It was Ranasinghe Premadasa who introduced mobile phones to Sri Lanka. In those days, the first mobile phone in Sri Lanka was called a brick. Also, Sri Lanka was connected to the internet for the first time during Premadasa’s time. Premadasa entrusted the task of bringing internet to Sri Lanka to the then Minister of Science and Technology Ranil.
But Premadasa never dreamed that the mobile phone and internet he was introducing to Sri Lanka would kill his son’s political character.
No politician in Sri Lanka has been maligned more than Sajith on social media. And no leader in Sri Lanka has been maligned more than Premadasa in the newspapers. The first to introduce television to Sri Lanka was Ranil’s elder brother Shan Wickremesinghe. That was ITN. But no leader has been maligned more than Ranil on TV. The maligned one’s political character was killed by ITN, which his elder brother had introduced to Sri Lanka, and by the television that his uncle J.R. received as a gift from Japan.
Although social media politics in Sri Lanka started in 2015, it was in 2019 that the political wave was created through social media. That wave made Sajith its enemy. The reason is that Sajith was the UNP candidate in the 2019 presidential election.
After Chandrika became president in 1994, when the opinion spread that Ranil, the opposition leader of the country, could build the country, Chandrika’s Goebbels Mangala did it by dressing Ranil up like Mr Bean and making a joke out of it. He also put it into people’s heads that Ranil could not do it to show Ranil’s incompetence. At that time, Mangala distorted the stories that Ranil was telling and showed that Ranil was a clay mill who did not even know the history of Sri Lanka.
Mangala did it on TV. After 2001, the JVP made Ranil look like a fool and did the same thing as Mangala, did by creating Ranil a joker.
It was Gotabaya’s social media network that started calling Sajith ‘stupid son’. They distorted Sajith’s speeches during the 2019 presidential election and made Sajith a joker. Sajith lost in 2019 because of that social media mudslinging. It was Sajith who also slandered Maithri and Ranil for the Easter bombing and the bond scam.
However, it was Ranil’s followers who started smearing Sajith’s educational qualifications. After the 2010 general election, when there was a huge wave within the party that the leadership of the UNP should be given to Sajith, Ranil seized an English website and spread a big smear campaign to falsify Sajith’s degree certificates. When this website, which was deceived by Ranil, asked about Sajith’s degree from the London School of Economics, where Sajith graduated, this is the written response given by that university.
‘Our reports indicate that Sajith Premadasa has obtained a degree in International Relations from the London School of Economics.
2013.10.03
– London School of Economics
But Ranil and his followers did not give up on this work. They continued to smear Sajith with this same degree. This mud was used by Gota’s social media handlers during the 2019 presidential election. They started smearing Sajith with all their might, saying that Sajith’s degree was fake. The social media users of the JVP and the National People’s Force also jumped on Gota’s bandwagon to show that Anura is more educated than Sajith.
When Sajith lost the 2019 presidential election and became the opposition leader, Anura publicly said that Sajith’s head should be examined. When the social media that made Gota the president joined the ‘Gota Fail’ campaign, Anura and the JVP were afraid that Sajith would become the hero of that social media. From then on, the JVP and the National People’s Force took over the baton of Gota’s social media campaign, making Sajith look like a fool.
Dr. N.M is the most powerful politician in Sri Lanka who graduated from the London School of Economics. Perera. After N.M. Perera, the next powerful politician to graduate from the London School of Economics is Sajith Premadasa. Also, he entered the University of Maryland in the United States for a doctorate and passed the exams with flying colours, but when his father Premadasa was assassinated, he had to stop his doctorate and come to Sri Lanka. He later became the opposition leader and is doing his doctorate at the Open University of Sri Lanka to obtain the doctorate that he missed.
The most shared on social media during the 2019 presidential election and the 2024 presidential election was a forged certificate called Sajith’s O’Level certificate. Proving that it was a forged certificate, he tabled in Parliament the O’Level and A’Level certificates approved by an Oxford-Cambridge board from Mill Hill College in London. Many powerful leaders in Sri Lanka have done their O’Level or A’Level from foreign colleges. Leaders like S.W.R.D. Bandaranaike and Dudley Senanayake did their O-levels and A-levels in British schools. Sajith did the same.
A person who graduated from the London School of Economics has never become the Prime Minister or President of Sri Lanka. At a time when Sri Lanka was economically bankrupt, Sri Lanka needed a leader who graduated from such a university. However, the people of Sri Lanka chose a leader who graduated from the University of Kelaniya in Chemistry.
The reason for this is the social media wave created by JVP – NPP that Sajith does not even have O-levels.
The biggest slur against Sajith was when he went to a school and spoke in Japanese, and when he spoke with a Japanese national. Sajith’s Japanese words became a popular satirical video in Sri Lanka. But in the end, the speaker of Anura’s government had to go home because of a Japanese degree. The JVP, which has been selling doctorates and professorships and degrees to win votes since 1997, was embarrassed in the country because of a Japanese degree. In English, it is said that ‘karma is a bitch’.
