Epilogue

Excerpted from ‘Rendering Unto Caesar’ by Bradman Weerakoon

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I sit in my easy chair, facing the porch and the garden that I like to keep soothingly rambling.

Over the right wall, the sky is blue-grey more grey than blue at times —- and the city rumble does not offend.

I try to unwind, allow my mind and body to accept that it is time to relax, think of all that has been and feel a new warmth of spirit. There is this feeling of satisfaction, yet, nervously enough not of satiation; and I think wistfully that so much more could be done.

Time is a great thief. It steals our years, puts them in a limbo of history and covers them with a glazed curtain. Now, I tell myself, others will take up so many challenges, and I will watch on the ringside, applaud if needs be, sip my tea and accept the best or worst of it with some stoicism. Age will take its toll, but deep inside, a small part of me will not rest.

Fifty years of public life, I began on the first of April 1954 ended on the second of April 2004. The ending is according to convention: all ‘political appointees’ — and secretaries to ministers must pack up and go with a change of government. Ranil Wickremesinghe did so with a customary grace. I did so too, yet with a faint sense of dissatisfaction. All was not well.

Fifty years on — and when the dust of the elections settled I see an instability that disturbs. A ‘hung’ Parliament with no one party or coalition able to command a majority in the House. The United Peoples Freedom Alliance (UPFA), a combination of the SLFP and the JVP secured over 47 per cent of the votes cast yet remained eight seats short of a parliamentary majority. Chandrika Kumaratunga, the president leads another coalition. She was able to catalyze almost 50 years later, a peaceful revolution, as her father did in 1956, but we now face more dramatic changes that make governance of the state more problematic.