Columns

The question buzzing on the people’s lips on Wednesday morn was whose hand was behind the gun that shot Weligama Pradeshiya Sabha Chairman?

Whose hidden finger pulled the trigger of the hired gun to end the life of a people elected representative at his public office while attending to his public duties on the day reserved for the people to meet him?

Lasantha Wickremesekera had arrived early at his office that fatal day. It was Wednesday.  His public day, the day reserved to hear the grievances of the people of the electorate. CCTV footage shows a thin man dressed in a white shirt and dark slacks walking through an empty corridor. On his left is the chairman’s office. Gunshots are heard followed by the sound of chaos as hell breaks loose.

The gunman and his accomplice take off on a motor bike, with their faces covered by their helmets. Wickremesekera is bundled into a vehicle and is rushed to hospital. But it’s to no avail. He was dead on arrival. It seemed as though, he had been waiting in his office as if asking to be killed. A lone sitting duck for anyone to take a potshot.

But SJB organiser for the Weligama electorate, Rehan Jayawickrama, told the media, ‘Lasantha Wickremesekera had asked for police protection. Lasantha sent a letter to the IGP in August 2025. He alerted the authorities to threats and a possible assassination attempt either outside court premises or at the Pradeshiya Sabha office. He requested protection.’ This confirmed what Lasantha had written on his Facebook, a few months before he was killed.

Wounded Weligama Pradeshiya Sabha Chairman Lasantha Wickremesekera is carried by council workers into a vehicle to be taken to hospital. He died upon admission on Wednesday.

Jayawickrama had recently said, in a phone interview with a popular social media channel, that he himself had received death threats. ‘No one does politics scared of such threats.’

Rehan Jayawickrama who bravely holds the SJB fort alone, should remind himself that ‘There by the grace of gods walk I’ in the Weligama electorate.

It was Opposition Leader Sajith Premadasa who first announced the news to the House. He said to the Speaker: ‘A few moments ago, a serious problem has developed. The chairman of the Weligama Pradeshiya Sabha, Lasantha Wickremesekera has been shot inside his public office on his public day.’

The Speaker of the House was not, however, unduly perturbed at the dramatic news. Perhaps, the gravity of the situation that a people’s representative had been shot inside his public office while attending to his public duties hadn’t still sunk in. He merely said, ‘It’s not a point of order for you. It’s a point of order for the Leader of the House, and only then is it for you. The matter would be referred to the Police for action.’

But Sajith could not be so easily put off by the Speaker’s matter-of-fact reply. He insisted on repeating it again and did so placing greater emphasis on each word he had said earlier. However, the Speaker gave the floor to Dr Nalinda Jayatissa to address the House.

Dr Nalinda said they, too, had received the message and police inquiries had already commenced. Their progress report will be soon presented to the House by the Minister of Public Security.

But Sajith remained insistent. He was livid at the lukewarm response he had received. He told the Speaker sternly, ‘The Chairman of the Weligama Sabha has not fallen from the skies. He is an elected member, a people’s representative.’ As Sajith was speaking, he received a message. Sajith resumed his speech and said: I have just received a message that the Chairman of the Weligama Pradeshiya Sabha has succumbed to his injuries.’

If the Leader of the Opposition Sajith Premadasa had expected the tragic news would bring great consternation to the House, it didn’t, except for those on the opposition benches. If he had expected a curtain of shock and empathy to fall on the House, none fell, except on those on the opposition benches. The House divide was so vast, so far apart that no bridge could unite it in grief.

Minister of Public Security Ananda Wijepala gave the Police Progress Report a few hours later. Making a special statement to the House, he delivered a damning indictment of the man elected by the people of Weligama as their Pradeshiya Sabha Chairman, shot dead that morn, and whose body was, probably, still warm on the cold mortuary slab at the hospital, whose dead lips now remain permanently silenced.

The Minister said, ‘The murdered Weligama Pradeshiya Sabha Chairman was not a public representative but an underworld activist. He was in possession of weapons and he was known as an underworld gang leader. There is no threat to public safety from this incident or from underworld activities that have taken place in the past’.

WICKREMESEKERA: Weligama Pradeshiya Sabha Chairman

‘We know that there are organised criminals in this country. They are divided into gangs. They have weapons. There is conflict between them. There is no debate about that. This murder that took place today should also be mentioned’.

‘He is Lasantha Wickremesekera or ‘Midigama Lasa.’ Although he is a public representative, he is an underworld activist. There are 6 cases against him. They are in the courts of Matara, Kurunegala, and Galle. He has received prison sentences. He is on suspended sentences. He is particularly involved in underworld activities.’

‘There used to be disputes between people with underworld connections like this. This is one such dispute. Underworld members use their weapons to kill each other. This has happened in the past. This is a similar incident, we don’t know how the Samagi Jana Balawegaya people know this person. They say that there are no such people in their party’.

‘I told Parliament about this on May 20th. I also mentioned some names of those associated with the SJB. This person is also such a person. We do not approve of the death of an underworld figure or any other person at all. A government that is responsible for the value of human lives is conducting a formal investigation into this. We do not approve of this murder at all.’

‘Whoever he is, he has been appointed as a public representative. However, we say that an underworld figure is working in a political party and has been appointed to that position by that party. When he is murdered, he does not fall into the category of a public representative, but into the underworld category.’

‘I request the Leader of the Opposition and the opposition members to ensure that if they had been law-abiding citizens of society and public representatives, this would not have happened.’

Wijepala’s speech brought strong condemnation from Sarvajana Balaya Party Leader Dilith Jayaweera. He told the House, ‘All of us, who are gathered here today, are here because we have received a mandate from the people. I have worn black to Parliament to express my deep disgust at the speech given by the Minister yesterday with regard to the killing of a public representative.’

He said: ‘As the Minister in charge of public security, he does not condemn this attack as a threat to democracy nor say that the duty thrust upon him to bring the killers to justice will soon be faithfully discharged but, instead, condemns the victim as a member of an underworld gang, with a series of alleged offences against his name and an alias as ‘Midigama Lasa’ to boot.’

REHAN JAYAWICKRAMA: Holds Weligama fort alone

The SJB Secretary Ranjith Madduma Bandara, in his speech to Parliament, said: ‘SJB’s Lasantha Wickremesekera chose a democratic political party and contested the Pradeshiya Sabha elections. He won 67 per cent of the votes polled. We remember a few incidents that happened when he competed for the Chairman’s seat. One was when about 300 government supporters and ministers went there to stop him being victoriously elected as the chairman of the sabha.’

‘He was threatened that day. The Provincial Commissioner, too, was threatened. It was amidst those obstacles that he became Chairman. Not only that. Two council members of the JVP went missing. We ask the Police Chief what happened to those investigations. We say that this is a political murder. We say the government must take responsibility for the lack of security in this country.’

‘We ask the government to take steps to protect the democracy that has been protected in this country for 76 years. So, the government must take this responsibility, they cannot make excuses. This situation has arisen due to the government’s fault and the lack of security.’

But a valid pertinent point raised by Ananda Wijepala in his speech, ‘We don’t know how the SJB knows this person. They say that there are no such people in their party’.

The SJB that boasts it’s a party that will not field any candidates unless they are clean as a whistle, seems to come a cropper when crossing this hurdle.

All that SJB’s Ranjith Madduma Bandara could say to the Sunday Times yesterday was, ‘We were not aware of any past allegations against Wickremesekera. We did not check on his background. He had been a council member previously.’

Are councillors paragons of virtue who do not need to be red flagged and passed unchecked through the green line? The SJB should be more alert for one blot can blotch the entire copybook.

The old firebrand, Vasudeva Nanayakkara, whose faith in Marxism became his religion, his altar of worship, his daily fix of opium, arose from his retirement bed to condemn – what he called – ‘a political murder’. He said, ‘There have been many political murders done under rightwing governments, but they were of a different kind. This happened when a Marxist government was in power and it can never be the case. This happened only because this government was careless in letting unruly elements reign.’

Lasantha Wickremesekera’s funeral will be held this evening.  As his body was brought home on Thursday, his inconsolable mother recalled, ‘After dressing smartly to go to his office, he asked his wife three times, ‘’Do I look smart, do I look smart, do I look smart’’ before leaving the residence for the last time.’ Her slain son was only 37 years old.

Has any organised outfit taken responsibility for his murder, as yet?

The problem is that with an underworld scapegoat available to pile the burden of responsibility, any organised group can place the blame on it.

Whoever did it, whoever was behind the killing, whatever the motive, whatever the allegations levelled against the dead chairman, he was, nevertheless, elected by the people of Weligama, no different, except in importance, to any rightfully elected member of Parliament by the sovereign will of the people.

It is a violent outrage; it’s a brutal assault on the very foundation itself on which Democracy stands.

Whatever organised outfit committed this flagrant crime, they need not send any of their hired hands to ask ‘for whom the bells toll’ for, as John Donne poetically forecasts, ‘it tolls for thee.’