{"id":91945,"date":"2019-08-04T14:41:33","date_gmt":"2019-08-04T21:41:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=91945"},"modified":"2019-08-04T14:41:33","modified_gmt":"2019-08-04T21:41:33","slug":"end-of-the-road-for-the-slfp","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2019\/08\/04\/end-of-the-road-for-the-slfp\/","title":{"rendered":"End of the road for the SLFP?"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Dr Upul Wijayawardhana Courtesy The Island<\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n\n\n

“Justin, I cannot wait for the old boy to die” was the response my father had received from S. W. R. D. Bandaranaike, shortly before he crossed over to the Opposition, in July 1951, having resigned from the posts of the Leader of the House and Minister of Health & Local Government. My father, Justin Wijayawardhana, was an ardent supporter of SWRD and secretary of the Matara Branch of the Sinhala Maha Sabha, till it joined the UNP, and then was the secretary of the Matara Branch of the UNP. On learning of the possibility of SWRD\u2019s crossover, he rushed to Colombo to request the latter not to do so. When my father pointed out that upon the retirement or death of DS, the Sinhala Maha Sabha faction would agitate and ensure SWRD would succeed, in spite of the mutterings that Lord Soulbury might nominate Dudley, he received the aforesaid response. In spite of the request, with incentives, from SWRD to join his party, my father remained with the UNP till death, probably because of his aversion to Marxists. Had he behaved liked the modern-day politicians, I may have earned the dubious distinction of being the son of a minister!
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When my father related this story to us, I cannot remember; must have been after the landslide victory of SWRD in 1956, I must say that it took the glitter off the revolutionary hero image I had then of SWRD; after all, he gave pride of place to my native language or so I thought then, but it was a misjudgement of youth. Whether SWRD had a patriotic stance or exploited basic instincts to gain power is immaterial as, unfortunately, the result was a divided nation with continuing repercussions, even to date.
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SWRD dissolved the Sinhala Maha Sabha and launched his new party, the Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP), on 2 September 1951. It puzzles me, even to this day, why he used the term freedom, in the party name, when we had already got freedom (nidahasa) from our colonizer. Totally unexpectedly, just over six months later, DS died, on 22 March 1952, having fallen off his horse he was riding in Galle Face.
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Maybe, even if SWRD had not crossed over, Lord Soulbury would still have appointed Dudley Prime Minister. He would then have had a much stronger case to resign and form a new political party. In fact, this seems to be the narrative of some SLFP bigwigs. I was taken aback when a senior member of the SLFP recently stated that on Dudley\u2019s appointment as PM, by Lord Soulbury, as wished to by DS, SWRD had left the UNP to form the SLFP!
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Though Dudley justified his appointment by winning, with a landslide, the election he called in May 1952, he resigned in August 1953, taking responsibility for the loss of 10 lives during the \u2018hartal\u2019 organised by the leftists. Sir John, who succeeded him called an election in 1956, prematurely. SWRD, the charismatic politician and the great orator, rallied the \u2018Pancha Maha Balaewegaya\u2019 to win a landslide at this election and the second force in Sri Lanka politics was born. Since then, the SLFP and UNP has ruled the country, alternately, sometimes helped by smaller parties.
<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On the assassination of SWRD, in September 1959, Wijayanada Dahanayaka became the PM. Though a man with total integrity, his term in office is better forgotten! The mantle of leadership of the SLFP fell on Sirimavo, who became the world\u2019s first woman PM by winning the July 1960 elections. When she thought of retirement, the biggest quandary she faced was whether to pass on the mantle to her son or her daughter and, for reasons best known to herself, she passed it on to Chandrika; the more intelligent son, left confused, wasted his life without realising his full potential. Chandrika was PM for a short time in 1994, before becoming the first woman president of Sri Lanka in November 1994. Her presidency till 2005 is yet another era of SLFP, better forgotten.
<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mahinda Rajapaksa became the President in 2005 and took over the SLFP leadership from the Bandaranaikes.
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Maybe, the golden era of the SLFP was under Mahinda, mainly due to the defeat of LTTE terrorism. Based on astrological advice, when Mahinda called a premature presidential election in 2015, Chandrika struck. Unfortunately for her, the Yahapalanaya, she created and fostered, has turned out to be a mirage. The bond scams, perpetuated by an imported Governor and his son-in-law, were made worse by the attempted cover-up by her new friend,Ranil.
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Clashes between Maithri and Ranil paved the way for the emergence of a new form of terrorism. As eminently pointed out by Malcolm Cardinal Ranjith, backboneless politicians are indulging in a battle of self-preservation at the expense of the security of the nation. Much to Chandrika\u2019s disdain, all this has led to a Mahinda resurgence, if one were to take cognisance of cheers from the crowd at the sheer mention of the name, at the parting speech of Lasith Malinga, among many other things.
<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mahinda\u2019s other brother, another clever politician Basil, has been busy building a new party; the SLPP. In a short period of existence, the bud (pohottuwa) bloomed at the last local government elections; so much, so that the Yahapalanaya is finding every possible excuse to postpone elections. If the present trend continues the SLPP may well become the dominant party in Sri Lanka politics.
<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What is left of the SLFP seems to be dwindling by the day and the behaviour of the bigwigs is only second to the behaviour of the PM, who denies the existence of wattle and daub houses in Sri Lanka and thinks what villagers want is not food and clothing, but gym equipment!
<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As the race for the presidency hots up, the big decision for the few MPs, remaining in the SLFP, seems to be, which way to jump: some are attempting to polevault to the UNP whilst others are jump the SLPP bandwagon. Maithri, after flirting with Sajith , seems to be in discussion with the SLPP.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Dr Upul Wijayawardhana Courtesy The Island “Justin, I cannot wait for the old boy to die” was the response my father had received from S. W. R. D. Bandaranaike, shortly before he crossed over to the Opposition, in July 1951, having resigned from the posts of the Leader of the House and Minister of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":true,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-91945","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91945","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=91945"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91945\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=91945"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=91945"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=91945"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}