It was R.G. Senanayake, a Minister of Trade and playboy, who first promoted tourism in Sri Lanka. He would spend weekends in the old rest houses in Bentota and Hikkaduwa with his friends and talk about the beauty of the sea and the fabulous beaches there, which he compared favourably to resorts in Thailand.
He was especially fond of Hikkaduwa with its coral reefs and the large variety of tropical fish living amidst them. You could hire a flat-bottomed boat and see the wonderfully colourful marine life a short distance away from the beach. He persuaded Dudley as PM to renovate the Hikkaduwa and Bentota rest houses to encourage local tourists, who at that time came mostly from the upper class.
RG fell in love with Trincomalee. He sang its praises as a holiday destination and persuaded many of his Colombo friends to buy up parcels of land for beach cottages. When the Government did not heed his call to acquire lands there for domestic tourism, he spent his own money to buy up swathes of land in Uppuveli and Nilaveli, which he devoted to growing red onions, thereby providing a new source of income for the farmers in the area.
Up until then, as Minister of Trade, he imported Bombay onions for domestic consumption. The Agriculture Ministry had said that onions could not be grown in our climate. It also said that potatoes could not be grown in this country till one maverick agricultural officer, Goonetilleke, grew it in his bailiwick in Uva. Initially he was interdicted for his pains. Today potato farming is a major occupation in Uva and Nuwara Eliya.
Arthur-Mike-Rodney boost
Sri Lankan tourism got a big boost when Arthur C. Clarke and Mike Wilson made their home here. They were on their way to the Great Barrier Reef in Australia when they stopped for a few days of snorkelling around Dondra. It was such a wonderful experience that they decided to settle down here and, together with friends like Rodney Jonklaas, explored the ‘Reefs of Taprobane’.
Arthur wrote books, made movies, gave lectures, and generally threw himself into publicising his new home country. A high point of this campaign was the arrival of astronauts to Sri Lanka and their snorkelling off the sea in Trinco near Swami Rock.
The Arthur-Mike-Rodney combination also made a Sinhala movie with Gamini Fonseka in the lead role called ‘Ranmuthu Duwa’ in order to make money for an expedition to the Great and Little Basses near Kirinda. The expedition was a success. They found treasure, but not gold, from a sunken ship and the resulting book ‘The Reefs of Taprobane’ was a bestseller and a wonderful boost for travellers to Sri Lanka.
A priority industry
It was at this time, particularly after developments in aviation led to the emergence of wide-bodied jet aircraft that could undertake long-haul tourism, that the Sri Lankan Government with J.R. Jayewardene (JRJ) as Minister of State put tourism as an important component of our economic development strategy.
But the United National Party (UNP) was defeated in 1970 and the leftists in Mrs. B’s Government were sceptical about the value of tourism. However, Mrs. B and her energetic Tourist Board Chairman Dharmasiri Senanayake overruled them and laid the foundations of the new industry.
With the runaway victory of JRJ in 1977, the tourism industry was given priority. Anandatissa de Alwis was made Minister in charge and ‘the golden age’ of tourism began. Top business companies like John Keells, Aitken Spence, Sommervilles, and Jetwing turned to tourism and brought in a level of management and commitment which the State could never replicate.
Arrivals doubled every year and by 1983 it rose to half a million. New hotels were built and Sri Lanka became a top ‘sea, sun, and sand’ destination, which was ready to compete with Bali, Thailand, and East Africa as long-haul tourist destinations. Then the riots of 1983 occurred and we lost the momentum that was built up and were forced to start again.
Vital foreign exchange earner
By 2019, tourism had become a vital foreign exchange earner and, together with foreign remittances, became the bedrock of our foreign exchange budget. It accounted for 15% of our foreign earnings and targeted a sum of $ 7 million. But with Covid-19, we are back where we started. Unless we can make a strong comeback in tourism, our fate is sealed.
Successive Rajapaksa regimes, while interfering in this essentially private sector operation, sabotaged tourism, as in the case of a criminal terminating of the code sharing and management agreement with Emirates Airlines.
The Airbus scandal in France threw up solid evidence of bribery in the purchase of new aircraft after our agreement was cancelled following the payment of compensation to Emirates. Now neither Emirates nor other recognised airlines want to touch SriLankan with a bargepole. The Sirisena-Wickremesinghe administration beginning in 2015 did nothing in the face of this clear evidence of corruption and our stolen money sitting pretty in Singapore.
Turning to Harin
Now languishing in desperate straits, President Ranil Wickremesinghe (RW) has turned to Minister Harin Fernando to deliver the goods because an uptick in the tourism sector is the ‘low-hanging fruit’ that can speedily pump desperately needed foreign currency into our economy. With our severely devalued rupee, Sri Lanka must be a great value for money destination, as all the travel journals have pointed out.
Harin undoubtedly is a charismatic figure, having earned a reputation as a go-getter. He is an authentic RW product in that he was brought into politics by the President, unlike many others who were in politics before he became the UNP’s ‘President for life’ by hijacking the party Constitution at its Kataragama convention. It must be mentioned to RW’s credit that he inducted several good leaders like Harin, Harsha, and Eran into the party, together with, of course, several of his cronies.
A man of action
Full of energy, Harin has been a man of action. After marrying the daughter of UNP’s Badulla chieftain Vincent Dias, Harin, a native Catholic from Wattala and an old boy of St. Joseph’s College, Colombo, where he excelled in sports, particularly rugby football, took Uva by storm and broke the citadels of the Left and the Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP), which were led by Nimal Siripala de Silva.
He challenged Chief Minister Shasheendra Rajapaksa and defeated him, presaging Mahinda Rajapaksa’s defeat in the Presidential Election of 2015. He continued this winning streak in the 2015 General Election and was rewarded with a Cabinet portfolio by then Prime Minister RW. He was made the Minister of Telecommunications.
He showed that he was forward-looking in promoting the Google Loom (balloon) with the ITU as an easy way of covering the whole island for Wi-Fi. This was shot down (metaphorically) by his uneducated Cabinet colleagues, including President Sirisena, just like a real data-gathering Chinese balloon which flew over its territory was shot down last week by the US.
Harin and the SJB
Harin is a restless individual who wants a quick fix of action. When the UNP appeared to be lethargic under RW, he was the first to press Sajith to break away and form the Samagi Jana Balawegaya (SJB). He was in the forefront of the SJB campaign in 2019’s unsuccessful attempt to wrest the presidency from the Rajapaksas.
Then, as Chief Organiser of the party, he arranged to have mammoth rallies to bolster Sajith’s confidence. The activist in him wanted Sajith to accept the challenge of succeeding GR when it was offered to him on a platter after the Aragalaya. But Sajith backed out and lost his friend as well. Harin returned to his old guru – RW.
Plucking the ‘low-hanging fruit’
Harin now has his work cut out for him. Even in the presidential address to Parliament last week, RW referred to the role of tourism. For a country desperately seeking foreign exchange, it is the ‘low-hanging fruit’ that can easily be plucked. If we, as planned in the JRJ years, find a million tourists and $ 7 billion, then the country is home and dry.
But the young Minister has at least two obstacles facing him. One is the social unrest, which, if allowed to escalate, will drive away big-time tourists. The other is the inefficiency of the State sector, which is trying to take over through regulations and licensing.
The JRJ administration kept the Sri Lanka Administrative Service (SLAS) out of the tourism sector. But under the Rajapaksas, relatives were brought in instead. But the relatives and the SLAS should not be substituted with travelling companions who are cronies and crooks. Politicians and bureaucrats should not be allowed to destroy an industry built up through the hard work of our corporate sector.