by Dr Upul Wijayawardhana Courtesy The Island

Asoka Ranwala

I continue to be amazed by the parallels in politics in the country of my birth and the country of my residence. But before going in to the latest developments in the field of politics, let me make a clarification regarding a response to my opinion piece What is in a title?” (The Island, 13 December). My grateful thanks go to Philosophiae Doctor (Canterbrigensis) for the tutorial on degrees (A degree is not a title! The Island, 16 December) from which I learnt a lot, but may I humbly point out a wrong assumption. Though in the said piece it is stated The learned physician who identified a Ph.D. degree as a title (The Island, 13/12/24) was wrong. The cardiologist had missed the heart of the matter.” What I stated in my piece was that ‘when challenged, among others, by the much respected and vociferous former elections chief, though the entry in the official parliamentary website dropped ‘Dr’ title and there had been a dramatic rewrite of his profile in the much-used people’s encyclopaedia, Wikipedia, he is yet to respond.” Obviously, What is in a title?” referred to was ‘Dr’, a title, not to the degree PhD!

Much more has surfaced regarding the former speaker since the publication of my piece. He has tendered his resignation, belatedly, from the post of the Speaker which has been accepted by the President; although he had no choice considering the circumstances. The excuse given, as I guessed in my opinion piece, is that he was looking for the documents but could not find them; an excuse nobody bar himself would believe! To make matters worse, he states that there is a likelihood of his obtaining the relevant documentation from the research institute affiliated to Waseda University. Surely, in this era of electronic communication such a feat does not need a gestation period!

As a trade unionist, Ranwala was the president of the State Medical Faculties’ Parents Association and spearheaded the 2018 protests against an attempt by Dr Neville Fernando’s pioneer institute SAITEM (South Asian Institute of Technology and Medicine) to award medical degrees locally. He claimed it was a ‘degree shop’ where a degree could be bought for money! The Sunday Times of 15 December has a photograph of him leading the protests and, more importantly, states that media reports, at the time, referred to him as ‘Prof. Ranwala! ‘Prof. Ranwala, who led the protests against private medical education in Sri Lanka now claims to have obtained a PhD from a private university in Japan! Is this not the height of hypocrisy? How come the JVP/NPP failed to detect these anomalies?

Another minister, who claimed to be a professor, turned out to be a person who had stagnated, for years, as a senior lecturer because he was not able obtain a PhD. He has said he will be submitting his thesis in three months! Perhaps, submission was delayed by all the planning and electioneering over the past few months and now that he has ample free time as a member of parliament, he can complete the thesis and be assured of acceptance as he is in the governing party!

Though some others have got ‘Dr’ titles removed hastily from the parliamentary website, the Minister of Justice has made a complaint to the CID, that parliamentary staff has wrongly called him ‘Dr’ in an attempt to discredit him. This action raises two questions. First, why did he take so long to note that mistake? Second, is it not more prudent to have an internal inquiry, led by the Secretary General of the parliament before contemplating police action.

True, the government is getting some results in some fields but it has lost the shine too soon, just like the Labour government did in the UK; which also came to power with a massive majority like the NPP. This becomes all the more significant as the NPP offered a change in political culture with honest, educated members of parliament but what has happened is just the opposite. It moved far too slowly over the speaker fiasco and the Speaker waited without any explanations, resigning only when he was left with no alternative. Attempts by NPP social media supporters to glorify the Speaker’s resignation as the actions of a transparent government are absurd.

As the saying goes, ‘coming colours no good!