Excerpts from the Speech of Your Excellency Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga

This conference is about achieving harmony in society through connectedness by promoting individuals to go beyond their narrow self interest, to transform selfishness to caring for others and sharing with them for the betterment of the society. The theme of first session this morning is Making a Global Connection. I understand that the conference wishes to explore how individuals as well as leaders can help transform society from a violent uncaring one to a harmonious society. I would like to briefly state my view of what I think is a good leader.

True leaders are those who make better humans of others: giving them vision of a better world, inspiring them to greater heights. True leaders possess the gift to inspire others to subdue and control the animal within others and lift out the good and humane in them. Such leaders have the ability to give a nation the strength to reach unconquered heights. On the other hand, bad leaders have destroyed not only individuals but entire nations. We have many examples of that in the past and even today all over the world. For this, I believe that the following main things are required: first a clear vision of what the leader wishes to achieve for his project, Then an effective plan of action, as well as the tools and materials to implement that vision and finally unswerving honesty, transparency and commitment to the vision. I must hasten to underline that all this requires many special qualities from a leader.

Now I would like to mention as I see them, some of the most dangerous temptation for the leaders. First, the greed for power, second the greed for wealth and money. The two are inter-connected. I’d like to quote here from the words of Gurudev Sri Sri Ravi Shankar. He states somewhere that ‘corruption begins outside the perceived boundary of connectedness." However boundaries born of narrow limited perception of self and self interest begins to dissolve when we recognize our global contentedness that we all belong to one world and that we are all connected in many different ways. When individuals only think of themselves, corruption and crime begin to take root in society.

When a leader forgets why he holds power, that the power bestowed on him is held in trust on behalf of those who gave it to him, the power and that it is never a right given to him to abuse his power in his personal benefit,. He begins to believe when he forgets all this.Then begins corruption. Thus all norms of democracy, freedom and democratic governance are destroyed. The soul of a nation is thus destroyed. the ethics, the spirituality, the caring for others is replaced by self interest. The poor can continue to be poor, the underprivileged must tolerate their suffering, What solutions can we employ to resolve this.I would humbly propose that education , education and more education in every way would be a major solution. Education at home, education in the institution of learning, schools, universities and so on. It is equally important about the acquisition of good ethics, spirituality. All this has to be taught. We are not born with it. It is not in our genes, it has to be taught by our parents in our homes, by our teachers in school. Hence also the importance of institutions such as The Art of Living to educate and develop the spirituality of individuals.

I would like to end by talking very briefly about my experience as a leader. As a leader like most leaders, especially in our part of the world, in a poor country, and in addition a country which was at a terrible civil war, the challenges were immense. Perhaps first I never forgot that power was a sacred thing I held, in trust for the people who put me there. That I had no divine right to hold that power in any other way, if not for the people’s wish. I knew that I had no right to help myself to state assets or demand commissions for government tenders. Therefore I remember I came in screaming against corruption and we did quite a lot of things for that, within the first few months we brought in laws, we amended the constitution, we brought in regulation, practices , procedures, tender procedures were streamlined and published and all tenders had to be done accordingly. Institutions were built for procurement of governments and of course laws to punish the corrupt and at no point did I influence the judges or the people in the bribery and corruption commissions and such like institutions to change their decisions as I wished. Once they were appointed, I never ever spoke to them.

Then I believe also the personal conduct of the leader is extremely important as I stated earlier in guaranteeing honesty, integrity, transparency and good governance. And also, magnanimity is the final thing i want to talk about. The leader has to be magnanimous. Whether I will be able to do that in this life, I do not know. But I did try whenever it was possible. I had to handle a vicious war. I was not the only one. There were many other leaders before me and after me who had to handle it. But at every point I did not forget that those who were waging the war , the important minority community in our country were very different from the civilians who belonged to that community. I never mixed up the terrorist fighters with the Tamil civilians. It was difficult but I didn't.

Just one example, as I came in to power. Invited the terrorist leaders for peace talks. We had 8 months of cease fire and talk but they kicked it in and went back to war. So we had to as a state wage the war. But right through this process of military conflict, I kept inviting them. Sometimes confidentially, not publicly known, sending messages , leading people to talk them and we were able to alleviate certain things. We finally got the agreement of the terrorist organisation to keep developing the northern province which was at war. And we started a developmental process. They didn't want the government people to come and do it. I said okay, we will have the international people coming, international organisations came in, they couldn't say no to the international organisations because they counted a lot on the international community for many things. The development went on while the war was going on. We rebuilt the roads, bridges, schools, universities and the hospitals to which some of the terrorist would come when they were injured fighting our soldiers. but the hospitals were rebuilt. Finally when they attempted to kill me in a suicide bomb attack fourteen years ago, during a presidential election and I was elected a president two days after the attack, in my acceptance address my main focus was inviting the terrorists again and pleading to the youths who were being recruited to forget the hatred and the enmity and join hands with us to make our peace project a success. That speech is published and it is available. I think it is also on my website. So I think it is not an easy thing, I was bad-mouthed, I was abused by the extremists, I am still abused. I was abused. I was called the mother of liars for talking about religious harmony in the major government newspaper editorial. but we go on. It doesn't matter. After retirement I worked with international organisations. I have two organisations and we have two very good programs for religious harmony because we are having some problems due to a handful of extremists in our country. I was asked yesterday by some of the gurus here when we were having a chat - ‘what gives a leader the ability and the strength to do this kind of thing’. I think, it is the values that were given to me by my parents. They taught it to us but also we watched how they live. and learnt by example. Then I learnt at school. We went to school at a time when the schools believed that they did not just have to stuff the children with knowledge and what was required to pass exams. We were also taught how to be good human beings.

Then of course as a Buddhist, the Buddhist philosophy and Buddhist teachings has stood me in good stead. The concepts of ‘tanha’ - greed, how to overcome it. the concept of mitta, karuna, upeksha, to be a good human being , to achieve spirituality, of course I never forgot the very important seminal Buddhist concept that exist in Hinduism and other great religions, the concept of impermanence that nothing lasts forever. We may be at the highest positions but tomorrow we can be right down. And those whom we trampled might be up there. Also my knowledge, study, whatever little I was able to study of the teachings of other great religions - all these gave me little bit of spirituality that the Art of Living tries to give us minor human beings to achieve greatness and to go beyond our selfish beings and reach those heights which were meant for human beings to reach.