Premadasa vs Lalith: A recipe for conflict

(Excerpted from In Pursuit of Governance, the autobiography of MDD Pieris)

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I will not dwell in any detail about the numerous other issues that engaged the Minister's (Athulathemudali) attention. That would add up to a book in itself. What I would do would be to briefly touch upon some selected matters. A structure of a Ministry is important and relevant as a facilitator or otherwise of work. There is also, in many ways a correlation between structure and achievement. In this vital area however, there was a major deficiency.

At the political level, besides the Cabinet Minister, there were two Project Ministers, Mrs. Sunethra Ranasinghe, MP for Education Services and Mr. A.C.S. Hameed, MP for Higher Education.

Mr. Hameed, a senior party man and Minister was also the Cabinet Minister for Justice. Then there was the State Minister for Education Mrs. Pulendiran, MP. Project Ministers were considered higher in status to State Ministers, but all came under the Cabinet Minister. The structural problem really arose in the area under Mr. Hameed's purview. Mr. Hameed, a former long serving Foreign Minister, was in the recent past the Cabinet Minister for Higher Education and Science. Now, although he was still the Cabinet Minister for Justice, he was at the same time only the Project Minister for Higher Education, responsible to a much younger Cabinet Minister.

He was now Project Minister in an area where he had been Cabinet Minister before. In practical terms, this was a recipe for conflict, and that is precisely what occurred. Higher Education encompassed both University and Technical Education. The rest of the Ministry handled the vast area of general education. Mr. Hameed could not get over the fact that he was no longer the Cabinet Minister for Higher Education. He sought to act as if he was. The geographical severance, that prevailed, with general education at "Isurupaya" in Battararmulla, and Higher Education located at Ward Place in Colombo, only helped to reinforce this trend towards separation.