UNP and its continuing suicidal saga

Congratulations on a brilliant editorial on 26 September which used the UNP and its extremely long time leader Ranil Wickremesinghe to highlight the destructive, disastrous and detrimental role he had played individually to the concept of social liberal politics and ideology in Sri Lanka.

You have brilliantly captured in words the reality and practical implications of Wickremesinghe’s role in weakening the pillars of social liberalism, firstly in the UNP and then in Sri Lankan politics.

His nurturing and sustaining the myth that he is eternal and thus creating personality cults within the UNP and every time he governed led to the building up of corruption, cronyism, poor governance, abuse of power, undermining the rule of law and undermining the parliamentary and judicial systems which violate the constitution of Sri Lanka.

These among many other administrative arrogance induced actions led to the erosion of the voters’ trust and confidence in politicians in general and social liberal politicians in particular.

Though claiming to be a democrat, his actions demonstrated his cult based dictatorial tendencies which was nurtured by capitalist elitism which drove millions of Sri Lankan voters to reject capitalism and drive them towards an assumed security of socialism for want of a better society in which wealth distribution is more equitable and where there will be checks and balances enforced by Government for the benefit of every citizen equally.

Ranil Wickremesinghe will paradoxically be looked at as the patriarch of the next few decades of socialist political rule in Sri Lanka.

This needless to say will have enormous economic and geopolitical consequences for Sri Lanka and perhaps even the South Asian region.

His continued political leadership for the moment of the UNP is THE single factor preventing social liberal democratic forces from getting together politically and offering the citizens of Sri Lanka an alternative to socialism in the democratic arena. The ultimate decision of our nation’s political destiny should be based on democracy which we saw in action in the just concluded Presidential elections which I think for the 30th time rejected Wickremesinghe resoundingly. It is extremely unfortunate that so much harm in terms of social liberal politics can be done and continue to be done by a single individual who’s blind followers continue to see him wearing the proverbial emperor’s clothes when in reality the emperor in the end was naked.

The moral of the story about the emperor and his clothes is that nobody around the emperor had the courage to tell him he was naked because the subjects of the emperor blinded by the emperor’s vision had lost their individual ability to be objective and truthful to themselves (which a basic concept of social liberalism).

All it took to see the emperor as he was – naked – was a little boy in the crowd who was unbiased and unafraid to speak the truth of what he saw. Just like what the Sri Lankan voters have been doing to the UNP since Wickremesinghe took over its leadership.

We as a nation need to trust in our mature and functional democracy at national level. The real question is do we have internal democracy within political parties which are clamouring for our votes in the name of democracy?

The UNP and its continuing suicidal saga with Ranil Wickremesinghe is a case in point which provides a clear answer to this question

Long live democracy in Sri Lanka!

Dr. Ruvaiz Haniffa

Specialist Family Physician, Sri Lanka Medical Association Past President