Were wires crossed on intercepted LTTE communications?

(Excerpted from vol. 3 of the Sarath Amunugama autbiography)
“On the 14th November 1987 Parliament passed
the 13th amendment to the constitution
and the Provincial Councils Act of 1987
to establish Provincial Councils”
Wikipedia

The DUNF entered the provincial council elections with much hope. We had outstanding leaders in many of the districts that we contested. Lalith contested the Colombo district and his campaign entered high gear though we were constantly warned that he was in danger of an attack by Premadasa’s goons. Premachandra contested Kurunegala and Gamini moved to Kandy with his wife Sirima leading our Nuwara Eliya contingent.

I too decided to contest from Kandy district and was confident of being returned because of the splendid response from my voters. I chose Harispattuwa which was an electorate with a large number of voters though it was equally segmented by Goigama, other caste and Muslim voters. The Buddhist priests in the electorate backed me which worried Hameed who used to gather their votes as a supplementary to his Muslim votes which put him easily over the top.

Then tragedy struck. Lalith who was an indefatigable campaigner was assassinated while addressing a meeting at Kirulapone. Our fears were about his earlier meeting which was held in Hulftsdorp close to Sucharitha – the home of the President. He had worn a bulletproof vest for this meeting but had relaxed after an uneventful finale and had taken it off for the last ill organized meeting at Kirulapone, which was held under lights as it was already dusk when it began. A moving assassin had shot him in the chest and Lalith’s bodyguard had returned fire and wounded him.

But the shooter had disappeared in the melee. As soon as I heard of this disaster I abandoned my campaigning and returned to Colombo to find our party in a state of shock and convinced that the dirty work was the work of the President and his supporters. Our Central Committee met and issued a statement which virtually accused the President of the murder of our leader. This obviously worried Premadasa who denied the charge and at a public meeting soon after made a heartfelt plea to the nation to absolve him. Little did we know that he would, within days, meet a similar fate himself

Lalith’s funeral

Lalith’s funeral shook up the city. There was a massive gathering which followed the cortege to Kanatte. This included a large number of grieving young men and women who had benefitted from his Mahapola scheme. The security forces were lined up along the road to prevent any incidents but there were several skirmishes on the way and the Police fired tear gas at those in the procession. The atmosphere was electric when we entered the cemetery with thousands of sorrowing people crowding round the coffin. Then there was a sight which is engraved in the minds of those who were present that day. High above on the sky was a lone eagle gliding along the clouds and circling the massive crowd that had assembled below.

We were not unaware that our party symbol was a “Rajaliya” or eagle and this dramatic sight added to the highly charged atmosphere when Gamini gave the funeral oration on behalf of the party. We then retired to lick our wounds and plan our next moves in the light of this crippling blow. Gamini had to take over the leadership and we found that Mrs. Bandaranaike was fully supportive of this move. We decided to go back to our districts and keep up the momentum because the election was drawing near. Lalith’s death was particularly poignant for us in Kandy because he was billed to have spent several days in our electorates as our leader supporting DUNF candidates. He was much in demand as an able orator and we were sure that our campaign would get a big boost with his presence. But that was not to be. We were in shellshock and did not really recover in the short time left to election day.

Murder of a President

Little did we know that the election campaign would be again interrupted by a murder. On May Day 1993 President Premadasa was to lead a rally of the UNP which was to climax with his speech at the Galle Face green. No effort was spared to make it a grand occasion. The “buzz” in Colombo was that he was going to clear his name by identifying the real killers of Lalith, thereby putting an end to the feverish speculation of organized murder that was being promoted by Ravaya and Yukthiya weeklies which had a special relationship with Lalith.

Since the DUNF had lost its leader we were not participating in May Day celebrations. The other opposition parties had their token meetings but they were overshadowed by the UNP juggernaut organized by Sirisena Cooray under the personal supervision of the President. As was his wont Premadasa had arranged to flag off the Colombo Central procession from near the Armour street junction. He ignored the warnings of the police and his soothsayers to stay away from such gatherings on that day.

I was campaigning in a village in Udunuwara electorate in the afternoon of May 1 when the DIG of Kandy district sent a police car with a message that the President had been injured. He requested me to terminate the meeting and go home to await further information because there were contradictory reports coming from Colombo and the state TV and radio remained silent.

By the time I reached Nugawela it became clear that the President had been killed by a LTTE bomber named Babu who had been part of his entourage and had even accompanied him on his visits to Kandy. I was deeply grieved by President Premadasa’s death because, despite political differences, he had been fond of me as I had been of him.

Indeed he had been instrumental in fashioning my destiny when he had me transferred to Colombo as the Director of Information as described in Volume One of my autobiography. He was a sincere and deeply committed “man of the people” and the fate of Sri Lanka would have been different had he lived. He was easily the most hard working political leader that I have been privileged to serve.

Inside story

I have often wondered about the “inside story” of Premadasa’s assassination. There were several loose ends which have to be tied up. The most significant are statements by several senior government officials who later interacted with the LTTE. They insist that they were told that the LTTE had nothing to do with the killing.

Another important factor was that by this time Premadasa had antagonized most of the top secret services of the world. He hated RAW and had made many disparaging remarks about India and her leaders. He displeased MI5 by declaring Gladstone – the British High Commissioner “persona non grata” and expelling him from the country. He antagonized Mossad by publicly accusing Israel of supporting Lalith and Gamini and appointing a Commission of Inquiry hoping to dig up some dirt. Even if these agencies were in the know of conspiracies against Premadasa it is unlikely that they would have blown the whistle or gone out of their way to warn their local counterparts.

But perhaps I could now divulge some information which was conveyed to me by Sirisena Cooray which can add to the conundrum of the Premadasa murder. Since we were good friends I asked Siri to tell me of this event since the Ravaya, and other weeklies accused him of planning Lalith’s murder and had itemized circumstantial evidence which they freely disseminated week after week.

Insisting that both murders were planned and executed by the LTTE, Cooray told me that they had intercepted LTTE communications soon after Lalith’s death. One such message said that target number one [Lalith] had been hit and they would now immediately go for target number two. According to Cooray they assumed that target number two was Gamini. Perhaps that was the “secret” that Premadasa alluded to and was planning to divulge on Galle Face green.

Only later after Premadasa’s death did they wise up to the fact that target number two was the President himself. His confidence in appearing nonchalantly in Armour street, despite pleas not to expose himself to danger, may have been because he thought he knew who target number two was [He thought it was Gamini] and that he was safe. [I must digress here to divulge that both Lakshman Kadirgamar and Jeyaraj Fernandopulle who were killed by the LTTE had similarly believed that they were not LTTE targets because they had got assurances from sources close to the LTTE leadership that they would be spared.]

Though we continued with our electoral campaigning the two recent assassinations completely changed the nature of the election. It had unexpected consequences for the DUNF, Gamini and me.

The aftermath

With the death of Premadasa the UNP had to reorient itself in the absence of its charismatic and ruthless leader. DB Wijetunga, my friend and former minister, who was a “stop gap” PM in Premadasa’s designs was unanimously elected President for the rest of the late President’s term of office. Though many expected Sirisena Cooray to succeed as PM that position went to Ranil Wickremesinghe who had been the Leader of the House. Cooray, who attributed his reluctance to be the PM to his shock at his late leaders demise, may have later regretted it because he was systematically maneuvered out of his office and position in the party by Wickremesinghe and Wijetunga.

It must be stated here that Ranil displayed great skill in effecting a smooth transition. He secured Wijetunga’s position as the new President who in turn appointed Ranil as the Prime Minister. The Premadasa faction which was led by the ambitious widow Hema Premadasa was outmaneuvered as Ranil was determined to be the leader of Colombo district notwithstanding the Premadasa voting machine which dominated Colombo Central and thereby the district as a whole.

What could have led to a dogfight for UNP leadership was averted and Wijetunga’s simplicity and early decision to dismantle some of his predecessors draconian laws made him popular among the Colombo elite who approved of the journalistic description of him as “Dearly Beloved”. He had the support of the UNPs steamroller majority of MPs who were now relieved of their fear of Premadasa’s frequent wrath.

The ascent of Wijetunga helped the UNP to win the Central Provincial Council election comfortably. The Kandy district results were as follows;

UNP: 16 seats

SLFP: 09 seats

DUNF: 05 seats

The provincial councillors elected from DUNF on the basis of proportional representation were;

1. Gamini Dissanayake

2. Sarath Amunugama

3. Keheliya Rambukwella

4. D Samaratunga

5. “Samanala” Shafie

On analyzing the results of this election we of the DUNF had to come to several political conclusions. With the elevation of Wijetunga to the Presidency the hill country remained anchored to the UNP. WB Dissanayake, a former acolyte of Gamini, led the UNP to victory and became the Chief Minister. In other provinces the verdict was not so clear. In the Western and North Western provinces the combined strength of the SLFP and DUNF gave them a majority.

Accordingly we threw our support to CBK to be the Chief Minister of the Western Province. She thereby entered national politics with a bang leading to her achieving much higher office later on in her career. In exchange we negotiated with Mrs. B to get SLFP support for Premachandra of the DUNF to be Chief Minister of the NWP, even though they had more seats in the council.

CBK’s appointment again threw the SLFP into confusion leading to the exit of Anura from his mother’s party. He accepted the invitation from the UNP to join its Cabinet as Minister of Higher Education. The background to Anura’s volte face” was the plot hatched by the new leaders of the party – Ranil, Cooray and Wijetunga – to prevent Gamini from returning to the UNP.

By this time the rank and file of the UNP wanted a national leader with “star quality” and outstanding oratorical skills. None of the three above mentioned had those attributes and the induction of Anura was meant to forestall a demand for Gamini by UNPers and thereby keep him at bay. With Anura’s hasty decision to cross over, the Anura-Mahinda Rajapaksa alliance was broken as the latter refused to join his “lokka” in the UNP fold. It was a fateful and strategic decision because Anura was then moved out of contention for SLFP leadership and the way forward for Mahinda, as the legatee of the Anura faction, in the SLFP became apparent.

Mahinda’s smart move eliminated Anura from the SLFP leadership struggle and made him the rival and challenger of CBK. It was the beginning of Mahinda’s ascent to power. In the future the dominance of the Bandaranaikes of Horagolla in local politics was to be replaced by the Rajapaksas of Medamulana.

(Volume three of the Sarath Amunugama autobiography covering 1992-2022 is available at the Vijitha Yapa Bookshop)