Uncle Sam a guiding hand to 24-year-old Parliamentarian

To write about a colourful personality is no easy task. It becomes all the more difficult when one has to write about Sam Wijesinha, the retired Secretary General of Parliament, formerly Clerk of the House of Representatives, one time Crown Counsel, and above all an accomplished personality who could move so easily with Kings and beggars alike. I am not wrong if I say that Sam Wijesinha was the ultimate authority on matters pertaining to Parliament and many matters of governance.

My father’s elder brother, D.M. Rajapaksa entered the State Council of Ceylon in 1936, to represent Hambantota. My loku thaththa became friendly with Uncle Sam (that is how we referred to him) because not many people from rural areas, particularly the deep south, had positions in the public service in Colombo. Uncle Sam hailed from Getamana, a village close to Medamulana, and our families were related and known to each other. That was another reason for the friendship between the families to flourish. DM, who had earned the love and respect of the peasants and the poor, and was known as Ruhune Sinhaya (the Lion of Ruhuna), died suddenly of a heart attack, and it was Uncle Sam who encouraged the young George Rajapaksa to go to Law College.

My father, who up to the time of his brother DM’S death was a keen cultivator and looked after the lands belonging to the Rajapaksas, was suddenly thrust into the world of politics. This was not of his own will but through the sheer pressure of the people and the followers of DM. People of Hambantota, the Giruwa Pattuwa, could not think of a better choice than D.A. Rajapaksa, my father, to succeed his brother. So my father returned unopposed at the by-election, and entered the State Council. My father too was friendly with Uncle Sam and discussed many matters with him, both political and personal. He had spent much time in the village after completing his education at Richmond College, Galle, and would have really then valued the friendship with Uncle Sam when he had to move to Colombo as a State Councillor.

Sam Wijesinha later joined the Attorney General’s Department as a young Crown Counsel and the friendship continued through the nineteen forties into the fifties and even beyond. It developed further when the latter moved to the Parliament of independent Ceylon, as Deputy Clerk to the House in 1963. My father would have been delighted to see his friend and kinsman in a position of influence and authority. Uncle Sam also much appreciated my father’s commitment to our people. I remember him telling me that my father in his maiden speech in the State Council of Ceylon had talked with deep feeling about the need for roads and electricity in rural areas. My father was passionate about improving rural infrastructure and this led him to stress this in his maiden speech itself.

Sam Wijesinha rose to be the Clerk of the House in 1964. The post was a very powerful as well as an influential one at the time. This is where Uncle Sam came into contact with the strongest personalities on both sides of the political divide. My recollection is that, whenever we went to the Parliament to visit my father who was then the Deputy Speaker, we would invariably go to see Uncle Sam. Many a time my father and Uncle Sam were together discussing some issue, either political or personal.

My father died in 1967 leaving my mother to look after the nine of us. Destiny demanded that I take my father’s place in the world of politics at the age of 22.

I faced the General Elections in 1970 from the Beliatta seat, and returned to Parliament as the youngest Member at the time. I was 24 years old, so I was delighted to see Uncle Sam as the Clerk to the House, and I too developed a long standing friendship with him. Time and again Sam Wijesinha, who strode tall in the corridors of Parliament, would offer me very sound advice, often narrating stories about my father and my loku thaththa who had carved out names for themselves. Whenever I had a problem and being a young Parliamentarian, I had many), Uncle Sam was always there to help. I guess he would have thought it his duty to look after his friend’s son, and also because I hailed from the Giruwa Pattuwa, his village being in close proximity to ours.

My impressions of Sam Wijesinha are still vivid. I admire him for his erudition, his forthrightness, his ability to proffer a solution to any problem, be it official or personal, the ease with which he moved with the most powerful in the political and official arenas, and above all, his empathy that enabled him to comprehend any issue. The fact that Uncle Sam was a close friend of my father and therefore our entire family was undoubtedly a consolation to me as a young Parliamentarian. We young MPS learned many things from him. Parliamentary procedures, framing questions, adjournment questions, were areas where Sam Wijesinha’s expertise in matters relating to Parliament and Governance came to the fore. He was simply a master when it came to Parliamentary procedures and the like.

The election of 1977 was devastating to the SLFP and I was among the losers. Although not in Parliament, I did not lose contact with Uncle Sam. Unfortunately I was not an MP at the time that Parliament bade farewell to Sam Wijesinha, an illustrious son of the South and a unique individual who held office in Parliament for 17 long years, as Clerk to the House and later as the First Secretary General of both the National State Assembly and then the Parliament under the 1972 and 1978 constitutions. Sam did not lose contact with Parliament, nor did he go into oblivion after his long stint in the House. He was made the Parliamentary Commissioner for Administration (Ombudsman) and reported to the Petitions Committee of the House. As the first Ombudsman, he was forceful and had a strong impact, making wrong doers in the bureaucracy shudder. Every public officer summoned before him, had to be thoroughly prepared, for Uncle Sam would spare no one when he detected injustice.

He retired from that position in 1991, and then served on the Human Rights Task Force of the Sri Lanka Foundation Institute which, though not fully responsible to Government, was the main semi-official Human Rights body at the time, before the creation of the National Human Rights Commission. Although out of active administrative work, Uncle Sam was always available for consultation on many a national issue and one was certain that one would receive the best advice from him.