Felix in Parliament and at Parliamentary Conferences

Today is the 21st Death Anniversary of former Minister Felix Dias Bandaranaike. Excerpts below from the article written by Sam Wijesinha in the book FDB by Lakshmi Dias Bandaranaike.

COLOMBO: The Legislative Council of Ceylon was established by Letters Patent of March 19, 1933, its first meeting being held on May 22, 1834.

There were nine Official and six Unofficial Members, three to represent the Europeans and one each to represent the Sinhalese, the Tamils and the Burghers. From the inception the representatives of the Sinhalese and the Tamils tended to be from two well-known family groups.

The Tamils were mainly the descendants of one of the first Unofficial Members, Mudaliyar S. Edirimanesingam. They included Sir Muttu Coomaraswamy and his three nephews Ponnambalam Coomarasawamy, Sir Ponnambalam Ramanathan, K.C., and the Official Member, Sir Ponnambalam Arunachalam.

Earliest Sinhalese Members

One of the earliest Sinhalese Members was J.G. Philipsz Panditaratne succeeded by his sister's two sons J.C. Dias Bandaranaike and H. Dias Bandaranaike the two younger brothers of Rev. S.W. Dias Bandaranaike who later became a Canon of the Anglican Church, Colonial Chaplain and Vicar of All Saints' Church, Hulftsdrop. J.C. Dias Bandaranaike was enrolled a Proctor in 1839 and was a Member of the Legislative Council till 1861.

He was succeeded by H. Dias Bandaranaike who was not only the first Sinhalese to be called to the Bar in England but also the first such to be appointed a Judge of the Supreme Court (1879) and also to be knighted. Sir Harry Dias Bandaranaike was succeeded in the Legislative Council by Philipsz Panditaratne's grand nephew, Advocate James D' Alwis in 1864.

He was not only an outstanding Legislator but also a great Oriental Scholar whose contributions to the development of our language and literature alone earned him a place in our recent history. Another of James D' Alwis' relatives, Albert L.D'. Alwis was also an Unofficial Member of the Legislative Council.

I have dealt with these matters to indicate that our Felix has had four generations of Supreme Court Judges and several generations of Legislators in our country.

Once, when Felix was Minister of Agriculture etc. he was speaking in the House on Animal Husbandry. He referred to the Australian cows imported thirty years earlier by D.S. Senanayake and went on to say that each of them gave forty bottles of milk a day at that time. But thirty years later at Ambewela and Bopatalawa each gave only four bottles a day.

"You know why Mr. Speaker?" he asked. Leaning forward from the Ministerial front row, he looked to his right at Mrs. Sirimavo Bandaranaike the Prime Minister, and with his usual impish glint in his eyes and a straight face he said "Those, cows, like the Bandaranaikes, are in-bred". He never missed a chance to have a good crack - even at his own family.

The Attanagalla electorate was literally a "pocket borough" represented in the Legislature by S.W.R.D. Bandaranaike from the inception of our adult franchise in 1931 for over twenty eight years continuously through five elections till his death in 1959.

The Legislature was expanded from 95 elected members to 151 in 1960. Dompe was a new electorate carved out of the old Attanagalla seat.

The ablest and the youngest member of the "Clan" who could be put forward for Dompe with confidence was Felix and Felix certainly won Dompe with majorities increasing progressively from over 12,000 going up to over 22,000 in the four elections held from March 1960 to May 1970 and after 17 years was defeated in July 1977 by 2400 votes.

I suppose after 17 years, even men of Felix's calibre of the old order had to change yielding place to the new. Today 17 seems a prophetic number!

Minister of Finance

With his party in office in August 1960 Felix was appointed Minister of Finance in Mrs Bandaranaike's first Government. He plunged into his duties with the competence of an experienced veteran.

He was ready to learn and was outstanding in debate. His almost flawless oratory and remarkable memory enabled him to silence critics with good-humoured defiance. He had a devastating ability to marshall his facts lucidly and precisely with order and method.

Although he never spoke to a text, he was most resourceful on his feet. He entered the Houses of Parliament like a fish to water - just as he did eight years earlier entering the Courts of Law.

At the opening of the Commonwealth Parliamentary Conference in 1973 in London by the Queen, Felix as the Vice-President of the C.P.A. expressed the gratitude of the Association to Her Majesty and to His Royal Highness proposing a vote of thanks.

The delegates sitting with the Queen on the dais had to be in morning dress or national dress. Fred Daly, Minister and Leader of the House in Australia and Felix Minister of Justice etc. did not want to be seen in morning dress. Lakshmi had to make do what she thought was a national dress for her husband and to get it ready overnight.

Felix, rather doubtful of her sartorial efforts, was holding his waist firmly with his left hand whilst speaking the next morning in the presence of the Queen and the vast gathering of notables in Westminster Hall.

With only his right hand to occasionally emphasize a point, he made a courageous speech that brought out a spontaneous ovation from the vast concourse gathered before the Queen. E. L. Bradby, Principal of Royal College in Felix's time was an overjoyed member of the audience who greeted Felix with tears of joy.

Joining a discussion on Racial Harmony at a Parliamentary conference in the Bahamas he said referring to Immigration "The truth of the matter is that the people who are going are not always the people who ought to go.

Sometimes the standard of living for performing certain relatively menial tasks abroad is somewhat better than the corresponding pay for Ceylonese at home, and the basic reason seems to me to be economic more than anything else.

I do not think the United Kingdom should really complain about immigration. See how much their country has been enriched by the waves of immigrants. They are learning to play cricket from the West Indies.

They are learning music from the calypso beat of the Mighty Sparrow of Jamaica and Lord Kitchener of Trinidad and Tobago. I think Britain would have been much poorer if they did not have curry, calypso, and cricket.

Think what would happen if London Transport was not serviced by the West Indies. When there is a cricket match at Lords, London Transport nearly comes to a grinding halt. Take the nursing services, the only white people are usually Irish nurses.

The rest of them come from the underdeveloped countries of the Commonwealth. What we are looking at is not a racial problem, it is a question of survival and maintenance of living standards.

The only way you can stop this wave of immigration is not by legislation and creating bitterness. Living standards must rise in the rest of the Commonwealth, and the need to migrate to other more developed countries must be eliminated.

In Malaysia

At a Conference in Malaysia in 1971 speaking to Parliamentary Democracy he said "Countries become independent, then we imagine that we are our own masters, we form political parties; political manifestos and tell the people, "We have a solution to the problems of this country, we can do something for you."

In practice in the context of the modern international society, a country of primary producers with limited resources lacks the necessary capacities.

We are unable to do anything practical about our economic situation in order to fulfil the promises and to satisfy the aspirations of the people.

Let the other fellow, fighting the elections against you, come into power, he is no better either; he cannot do much unless there is a growing realization that parliamentary democracy itself becomes a cherished ideal, something worth protecting, something worth fighting for, something worthy of protection in its own right.

However much we follow the forms of parliamentary democracy - rival candidates coming forward with rival sets of promises, hopes, aspirations for the future, let it be nationalization, let it be private enterprise, it makes no difference if the net result is that the life of the people and the country remain unaltered substantially.

Then you will find that the seeds of revolutionary movements, of insurrections, and dissatisfactions will become manifest sooner or later. The unrest will not present itself in the shape and form of overthrowing a particular Government which is unpopular.

It will become a challenge to Parliamentary democracy in itself. It will become the very rationale for saying that this system is no good; we are not making progress this way, Parliamentary democracy is, by its very nature, a slow system.

It is slow so far as economic growth is concerned. We talk and debate and argue about the rights and wrongs of every little thing. I think that, that sort of democracy is making people impatient."

"If you visit American City

You will find it very pretty.

Of just one thing you must beware,

Do not drink the water and do not breathe the air!"

Speaking on the problems of minorities, particularly of the Tamils in Sri Lanka at the C.P.A. Conference of 1974 in Colombo he said "We are prepared to go to all the corners of our country to talk to them in their own language if we can and try to persuade them.

You would imagine that minority problems here are very difficult ones, but I know of no other country in the world where a majority had made it possible for the minority to achieve unheard of economic wealth and to become the most prosperous people in our country through the policies being followed consciously and deliberately by the majority.

I should like to urge that even in our own little land dialogue and discussion are fundamental and essential to good relations. Recently I had the privilege of visiting the Northern Province.

I tried to speak to the people there in my own faulty Tamil, trying to make contact and to express our point of view. All I can say is that we stretch the hand of friendship and invite our friends, the Tamils to do the same - to come down South and talk to us.

It does not matter if they do not know our language. They can talk to us in English or in Tamil. We are prepared to listen. We say that once the dialogue is established, as it can be established - we cannot afford to talk of dialogue in international terms unless we are prepared to do precisely that in our own problems can be resolved."