-By Chandrapradeep
(Lanka-e-News -23.Aug.2025, 11.20 PM) In the elite drawing rooms of Colombo, it was once unthinkable that Ranil Wickremesinghe—the man who crowned himself “Mr Clean”—would ever taste prison food. Yet yesterday, history shattered that illusion.
The former president, once the supreme figure of Colombo’s landed class, was ordered remanded by the Colombo Magistrate’s Court for the misappropriation of 16.6 million rupees of public money in just two days. With that ruling, Wickremesinghe—Sri Lanka’s longest survivor in politics—fell headfirst into the abyss he had spent decades insisting belonged only to others.
Ranil Wickremesinghe has long carried an air of detachment from the everyday world. Those who knew him closely often remarked he seemed insulated from ordinary life, oblivious to the pulse of the street. Some whisper this aloofness had roots in his childhood—he was an autistic child, it is said—possessing sharpness in one corner of the mind and dullness in another. Whatever the origins, it was on full display in court.
When Magistrate Nilupuli Lankapura rejected bail and ordered him to be held until August 26, Ranil rose from his seat with a smile, muttering in English, “Let’s go.” He appeared to believe the decision had gone in his favour. Perhaps he hadn’t listened carefully, perhaps his Sinhala failed him, or perhaps he had simply convinced himself that bail was assured.
But reality struck swiftly. An officer of the Criminal Investigation Department leaned over and whispered, “Sir, you have been remanded until the 26th.” At that moment, Wickremesinghe collapsed into his chair as though felled by an axe. Even former president Maithripala Sirisena, watching from nearby, was left speechless, unsure how to console his one-time rival.
Later, as the prison bus arrived, officers shackled Wickremesinghe’s hands and escorted him aboard. In his seventy-six years, he had never once travelled by bus. His inaugural bus ride was in a prison bus, shackled like a common thief.
By nightfall he was in the prison hospital, but the shock had already taken its toll. His diabetes was spiralling, his body trembling. Doctors transferred him from the Emergency Treatment Unit at the National Hospital to the Intensive Care Unit. The man who had plotted to fly to India in two days’ time for a Commonwealth event now lay tethered to monitors in Colombo.
Meanwhile, at his home, his wife Maithree Wickremesinghe began an urgent campaign: calling the embassies of powerful nations, pleading for intervention. For years, the Colombo elite had whispered of Ranil’s supposed “international connections”—the man who, they claimed, could pick up the phone to Donald Trump and resolve a tariff war in a single call.
Yesterday, the myth evaporated. One by one, her calls went unanswered. The diplomatic corps, well-briefed by their governments, had little interest in saving a fallen leader now branded corrupt by his own courts.
Maithree confessed bitterly to a friend: “They have deceived us all these years.” But the truth was harsher—Ranil had deceived himself.
For decades, Wickremesinghe’s backers within Colombo’s privileged class had chanted a mantra: that he was untouchable, that no government could touch him, that he was the “international statesman” upon whom the West relied. That incantation lies in ashes today.
Even more shattered is the second mantra: that Anura Kumara Dissanayake’s government was no different from Ranil’s, that the new rulers would never dare lay a finger on him. Yesterday proved otherwise. Wickremesinghe is in remand not because of political vendetta, but because a principle was finally tested: in a functioning republic, no man stands above the law.
As Anura often says, “The law must apply to everyone. And not just apply—they must fear it.” Yesterday, the Colombo elite learned what that meant. Fear has crept into the drawing rooms where arrogance once reigned.
In truth, the power shift from the privileged to the underprivileged occurred formally with last year’s presidential and parliamentary elections. But its true symbolism only crystallised yesterday: when the man who embodied the elite, Ranil Wickremesinghe, was branded corrupt and sent behind bars.
For the underprivileged, it was the first real taste of justice. For the privileged, it was the moment they realised their time was up.
For centuries, Sri Lanka’s ruling class had mocked the dream of equality as a fantasy. Yesterday, that fantasy stirred into reality. The fall of “Mr Clean” into the grim shadows of a prison cell was more than the downfall of a man. It was the fall of a class.
And so, after decades of chants and myths, the elite must whisper the words they thought they would never say: Ranil Wickremesinghe, once untouchable, is now in remand.
A century-old dream has begun to take form.
-By Chandrapradeep
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by (2025-08-23 19:19:47)
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