Young Mangala Samaraweera with his mother, Khema, as he entered politics late 80s.
By Somasiri Munasinghe
A picture of former Sri Lankan president Chandrika Kumaratunga pausing to look at the last puffs of smoke rising from the chimney at the funeral of her best friend Mangala Samaraweera is going viral on social media.
It is an image that will remain in our memory for a long time because the two friends born to influential political families had an enduring relationship through the tumultuous politics of Sri Lanka where a foe can become a friend and vice versa with a blink of an eye.
Through her mom, Mrs. Sirima Bandaranaike, Mangala cut his teeth in politics fresh from England armed with a degree in fashion designing. He was introduced to the former prime minister by her son Anura. It is said that Mrs. B was quite amazed to see the young man hailing from a conservative family background sporting tinted hair and decked in 70s’ hip attire, wondering loudly whether Mahanama (his father) had more sons like that!
The Samaraweeras hailed from the Sinhala-Buddhist heartland of Matara, a city down south. Mangala’s father Mahanama was in politics from 1943, holding key ministerial portfolios until his death in 1966. Mangala was ten years old when he lost his father.
I knew Mangala’s mother, Khema, who worked with me on Ceylon Observer editorial in the 80s. She was the secretary to editor Harold Peiris, the father of Saliya, the current President of the Sri Lanka Bar Association. The two families are also related.
Khema was very attached to her three children. The eldest son was Jaimini. He was an architect in the Fiji Islands, and the youngest daughter, Jayanthi, worked as a travel consultant in Colombo. Jaimini had an accident in the early 80s. Khema was almost hysterical after she got the news and flew to her son’s bedside on the following day and returned to Sri Lanka after he recovered completely. Jaimini passed away in September 2005.
Khema never thought that Mangala would enter politics. After he returned from England armed with a BA in Clothing Design and Technology from St. Martin’s School of Art in London, Mangala lectured to the students at the Institute of Aesthetic Studies at the University of Kelaniya, but Khema was little worried about his rusty Sinhala. He was also writing a fashion feature to the evening tabloid Daily Observer under the name Mangala Innocence.
Khema was very close to Mangala, and after retiring from Lake House, she worked as his private secretary. For some time, she lived with him in his apartment in Dehiwala. She passed away in 2008 at the age of 79.
In politics, Mangala was known as Khemage Koluwa (Khema’s boy), and a meeting to felicitate him on completion of his 30 years of politics in 2019 bore the same title.
At the meeting attended by political bigwigs and former US ambassador to UN Samantha Power, Mangala said his mother ‘was one of the first women to enter local government politics in Sri Lanka when she was elected as a member of the Matara UC in the ’50s’.
“She was a people’s person, and I like to think that I inherited some of my better qualities from her. My mother was not judgmental. I remember writing to her from London at 19, grandly announcing that I was madly in love, and a week later, I get a reply; ‘whoever makes you happy will always make me happy.'”
Talking about his first love affair, he said it did not end in marriage, and he decided to stay single as his ‘interests were confined to a different area.’ He said the woman in question lived in New York and was a good friend who kept in touch frequently.
Mangala depended on his mother to make crucial decisions in his political life. “When I was planning to leave Mahinda Rajapakse’s government, I consulted my mother, who was ailing at the time, about what she thought about my move. She asked me to leave,” he said, adding that it was one of the wisest decisions he took in his career.
Mangala said the saddest moment in his life was his inability to be with her when she breathed her last. “When I was at the hospital, the doctor came and said that my mother has just stopped breathing and asked me to come to be with her. But I started to cry like a child without the courage to see her dead. Looking back, I still regret my failure to go to her and touch her hands at the last moment of her life.”
Mangala was very liberal in politics and one of the most non-racial politicians challenging some sections of the Buddhist clergy who wield significant influence in politics. He respected the monks but was against the groups sowing racial hatred whom he termed as ‘loafers in robes.’ Over the last few years, he remained a bold voice critical of the Rajapaksa administration’s domestic and foreign policy.
In a social media post in July, Mangala said he was disillusioned with the country’s two main political parties – SLFP and UNP – of which he was part of at different times also holding the portfolio of foreign minister two times. He said the parties were ‘two sides of the same coin’.
He is well known for his decision to privatize the telecommunication sector as the minister in 1984 in Chandrika Kumaratunga’s government, a portfolio also held by his father. Mangala liberalized the telecommunication sector doing away with long waiting lists to get a telephone.
From the late 1980s, Mangala campaigned for women whose sons or husbands disappeared or were killed in the government’s crackdown against the leftist Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP). He was a co-convener of the ‘Mothers’ Front’ movement, along with Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa drawing attention to human rights violations during Ranasinghe Premadasa’s tenure as President.
In his last interview with a Sinhala talk show host, a question was raised about Mangala’s sexual orientation using the homophobic Sinhala slang ‘butterfly.’ Mangala said he did not exactly know what the term referred to but replied ‘it is better to be a butterfly rather than being a leech’.
Another talk show host quoted from John Donne’s famous poem ‘Death Be Not Proud’, questioning why Death claimed an honest man like Mangala while the politicians who rob the nation stooping down to the lowest level in life are spared. This particular comment echoed the general notion of the population helpless against the widespread corruption, injustice and nepotism prevailing in Sri Lanka.
Mangala will be known in the history as an honest politician with remarkable leadership qualities. Swimming against the current does not always guarantee victory but he was a politician of a different breed who tried to do some good for his country. May his journey through Samsara be brief.
