All this and too
What is significant about the results of this week’s election is that UNP leader Ranil Wickremesinghe managed to achieve under his own volition ( as some in our Foreign Ministry would say) what neither SWRD Bandaranaike nor Sirima Bandaranaike could do -- eliminate ( certainly as of now) the United National Party from the political landscape of this country.
Instead of building the UNP and harnessing the resources available to it, Wickremesinghe surrounded himself with friends and batch mates from his alma mater irrespective of whether they had the wisdom, capability and strength to perform the tasks mandated to them.
Eventually it was his increasing stubbornness within the UNP to run the party machine as he wanted and ignored the younger members of the party who offered advice. That made him unpopular with the UNP which was manifestly getting sick of his irascibility and stubborn refusal to take advice genuinely proferred.
Whether Donald Trump picked up habits from Ranil Wickremesinghe or it was the other way round, it was becoming increasingly clear that both were heading towards the destruction of the oldest political parties in their countries.
Ranil’s uncle JR Jayewardene picked up a UNP battered at the elections way back in 1970 and restructured it into a political machine that could take on the Sirima Bandaranaike coalition which itself was slowly coming apart in the late 1970s.
Nephew Ranil Wickremesinghe did the opposite. He took a functioning party which had support not only among the rich, urban upper/middle class but also among the rural peasantry and tried to turn it into a cog of the globalised, pro-western world.
If ‘ JR’ was intent on building a strong UNP using his 1978 constitution, his nephew set about gradually dismantling it because he was not ready to modernise the party and throw it open to bright young members with fresh ideas on how to take the party forward.
Take a step back into the politics of, say, 25 years ago. That was the time when Colombo was a UNP fortress. It was impregnable and most other parties hardly had a look in.
Today it appears that the UNP has been unable to win a single seat and even the party leader could not successfully defend his own seat.
If the UNP, the oldest party in Sri Lanka save the LSSP which began somewhere in the 1935s, if I remember correctly, is to be resurrected to play a significant role in local politics then it should be extirpated from the hands of an outdated and stubborn old guard whose shelf life was over a long time ago.
What is difficult to fathom is why the UNP leader seems to have taken such a delight in committing political hara kiri. As I write this, the coffin of the UNP has still not brought for mourners -- if there are any -- to perform their last rights.
One cannot forget the words of Calpurnia, the wife of Julius Caesar to her husband: “When beggars die there are no comets seen”.
"There are some who think that Ranil will somehow swim across the Diyawanna Oya and gain entrance to the Great Hall where rubbish is churned out so regularly. Who knows these are strange times."
( Neville de Silva is a veteran Sri Lankan journalist who was Assistant Editor, Diplomatic Editor and Political Columnist of the Hong Kong Standard before joining Gemini News Service in London. Later he was Deputy Chief of Mission in Bangkok and Deputy High Commissioner in London before returning to journalism.)