Bradman Weerakoon as crisis manager and international relations advisor

BRADMAN Weerakoon was given a ceremonial but warm farewell by a regretful Prime Minister R. Premadasa, when he was quitting the post of Secretary to the PM and leaving for London to take up the post of Secretary-General of the International Planned Parenthood Federation. A lesser man wouldn't have returned to Sri Lanka though his former boss Premadasa was elected President, because the country was a cauldron of armed conflict. He could have stayed on in the UK, but his patriotism combined with his loyalty to Premadasa made him return and assume the post of Presidential Advisor on International Relations at a time Sri Lanka's external affairs and world affairs in general were in a state of flux.

- By Dr. Dayan Jayatilleka

It was during this period that I worked closely with him. But my acquaintance with him was inherited. When my parents died within one-and-a-half years of each other and I was clearing out their stuff, I came across among my mother's belongings, a Wisconsin-produced album titled 'Baby's Own Story Year by Year'. Among other details it noted that on my 4th birthday celebrated at 37th Lane Wellawatte, 'Brad and his wife' were among the guests. 'Charlie and Yvonne', Bradman Weerakoon's sister Yvonne and brother-in-law Charlie Gunawardena had attended my 2nd birthday.

30 years later when I worked with Bradman Weerakoon, he was no longer 'Uncle Brad', my father Mervyn's friend, but 'Mr Weerakoon'. Over and above his designation as Presidential Advisor on International Relations, Bradman was part of President Premadasa's crisis-management team during the most complex crisis faced by the Sri Lankan state since Independence. In my first book (1995) at the launch of which Bradman spoke, I defined the Sri Lankan crisis of the late1980s-early 1990s as the most dangerous a state could face because it saw the interactive overlap of three major types of threat: an anti-systemic civil war, a secessionist civil war and the militarily active presence of a large formation of foreign troops.

Crisis management