"Come Mr Chandraprema" says the usher. I follow him into the smallish modestly furnished office in the presidential secretariat. A national dress and kurakkan satake clad gentleman is sitting at his desk looking through some files with a couple of officials in attendance. Seeing me he asks, "Can’t this wait until I finish this interview?". The room clears and I am left alone with presidential advisor and Gampaha district parliamentary candidate Basil Rajapakse. The governing party does not have a prime ministerial candidate at this election, but the occupant of this modest office has been the effective second in command of the government for the past four years.

I look around the cramped office as I settle down in a chair. The modest office hardly looks like the nerve centre from where many things in this country are made to happen. Every important or intractable issue in the country, whether it be running election campaigns, finalizing nominations lists within the governing party, negotiating with the many coalition partners within the UPFA, wooing politicians away from the opposition, talking to the Indian government, making representations to the UN, deciding on infrastructure projects for the war ravaged north, etc etc, passes through this office.

Yet, over the past four years, there was little or no real publicity for anything that Basil Rajapakse did. He had no press secretary to whisper in our ears, "Boss met so and so last week and said this and so and so said that…" There was only a bare mention of meetings held or visits overseas in news broadcasts. Beyond that, there were no details of what actually happened. In the halcyon days of UNP rule, President Premadasa’s motto was "Never do anything without the public getting to know about it." His rivals Gamini Dissanayake and Lalith Athulathmudali followed much the same policy and anything they did, whether it was making decisions on national security, building a dam or negotiating with the Indian government, was always done in the glare of publicity. But Basil was a figure who operated mostly in the shadows.

The contrast couldn’t be sharper than when one compares Basil with Sarath Fonseka. When SF was army commander, he had his own coterie of journalists. Any journalist who wished to be in his good books could highlight only what happened on land. The air and sea were out of bounds. Even on land, SF had to be the central figure. One officer who proudly wrote in a Ceylon Light Infantry anniversary publication that it was Maj Gen Nanda Mallawaarachchi who had led and won the Mavilaaru operation, was booted out of office. Victor Ivan pointed out in the Ravaya that Keith Noyhar the defence correspondent of The Nation was not beaten within an inch of his life because he was in league with the LTTE, but because he got his defense stories from the sea side. And journalist Namal Perera also got his teeth knocked out because he acted as the conduit between the sea going types and Noyhar. On one occasion, as the members of the security council waited for the arrival of the president, Sarath Fonseka had said to no one in particular "Patthara karayonta kanna bonna paga deela thamai ova liyawaganne." Wasantha Karannagoda sitting on the opposite side of the table had wanted to know "Kauda yako paga dunne?" Nothing further had happened, due to the timely arrival of the president.

The then army commander had one eye on the defence columns while the other eye was on the war. What we see in hindsight is that SF had been planning his entry into politics for years. Here was a military officer seeking publicity or a monopoly of the credit the way a politician would. BR, in contrast, operated largely in obscurity as a civil or military officer of the state would. No political column reported any discussion he had with visiting dignitaries, or the sensitive negotiations he routinely carried out with the partners as well as the enemies of the regime. People saw him on TV only at opening ceremonies. Everything else he did was largely unknown. So naturally, my first question to BR was: Why did you think of contesting elections, and coming into the public domain, without remaining on the national list?

That brought me to the inevitable question. Why maintain a low profile for the past four years if he was going to contest an election? In the old days, Lalith Athulathmudali used to have reporters who sent in stories to the newspapers from his residence. Every political column got inside information and exclusives about who did what. How is it that BR never sought to get his doings into the political columns?

Sri Lanka today basks in the afterglow of having defeated terrorism. But none of this would have been possible without the cooperation of India. As the war in Sri Lanka progressed into the latter half of 2008, India sounded exactly the same as the west, emphasizing that there could be no military solution to the LTTE problem and that negotiations were the only way. As the military operations progressed, Tamil Nadu erupted in protests and Chief Minister Mutuvel Karunanidhi himself went on hunger strike. For all the world, it did appear that October 2008 was going to be another July 1987, where India would step in to stop the war. As the crisis reached a flashpoint, Basil Rajapakse was sent to India to talk to the Indian central government. After his visit, India took a 180 degree turn in its policy towards the Sri Lankan war, and adopted the stance that enabled Sri Lanka to finish off the LTTE. Details of this hectic diplomacy never found its way into the political columns. So I ask BR, what really happened in India in October 2008 that made India change her stance so radically?

He speaks animatedly about India. Like his presidential sibling, BR too has a close relationship with the Indian authorities which began before 2005, when Mahinda Rajapakse was Prime Minister. Maintaining this relationship through the stresses and strains generated by the war, was obviously one of the highlights of his career. Throughout the war, BR was sent on trouble shooting missions overseas. In March 2009, as the war drew to a close, BR led the government team that visited the IMF headquarters in Washington DC, to persuade them to grant a stand by facility to Sri Lanka to tide over the difficulties arising from the global economic meltdown of 2008/09. Soon after the war, he also had to visit the UN and work with the then Permanent Representative H.M.G.S. Palihakkara to defuse a situation that arose with the threat of Sri Lanka being taken up for discussion by the UN security council.

Speaking of the manner in which he was able to work around problems coming from certain quarters overseas, BR says: "After the east was captured, and the LTTE confined to the north, some countries said that the government was bent on following a military course of action and that if they give aid to rehabilitate the east, they will be encouraging a military solution and that therefore, no aid should be given. But I approached Japan for this purpose and found them to be quite responsive. Once aid started coming in from Japan, things gradually changed. When it came to the north and east, the president had a four D concept – demilitarization, democratization, development and devolution. The first phase was handled by the defense secretary. I was in charge of the second and third phases. Democratisation has been proceeding apace in the east, and is now being introduced to the north as well. In those areas, even village level voluntary organizations had been destroyed and representative institutions had to be built from scratch".

Even though the prosecution of the war would not have been possible without him, BR’s sibling Gotabhaya Rajapakse too never sought to hog the limelight or monopolize the defence columns and he did not have a coterie of loyal journalists. It was thus made possible for a subordinate officer to lay claim to all the credit for ending the war. The end result of that was that he and many others, barely escaped with their lives in the presidential election drama. As Gota himself had shouted at the now blacklisted Kariyapperuma brothers of Telecommunications Regulatory Commission fame at Temple Trees the day after the election (they had come to congratulate the president) the issue was not a case of winning or losing but living or getting killed!

The Kariyapperumas were alleged to have consorted with the enemy while enjoying all the perks of office conferred by the government. The government obviously has a marketing problem. In the days of the UNP regime, nobody could have even thought of stealing the credit for defence matters from Lalith Athulathmudali or Ranjan Wijeratne or for development work from Gamini Dissanayake or R.Premadasa. So I ask Basil Rajapakse, is he really satisfied that the development thrust launched by the government has been adequately marketed among the public in the way that the UNP government of 1977 marketed their development projects?

His voice trails off, seemingly not very convinced about the answer himself. After holding forth for a while about marketing, BR finally admits that they have not really been marketing their development projects. The development thrust over the past four years is much bigger than the development thrust of 1977. Yet the present government has not been rubbing awareness of it into the public the way the UNP government of 1977 did. The UNP government talked so much about development that at the presidential election of 1982, opposition politicians referred to Jayewardene as "Sanwardene".

I remain unconvinced. There was of course some truth in BR’s point because surveys carried out during the presidential elections did show that a very significant majority believed that the infrastructure of the country was being developed under the present regime. However the missing ingredient is perhaps a sense of awe, the feeling that no other government could even think of such feats – a feeling abundantly instilled in the people by the UNP govt. of 1977. Despite such shortcomings, in an unplanned kind of way, BR’s name has become associated with development as he has been seen more at opening ceremonies than anywhere else. There is the feeling that the people of the Gampaha district have only to cast their votes and prepare their wish lists, and it’ll all be granted. But what can you do in a district that is already developed to a large extent?

Usually, it’s the opposing side or the challenger who sets the tone of an election. One thing that we find at this election is that the main issue of the presidential election held barely six weeks ago – corruption – does not seem to find any mention at all now. If the final outlay of the Kerawalapitiya power plant had been inflated to twice the actual cost, the opposition should be screaming about it at this election as well. And if the Rajapakse’s had bought the Tangalla Bay Hotel and Basil Rajapakse was living in a newly constructed mansion at Balapokuna Road in Kirullapone, then they should be shouting from the rooftops about this too. But all we hear is about the cost of sugar, maalu paan and kelawallo. I ask BR about his alleged property buying spree.