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Firebrand politician SJB’s Hirunika Premachandra found her blooming political rose blighted in the summer of its promise, when slow-footed justice finally managed to catch up with her and condemn her to jail for three years hard labour.

Last Friday, a Colombo High Court judge found her guilty of being the mastermind behind the abduction of a young man in December 2015. She had pleaded not guilty to the charge while her accomplices, who had carried out the kidnapping and had pleaded guilty, were given suspended prison sentences.

After filing an appeal in the Appeal Court challenging her conviction and sentence, a plea for bail pending appeal, fixed to be heard on Thursday was refixed for July 12, since the Attorney General strongly objected to the grant, and requested time to file written submissions, even as his Department had strongly urged the trial court judge not to show leniency to Hirunika, insisting she be made an example of the law being equal to all.

The incident had transpired on December 21, 2015, just barely over three months after she had taken her oaths as an MP elected to Parliament for the first time in that year’s August elections. She was only 29 years. Following the youth’s kidnapping, she was arrested by the police and later released on bail by court on January 9, 2016.

On January 3 of that year, The Sunday Punch commenting on the abduction, stated:

‘When a slip of a girl is suddenly elevated to the ranks of the parliamentary elite, and, with pride swelled crest and power bloated head, holds court in her political office and dispenses the Bharatha Lakshman brand of summary street justice to one kidnapped by her goons and forcibly brought to her feet, it is time President Maithripala Sirisena took serious note and asked himself whether his vision of creating a just society, governed by the much-vaunted principles of Yahapalanaya, is now perilously poised to vanish in a whiff of scandalous smoke.’

Hirunika Premachandra’s conceited belief—at that young age—that she was the fountain of justice in her Kolonnawa electorate and her capricious bent to hold a kangaroo trial at her political office, and to question one forcibly abducted by eight of her henchmen and brought before her against his will, has now returned to deliver justice—though belated—to the man abducted.

CONVICTED: Hirunika led by the police to Welikada Prison after a judge finds her guilty

It had all begun, as Hirunika described at the time to reporters on the day following the abduction: “I know a certain pavement hawker in Pettah who practises his trade down Second Cross Street. He and the association of pavement hawkers numbering around 400 had helped me enormously during the general election. The pavement hawker came to my office the previous day with his two children, a daughter aged 12 and a son aged 8.”

With a lawyer beside her at the press briefing, she continued: “He had met her bodyguards with whom he and the other hawkers are very friendly and had told them that his wife had been taken by a man. He had told them he had gone to the Wellampitiya police and sought their help to get his wife back but the police had told him there was nothing they could do if the wife went with another man and that it was something he would have to sort out by himself. He had asked my guards what he should do.”

“Since the daughter, she said, “could identify the man who had gone with the woman and the man’s workplace was known they had taken my defender vehicle and gone with the husband and the daughter.”

“My men met the man,” she said, “and asked him to come out. When he refused, they had caught him by the neck, as the CCTV cameras show, and taken him out and had brought him here. Then the woman was brought here. I talked to all of them and settled the problem. I even told the man that if he loses his job at the drapery store as a result of this, I will find him a job also. It was only after talking all that and settling the problem that the man had gone and made a complaint at the police station.”

Unbeknown to her, her attempt to play Agony Aunt to a cuckolded supporter in true Godfather style which threatened to despoil the pristine image of the newly elected yahapalana government, would—eight years later—land her in prison as a convict and banish her political hopes at the most crucial hour when her party leader, Sajith Premadasa, was standing on the threshold of becoming the nation’s new president.

When Nemesis, the Goddess of Retribution, visits, she does so unexpectedly, sans any warning or notice. And all who may have done injustice even many years ago, should beware her delayed but inevitable visit at the most unexpected or inconvenient hour.

But until such time her appeal is heard and adjudged by the Appeal Court, she will walk—though free on bail—in the shadow of guilt, stalked by her conviction. She will remain guilty with the burden on her to prove her innocence in the Court of Appeal.

With her conviction last Friday, she joins the ranks of Prasanna Ranatunga who was convicted on a charge of extortion two years ago. He too, like her, walks free with the stigma of conviction scorched into his visage until such day the Appeal Court removes the legal stain.

But unlike Prasanna Ranatunga who not only sits in Parliament but occupies a seat in Cabinet, despite Articles 89 and 91 of the Constitution, read together, stating, ‘it shall be a disqualification to be a member of Parliament if he is serving a sentence of imprisonment (by whatever name it is called) for a term not less than six months imposed after conviction for an offence punishable with imprisonment for a term not less than two years.’ Hirunika Premachandra will be disqualified by the same Articles from even voting—let alone contesting—at any elections for the next seven years, unless the Appeal Court absolves her of the crime or she receives a free pardon.

So why is Hirunika a black sheep and Prasanna a sacred cow left spared by the effect of the Constitutional provisos?

The difference that spares Prasanna and impacts Hirunika revolves around the word ‘suspended’ and the interpretation that has been given to it.

In Section 303 of the Criminal Procedure Code states: ‘A suspended sentence of imprisonment shall be taken as being a sentence of imprisonment for the purpose of any law’. But it has one qualifying provision. The section says, ‘except any law providing for disqualification for loss of office or for the forfeiture or suspension of pensions or other benefits.’  Does it apply to elected MPs? It has been interpreted by the powers that be to mean yes.

Can a man held to be disqualified by the Constitution to sit in Parliament if he’s sentenced to a prison term of two years be deemed not to be disqualified if the sentence—by divine will and a court’s grace—is suspended?

The province to interpret constitutional clauses lies in the Supreme Court which holds, by virtue of Article 125, ‘sole and exclusive jurisdiction to hear and determine any question relating to the interpretation of the Constitution’.

Unfortunately for Hirunika, no such favourable interpretations will or can be made. Hers is clearer cut even for extrajudicial minds to usurp the role of Supreme Court Justices. Even if released on bail on Friday, she will be forced to remain a spectator in the wings—albeit vociferous—or else, if not released, she’ll be forced to observe the silence of a cloistered Carmelite nun in jail.

But even as her past resurges to blight her promise, let’s not forget her recent bravery of taking a tormented people’s wail through a gauntlet of heavily armed guards to then President’s private residential gates on March 31, 2022. She was the catalyst of change which ultimately—in less than four months—brought Ranil Wickremesinghe to the Presidential throne.

Alas, Hirunika’s unsavoury past has come home to roost, grounding her when she needs to fly the most, while others more deserving to be made examples of, roam free, ‘nidos and nidahas’.

Britain sees red, and so does Rishi Sunak! Britain’s Conservative Party’s brief flirtation with first-generation Indian immigrant Rishi Sunak as its leader ended abruptly with a humiliating electoral defeat on Thursday night. After he had conceded defeat to Labour party leader Kier Starmer, he appeared outside No 10 to tell party supporters, ‘I’m sorry,’ before leaving Downing Street to Buckingham Palace to offer his resignation to the regent, King Charles. With the electoral map of Britain showing a major chunk painted in red, it was plainly obvious that Labour had won a landslide victory. The 44-year-old Rishi Sunak, who had been a former financier, had gambled on a snap general election six months before its time. He had hoped that better economic data would swing public support back towards the Tories. He had clearly read the public mood wrong. A month ago, Sunak had received a severe backlash, after failing to gauge the depths of emotions the British held for their war dead. Attending the 80th D-Day Commemoration with other world leaders, and the few surviving war veterans of the Normandy beach crossing, on the 6th of last month, Sunak, while the rest had stayed till the end, had scooted off halfway during the sombre event to London to give a political interview to a TV station. OFFICIAL AUDIENCE: PM elect meets the King to perform what is traditionally known as ‘the Kissing of Hands’, the equivalent of a swearing-in ceremony The British press was merciless in their attacks on him, for heaping gross insult to Britain’s war heroes who had failed to make the Normandy beach crossing. But how could one expect a first-generation Indian immigrant to hold the same raw emotion towards Britain’s war dead as any true Brit would hold in his gut? The stiff upper lipped British keep their true feelings, and a nostalgic pride in their empire, bottled inside. Though racism is officially dead in Britain, deep within its collective conscience it lurks. Last month Sunak told reports: ‘My two daughters have to see and hear Reform people who campaign for Nigel Farage calling me an effing Paki. It hurts and it makes me angry, and it made my daughters cry.’ Perhaps, unspoken racism was one of the underlying factors, alongside economic woes, NHS cuts and Tory disunity that made the Great British Public kick out Sunak and the Tories who chose him as Prime Minister in so ignominious a manner at this election. Rishi Sunak has already declared his intention of stepping down as party leader—before the party does—at the Tory conference to be held soon. As tradition dictates, victorious Labour Party leader Starmer would have headed to Buckingham Palace on Friday morn, where, as is the custom, the King would be waiting to receive him. In the one-to-one meeting, King Charles would have formally asked him: ‘Are you able to form His Majesty’s Government’? And Starmer would have confidently replied, ‘Yes’. Confident because he does not have to worry of stringing together a loose coalition to form a shaky government. A landslide victory – though with only a mere 33 percent the total polled – has spared him such anxieties. Returning from the official audience with the King, the equivalent of a swearing-in ceremony, Stammer said: ‘I have just returned from Buckingham Palace, where I accepted an invitation from His Majesty the King to form the next government of this great nation. With a majority of 176 seats in the House, no doubt, Britain’s new Prime Minister Keir Starmer stands on the uplands of power.