Decimation of the UNP

By Rajitha Ratwatte
Fromoutsidethepearl@gmail.com

The United National Party or the Uncle Nephew Party as it was sometimes known due to the original penchant of the founding family of the Senanayakes’ trying to keep the leadership within their ranks and triggering the first split and subsequently and to a lesser extent, sparked mainly by default, of J.R. Jayewardene being accused of trying to pass the leadership to his “nephew” Ranil Wickremesinghe. By default, I say as many probable leaders were assassinated during the days of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) terror and Ranil Wickremesinghe became leader as there was no one else left.

The UNP has always been a benevolent shadow in my life and in the handful of those in my family who kept the original alliances. The larger section of our family that moved with Sirima Ratwatte and her husband created a split in the family on political grounds. The large majority of course sat on the fence and reaped whatever largesse they could from whoever was in power!

This is something that may sound absurd to those who look at political science in the future but something that was very real in the lives of my generation and even more so in the lives of our immediate predecessors. The petty acts of revenge and one-upmanship were experienced by us at first hand and the consequences suffered. We took comfort from the fact that we had access to those who made policy in the UNP and that they thought like us and we could relate to them.

Relating to the thinking of the leadership of those you follow is extremely important. This is a point I wish to emphasise when talking about the breakaway fraction of the party now lead by Sajith Premadasa. I have watched them in action, listened to them speaking and regret to say that they do not have a place in the leadership of the UNP that I relate to. Now this is a personal opinion and having said that I would also like to place on record that the UNP I relate to has NO PLACE in the current political scene of Sri Lanka. The current dog eat-dog, and may the devil take the hindmost philosophy is not part of the original UNP. There have been other casualties of political parties and their original philosophies, the Communist Party, the Sri Lanka Freedom Party being two of those of note.

It is a time for change. I am not in a position to judge Ranil Wickremesinghe and cannot say if he read this situation or not. I am also not writing this piece in defence of the man who I have literarily known from the day I was born. I am writing out of a shattering sense of loss, of losing something that has provided me comfort and even solace through a period of my life. It is time for change of thinking, change of leadership and maybe a time for a change of values and standards of the old party bearing the name UNP. This I feel is the vital question.

People like me who are expatriates, in some cases who have even sworn allegiance to another flag, have no right to waffle on about standards and values that should be adhered to by political parties in today’s political scenario. It is up to the rank and file of card carrying members of the UNP to decide if they wish the old standards to be changed, for they Will CHANGE, under this leadership and retain the old name or let the new party under its new name go its own way to success or failure as may be deemed by their political fate.

Being a person with over 60 years’ experience of life, it’s many trials and tribulations, my take is that everything happens in circles. However, “shattered” and even depressed we may be at what is going on right now and however difficult we find it to relate to them and accept them, our beliefs and standards IF THEY ARE RIGHT, will come back. Society with experience and education will realise that “different times need different folks”!

Those who are advocating reconciliation that entails abject surrender and handing over of everything the UNP has stood for to the new party, should maybe think a little deeper. Let the new boys fly under their own flag, let the original UNP step back, lick their wounds and take a good look at what went wrong. Let them identify if there will be a place for any real discernible values and standards that may have been lost in the current direction, identify new and competent leaders who stand for those and wait their turn.

Ranil Wickremesinghe does not deserve the place he now holds in the political history of our mother country. He is now branded as a failure, who due to whatever reasons didn’t hand over the leadership when he should have and under whose stewardship the UNP suffered total decimation at a general election. With all humility I would like to say that I have known this man from afar. Being related, not very closely but closely enough to meet at some family occasions. To have watched him through his student days when a much younger and carefree law student used to entertain us youngsters during the Royal – Thomian match, who was a brilliant student and who had absolutely NONE of the behavioural deviances that he has been accused of, I say he is a clever man but didn’t have enough confidence in himself to handle the full mantle of leadership. He relied on the wrong people to make decisions for him and has been “led up the garden path” to a certain extent.

I hasten to add that I am not making excuses for the man. If one chooses to lead, one has to take responsibility for one’s actions and bear the consequences’, good and bad. I am only holding a brief to try and salvage some sort of pride and a better place in history, for a man I still respect, in spite of feeling greatly let down and yes, even shattered by his actions.