Upali Wijewardene – an enigma and a legend

by Ajith Samaranayake

Between Sri Lanka’s 35th independence anniversary and his birthday Upali Wijewardene boarded his executive Lear Jet at Kuala Lumpur and in a single fateful flash became solidified into an enigma and a legend. The flamboyant tycoon who had left with five others never arrived in Colombo. Somewhere over the Straits of Malacca the plane disappeared with not a clue or a trace.

The drama held the nation in its grip for months. Newspapers reported little else except the mystery of the disappearance. Speculation spread like a bush fire and as the days passed with no news the most fantastic cloak and dagger theories were spun. People gathered by the roadside to listen to the radio news bulletins and strangers become friends as they speculated about the fate of a man who was one of Sri Lanka’s most beloved sons.

Destined

For Philip Upali Wijewardene it was a strangely fitting apotheosis. It was as if his whole colourful career was destined for this final peak, this sudden and dramatic exit just as he was in the very centre of the public eye, a glorious accession to the heights of myth and legend.

For Upali’s life was of the kind which dreams are made of Though born to one of the most distinguished families in Colombo and into a charmed circle which constituted Sri Lanka’s ruling elite, Upali had carved out a career in an area totally aline to that class. He did not take to law or medicine or pursue an academic career as the more favoured sons of this affluent, anglicised and genteel elite were wont to do. Neither did he take to politics. On the contrary with nothing much except the most rudimentary capital and confidence in his own abilities he began a confectionery industry and business in a part of his ancestral home where such brushes with crude commerce had never before taken place. Down the years this fledgling business he was able to build and expand into a mighty conglomerate, Sri Lanka’s only multinational, until he acquired a worldwide reputation as Sri Lanka’s leading entrepreneur, an enterprising and shrewd businessman who could hold his own with the best of them in New York, London or Bonn.

But by February 13, that fateful day which again confirmed the hold of superstition, Upali’s mind was not preoccupied with his businesses alone. For about two years politics had replaced business as his central passion. The man who had conquered the commanding heights of commerce now wanted to conquer the commanding heights of politics. And like everything else he did, he wanted to do it soon.

In 1981 he had founded The Island and the Divaina which had immediately become the eye of the political storm. Their vigorous reporting and comments which did not spare even some of the most powerful politicians of the ruling UNP came as a stirring antidote to the flabby, tame-cat Lake House press which was then dominating journalism. Readers lapped up the new offerings avidly.

Upali Wijewardene’s name was bandied about freely in Parliament. He made no secret of the fact that he wanted to enter Parliament and become finance minister which raised the hackles of the Finance Minister, the fiercely combative Mr. Ronnie de Mel. It became quite commonplace for the bespectacled and owlish Minister to hurl fearsome thunderbolts at the absent Upali in Parliament while we parliamentary reporters of The Island in the absence of our owner became surrogates for the ministerial fury and the embarrassed focus of the eyes of our colleagues in the crowded press gallery of the old Parliament by the sea.

Following year

The following year was to be one of the most crucial in Sri Lanka’s politics. President Jayewardene, Upali’s cousin and mentor, called an early Presidential Election, and in the absence of his normal rival Mrs. Sirima Bandaranaike, incapacitated by her loss of civic rights, easily beat former Minister Hector Kobbekoduwa fielded by an SLFP in tatters. Then claiming that there was a Naxalite conspiracy to assassinate him if he had lost and claiming further that if General Elections were held on schedule a sizeable number of these horrendous Naxalites would enter Parliament he held a Referendum which the UNP won amidst widespread claims of thuggery, ballot-rigging, etc.

Anyway Upali was loyally by Jayewardene’s side during both campaigns, campaigning vigorously for the UNP at Kamburupitiya, his mother’s ancestral village, for which he had done much through his Ruhunu Udanaya programme for improving the conditions of villages in the South. The south he considered his heartland and it was from the South that he sought to enter Parliament for which there were vacancies even as he boarded his Lear Jet that day in the Malaysian capital.

Elections

For what had happened was that Jayewardene had asked for and received the resignations of 17 members of Parliament who had lost their electorates at the Referendum. Parliament had just been convened for the new session of the Second Jayewardene Presidency and the guns had boomed and the Jayamangala Gathas had been chanted. As that irrepressible Communist MP, the much lamented late Sarath Muttettuwegama quipped, “There was a 21-gun salute only the other day. And now 17 of you are gone.” Among the vacancies were Kamburupitiya and Devinuwara either of which Upali was planning to contest.

This was the backdrop to Upali’s destiny which during the next few weeks would hold the nation in its grip and virtually bring the country to a standstill. Among those on board with Upali in the plane which had left Malaysia’s Subang Airport at 8.41 p.m. on February 13 were Mr. Ananda Pelimuhandiram, the whiz kid Financial Director of the Upali Group and one of his most trusted lieutenants, a Malaysian lawyer Mr. S. M. Ratnam and Steward Mr. A. Senanayake. The jet was piloted by Capt. Noel Anandappa with Mr. Sidney de Zoysa as co-pilot.

They were to have reached Colombo by 9.45 p.m. that night but they did not come. Neither did they come the next day. By the morning of Monday February 14 Colombo was agog with the news. Soon it spread everywhere and the people paused in awe and wonderment as the enormity of the event sank into the public consciousness. Upali Wijewardene had mysteriously vanished with his three companions and two navigators leaving not a clue behind somewhere in that vast and empty night sky over Malaysia.

On Tuesday February 15 The Island, ‘Upali’s beloved flagship, broke the news soberly. Over a banner headline “Plane carrying Upali Wijewardene feared lost”. it told its readers that the jet had lost radio contact with the airport just 15 minutes after take off. The last message had said that the aircraft was at an altitude of 27,000 feet. Indonesia and Malaysia had launched a joint air and sea search operation but had failed to find any debris of an aircraft.

At The Island that Monday it was like something out of a novel by Kafka. We were in a daze. Was it possible that six people on board an aircraft in this miraculous age of technology could disappear without a trace? People huddled about the corridors talking, absorbing the news only slowly while the telephones rang incessantly as the other newspapers were getting in touch with us for the latest. But we could do little to shed light on the mystery. The most intensive search by several governments could not yield a single clue. These headlines from the papers which followed convey the flavour of those bizarre days.

February 16 —Air, sea search for Upali Wijewardene continues. Aussie plane may have seen missing jet.

February 17— Three planes with sophisticated equipment comb the ocean. No results yet from seven-notion search.

A flare and a weak signal but search proves negative. Search for missing plane in Andaman Island.

February 18 – Search for missing jet narrows to coastal area round Sumatra. Lear Jet reps suspect sabotage.

Wreckage

On the same day something happened which could well have been the tragic denouement of the whole drama but which was aborted at the last moment. On the afternoon of that Friday a Reuter report was received that the wreckage of the private jet and several bodies had been found off the Indonesian island of Sumatra. I was in Fort at the time having taken a brief respite from the bleak house at Bloemendhal Road. With me at one of Fort’s many hospitable hostelries where we were drinking more than usual was Joe Segera, the Daymon Runyonesque Lake House story teller and chronicler of Canal Row and Chandra S. Perera, the always nattily-dressed NBC reporter and man about town.

Slowly the story spread through Canal Row, Hospital Street and Baillie Street and people reacted with shock and grief. More pints were drunk and our senses numbed somewhat by what we had taken Chandra who had known Upali in London and had common friends with him and I repaired to Bloemendhal Road. There we were told by Editor Vijitha Yapa who had worked frenziedly during those days to bring out the paper in the midst of the tension that Reuter had denied the story within the hour. The next day The Island reported that it had been besieged with telephone calls following the story breaking. Reuters, Hong Kong had been contacted and The Island told ‘The story will be held back’, it reported.

And so the days passed. More headlines.

February 19 — Divers too join search near Sumatra. Another frustrating day of search.

February 21 — Top Sri Lanka cops arrive in KL for investigation.

Sabotage not ruled out.

February 22 — Wheel found by fishermen did come from Lear Jet. Oil slick found near Kumana not from Lear Jet. February 23 —Minesweepers deployed in Indonesia today to find Jet. Identification of Lear Jet wheel narrows search area. February 24 — If Lear Jet wheel was spare explosion may have occurred.

February 25 —Fishermen cleared: Minesweeper move into find jet. There was no black box on missing Lear Jet. February 26 — PM answers questions on Upali.

Unsolved

And so that unusually short month petered out sadly with the riddle unsolved. On the last day of February The Island headline was ‘Lalith thinks sabotage is likely cause of crash’. Under the by line of Lasantha Wickremetunge it said that the then Minister of Trade and Shipping Lalith Athulathmudali who had returned from Indonesia on February 26 as President Jayewardene’s special envoy had said that there were three possibilities for the disappearance of which the most likely was sabotage. Of the other possibilities, pilot error and a defect in the aircraft were most unlikely. Mr. Athulathmudali also stressed that his investigations had shown that Mr. Wijewardene had no commercial enemies. In a box in the same story the paper reported ‘Temporary halt to search’ saying that since the area searched by the minesweeper had yielded no clues the search; was being abandoned and would resume if fresh evidence is uncovered. Only a single wheel — the right outbourne wheel — of the whole aircraft was found.

And so ended a drama which had electrified the country that cruel month of February and still continues to bemuse the people. What happened to Upali? is still the most popular question asked by friends and acquaintances from anybody connected with the Upali Group. Upali fascinated the people in life and now that he is no longer to be found, lost somewhere in the vast ethereal emptiness, he has become a legend and a cult which continues to enthral the people. What would have happened if he had arrived in Colombo that February night with politics entering a fresh phase and plunged into what would have undoubtedly been d stormy political career will remain one of the most fascinating “Ifs”, of our contemporary political history.

Enigmatic fate

But what is clear is that the enigmatic fate of the man who built a commercial empire from nothing and captured a nation’s heart will always be looked upon with wonderment by them. Whether Upali could have stormed the commanding heights of politics by using the methods of advertising and self-promotion which he so successfully used in his business enterprises we will never know. Yet, like Icarus who flew but went too close to the sun so that his wings melted, the strange and fascinating destiny of Upali Wijewardene, Sri Lanka’s first tycoon who also chose the sun as his symbol, will always be a glorious legend of our times.

Newspaper

Looking back across ten more eventful years several memories crowd the mind. The memory which stands out most prominently is that of the collective effort to bring out the paper in the midst of the most terrible tension which could have pervaded any newspaper office. Editor Vijitha Yapa who was a loyal friend of Upali had to battle his feelings while he held the fort in the news room keeping in constant touch with the latest developments and answering the questions of local and foreign journalists. For him and Deputy Editor and News Editor Gamini Weerakoon it was a trial of endurance which they magnificently stood up to. Looking at the paper to which thousands turned during that fateful month for news of its proprietor there is no sign of the almost unbearable tension with which we were working.

Upali Mahattaya

Several days on end we did not go home and the bleak reaches of the night were spent on the bare office tables with the late K. C. Kulasinghe as my companion. Or some nights would be spent in the grimy digs of D. B. S. Jeyaraj located quite close to the Premil Sports Club which was often the hub of our social life where the owner, the late Rajendra Mudalali, would approach us sombrely, always dressed in spotless white sarong and shirt and inquire ‘Any news of Upali Mahattaya?’ And in the morning the sun would rise over the splendid dome of St. Lucia’s Cathedral and we would search the vast sky for an answer.

(This article first appeared in a supplement to mark the 10th anniversary of the disappearance of Upali Wijewardene and party on Feb 13, 1993)