SRI LANKA: All in the Family

“The last word in family planning” is how Britain’s Guardian described it. The paper was referring to the Bandaranaike clan of Sri Lanka (formerly Ceylon), who have managed to turn government into something of a family affair. At the head of the Indian Ocean republic is Mrs. Sirimavo Bandaranaike, the Prime Minister and widow of S.W.R.D. Bandaranaike, who held this post from 1956 until he was assassinated by a Buddhist monk in 1959. Since Mrs. Bandaranaike was last elected in 1970, an imposing number of her relatives—both from her own family, the feudal Ratwatte clan, and her in-laws, the equally aristocratic Bandaranaikes—have assumed high office.

The President of the country, William Gopallawa, and the Minister of Agriculture, Hector Kobbekadura, are both relatives by marriage (see chart). Then there are her brothers: Mackie, her private secretary; Barnes, a Supreme Court judge; Sevali, director of the Export Promotion Secretariat; and Clifford, chairman of the State Plantation Corporation. Last month Mrs. Bandaranaike fired her Finance Minister, N.M. Perera, the grand old man of the Trotskyite Sri Lanka Equality Party. She replaced him with another member of the clan, Felix Bandaranaike. Explains one observer: “She takes the position, ‘What’s wrong with giving my brother a job? He can do it perfectly well, and anyway I can trust him.’ ” No one has suggested, though, that the Bandaranaikes are corrupt.

Perera’s ouster led to a break with the Trotskyites, who had been in uneasy coalition with the Prime Minister’s Sri Lanka Freedom Party. The apparent cause of the political spat was a remark reputedly made by Perera to the effect that Mrs. Bandaranaike’s husband had no consistent policy. Perera later apologized for giving offense, but Mrs. Bandaranaike replied that her party would not tolerate “throat cutting hi the guise of unity” and forced the Trotskyites out of the government. Others believe the firing of Perera was the result of a tug of war within the ruling clan. In this reading, Mrs. Bandaranaike used Perera’s remark as an excuse to move away from the radical left—represented by her daughter Sunethra, who is coordinating secretary to the Prime Minister, her husband Kumar and sister Chandrika—and in the direction of her more conservative son Anura, 27, who has recently become chief organizer of the party’s powerful Youth League. The shift to the right is seen as part of an emergency effort to shore up the country’s failing economy—and the Prime Minister’s falling popularity.

Savings System. Indeed, Sri Lanka’s economic crisis is such that if elections were held now, Mrs. Bandaranaike would almost certainly lose. The problem is a familiar one: severe inflation, particularly in food prices, and high unemployment (running to more than 1 million out of a population of 13 million). To head off possible uprisings, the government announced cuts in basic commodity prices and moved ahead with the second phase of a nationalization program, involving the mostly British-owned tea, rubber and coconut plantations.

That move was popular with almost everyone. What outraged the Trotskyites, apart from being bounced from the government, was the effort by Felix Bandaranaike to abandon two of their cherished measures: a compulsory savings system and a ceiling on income. Last week the Trotskyites, who have 16 seats in Parliament to a government voting strength of 99, gave notice that they would call for a vote of no confidence in Parliament later this month. In the unlikely event that the Trotskyites should win, Mrs. Bandaranaike would be forced to call elections.

The Prime Minister, however, is determined not to call elections before August, when the 80-member conference of nonaligned countries will meet in Sri Lanka. No effort is being spared by the government to beautify and modernize the capital, Colombo, for the conference. The airport highway is being rebuilt. A new luxury hotel, the Lanka Oberoi, has just opened, and a new long-distance telephone system is being installed. With a little help from the family, as it were, few in Sri Lanka doubt that Mrs. Bandaranaike will be able to survive the showdown with the Trotskyites to preside over the conference.