By

Vishnuguptha

“Everybody is damaged goods. Everybody got bumps and dents, ja? But sometimes two people fit together, and the bumps go into the dents, and you have a whole thing like a potato.”
― Paul Quarrington

It is dreaming season again for Ranil Wickremesinghe, the leader of the United National Party (UNP). With the nominations for the Wayamba, Central and the Northern provinces already scheduled to be closed on July 31, 2013, the UNP leader and his coteries have begun their prediction game in earnest. And they believe that the UNP would receive at least 45% of the vote in the Wayamba, a hard-fought victory in the Central Province and a decent showing in the Northern Province. This, Ranil thinks, would catapult him to be the ‘joint-opposition’ candidate in the forthcoming Presidential Elections, contesting under the UNP banner. But the unfortunate part of this is that it is only an illusion, an illusion in which Ranil and his cohorts have been dwelling in for the last eighteen years. Defeat after defeat, the Party has been rotting away in the Opposition benches in Parliament, Provincial Councils and Pradesheeya Sabhas.

But when election time comes, Ranil Wickremesinghe comes to life, wakes up from his slumber, just before the nomination-closing days and tries to energize an organization that itself had gone to sleep along with its leader. If elections could be won on this basis and according to Ranil Wickremesinghe’s ‘plan’, if it were a plan at all, all the preparatory work including enthusing the supporters to achieve almost unbelievable results, allocating lawyers to polling booth areas, meeting thugery with credible thugery of your own, maintaining a ‘media blitz’ to counter the Government’s propaganda machine’s incessant 365-day media campaign, identifying the polling agents and counting agents well in advance, fielding a ground staff that could muster a fair number of workers and seeing the entire campaign to a finish from A to Z, would be all in vain. The UNP at present does not have the wherewithal that a political party needs to fight an election, let alone winning one. It’s been hurt election after election, most grievously by the defection of its leading vote-getters in all provinces, districts and electorates.

For example, Keheliya Rambukwella, S B Dissanayake and Sarath Amunugama in Kandy, Navin Dissanayake in Nuwara Eliya, Mohanlal Grero in Colombo and now Dayasiri Jayasekera to add to already defected Johnston Fernando in Kurunegala. The United National Party has suffered in key provinces and districts and any recovery seems impossible unless and until some political miracle occurs. Such miracles are rare indeed, although one cannot rule them out. The present leadership of the UNP nor its current make-up indicates an uncommon and scarce program, action plan or a masterful strategy which in any case are certainly not in the realm of possibility so long as the current leadership is in power and the switches are controlled by them.

The UNP is damaged goods. There are no buyers; the UNP candidates, their ideas or non-ideas, its structure, its key officials, its plans or lack thereof, the whole enchilada is spoiled, rotten and stinking. No human nostril could bear the stench that it emanates. Most writers, pundits and analysts including this writer have been pointing the finger at the Leader. Yet his ouster and replacement alone would not be enough. History has shown us that time and time again when political parties fall from grace, such falls are mostly attributable to the individual leaders who were directing the operations, and the demise so generated has invariably taken the leaders too. A political leader cannot escape from this cruel reality. Among the preliminary signs of a political party’s decline is the defection of its members from time to time. However, when such abandonments are occurring when the party is in the Opposition and the weight of such abandonments are too heavy to bear and when it happens not just to one, two or three stalwarts, but for sixty two members, it’s phenomenal.

The ‘brain-drain’ from the United National Party is almost complete in that what is left is utter rubbish and garbage, those whose knees wobble in the presence of its weaker leader. That is the irony of the whole story. When Ranil Wickremesinghe was confronted by Gamini Dissanayake hours after the results of the General Elections in 1994 with regard to the ‘Leader of the Opposition’ post and Gamini told him that he was keen on becoming the one as most of the senior UNPers had asked him to do so, Ranil’s reaction was: “Gamini, I thought since I am the outgoing Prime Minister, I should be the Leader of the Opposition.”

According to an eye witness to this event, Ranil was extremely nervous and literally wobbling at his knees. What happened after that fateful conversation is now water under the bridge and many a UNPer is still lamenting the loss of Gamini Dissanayake at a time when the Party needed the kind of gutty visionary leader that Gamini Dissanayake was.

The brain-drain from the ranks of the United National Party started with the loss of Gamini and it’s still continuing on its weary way. The effect of this brain-drain is patently obvious. The Party has been losing in almost every election except in the aberrational General Election in 2001 but even then, Ranil did not have the basic knowhow nor did he possess the fundamental political sense to navigate his government in the stormy environment that President Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaranatunge created.

When some eyes opened within the UNP ranks and when both Karu Jayasuriya and Sajith Premadasa, leading UNPers and in rank second only to Ranil chose to embark on a newer and more aggressive course by challenging the leader, that too fell flat for various reasons, more so due to lack of stamina on the part of this new front rather than on any other substantial issue.

The collapse of this new movement only contributed to the already ‘damaged’ status of the Party. Two stalwarts, Maithree Gunaratne and Shiral Lakthilaka, who worked day in and day out for these new changes were left high and dry.

In a most strange way, the release of Sarath Fonseka from prison and his eventual re-entry into the political field sent waves among the UNPers, the vibrations that these waves created were greatly felt and the shuddering it caused made it an almost impossible task to reconcile with Fonseka and forge a new common front with him. The damaged goods suffered another setback. The country is calling for a common front to fight the might of the Rajapaksas, yet the main Opposition Party does not seem to realize the critical significance of it. But Ranil Wickremesinghe is in a mighty hurry to embrace this idea of a common candidate, thinking that he would be the choice.

That is a far cry from reality; if Ranil were the only one leader left breathing, the country would still not choose him against Mahinda Rajapaksa. Ranil himself is so damaged and the residual effect of that damage has infected the Party and a process of decomposition has taken hold of the Grand Old Party. It’s become damaged, corrupted and archaic in thinking. The corrosion that Ranil has helped to set in inside the Party and in the country is consuming not only the very structure of the UNP; it is eating into the body politic of Sri Lanka. The damaged goods would be left behind in the warehouse, ultimately becoming a helpless victim of mice and scavengers.