Another Renaissance Man, Lionel Fernando, dies

 Another Renaissance Man, Lionel Fernando, has completed his long and fruitful contribution to his community - to many of its sections: citizenry (as public administrator), victimised social grorups (as social activist, lawyer), ethnic communities, aesthetic audiences (as actor, writer). I believe he died on July 5, and his cremation is today at General Cemetery, Kanatta, this afternoon. Which I hope to attend. I first knew of him as an elder peace-maker in the ethnic conflict, then as Government Agent of Jaffna District, in a bad phase of the ethnic war, and later had the delight and privilege of working under him when he briefly served as chairman of Lake House newspaper group appointed by Chandrika Kumartunga in which I was then serving as Associate Editor, Sunday Observer, virtually running the newspaper during my beloved, brilliant, Editor and friend Ajith Samaranayake's frequent drunken absences. Long before I personally met him, I grew to respect him. I certainly revered his leadership in Lake House. In later years, our paths directly crossed at a South Asian regional consultation of govt and NGO experts on disaster policy convened by ITDG, UK (later known as Practical Action), in Delhi. I recall it was at the India International Centre, where I have stayed many times - lovely, spacious, quiet, residential, multi venue complex. Lionel headed the SL govt officials delegation, while I was the attending communications expert for ITDG's Duryog Nivaran disaster network of South Asia. There were also attending South Asian specialist NGOs. I recall flummoxing the Lankan officials and boxing them in on the issue of sidelining (and harassing) of NGOs by the GoSL which was in sharp contrast to the rest if South Asia. While certain types of NGOs like those in the human rights, social group mobilisation (workers, minorities, women, poor, etc) were harassed intd all of South Asia. But other S, Asian governments did collaborate systematically with NGOs according to practical needs in some sectors. In SL the sidelining of NGOs was almost total except for the health sector and one or two others like the religious and education sectors. But the newly emergent NGO sector on disaster issues was totally ignored in terms of actual prevention and mitigation operational integration. At that consultation, having heard each govt delegation report on their disaster operational set up, I asked each of the five or six attending govt teams whether they had fixed operational collaborations with various specialised NGOs. They all listed out various built-in as well as situation-based collaborations. Only the SL delegation had no reply (which I anticipated and was the point I wanted to make). I could see Lionel's very frustrated and embarassed expression. But there was no animosity in the least because, as a social activist himself (in his personal capacity at the time) he knew exactly what I was getting at. I only politely listened to the various answers and did not push the issue further with comments. It was not necessary and not the place. Actually, because it was Lionel leading the Lankan govt delegation, I had the confidence to gently, indirectly, raise the issue, because there was no fear of later retaliation of myself or of ITDG. I think I really won Lionel's respect and that made me very proud. I could see that in later years whenever our paths crossed.