Sanath’s death leaves Rajapaksas bereft of their stoutest lieutenant
Sanath Nishantha died as he had lived. In life’s fast lane, hurtling at reckless speed. In every political endeavour, he threw caution to the winds and acted in total disregard of its consequences, in the firm unwavering faith that his patron saint in politics Mahinda Rajapaksa would work in mysterious ways to grant absolution and come to his rescue at the eleventh hour.
His tragic death at the untimely age of 48, would, no doubt, have struck a devastating blow to the flagging morale of the Rajapaksa clan and their party, the SLPP, for Sanath Nishantha was the stoutest lieutenant in the Rajapaksa camp to rouse the down-hearted troops to battle even when all was lost. Whereas party secretary Sagala Kariyawasam struggled to do it with hollow phrases, Sanath Nishantha did it with a foolhardy display of brawn and bravado.
Even on the last day of his life on Wednesday, he was seen menacingly standing guard before Susil Premajayantha as he read the Government’s obnoxious Online Safety bill in Parliament, presenting himself as usual as the archetypal defender of the Rajapaksa faith.
He had left Parliament shortly after the bill had been passed in the evening around 6.30. After attending a social function, he proceeded to Chilaw to attend the wedding of his nephew, Lahindu and his bride Warsha. In what may well be the last photograph taken of him at the joyous family occasion, he posed with the newly married couple before bidding, unbeknown to them all, what would be his last farewell to the family; and departing to keep his rendezvous with death at the 11.1 kilometre post on the Katunayake expressway.
His distraught nephew, Lahindu Ishan posted the photograph on Facebook with the comment, ‘I find it hard to think what happened, Nishantha mame. I find it impossible to bear that this happened after you have come for my sake to see me.’
As Sanath Nishantha’s widow, Chamari, an attorney-at-law, told the President when he went to pay his condolences to the family at Sanath Nishantha’s official Colombo residence, ‘he had said, ‘’I must take the whole family’’, so we all went. There he dropped us and, after calling for another vehicle, left in his vehicle to attend another wedding in Chilaw. It was on the way back to Colombo that he met with this tragic accident.’
When the President inquired after the children’s education, she said, the three daughters were in Grades 7, 5 and 4, respectively, at Visaka, while the son had started grade one at Royal this year. She pointed to the cups the children had won after their Puttalam home was burnt down in 2022. The little boy, nestling by her side together with his sisters, perhaps intuitively sensing her imminent unstoppable tear, touchingly reached out to wipe his mother’s eyes dry.
Sanath Nishantha was travelling in the front seat of the jeep on the expressway when it crashed at full speed into a container vehicle moving ahead of it, killing him and his police guard who was seated right behind him. After police had extricated their bodies from the mangled wreck, a police ambulance rushed them to the nearby Ragama Hospital. Both were declared dead on admission around 2.25 am on Thursday morn.
The driver of the jeep survived the deadly crash, sustaining injuries but was soon reported out of danger. He told the Police, on Thursday, that he had desperately tried to avoid colliding with a vehicle that was overtaking the container vehicle and had swerved the jeep to the left and crashed into the container truck instead. The jeep had then hit the metal fence on the left-hand side of the expressway.
The tragic news would have certainly dealt a mortal blow to the moribund hopes of the SLPP to rise from its ashes. Most of all it would have sounded the SLPP’s own death knell, within earshot of its leader Mahinda Rajapaksa who soon made his way to the funeral parlour to pay his respects to his fallen knight whose body lay, awaiting preparations by morticians to be concluded before being presented to the public to pay their last respects. Thereafter, the former president visited Sanath Nishantha’s residence to sympathise with his grieving widow and four young children. On his way out, a visibly distressed Rajapaksa told reporters, ‘his death is a great loss to the party as well as the country. He was a minister who came forward and worked for his area and his country.’
Later, at the Borella funeral parlour, the public mourning was led by President Ranil Wickremesinghe, followed by a trail of Ministers and MPs from both sides of the House. Death that levels all in the dust, had brought them together in a pall of solemn dignified unity to mourn the tragic loss of a fellow parliamentarian who, whilst he had been alive, had invoked in them the fiercest rage. It was a fitting example for each one’s political followers to emulate and contemplate the senselessness of political warfare and the ensuing violence that shadows Lanka’s elections.
But in the immediate aftermath of Sanath Nishantha’s tragic death, the humanitarian message had not filtered down to some. As SLPP’s Agricultural Minister Amaraweera acidly commented: ‘Lots of insulting posts about his death are shared on social media. We observed who had uploaded such posts. According to the reports, we came to know that it is mostly done by a group connected to a certain political party.’
Sanath Nishantha first shot into the limelight at the 2015 elections. Although the UPFA lost the general elections, Sanath Nishantha topped the preferential voting list in the Puttalam District and gained maiden entry to Parliament. At the August 2020 general elections, he rode the crest of the returning wave of Gota zeal and repeated the exercise, securing once again the highest number of preferential votes polled in the Puttalam District.
But within two years of his record-breaking haul of votes, his popularity in the Puttalam District plummeted to an all-time low. His unrestrained defence of the Rajapaksas, disgraced and scorned by the public after the economic debacle in 2022, earned him public contempt. He gained national notoriety in May that year from which his public image never recovered.
His infamous presence on Galle Face Green, seemingly directing operations when Mahinda goons from Temple Trees stormed the Green and attacked peaceful protesters, showed the perverse, violent side of his character; and instantaneously catapulted him to the nation’s Top Ten, as one of the men the people loved to hate most.
Though arrested and remanded, his foul-mouth arrogance, couldn’t be locked up. Not even contempt of court proceedings brought against him which are still pending before court, could silence the Rajapaksa mega mouthpiece. His unabashed servility, his menial sycophantic grovelling at Mahinda Rajapaksa’s feet in abject ‘padanamaskar’, was all too evident in the fiery speeches he made as the self-appointed defender of the Rajapaksa faith.
In one last seeming philanthropic act, he appeared as the heaven-sent benefactor to the apparently destitute Rajapaksa family and paid the 4-year overdue electricity bill of two million bucks in full, for Namal’s gala wedding night’s festive lighting at Medamulana. Though it increased public fury, he couldn’t care less nor gave two hoots what the vast mass of people thought of his many despicable actions.
In the final analysis, the real tragedy of his short life was not the fatal crash but his fatal embrace of the Rajapaksas’ corrupt clan and decadent creed. Man must serve either God or Mammon, he cannot serve two masters. Roman Catholic Sanath Nishantha chose to serve Mahinda and not his Maker. He served him well, only too well.
But in that tragic flaw, can be gleaned, however, one redeeming virtue. He served his chosen master faithfully not only in the dizzy days of power and fortune but also in the harsh days of adversity when the bats that had flocked around the plum tree when it was laden with fruit in the summer, had long deserted it in cold winter when it turned barren beyond hope of revival. His altruistic sense of gratitude to his fallen master, despite knowing there will never be plums for him to reap, still urged him to remain staunch and true unto his last breath.
This Sunday afternoon the last remains of Sanath Nishantha will be laid to rest in a quiet Puttalam churchyard. The final rites will be administered with the biblical prayer: ‘We therefore commit this body to the ground, earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust; in sure and certain hope of the Resurrection to eternal life’. Amen.
‘The evil that men do lives after them; the good is oft interred with their bones’. So be it with Sanath Nishantha as he awaits Judgement Day.