Kadirgamar had a vision for this country - Chief Justice

COLOMBO: The Chief Justice Sarath N. Silva said late Lakshman Kadirgamar had a vision for this country. A vision of freedom from fear, of unity, reasonableness and truth. He made these references after unveiling a portrait of late Lakshman Kadirgamar at a ceremonial sitting of the Supreme Court.

The full text of the speech:

Mr. Attorney , President of the Bar Association Your Excellencies, Ladies and Gentlemen: We are assembled today, to make a respectful reference to the memory of the late Hon. Lakshman Kadirgamar, P.C., who was cruelly assassinated by a terrorist attack well-nigh one year ago, on the 12th of August 2005.

Hon. Kadirgamar was son of an eminent lawyer who served prior to the fusion of the profession, as the President of the Ceylon Law Society. He hailed from Manipay in Jaffna and had his education at Trinity College, Kandy, where he excelled both in studies and in sports. He captained the Cricket team, and played Rugger for the College and was a champion athlete.

In the academic field, in addition to regular prizes he won two coveted special prizes being the Nell History Prize and the Napier Clavering prize. He was the Senior Prefect and was awarded the prestigious Ryde Gold Medal for the best all-round student in the year 1949.

Considering his unmatched achievements, from the perspective of Trinitian, I would unhesitatingly say that he was the best of them all. His link with the alma mater continued and in later years he functioned as the President of the Old Boys Association and worked actively to improve the facilities of the College.

He entered the University of Ceylon in the first batch of students of the Law Faculty, where too he continued his all round excellence. He played cricket for the University and in athletics won the Indian Inter-University 110 metres hurdles title in 1951 and 1952 and the All Ceylon title in the same event for those years.

His academic excellence resulted in his being awarded LLB Hons. degree by the University of Ceylon in 1953. In 1954 he completed his law education in Ceylon on being awarded 1st Class Hons. in the final examination for the admission of Advocates.

He entered the profession as an Advocate in the year 1956 and soon left for further education at Balliol College of the University of Oxford and there too continued his record of all round excellence.

In recognition of his debating skills he was elected the President of the prestigious Oxford Union in 1959. The Oxford Union paid the highest tribute to him by unveiling his portrait a few months prior to his death.

He was awarded B. Litt Oxford by the Balliol College in 1960 and entered the Bar as a Barrister from the Inner Temple. In recognition of the high eminence achieved by him, in 1955 he was made a Honourary Master of the Inner Temple.

He practised as an Advocate in our Courts with great success intermittently, in view of his extensive foreign assignments. He was a Consultant of the International Labour Organisation (ILO), Geneva from 1974-1976 and later took a permanent appointment at the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO), Geneva in 1976.

He was instrumental in bringing about a codification of different legal regimes of Copyrights, Patents, Trade Marks and Industrial Designs, in a single code as the Code of Intellectual Property Law. He was the Director for Asia and the Pacific at the WIPO during the period 1983-1988.

He persuaded the then Hon. Minister of Trade Lalith Athulathmudali, another product of Oxford to adopt the model draft Code of Intellectual Property Law in Sri Lanka. In that sense Hon. Kadirgamar foreshadowed the current development in the area of Intellectual Property Law. He may be considered as the father of codification of law in this regard.

At the conclusion of his assignment with the WIPO in 1988 Hon. Kadirgamar had acquired such stature and international experience that could have easily fitted him to a high international position, but he choose to return to his motherland.

Immediately upon his return he took on several assignments to address the lawyers on the developments in the area of Intellectual Property Law. He emerged as the leading counsel in that branch of the law and soon took silk as a President's Counsel in the year 1991.

The watershed election in 1994 saw yet another change in the affairs of Hon. Kadirgamar. He was persuaded to be nominated as a National List candidate of the People's Alliance and with the significant electoral triumph of that party he was appointed as the Minister of Foreign Affairs. All would agree that Her Excellency the President could not have made a better choice for the portfolio.

The international image of Sri Lanka was then at a very low ebb with a dismal record of Human Rights resulting from extra judicial killings with brazen impunity.

Hon. Kadirgamar set about the task with quiet unshaken courage and dedication and drawing on the considerable influence he had in the international arena, he gradually improved the image of the country aided by a significant change in the human rights record within the country.

He made use of his long tenure as the Minister of Foreign Affairs to go from one international forum to another and to grant interviews to all leading TV stations of the world. Those of us who watched these TV interviews spent anxious moments when searching questions were put to him.

But he was always adept in answering these questions. Being soft spoken with immaculate pronunciation, clarity of exposition and logic of argument, he painstakingly retrieved the tarnished image of the motherland.

Thereafter, he gradually went on the offensive and exposed the double standards of some European countries who masked the true face of terrorism within this country and took the battle virtually single handed to the enemy corner, relentlessly pursuing the imposition of sanctions on the terrorists.

He was largely successful in this endeavour and sanctions now imposed by the developed countries is the result of a sincere national endeavour on his part.

Hon. Kadirgamar transcended the ethnic divide and was a nationalist to the core. He had a deep and abiding concern for the people of Jaffna, who may be described as the worst affected in the conflict that has ravaged that part of the country for nearly two decades.

He identified the burning of the Jaffna library which was undoubtedly the richest literary heritage of the people of Jaffna as a point where immediate reconstruction effort should be started.

In 1997 he was appointed as the co-Chairman to reconstruct the library. A little known fact to which Hon. Kadirgamar deliberately avoided giving publicity was that the entire reconstruction programme was monitored by a Committee of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. He first established an interim library in the building that had been previously used by the LTTE as its headquarters.

Thereafter, he sent a team of officers to ascertain the views of the people of Jaffna, whether the old building which was destroyed should be reconstructed in that form or whether a new structure should be erected.

The people opted for the reconstruction of the building at the original site on the same design. The actual reconstruction started in 1998 and continued till 2001. After the work was completed there was a change of Government which resulted in no publicity being given to the fact that it was Hon. Kadirgamar who painstakingly restored the building to its original grandeur.

Throughout this period he made use of his extensive contacts in foreign countries and obtained books for the Jaffna library. These consignments of books were regularly sent to Jaffna to keep the process of re-establishment of the library on course.

Thus Hon. Kadirgamar had a genuine and national concern to resolve the problem of the ethnic conflict and to serve the Tamil people, actively in the process of reconstruction.

At this point it is relevant to state that this is the fourth reference we are making in respect of President's Counsel, who have been cruelly assassinated by terrorist attacks. There were previously, references made to Hon. Lalith Athulathmudali, Hon. Gamini Dissanayake, and Dr. Neelan Tiruchelvam.

They were all legal luminaries with professional skills, who opted to serve the country in the political arena. Their capacity, skill and stature were such that they could have stood their own with the best in the world. We can say, on sad reflection, that the country has been deprived of the cream of eminent people of the highest ability.

It is strange that two of them are from the Sinhala community and two from the Tamil community, which fact detracts from any assumption that they were assassinated on the basis of an ethnic divide.

More in the line of truth may be that these assassinations were cruelly revengeful acts to deny to this country men of excellence and to push the country to the dark abyss of death and destruction, where only the force of terror would prevail.

Hon. Kadirgamar was alive to the obvious danger he was courting through his national endeavour. An official of the Foreign Ministry who accompanied him wrote in an article that after making a most effective speech in Europe seeking sanctions on the terrorists, Hon. Kadirgamar had commented to him, "I have taken one more step towards the terrorist bullet." Sadly, that prediction came to pass.

As a nation we owe a debt to this great statesman. In the Sinhala song that was composed and broadcast at his funeral, bringing tears to the eyes of many, it was poignantly stated that he, "was the world to us and that we stand indebted to him".

Although Hon. Kadirgamar was a politician he never lost his gentle way of life and qualities of compassion and kindness. The following passage in the final scene of Shakespeare's immortal play Julius Ceasar aptly describes these attributes of Hon. Kadirgamar, I quote:

"He only, on a general honest thought,

And common good to all, made one of them.

His life was gentle; and the elements

So mix'd in him that Nature might stand up

And say to all the world, This is a man!

The late Hon. Kadirgamar had a vision for this country. A vision of freedom from fear, of unity, reasonableness and truth. This vision is finely encompassed by the Nobel Laureate Rabindranath Tagore in the 35th verse of the collection titled 'Gitanjali', I quote:

"Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high;

Where knowledge is free;

Where the world has not been broken up into fragments by the narrow domestic walls;

Where words come out from the depth of truth,

Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection;

Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way into the dreary desert sand of dead habit;

Where the minds is led forward by thee into ever-widening thought and action -

Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake."

Mr. Attorney, President of the Bar Association, Your Excellencies, Ladies and Gentlemen, I will direct that a copy of these proceedings be sent to the widow, being herself an Attorney-at-Law and the family of the late Hon. Kadirgamar, as a measure of our highest esteem.