April 6, 2005

INTERVIEW WITH PRESIDENT CHANDRIKA BANDARANIAKE KUMARATUNGA OF SRI LANKA, conducted at the President’s official residence in Colombo.

Institutional Investor: How are you?

A: Tired

Q: First let me express sincere sympathies for the tragedy that has stricken Sri Lanka

A: Thank you very much.

Q: How can the international community be assured that not a cent of the tsunami aid donated to Sri Lanka be misused or misappropriated?

A: All I can say is that I am in control of the situation with my government. Whatever monies that come into the government we can be sure they will be dispersed properly.

Q: What mechanisms will you employ to ensure that?

A: I set up three task forces as soon as it happened. Don’t forget that Sri Lanka has never had disasters, a few small floods and once in a while a drought that has not been serious compared to other countries. So we were totally unprepared, and we had just had to use our heads and start everything. And we did. And we have been praised by everyone; we have nearly 100 heads of state, heads of government, prime ministers, presidents, the UN Secretary-General and other ministers coming here…and they have been looking at other disasters and they think we have done very impressively. And I don’t think they are just saying this if they didn’t believe it.

Q: How are you combatting corruption in your government?

A: I am satisfied we have got in control of the situation very well. Here and there are a few corrupt, very low-down public officials who are not even trained and who were brought in by a previous government with no qualifications simply because they were political acolytes of that party. They have robbed a certain amount of food and all that but the people are still getting food. Apart from that, we are quite sure we can control this as we have put in very organised and streamlined procedures.

Q: What is your assessment of the clean-up and reconstruction so far? Are you happy with the way government has performed during this crisis?

A: I’m happy generally with the way government has functioned except for a few hiccups and there are always exceptions, and the exceptions are exceptional. We have various donors, sometimes the governments of the victims, UN agencies, World Bank, Asian Development Bank, other UN agencies or big private sector companies in Sri Lanka that are offering free money. We have told them, we have talked with them and we did very very fast something that normally takes two years in this country that we did in three weeks through these units and task forces, we assessed the damage, did the plans together with the relevant ministries and have the costs estimated in two weeks. We have been talking to the donors, whoever they may be, and we are matching the projects in discussion with the donors. We have told the donors, because they are giving us the money free, they are all grants, we will by-pass the normal systems that I insist on under my government for the sake of transparency that we call for tenders and so on, to accepted international procedure and all that, we have told them (the donors) you can bypass all that, its your money, you give it to anyone you want and you build them something. So there is no corruption from the government side and I hope there will be accountability from the (donor) side. We do the planning, we tell them what they require….and our government teams, our professionals will be helping them to ensure that it happens properly.

Q: Surely, you can’t rebuild Sri Lanka to its previous poverty. This is an opportunity to modernize the country.

A: We have to rebuild 50,000 homes that are completely destroyed and about 50,000 which are partially damaged, and they are in different areas of the country, strewn all over the place and each place has its own traditions and its own quirks. Private land is too expensive so the government, almost all the houses (to be relocated), we have to have government blocks of land. We are going to build little settlements, much more modern. About 75 per cent of the people whose property was destroyed lived in utter poverty, on the beaches without electricity, without drinking water, without tap water and no toilet facilities in most places. Now they are getting toilets, electricity and drinking waters in these (yet-to-be-built) townships. They will be nice villages with a village green, all these common facilities, shopping area, much much better living places than they had previously.

Q: And they will be equitably distributed regardless of political persuasions and considerations?

A: Quite definitely. We are not bothered about who they are, ethnically also. We are not favouring any political party, anybody who was affected will be given these houses.


Q: The World Bank has noted that around 60-70% of the affected area are in the north-east, particularly in the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (the LTTE, Tamil Tigers) area, and duly that’s where the same proportion of aid should go. Do you agree?

A: I don’t know if that’s true, it should be just under 60%. Of course it should go there.

Q: Regardless of the political persuasion of the LTTE?

A: My government has never worked like that. All others have. The largest amount of monetary and physical development of infrastructure in the north and the east happened under my government in the whole history of Sri Lanka.

Q: What sort of mechanisms are you employing to get that 60% to those LTTE-held affected areas?
A: Very simple, wherever something has been damaged we will do it. TAFREN (Task Force For Rebuilding the Nation) has made an assessment, the World Bank and the ADB have made a separate assessment, and they match. We made an assessment of every but of whatever that has been destroyed; housing, infrastructure and wherever it was destroyed we rebuild it. If it was 99% north-east, of course, if it was 99% north-east we will re-build the infrastructure.

Q: Does TAFREN have a north-east element (rebel Tamil areas) to its board, or is it, if you will, TAFRES (Task Force to Rebuild the South)?

A: Of course there is an ethnic mix, we have Muslims, we have a large number of people from the private sector.

Q: Are there representatives of the LTTE?

A: We don’t have representation of any political party, including my party. There are only officials, professionals such as architects, engineers and surveyors and town planners and big private sector people selected for their ability to do things, people who are known to be achievers

Q: I understand that and I will press the point here. As of now, you are comfortable that the representation of TAFREN reflects the mix of the country?

A: There are Muslims and Tamils, and the Tamils are obviously supposed to think about themselves.

(avoiding the meat of this question, because the N-E is not represented on TAFREN, she pauses to remark to photographer Dominic Sansoni that 'you are putting on weight Dominic')

Q: The President’s Fund. Will you, as an example of the good governance you say on your website you adhere to, publish all the incomings and outgoings of your personal fund since December 26?

A: We publish it in the papers. All that we have got in the fund. We have all the details.

Q: You are saying its 100% accountable?
A: Oh yes. Today, the Thai ambassador came and gave a cheque for some money and immediately we gave him a receipt.

Q: And is it independently audited?
A: It has to be audited by the Auditor-General. What worries me more is how much the international NGOs are pocketing. They have collected millions, hundreds of millions of dollars and we havent seen the colour of it yet in this country. The President of the World Bank came and saw me to warn about this saying that Sri Lanka especially is far too lax in its laws and they are bringing money, nobody knows how much they are bringing in and we just don’t know, we are too flexible, especially with the NGOs. Everybody is scared about NGOs. They screamed at one time saying the (foreign) governments are not doing anything about the LTTE so therefore the NGOs are here to do it for them. Do you know that nearly 200 high-luxury vehicles have been bought with money collected for Sri Lanka by the NGOs? And then they ask for duty-free concessions to bring those vehicles in and within a couple of weeks or months the workers in the NGOs, the executives, they take those vehicles away. Foreign governments and international agencies have pledged monies and those are coming in. And the Sri Lankan private sector has pledged quite a lot of money, and that is coming in, magnificent generosity from the Sri Lankans. The NGOs don’t pledge anything. The only people who pledge are governments. We are insisting that they (NGOs) declare the monies that they bring into the country. We don’t want to touch but they have to tell us what they are going to spend it on, what projects. They have to tell us….and they are also pocketing the money.

Q: Do you think that has happened?

A: Well, for one and half months we haven’t seen the money. I would like you to please quote me on that. You know that the NGOS are a worldwide racket. It’s the most lucrative employment in the world.

Q: Politics. You have been quoted in local media that your coalition partner, the (hardline Marxist People’s Liberation Front, known by its local initials as the) JVP, should leave the coalition if they are unhappy with it.

A: Completely false, completely false. I did not mention any political party. I was giving a kind of philosophical lecture for the people.

Q: How strong is your coalition with the JVP? They seem to be acting as an opposition within the government.

A: They are, very much so. Well, the JVP did not come in for the love of us. The JVP came in with the hope of strengthening themselves, grabbing the members from our party and becoming the major party very soon, we knew this and that is the nature, the personality of former parties that use violence as their main means of politics.

Q: And you know that from a familial point of view?
A: Very familiar

Q: Therefore how can you do business with a party that has impacted on your family so significantly?
A: On my husband?

Q: Yes.
A: My children ask me this all the time. I have no answers. Well, I explain to myself, I can tell you very honestly, I don’t do politics for opportunistic reasons. I never wanted positions. I care for my country very much. I worked for 22 years before I accepted any political position, with the people, walking in the villages, still I can quite clearly say, without any hesistation that I am the politician in this country who knows the largest number of rural areas in this country. Personally I have gone to those villages, spent hours, days with them, chat (to) them, done work with them. You know, I do development and politics, I don’t just do politics. I talked to them, gave them various political lectures and all that. I was also very left but I wasn’t destructive left, I was constructive left (laughs) now I have moved to the middle with age… in this globalised world. I’m telling you that I wanted to continue working like that, I worked in government, I was a government servant, I’m an economist and I wanted to continue like that, and also do my intellectual work, of writing. I (used to) write a lot before I can into this office. As far as I concerned, I am here to do a job of work for the people and if I think I can’t do a job, if the JVP or anybody is preventing me, then I go home. Quite a few parties with us, quite definitely including the JVP, are there to build themselves up, and to take power by themselves. I knew this. To tell you the fact, I would have preferred to have worked with the bulk of the (official opposition) UNP (United National Party), though there are some leaders in the UNP whose morality, whose vision for the country I find horrendous.

Q: Some say the dream scenario, politically, to advance Sri Lanka is a government of national unity between your party, the Sri Lankan Freedom Party, and the UNP, the opposition.

A: What? Some people? I’ve been saying that in all my speeches! I will send you a collection if you can be bored enough to go through them, some of them are good. They are all written by me, the good ones (laughs). I have always for the last 11 years (of her presidency) called for a coalition of the UNP and the (SLFP-led) People’s Alliance (PA). All the PA parties are very decent democratic parties, even though some of them are former Marxist parties, I mean they were very decent Marxists, they were not the killing types but educated professionals, they just had left ideas. As recently as December 2001, the UNP and the PA together accounted for 73% of the vote of the country. I kept telling the UNP leadership, please realise this. Maybe there are some personalities I don’t like, there are some personalities they don’t like in our party but we have the confidence of the people, we are the middle of this country, there are the extremes like the LTTE that the UNP had to depend on to come into power with secret pacts. And there is the SLFP that may have to depend on the JVP to come into power, they are the extremists on the other side. That is bad for the country. Let us get together. (The JVP have said) we also don’t mind coming in with the UNP under certain conditions.

Q: Has the JVP enhanced their support since the tsunami? Are they a political ‘winner’ from this crisis?
A: Whoever works for the people when they are in trouble will come out winners. Everybody’s working so I suppose everybody will get a bit of the cake. I am concerned about their (JVP) attitudes. They don’t seem to understand what coalition politics is. They have changed their positions quite often.

Q: Have they been good performers in cabinet?
A: They have no experience of governing at all. They are learning, they still have a long way to go.

Q: Are they clean?
A: I don’t know (smiles).

Q: The peace process; Before the tsunami, the international community were impatient with the progress, or lack of, in the peace talks. There was even talk of a return to war. How has the tsunami changed the north-south political dynamic, if at all?

A: Well theoretically it should have changed it for the better, though with the LTTE one never knows. Practically the LTTE can’t go to war, the LTTE cannot provoke a war at this time because they are devastated.

Q: Are you saying the (military) strategic balance has changed since the tsunami?
A: Well, practically speaking the LTTE is quite definitely weakened. The Sea Tigers and they have lost of a lot of their cadres, though they don’t say so, and their entire area has been devastated. They have lost everything in those areas. So they have to rebuild first before expect their people to go to war. So that is one little good thing but one never knows with (LTTE leader Vellupillai) Prabakaran, its not logic that works. But they are being much more flexible than they were before.

Q: The LTTE’s political wing leader Thamil Selvan suggested to me that peace was difficult to achieve with your government if it included the JVP? Is that the obstacle to peace?

A: Can I be very honest? The main obstacle is not anybody other than the LTTE itself, the LTTE leadership. If the JVP were to disappear into thin air tomorrow, they would find some other thing. Previously, before we got into coalition with the JVP they (the LTTE) said they cannot deal with Chandrika. They have killed off every single Sri Lankan leader who could be strong in the face of the LTTE. And they tried to kill off the last one (herself) and failed and they’d much prefer to deal with weak leaders, like some of the leaders in the opposition because they get them to agree to secret pacts.

Q: When will peace talks resume?
A: You will have to ask (LTTE leader) Mr Prabakaran. We are willing to start this minute.

Q: Does a Nobel Peace Prize appeal to you?
A: No, I think it’s a joke. Once somebody, a certain country that is involved in the peace process, came and offered to me, during (the previous government of ) Ranil Wickremesinghe time when he actually gave the LTTE some very dangerous concessions which would not have helped peace at all but would have sabotaged peace…he (Prabakaran) is such a ruthless interlocutor.. you don’t want to say yes and jump onto his lap straight off …and they (the UNP govt of the day) were willing to write away the sovereign rights of the government of Sri Lanka. At that time, I did not make a fuss, I just raised concerns with my Prime Minister (Wickremesinghe) and with the Norwegians, and with some of the other countries that were involved and then, as a kind of sop to me, a certain country (Norway) which had not invited me to visit their country before said, ohhh, we would like to invite you, and came with a letter from their head of state, and hinting about. I said no I don’t have the time now to come. They very rudely sort of saying ‘we would like to have you from this date to this date’ and just giving two days. That never happens between heads of state or heads of government, they give a whole period of three months or something, and they very rudely said ‘you can come on these two days, in a particular month.’

Q: But the Norwegians are renowned to be very polite.

A: I didn’t say who it was (laughs). Some people get very arrogant when the sovereignty of state is written over to them. I said to them that I wont be free on those days and then there was this carrot of addressing various institutions which could lead up to a Nobel Prize that was dangled before my nose. I really mean it, I said ‘to hell with the Nobel Prize’…I said ‘to hell with the Nobel Prize, I don't give a hoot.’ The only prize that matters to me in my life and I am very honest is that when I get out of politics is that my people say that she tried to do something for our country.

Q: And that includes the Tamil people?

A: Of course. And that’s all that matters to me, I don’t care two hoots for a Nobel Prize. They shut up.

Q: How much of your work is done, given that you are nearing the end of your presidency?

A: I am nearing the end of my presidency. I would say the tasks I gave myself, I would say I have achieved a large amount of it; development, bringing in systems and procedures into government to make it more efficient.

Q: Isn’t Sri Lanka over-governed? Aren’t there 70-80 odd ministers (and deputy ministers)?

A: There are 35 (ministers).

Q: And deputy ministers?
A: About 35.

Q: Isn't that a lot relative to the size of population (18-19 million)?
A: Pakistan has 100-odd ministers, they also have a coalition government. My first government had only 20 ministers and only about 15 deputies but when you have coalition governments, and parties that are joining you only for the positions, to fatten themselves, to fatten their party membership, then the numbers spiral.

Q: You have said you have a zero tolerance for corruption in government?
A: In my personality. I can tell you this, in the first seven and a half years of my party in power, we have been able to reduce, if one can count it properly, I would say about 60% of the corruption, certainly at the top. In Pakistan, they did the same as I did. They eliminated corruption at the top first, the President and the PM. Good governance has two aspects, elimination of corruption and rendering government efficiency – it was very inefficient during UNP time – and I think we have achieve about 60% of that. And we have shown it in the field, in the amount, the quantitative amount of development that went into the areas where there was no development.

Q: But you have now, more money that Sri Lanka has seen, in one lump, than in its entire history.
A: That I resolved very simply, we are not touching it, we are telling the donors we agree with them what they will take on, which rod, which hospital, and we are telling them you are bringing your money, you are giving it free, you bring your contractors and build it for us. So government does not call for tenders at all so there cant be any corruption from the government side. We go into a monitoring committee with them to ensure that once they bring in the contractors, then the work happens properly.

Q: TAFREN, the Task Force for Rebuilding the Nation. Some have said it is an alternative cabinet.
A: Oh no.

Q: Its relationship with the line ministries is sound, or are there jealousies there?
A: No, no very sound, but there must be jealousies. Everybody is jealous in this country, of everybody else.

Q: To finish up, how has this unprecented disaster changed Sri Lanka, if at all.
A: I think it is still too early to say but we will see some very big differences but if the government and other leaders of society know how to handle it, to take the positives that comes out of this and turn them into constructive forward movement of the country. And some of the enemies of this nation, in the opposition, are trying to stop it. For example, I have been known to complain about the lethargy of Sri Lankans, either their corruption or their lethargy, the lack of bothering about anything and just letting things be – let things be, what to do, just let it be…that attitude changed radically after the tsunami, everybody just rose up and they began to do things for it. Everybody was absolutely mobilised, very vibrant, the nation acquired a new vibrancy and this is the vibrancy I want keep going, for development, for reconstruction and making it go like that.

Q: Is the Bush model of leadership after September 11 something for you, in terms of crisis leadership?
A: Mr Bush’s model is not one I would like to emulate.

Q: His presidency was shaped by a disaster.
A: I hope mine wasn’t. It’s a challenge and I have taken it up. I took up the challenge of talking peace to a nation that was only talking war. When I first came in, Mr Ranil Wickremesinghe was only talking of war, I took over from him as PM. We did a survey soon after we came in about nine-and-a-half years ago, only 23 per cent of the Sri Lankans, of the Sinhalese (72% of population), only 23% of that 72% thought we could resolve the ethnic problem without war. Only 23% said it should be resolved through negotiation and non-military efforts. The other 77% of the Sinhala population thought war was the only solution, not because they were warring but because the government and their leaders had not told them anything else. Wwhen we came in I took up that challenge. People said to me ‘madame, don’t say that at election time, you will lose votes’ and I said ‘to hell with the votes’ and from that time I was talking of peace, and that was the biggest challenge, that was our biggest victory.

Q: Isnt it a failure of your presidency, as you near the end of it, that peace hasn’t been achieved?

A: Isnt it a failure of the British government that for 70 years they could not resolve the Irish problem? Is it a failure of the biggest nations of the world, of the United Nations and the Americans and everybody else who have been trying to resolve the Palestinian issue for 56 years. No, I don’t think it is. Peace doesn’t just mean just hiding and downing arms and going away. We have moved forward on the peace matters, we have moved hugely on the peace matter from zero to 75% and that is a victory, and I was the first person who had the courage to say it. I have still continued to talk about peace, even after nearly getting killed, fear did not deter me from talking about it, and now we are seeing results, the Tigers are beginning to say OK, let’s talk, falsely or not. For the first time they said OK we will look at some solution other than a separate state. All those are victories on the path to peace.

Q: When your term as President ends, will you retire from politics at that point?
A: No comment (laughs). I shall surprise. I have surprised many people in my life and you will be in for a big surprise. It is not anything that anybody thinks I am going to do.