Accurate prediction of 1977 general election results by Cyril Herath

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By P.H. Manatunga

It was a couple of days before 21 July 1977, the day of the general elections; Cyril Herath, at the time who was in charge of National Intelligence, and his wife paid a courtesy visit to our home to reciprocate a visit by my wife and I who were family friends of theirs. My initial contact with Cyril was official, as he would call on me for professional advice on JVP-related investigations that he was in charge of, which led to a close friendship.

I could not resist inquiring from Cyril how the election was turning out to be. In reply he told us that the SLFP would not win more than eight seats and of Cabinet, only Sirimavo Bandaranaike and Maithripala Senanayake would win.

However much the Government was unpopular at that time, it was hard to accept this forecast, but its stunning accuracy baffled me the moment the results were made known. Of course, I did not fail to congratulate Cyril on his professionalism. The point I wish to make is that such an approach to intelligence gathering would unearth the truth but the ‘spot on’ accuracy of Cyril’s forecast was a tribute the man and his professionalism.

I remember that in March 1977, quite unexpectedly, I ran into Cyril, in the posh lobby of Hotel Ashok in New Delhi. He said that he had just returned from a little shopping and was about to emplane, as I was. His main item in shopping was Mysore Dhal while mine was a few apples for my children, both rarities back home at the time.

Years later, I recall the Director CID, O.K. Hemachandra getting in touch with me with regard to the identification of the authorship of a document written in Sinhala. This matter too was suspected to have a connection to the JVP insurgency and related to a document written in Sinhala discovered from a University Campus. However, it has also had a connection to do with the choice of one of three contenders to the post of IGP at the time and the document a ‘planted one’ to score points.

This fact was known to me at the time and I treated it as normal JVP case, although O.K. showed much interest in getting a report very urgently. Due to paucity of adequate suitable comparison material, I had to disappoint O.K. several times from expressing an opinion. But he kept on coming back to me with more and more specimens of a particular person.

I recall that it must have been on the fifth and sixth time that I decided I had the material required to express an opinion. Finally, I identified the writing as having been written by the writer of the specimens. It so happened that the writer whom I had identified was one of the contenders for the post of IGP and not a university student.

When my report was made known, the contender had to drop out of the race and apparently, was given the opportunity to return in view of his long period of service in the Police Department. Thereafter, it was a one horse race for Cyril. I wish to state that no one contacted me with regard to any personal aspects of this case.

(The writer is a former Government Examiner of Questioned Documents.)