Hell hath no fury like you know who

The other day an unusual email was in my inbox. It was a long-winded interview with that State Minister called Diana Gamage. Had it been just a litany of complaints I would have let it pass as the usual disgruntlement of would-be politicians who set out pompously claiming to serve the country but eventually end up screwing the country.

What stuck in one’s craw on reading further is not merely the bombast but the sheer egotism that before long would surely burst through her blouse. As one example let me quote her own words as reported in a Sri Lankan magazine called “Business Today”. This is from the October issue.

“I’ll be fine if people decide they don’t want me back in parliament. But that’ll be the country’s downfall.”

For sheer effrontery this sure is hard to beat. For the people to decide, Diana Dear (DD for short), you must first contest an election. Whether you do so or not will depend on many factors which do not need reiteration here.

Earlier in this interview, which seems to have been done by one accustomed to bowling only full tosses instead of an occasional yorker, she says this. “We may be in parliament representing the people, but we are still part of the citizenry and responsible to the country.” I could not quite fathom that convolution but she sure has got her wires crossed.

She is certainly not in parliament representing the people because no people ever elected her to represent them—surely not if they had anything in the cranium. She entered the legislature from the SJB nationalist list thanks to some arrangement with Sajith Premadasa over a party in disuse.

So this is a distortion of what she is doing in parliament, if not a falsity.

But to think (not the people but ‘Desperate Diana’) that this country would go down the pallang if the aforesaid DD is not around in parliament to save this nation, then this country is not doing justice to Sri Lanka’s latest saviour, even if she is the only one who believes its future rests on her shoulders or wherever.

But those people who are still sober and are not already ‘high’ just thinking of Diana’s potential medical concoctions with some Ganja in it, might well wonder why few, if any, had heard of this saree-clad Lazarus all these years though she claims to have lived in this Resplendent Isle since 2001.

Gotabaya Rajapakse thought Ranil Wickremesinghe was the only one who could save a sinking nation. As usual, he was wrong. He forgot the formidable Diana Gamage, an ardent believer in herself, who thinks that without her at the helm Sri Lanka is doomed.

The verbal onslaughts inside and outside parliament, the weaponisaton of handbags and a machismolike approach to verbal and physical confrontations that the Diyawanna Oya abode of the peoples’ representatives has seen in the last couple of decades or more, surely deserves to be etched in the annals of parliament.

Why wait for President Wickremesinghe’s independent commission to lay the ground rules for parliamentary conduct?

So as a tribute to her personal assessment as advertised in Business Today and her latest engagement recently in the corridors of power, it is only right that this should be carved in stone like a rock edict of Emperor Asoka.

Perhaps some budding Christopher Marlowe in Sri Lanka’s literary world could pen a few words to Diana who is even called “People’s Princess” in the title to the interview. Maybe the first line of Marlowe’s poem “Dr Faustus” might be helpful.

“Were these the words that launched a thousand quips

And made the Speaker’s jury scan those video clips.

Yet no bodies outside can cure the Diyawanna mess

So waste no time, all this is merely to impress”

One should not forget, of course, State Minister Gamage’s continued criticism that our Resplendent Isle has no night entertainment to satiate those with bursting wallets and diverse desires.

Her complaint is that this Paradise falls dead at night for lack of anything to do.

Why, in heaven’s name, do we need entertainment at night when we have more than enough of it during the day. A day’s outing to the Diyawanna abode where the greatest thinkers since Socrates gather, should surely satisfy all those tourists with jaded souls.

DD is quick to point to her deep Buddhist roots. But I doubt she picked up her Sinhala language from damma classes.

But what intrigued me most in this seemingly unending self-promotion is the reference to her educational qualifications she acquired in the UK. She says she completed her Ordinary Level and Advanced Level examinations, studied psychology and business finance and “completed my LLB and MBA”.

Well, she says she “completed” the LLB and MBA. Does that mean she obtained her LLB degree or just completed her studies? Is it not rather strange that she does not say from which university or tertiary educational institution she obtained these qualifications?

The verbal onslaughts inside and outside parliament, the weaponisaton of handbags and a machismo-like approach to verbal and physical confrontations that the Diyawanna Oya abode of the peoples’ representatives has seen in the last couple of decades or more, surely deserves to be etched in the annals of parliament.

This is not the first time she has avoided saying so. Last November, trying to find out the educational background of Minister Prasanna Ranatunga I turned to the parliament’s Holy Grail—its website. Minister Ranatunga’s qualifications are listed as: GCE (A/L); GCE (O/L): Diploma Certificate in Leadership and Management-Orara University, Australia.

I tried to trace an Orara University in Australia but it does not seem to exist though there is an Orara High School somewhere around Sydney. Maybe Prasanna Ranatunga mistook a high school for a university. These things do happen you know, especially when we have a parliament that appears to accept anything without checking its veracity.

It was then that I came across Diana Gamage’s educational achievements for the first time. They are listed as MBA, LLB (UK). That I thought was strange as I said then in my column on November 6, 2022.

There is a country named the United Kingdom (UK) but it is no university. One could find a University of Edinburgh or a University of London or even a University of Westminster and they are educational institutions accredited to issue degrees. But who ever heard of an LLB (UK) as though the British monarchy or the prime minister goes around issuing degree certificates?

This interview gave her another opportunity to say from which university she qualified for an LLB degree, but again she skipped it. President Wickremesinghe can proudly say he holds an LLB from the University of Colombo. But not Diana Gamage. Why?

We know that if the name of a university is mentioned one can always check with that university to ascertain relevant information.

Somewhere in the late 1990s, there was a firm in Wembley High Street that was dealing with immigration issues. It was run by a Sri Lankan but I don’t wish to mention names here. It was not a legal firm. That person was convicted, among other things, for fixing fake marriages so that Sri Lankans and others who wished to acquire residence here or British citizenship by having a British spouse, all part of the scam.

There were some women employed in this firm, some as receptionists answering telephone calls and putting files together. When the story broke it was front page news in the Wembley Post. This firm did not deal with the law, it broke the law and had to pay the price.

But that is by the way, of course. Sri Lankans here end up doing strange things, even concocting stories. For more tales out of school, ask Ravi, a caller said.

(Neville de Silva is a veteran Sri Lankan journalist who was Assistant Editor of the Hong Kong Standard and worked for Gemini News Service in London. Later he was Deputy Chief-of-Mission in Bangkok and Deputy High Commissioner in London)