‘A Coward And A Puppet’: Hirunika Slams Gota After Duminda’s Release

JUNE 27, 2021

Parliamentarian Hirunika Premachandra issued a scathing rebuke of President Nandasena Gotabaya Rajapaksa on Thursday after he pardoned her father’s murderer Duminda Silva.

Hirunika Premachandra is the daughter of SLFP trade-unionist and long time ally of current prime minister Mahinda Rajapaksa, Bharatha Lakshman Premachandra who was brutally murdered by Silva and his goons in October 2011. Silva was convicted of the murder by the High Court and the judgment was subsequently upheld by a five-judge bench of the Supreme Court.

In a five-page, hard-hitting letter to the President written the day Silva was released, Premachandra accused Gotabaya Rajapaksa of being a coward and a puppet, and no longer the man who “really leads the country.”

“Accept this truth,” she urged the President, calling him a cat’s paw of a few powerful people who were manipulating his decisions.

Sri Lanka was a lawless country under Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s rule, Premachandra said, likening him to a master leading a nation of slaves to certain death.

“Your rule is breeding injustice, Mr President,” her letter charged. “The day is not far off when the people will break these shackles and rise up,” the letter warned.

Premachandra goes into depth about the relationship between her father and Mahinda Rajapaksa, saying the pair shared an unique brotherhood. Her father had stood by the current prime minister when he was nearly denied the opposition leadership and the premiership by former President Chandrika Kumaratunga, she explained.

Bharatha Lakshman Premachandra made one big misstep when he criticised former Defence Secretary Gotabaya Rajapaksa for his association with Silva, who he said was taking the official to all the houses in Kolonnawa that were part of his lucrative illegal narcotics operation. Silva is a well-known drug kingpin in Kolonnawa and continued to run his narcotics operation from inside Welikada Prison.

Giving an unprecedented and heart-rending account of the day her father was murdered, Premachandra said even 10 years later the pain was still “unbearable”, cutting through her happiness as a mother and a wife. The families of Lasantha Wickrematunge, Prageeth Eknaligoda and Wasim Thajudeen who had not got justice were also probably reliving this trauma every day of their lives, she said.

“No matter how full our lives are, what blessings we receive, there is a void in our hearts that will never be filled,” her letter to the President emphasized.

The condemnation is the most scathing yet of the President’s controversial decision to pardon Silva, and has drawn little reaction from Hirunika Premachandra’s own party, which fears reprisals from the broadcasting giant Hiru TV, owned by the murder convict’s brother Raynor. The Samagi Jana Balawegaya General Secretary issued a statement opposing the pardon, but SJB MPs have refrained from making individual statements or launching a campaign against the President’s actions. Hiru TV has repeatedly blacked out MPs who speak openly against Duminda Silva and launched campaigns to discredit them.

See translation of Hirunika Premachandra’s letter below. For original Sinhala letter, click here.

Written on Poson Full Moon Poya Day, 24th June 2021.

H.E. Gotabaya Rajapaksa

President of the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka Presidential Secretariat

Colombo.

Your Excellency,

Re: Granting Presidential Pardon to R. Dumunda Silva, who was convicted for the murder of Bharatha Lakshman Premachandra by seven Judges.

I am the daughter of Bharatha Lakshman Premachandra, Trade Union Adviser to your brother, former President Mahinda Rajapaksa, and former Member of Parliament.

On October 8, 2011, my beloved father was shot and killed in broad daylight, his body riddled with over 20 bullets. Two High Court judges convicted former MP R Duminda Silva of his murder, and their ruling was upheld by five judges of the Supreme Court, including the Chief Justice. Today, you granted him a presidential pardon.

On that fateful day, my mother and I received an anonymous telephone call informing us that my father had been shot. We did not panic initially, because we were used such phone calls. In the past they had always been followed up with confirmation that my father was safe from harm.

In 1999, it was my father who organized the final election rally for President Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga in Borella. After the LTTE bomb attack on that rally, my father reached out to our family on the telephone to confirm that he was unharmed in the blast. Every morning, my brother and I would worship our father before leaving for school. I vividly remember that when we walked up to him to pay our respects the morning after the bomb blast at the rally, his tunic was still smeared with blood.

In a war-torn country, these incidents were common during his political career that spanned 30 years. But that day in October 2011, the phone never stopped ringing. My mother and I decided to leave for the National Hospital in Colombo. When we got there, we were told to make our way to the mortuary.

Ten years have passed, and the memory of my father’s tragic death still crushes me, filling me with dread and making me feel like the whole world is collapsing around me.

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