By P.K. Balachandran, IANS
Colombo : Sripathi Sooriyaraachchi, a ruling party dissident and a former minister in Sri Lanka, was killed in a road accident Saturday, an army official said.
SooriyaraAchchi, his bodyguard and driver were killed in an accident at Thambuththegama near Anuradhapura in north-central Sri Lanka.
“While the driver and the bodyguard died on the spot, Sooriyarachchi succumbed to his injuries in the Anuradhapura hospital. Three other occupants of the car were badly injured,” said Brig. Udaya Nanayakkara, a Sri Lankan Army spokesman.
Television channels reported that Sooriyaraachchi’s vehicle swerved and crashed into a roadside tree due to heavy rain.
A former naval officer and MP, Sooriyaraachchi was a controversial politician.As deputy minister for ports and aviation in the Mahinda Rajapaksa government in 2006, he had accused Rajapaksa of entering into a secret deal with the Tamil Tiger rebels to enable his victory in the 2005 presidential election.
Sooriyaraachchi alleged that Rajapaksa would not have won the election, if the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) had not urged the minority Tamils to boycott it.
Rajapaksa’s political advisor and brother, Basil Rajapaksa, negotiated the deal with the Tamil Tigers, whereby the latter would order a boycott of the poll by Tamils of the north and east, in exchange for a huge sum of money, Sooriyaraachchi had alleged.
The Tamils were poised to vote for the United National Party (UNP) candidate Ranil Wickremesinghe, but they could not due to the boycott call. Rajapaksa, who had the support of the Sinhalese majority, won the election.
Sooriyarachchi’s senior colleague Mangala Samaraweera, then cabinet minister for ports and aviation, had also levelled the same charges against Rajapaksa. Both were sacked from the council of ministers.
In addition, Sooriyarachchi was also briefly arrested for his alleged involvement with the Tamil Tigers when he was in the navy as an intelligence officer.
Sooriyarachchi and Samaraweera then formed a new faction of the ruling Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP) called SLFP (Mahajana). Later, SLFP (M) joined the opposition United National Party (UNP) to form the National Congress, an umbrella organisation of parties and groups opposed to the Rajapaksa government.