After President Premadasa’s assassination, his widow Hema sought the Colombo Central seat, as its longtime organizer Sirisena Cooray had decided not to contest the 1994 general election. At the same time, Ranil Wickremesinghe—having faced humiliating defeats in Biyagama at the 1993 provincial council elections and again in the Gampaha district—set his sights on contesting from Colombo.
With Cooray’s backing, Ranil appealed to party leader President D. B. Wijetunga for the Colombo Central slot. Together, Ranil and Cooray maneuvered to remove Hema’s name from the Colombo district nomination list. Hema only discovered her exclusion when she arrived at the Colombo Municipal Council nomination hall.
Though known as a critic of Premadasa, Gamini Dissanayake was uneasy about this treatment of Hema. When he became Opposition Leader and later the UNP’s presidential candidate in 1994, Gamini invited Sajith Premadasa into politics, promising him the Colombo Central seat. But Gamini’s assassination changed everything—Ranil rose as party leader and bluntly told Sajith, “If you want to do politics, go to Hambantota.” Realizing Colombo Central would never be given to him, Sajith accepted any constituency and began his political journey in Hambantota.
Sajith’s entry unsettled the Rajapaksa family. To protect their turf, Ranil used Hambantota MPs Mervyn Silva and Ananda Kularatne to undermine him. Despite these attacks, Sajith delivered victories for the UNP in Hambantota in both 2000 and 2001, angering the Rajapaksas further.
When Ranil became Prime Minister, expectations were that Sajith would receive a powerful ministry, but Ranil relegated him to Deputy Minister of Health. Sajith, however, chose patience, believing his time within the party would eventually come.
Following the 2010 election defeat, pressure mounted within the UNP to make Sajith the leader. With President Mahinda Rajapaksa’s help, Ranil crushed the rebellion by compensating and swaying members of the UNP’s central committee to his side. When calls grew for either Karu Jayasuriya or Sajith to contest the 2010 presidential election, Ranil declared that no UNP member would be allowed to run if he himself did not. To block both Karu and Sajith, Ranil struck an understanding with Maithripala Sirisena.
When Maithripala emerged as the common candidate, Chandrika, Mangala and other SLFP figures pushed him forward, sidelining Ranil’s demand to be declared the Prime Ministerial candidate. With Mangala openly stating no PM candidate had been agreed upon, Ranil turned to Sajith.
On campaign stages, Sajith declared that without Ranil being named Prime Minister, the UNP would not back Maithripala. This forced Chandrika, Mangala, and the SLFP to concede, officially nominating Ranil as PM-in-waiting.
After Maithripala’s 2015 victory, Ranil became Prime Minister. But conflicts soon erupted between him and the President. On more than sixty occasions, Maithripala even invited Sajith to take over the premiership—hoping to pave the way for Sajith’s UNP leadership. Yet Sajith refused, unwilling to betray his leader, even when the opportunity lay wide open.
In 2018, Maithripala Sirisena said that Ranil should be removed from the Prime Ministership and Sajith should take over the Prime Ministership, with the blessing of a group of anti-Ranil U.N.P. strongmen.
Sajith refused to stab the leader in the back at that time. When even Ranil’s close aide Mangala said that Sajith should be nominated for the 2019 Presidential Election, Ranil appointed a committee to investigate financial irregularities in the Central Cultural Fund under Sajith’s ministry.
There is no one who does not know that Ranil worked with Mahinda to defeat Sajith in the 2019 Presidential Election and that he suppressed the files of the Immigration and Emigration Office, which were an obstacle to proving Gotabaya’s Sri Lankan citizenship.
Ranil’s uncle’s newspaper, the Sunday Times, reported that when Sajith lost the presidential election and Ranil lost the Prime Minister’s post, the Central Cultural Fund’s allegations against Sajith were left in a drawer at Temple Trees when Ranil left.
Mahinda handed over this file of Sajith’s irregularities to the Bribery Commission. After handing it over, he invited Ranil, who was at home after losing the 2020 general election, to come from the national list. The strategy of Mahinda and the Rajapaksa family was to make Ranil the opposition leader and finish off Sajith.
In the midst of the ‘aragalaya’, when Gota was about to hand over the Prime Minister’s post to Sajith, Mahinda and the Rajapaksa family opposed it. They insisted that Ranil should be given the Prime Minister’s post. Sajith presented conditions for accepting the Prime Ministership. Ranil accepted the Prime Minister ship without presenting any conditions and made a deal with the Rajapaksas.
After Ranil became President, he incited Anura Kumara, who was in the opposition, to attack Sajith. The Sajith and Anura debate was a topic of discussion throughout the country. At that time, all media institutions expressed their willingness to broadcast this debate, but a condition was imposed that both of them should attend the debate.
Ranil, knowing that Sajith would not come to the Independent Television which was under his control, brought Anura and telecast the debate and instructed him to finish Sajith. He also planted a news, saying that he was going to investigate the Central Cultural Fund’s allegations against Sajith. The news that the Samagi Jana Balawegaya would abandon Sajith and join him was chanted as a mantra in all the media in the country, giving the advantage to Anura.
In the 2019 presidential election, Ranil mostly went to the plantation areas, the North and East, where there are minorities that are favourable to Sajith. He also publicly said that Sajith cannot defeat Anura.
Before the postal vote, Anura gave an interview to Independent Television. Thalatha Athukorala abandoned Sajith and came to support Ranil, making a public statement that Anura would win. Anura and the JVP took maximum advantage of Thalatha’s defection by saying that Geetha was chosen instead of Thalatha.
If Ranil had not broken Sajith’s minority votes, Sajith would be the president today. Ranil thought that after Sajith was defeated, he would have Anura to finish Sajith off and become the Leader of the Opposition. However, in the 88-89 terror, in a context where all the ministers and MPs who represented the J.R. and Premadasa government were dead or lying sick, the JVP saw Ranil as the only symbol of terror in politics, accused of running a Batalanda torture chamber during the terror.
Therefore, the JVP said that Ranil should be punished for the sake of the murdered JVP youth. Anura’s government started chasing Ranil after those calculations were revealed.
The result was Ranil’s imprisonment. When Ranil was the leader of the UNP, S.B. came to defend Ranil and was accused of contempt of court and went to prison. The party organized a march from S.B.’s village, Hanguranketha, to Colombo to save S.B. Ranil stopped the march midway, saying that the biggest problem in the country was the cost of living, not S.B.
When Sarath Fonseka came to defend Ranil and went to prison, Ranil did not participate in any of the protests held on behalf of Fonseka.
Fonseka was helpless.
‘Ranil defeated me. Ranil defeated Anura. Why are we giving our necks for Ranil…?’
When Ranil went to jail, Sajith could have said that. But he didn’t. The government also thought that Sajith and the Samagi Jana Balawegaya would not fight for Ranil. The government became restless only after Sajith joined the game.
What must Ranil have thought when Anura’s government, which he called his friend, put him in jail and put him in extreme helplessness, and Sajith, whom Ranil always thought and always said was his enemy, came to see Ranil?
A popular saying is recorded on Facebook these days that the head of state who went to jail in Sri Lanka before Ranil was Sri Wickreme Rajasinghe. King Sri Wickreme Rajasinghe was taken to jail by the whites. That was with the help of the Sinhala elite. Since the king had conflicts with them, they betrayed the king to the whites.
Ranil was also in conflict not only with Sajith but also with the opposition SLFP. But Sajith, did not betray Ranil.
