Working with Dr. Dahanayake and some advice to public servants

On February 28, 1986, I was chairing a conference on Cooperative Policy at the Agricultural Research and Training Institute (ARTI), which included a senior delegation of Cooperative experts from Sweden, when I received an urgent summons from the President. Such a summons were always somewhat destabilizing because you wondered as to what could have caused the head of State to suddenly send for you.

- (Excerpted from In Pursuit of Governance, autobigraphy of MDD Pieris)

I went to the President's office at Republic Square and met him. The President informed me that sometime previously he had promised the veteran Parliamentarian and former Prime Minister, Dr. W. Dahanayake a Cabinet post. He said further that he had been reminding him of this on a number of occasions, including recently. He therefore did not want to delay matters further, and wished to appoint him as Minister of Cooperatives. He wanted me to split the existing Ministry of Food and Cooperatives into two. Mr. Gamani Jayasuriya was to remain as Minister of Food.

The President said that he had already discussed matters with him. If this was what the President wanted done, I had to do it. I had however a fear that I would be appointed Secretary to the Ministry of Co-operatives. The reason for this was not that I thought the subject of Cooperatives unimportant. It in fact encompassed a vast area. The reason was that I was compelled to figure in a major clash with Dr. Dahanayake, in the Parliamentary Consultative Committee a few months earlier, when he, in my view quite unfairly went for my Commissioner of Cooperative Development.

On this occasion in Parliament, I waited patiently for a while thinking that matters would blow over. But when they didn't and Dr. Dahanayake kept on attacking the Commissioner, not giving him a chance to speak, I intervened. He then turned his ire on me, and I took him on. We went at each other with raised voices until I remember my Minister Gamani Jayasuriya next to whom I was seated, squeezing my arm to restrain me. When the meeting was over and we were leaving, my officers who were very pleased at the defence I put up told me "Sir, did you realize that you were pointing your finger at Dr. Dahanayake?" I had not.