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• CONTINUING SAGA OF ONE WOMAN’S FAILED BID FOR MRS. WORLD TITLE
• Ex-Mrs. Sri Lanka now faces Rs. 900m legal demands for ‘indiscretions’

ROSY:MRS. WORLD 1986 claims Rs. 500m

Poor, pathetic, pitiful Pushpika de Silva. The controversial beauty queen seems unable to hold onto her Mrs. Sri Lanka crown but lets it slip out of her buttered grasp, given half the chance. She lost it once, albeit, briefly, for having supposedly misled the judges about her true marital status, only to regain the bauble the following day after a behind the scenes overnight fix.

She has now been told that she has been stripped of her Mrs. Sri Lanka title due to alleged conduct unbecoming of a title holder; and warned that any attempt to exploit the patented status would expose her to a pecuniary claim in damages. And this latest jinx to strike coming less than a month since she strutted on the Mrs. World catwalk in the gala pageant held at Las Vegas on January 15.

She failed to win the coveted Mrs. World crown as fellow Lankan Caroline Jurie had won it the previous year or as the present Colombo Mayor Rosie Senanayake had bagged it 36 years ago in 1986, 6 years before Pushpika was even born.  Instead she was among the final six out of whom Mrs. America Shaylyn Ford was adjudged as the new Mrs. World with Mrs. United Arab Emirates Dilanjali Kamasutra and Mrs. Jordan Jaclyn Stapp chosen as the first and second runner ups respectively.

PUSHPIKA: EX MRS. SRI LANKA

The furore erupted when a crestfallen Pushpika returned to Lanka shortly after and claimed on her Facebook account she had been chosen the fourth in the final lineup. This claim was soon challenged. Her critics countered there was no fourth place, with even one of the judges confirming it in a tweet and asking her to withdraw the claim. They said the beauty contest was no bicycle race where the fourth also trailed past the finishing line. At Mrs. World contest, after the first, the second and the third had been chosen, the Mrs. World judges simply stop adjudging.

Snubbed red and exposed, she sought the refuge of a YouTube interview with TV journalist Chamuditha Samarawickrama to give vent to her rage. That, alas, proved to be her undoing. And her fall from grace was swift and complete.

In the 46-minute TV interview aired on January 28 Friday, Pushpika let all hell loose. It sealed her fate. In the face of the interviewer’s persistent line of questioning, she grudgingly admitted she had lied about coming fourth but held she was told by Rosy Senanayake to say so. Then she swiftly shifted the subject to fire at will against former Mrs. World 1986, Rosy Senanayake.

In the interview, Pushpika de Silva makes the shocking allegations:

• That Rosy was not invited for the Mrs. World pageant. “And I didn’t want her to come either,” claims Pushpika, “because people would say I won the contest because of her. But Chandimal asked me to invite her. If Rosy hadn’t come to the US, I would definitely have become Mrs. World.”
• That she, Pushpika, paid for Rosy’s ticket to USA. “I paid for the ticket,” Pushpika claims, “I spent Rs.1.2 million to buy her an Emirates business class ticket to America with a few days stopover in Dubai for Rosy to see her sister. My travel agent did all the documentation. I also paid for her entire stay in USA, including hotel accommodation.’’
• That everything had gone smoothly in the events leading up to January 13, two days before final night. “Then Rosy arrived and everything went downhill for me,” Pushpika claimed in her interview. “The judges had already told me I was the winner.”

Only 10 months ago, after Lanka’s own Mrs. World 2020 Caroline Jurie had physically and publicly removed Pushpika’s crown, moments after she had been crowned by Rosy, Rosy Senanayake had described the incident as an ‘ugly act’.

CAROLINE: MRS.WORLD 2020

No doubt she would have held this newest incident of alleged slander against her as an even uglier act. Shortly after Pushpika returned to Lanka without her Golden Fleece, an audio clip went viral three weeks ago, which had Rosy advising Pushpika what to say on Pushpika’s Facebook and telling her to say she had come to the fourth place in the Mrs. World contest after being chosen for the final six.

Rosy told the Daily Mirror on January 27, “It was Pushpika’s manager who told me that Pushpika was the fourth. “I then inquired from the organisers of the pageant and they informed me that they have scrapped the third and fourth runners up positions a few years ago. I don’t know why people should make an issue over this via social media. Pushpika only sought my advice on an effective way she should thank the Sri Lankan public and I just gave her some instructions.”

But Rosy Senanayake has decided to make more than a fuss when the ‘Pushpika interview’ with Chamuditha went viral on January 28. The charges against her — especially the one that Pushpika paid for Rosy Senanayake’s ticket to the USA and paid all expenses for her stay there, including her hotel accommodation — could not be ignored but the alleged ‘freebie’ had to made an issue, even in court.

Else, as the Mayor of Colombo, elected to public office, Rosy Senanayake would open herself up to a bribery investigation being held against her, in the manner, following a complaint received, the Bribery Commission on Tuesday launched an investigation into Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa flying to Tirupathi, with some members of his family, in a private jet, Embraer Legacy 600, allegedly paid for by an unidentified friend.

On February 3, Rosy sent a letter of demand through her lawyers to Pushpika, claiming Rs.500 million as damages, plus a public apology within 14 days for making several defamatory allegations against her during the YouTube interview.

YOUTUBER DANU: Claims Rs 200m

The lawyer’s letter, released to the media, stated: “You have falsely alleged that our Client was not invited to the Mrs. World Pageant when she had an official invitation from Mrs. World Inc. You have made the false accusation that had our Client not attended the Mrs World Pageant held in January 2022, you would have been crowned Mrs. World. You insinuated and/or implied that our Client was instrumental and/or responsible in changing the final results at the pageant and thereby causing your downgrading to the top six instead of winning the crown.”

And that’s just for starters. Pushpika’s legal woes have begun to accumulate at the foot of Hulftsdorp Hill.

Last week, the National Director of Mrs. World in Lanka, Chandimal Jayasinghe, who also accompanied Pushpika to the US, too sent a letter of demand to Pushpika, claiming Rs.200 million as damages within 14 days for allegedly making a defamatory statement regarding him in Chamuditha’s  YouTube interview that, “she can no longer trust Chandimal Jayasinghe and by innuendo held Jayasinghe to be liable for her troubling encounters during the recently concluded Mrs. World 2022 pageant and her unsuccessful attempt of winning”.

Chandimal, along with Rosy, had been part of Pushpika’s inner sanctum of advisers, having, last year, strongly defended Pushpika’s eligibility to contest in the Mrs. World contest even though Pushpika, a mother of one, had been separated from her husband since 2017 and was in the midst of divorce proceedings, despite it strongly rebelling against the Mrs. World concept proudly promoted then by its organisers as a “pageant celebrating the uniqueness of the married woman”.

But one reapest what one sowest. Accusing Pushpika of seriously violating the discipline and ethical standards required of her as Mrs. Sri Lanka, Chandimal Jayasinghe on Tuesday used his mandate as the National Director of Mrs. Sri Lanka for Mrs. World to deliver his coup de grace — the unkindest cut as Pushpika may well say — to strip Pushpika of her crown and her title as Mrs. Sri Lanka. Furthermore, he forbade her using or exploiting the title in any capacity anywhere, warning her she would risk incurring legal liability if she did so.

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MRS.WORLD NATIONAL DIRECTOR CHANDIMAL: Claims Rs. 200m

ut if Rosy’s Rs. 500million and Chandimal’s Rs. 200 million demands were not enough legal liabilities on her head for one week, there was more to come in the pipeline.

This week, on Monday popular YouTuber and media personality Danu Innasithamby sent a letter of demand to Pushpika demanding Rs. 200 million in damages for stating on her Facebook that ‘he had been misled by a certain person telling him to have an interview with Vice President and pageant coordinator of the Mrs. World Organization, USA, Tana Johnson and to ask her certain questions and that certain person was a woman.’

Danu’s lawyers also claimed that after Danu’s interview with Chandimal Jayasinghe in ‘Danuta Kiyanna’ had appeared on February 4 on Lankadeeepa Online,  Pushpika had again stated on her Facebook, two days later, that Danu had been coached on what questions to ask, again by a certain woman who was misleading him. His lawyers maintain, this suggests that their client Danu has ‘foregone his autonomy and agency as an unbiased journalist’ and provided ‘doctored and controlled content to his audience’.

Earlier last week, following his YouTube interview with Tana Johnson, Danu claimed that Pushpika had verbally threatened him and that he had filed a complaint at the Mirihana Police.

But Pushpika, who says she personally paid Rs.7.5 million for Dubai based Filipino designer Michael Cinco’s specially designed gown for the final which in the end she did not wear, remains undaunted. After Chandimal had stripped her of her Mrs. Sri Lanka crown, she told the media on Wednesday: ‘No one can arbitrarily take away my crown. We’ll see what will happen.’

In her interview with Chamuditha, she says: ‘I learnt one good lesson in my life from all this. And that is never ever to trust those who get close you by appearing to help you, who show you a nice face, full of smiles but with jealousy in the heart. They are your worst enemy. There is no political game involved in what happened to me. It’s just envy.’

Her extraordinary ability, however, to forgive all those who played an evil role in her downfall surpasseth all understanding. Pushpika ends the interview on a grim note. She says: ‘No one can put me down. I am an iron woman. I have no anger against them. I have forgiven all of them. But if a person had changed the decision God had made to make me Mrs. World, then that person will face a terrible punishment. I have given it over to God to deliver justice.’

So where will the folly of ambition, the vanity of baubles lead? Pushpika’s elusive quest to be crowned Mrs. World has left her with shattered dreams, with a Rs.7.5 million designer gown gone unworn, with a baggage load of acrimony, too bitter to forgive or to forget in a hurry, with even the justifiable joy of being chosen as one of the final six contestants, eclipsed by being in denial, over a perceived sense of injustice and betrayal.

The continuing saga of one woman’s failed bid to be crowned Mrs. World has also led to Pushpika being stripped of her Mrs. Sri Lanka crown, at least for the moment. For whether natural justice was granted to Pushpika when Chandimal unilaterally exercised his Mrs. World National Director mandate without first affording her a fair hearing may become subject to legal adjudication.

The continuing saga, played out for the last ten months, may also lead to a court room drama, where, to meet the claims of her legal suitors, Pushpika may well have to find — or ask her sponsors, who, according to Pushpika paid for all the visa fees, air tickets and expenses, including hotel accommodation, for all those who accompanied or joined her in Las Vegas, to dig deeper into their deep pockets — the money, a thumping Rs. 900 million of it, to put where her mouth was when she unleashed a barrage of allegations from it in the Chamuditha interview.

Phew. Poor Pathetic Pushpika. Had she bitten off more than she could chew?  If to a king, ‘heavy hangs the head that wears the crown’; then to this dethroned beauty queen, how much heavier must hang the head that’s denied wearing it?