LSE FAKE DEGREE LEADER-SAJITH MEETS UK-CONVICTED ORGANISER-CHATHURA
Sri Lanka’s New Italian Saga Arrives Without Pizza, But With Paperwork
Sri Lankan politics has finally achieved what generations of reformers, rebels, and revolutionaries could not: it has reinvented itself as an operatic farce. The latest act in this long-running production stars a leader accused of possessing a mysterious foreign degree without a transcript, meeting and embracing a party organiser burdened by a criminal conviction in the United Kingdom. Together, they are not launching a policy platform or a reform agenda, but something far more ambitious: the transformation of a mainstream political party into what critics now jokingly call “Sri Lanka’s Italian saga”, minus the style and with significantly more paperwork problems.
The scene opens with Sajith Premadasa, leader of the Samagi Jana Balawegaya (SJB), a man who speaks passionately about transparency, accountability, and good governance, while simultaneously presiding over one of the most stubborn academic mysteries in Sri Lankan political history. His much-advertised London School of Economics qualification continues to exist in a quantum state: frequently referenced, rarely evidenced, and eternally without a transcript. It is the only degree in the country that appears to be immune to administrative verification.
Enter stage left: Chatura Abeysinghe, now appointed as the SJB organiser for the Horana electorate. This appointment, we are told, is part of the party’s grassroots strengthening exercise. Unfortunately, critics note that Abeysinghe’s “grassroots” appear to extend all the way to the UK criminal justice system, where he has previously faced conviction. Details, context, and rehabilitation aside, the optics are breathtaking.
Thus, Sri Lanka witnesses the political equivalent of a blind date arranged by destiny itself: an alleged fake-degree leader meeting a UK-convicted organiser, united under one banner, smiling for photographs as if this were a celebration of democratic excellence rather than a punchline written by reality.
If Italian politics gave us Berlusconi, bunga bunga, and courtroom drama, Sri Lanka’s version offers a subtler but no less entertaining twist: fake credentials at the top, criminal records at the base, and moral lectures delivered somewhere in between. The SJB, once marketed as a “clean alternative” to the old political order, now risks rebranding itself as a political rehabilitation centre without professional supervision.
Critics ask a simple question: when a party is led by a man accused of parading an unverifiable foreign qualification, and organised at electorate level by individuals with criminal convictions abroad, what exactly is the ideological glue holding it together? Is it social democracy? Liberal reformism? Or merely the shared belief that Sri Lankan voters have a dangerously short memory?
Sajith Premadasa’s academic saga deserves special mention. In a country where even a village school leaver can produce certificates wrapped in polythene, the continued absence of a transcript from a world-famous institution raises eyebrows. The LSE, an institution known for bureaucracy so intense it could make Kafka weep, has somehow failed to generate a basic academic record for one of Sri Lanka’s most prominent opposition leaders. If true, this would be a miracle of administrative incompetence. If untrue, it becomes something else entirely.
The irony is painful. The same party that demands forensic audits of government spending appears remarkably relaxed about forensic verification of its leader’s academic claims. Transparency, it seems, is a principle best applied to others.
Then comes the appointment of Chatura Abeysinghe. In any functional political system, candidate selection and organisational appointments are exercises in reputational risk management. In Sri Lanka, they are increasingly acts of political performance art. The SJB leadership appears to have concluded that UK convictions are not disqualifications but international experience.
Defenders argue that everyone deserves a second chance. This is a noble sentiment, and one that resonates deeply with democratic values. But second chances usually come with acknowledgment, explanation, and contrition. What troubles observers is not merely the appointment, but the absence of seriousness surrounding it. No clarification. No transparency. Just a shrug and a photo opportunity.
This has led critics to coin a new phrase: “organised democracy”. Not organised crime, mind you—just democracy that appears increasingly comfortable with figures whose biographies require careful footnotes.
The transformation of the SJB into what some now jokingly label a “criminal mafia organisation” is, of course, rhetorical exaggeration. But satire thrives on exaggeration precisely because it exposes uncomfortable truths. When leadership credibility erodes and organisational discipline collapses, ridicule fills the vacuum left by legitimacy.
Sri Lanka’s voters have seen this movie before. Parties that promised moral renewal quietly importing the same practices they once condemned. Leaders who spoke of meritocracy while surrounding themselves with loyalists of questionable pedigree. The difference now is that the contradictions are no longer subtle. They are smiling into cameras.
The “Italian saga” comparison is particularly apt. Like Italy’s political dramas, Sri Lanka’s version is not about ideology but personality, scandal, and survival. It is politics as theatre, where policy is secondary and optics are everything. The only missing ingredient is the resignation speech that never comes.
What does all this mean for the SJB’s future? Possibly nothing. Sri Lankan politics has an extraordinary tolerance for contradiction. Voters exhausted by economic hardship often prioritise familiarity over integrity. A fake degree here, a conviction there—these are, to some, merely footnotes in a system already perceived as broken.
Yet there is a deeper cost. Every such episode further normalises the idea that leadership credentials are optional and accountability negotiable. When political parties abandon internal standards, they lose the moral authority to demand standards from the state.
In the end, the meeting between an alleged fake-degree leader and a UK-convicted organiser is more than comedy. It is a mirror held up to a political culture that has confused loyalty with legitimacy and visibility with virtue.
Sri Lanka may laugh today. But tomorrow, it will still have to govern. And governing, unlike satire, does not allow punchlines to substitute for credibility.