law, the first Ceylonese Government Agent flanked by a phalanx of Kandyan chiefs. With Sam Wijesinha around Sri Lanka had no need for a Julian Asange or Wikileaks. But , unlike them, he discreetly vetted whatever information he deemed improper or impolite – even in Hansard as Manik de Silva writes.He also says that Sam Wjesinha’s tremendous store of knowledge of government rules and regulation enabled him to “bend a rule where it would do some good” – as he did in the case of Daya Perera’s overseas leave and Jean Sivaprakasam’s passport.

Central to Sam Wijesinha’s way of life was the civilized ambience of ‘Lakmahal’ the Wickremasinghe home where, in his tongue-in-cheek phrase, he was a ‘binna’ husband. Reading the fond accounts of family and friends is a window into the leisurely, gracious life of Colombo’s elite before the trauma of 1983. Surrounded by neighbours such as the Coomarasamys, Pathmanathans and Uvais’ among others– the cricket on the lawn and birthday parties the Wijesinha’s led a truly charmed life. My great regret is that I met the gracious Mukta only once, when she visited Trincomalee, where I was Government Agent, to support my wife Indrani in setting up a GirlGuide Troop.

Sam Wijesinha is truly a humane man. Many, many persons have benefited from his generous help – to admit a child to school , to build a roof, to surmount administrative obstacles and so on. His Buddhist background, and schooling in Rahula, Ananda and S.Thomas Colleges taught him easy tolerance. No more so than in the way he seamlessly fitted into the Anglican Wickremasinghe clan which nurtured a Bishop. Nihal Seneviratne tells the story of the great ‘dane’ he held in Parliament precincts to mark his 50thbirthday. Typically sensitive, he did not consider proper to have it in Anglican ‘Lakmahal’

May I end by quoting Sam Wijesinha on his typically open-minded thoughts on life and death “Mine is a Gandhian attitude which is embodied in the view that death is but a sleep and a forgetting, such a sleep that the body has not to wake again such a forgetting that the dead load of memory is thrown overboard. So far as I know, happily, there is no meeting in the beyond as we have it here.”

Let us all be grateful that we were privileged to know Sam Wijesinha in the here and now.

Courtesy:The Island