{"id":96108,"date":"2019-12-07T16:48:38","date_gmt":"2019-12-07T23:48:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=96108"},"modified":"2019-12-07T16:48:38","modified_gmt":"2019-12-07T23:48:38","slug":"the-birth-and-the-demise-of-the-unp-un-patriotic-non-national-party","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2019\/12\/07\/the-birth-and-the-demise-of-the-unp-un-patriotic-non-national-party\/","title":{"rendered":"\u201cThe Birth and the Demise of the UNP (Un-patriotic non-National Party)"},"content":{"rendered":"

(Addenda to the article on the above subject posted on December 6th, 2019 Lankaweb)<\/strong><\/span><\/h3>\n\n

Dr Sudath Gunasekara 7.12. 2019<\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n\n\n

Further to my previous essay on\nthe above subject published on 6th<\/sup> Dec, I would like to add few more\ncomments on the UNP that would be interesting to my readers.  JR had carefully selected two young brilliant\npoliticians Gamini Disanayaka and Lalith Atulathmudali as potential future\nleaders to fill the vacuum of the party after him. In fact JR was grooming\nGamini as his successor Gamini to be the next President. But Premadasa, (Just\nlike what Sajit did in 2019 against Ranil) deployed an Island wide campaign\nagainst JR against his move to nominate Gamini and he wanted the nominations\nfor the Presidency. I remember the words JR MARAMU appeared overnight on the\nroads and instances where even school children wrote these words on their\nslates were reported.  Finally JR gave in\nand Premadasa (Father of Sajit) who took over the leadership by force and\nintimidation from JR towards the end of 1988  became the President on 2nd<\/sup> Jan in\n1989. From the day he became President he did not like Gamini and Lalith as he\nconsidered them to be a potential threat to him. So he sidelined them and\ndemoted in their Ministerial positions. Gamini decided to leave politics under\nPremadasa and left the country to Cambridge for studies. Lalith remained behind\nas destiny wanted him to and he was finally assassinated on April 23, 1993 at\nan election meeting at Kirulapana by Premadasa\u2019s goons.  Premadasa himself was assassinated by the LTTE\non 1 May 1993, perhaps in retribution for what he had done. He was succeeded by\nD.B. Wijetunga and got down Gamini to lead the Party. He was also assassinated\nthe LTTE at an election meeting in Totalanga. while he was addressing\nPresidential meeting to Chandrikas luck.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The following two mews items that\nappeared in media narrate the conspiracy behind Lalith\u201ds political\nassassination.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Athulathmudali was assassinated\nwhen he was shot by a gunman on 23 April 1993 after an election rally at\nKirulapana. Initially, the government blamed the LTTE and produced the body of\na Tamil youth named Ragunathan which was found near the scene of the shooting\nthe following day. He had apparently died from taking a cyanide capsule.\nHowever, these claims were later proved to be false.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A Presidential Commission carried\nout by the Sri Lankan Government concluded that Sri Lankan President Ranasinghe\nPremadasa was directly responsible for the assassination. It also concluded\nthat the Tamil youth Ragunathan, was murdered by the same people who killed\nAthulathmudali, by forcibly administering him with cyanide.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Does this not  speaks volumes of Ranasinha Premadasa\u2019s\nvicious  plans to remove the most\nbrilliant political leader JR had picked up to take the UNP forward and the\nirreparable damage he had done to the UNP in particular and the country at\nlarge<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 In this back drop what credentials Sajih can\nclaim to lead the UNP at a crucial time of the Party like the present when it\nhad fallen to the lowest level in its history with both in its anti-Sinhala\nAnti-Buddhist policies and the quality politicians it has brought to Parliament\nwhere there isn\u2019t a single promising Potential leader of quality statesmanship.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I consider the assassination of\nLalith in 1993 and the death of Gamini in 1994 as the beginning of the journey\nof UNP to its demise for which R Premadasa was solely accountable. He was\ndirectly responsible for Lalith\u2019s murder, as it was later reported in the\npress, and of cause for Gamini\u2019s, leaving the Party. These two young shining\nstars of the UNP would have definitely lifted the UNP to unbelievable levels\nhad they lived. Of the two, having worked with him for one year and known very\nclosely Lalith would have made this country a miracle in Asia if lived to lead\nthe UNP. As a person who has worked closely with both, I can tell you with\nauthority the story of UNP as a political party would have been completely\ndifferent today if they lived to date. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Gamini being senior to Lalith in\npolitics and more charismatic was certainly a popular politician who could\nattract crowds with his pleasant personality. But Lalith was a world class\nleader with his academic credentials from Oxford and Harvard with no peer\neither here or even in India. I worked with him very closely for one year under\nthe Ministry of Agriculture and I rate him as the best politician and statesman\nI have ever met. I have devoted one chapter for him in my book \u2018Deyata\nAhimivana Ran Akara\u201d a critique of public Administration of our time. Both of\nthem revolted against Premadasa for which they had to pay dearly. Premadasa did\nnot like both of them and finally got them removed from the party. That was the\nbiggest damage Premadasa did to the UNP and the treachery to the country.  In this backdrop those crazy young UNP MPP\nwho expect Ranasinha Premadasa\u2019s son (who does not inherit an iota of R\nPremadasa\u2019s talents) to lift up the UNP that has already been dumped in to the\ndustbin of history by Ranil, in my opinion is only day dreaming on their part.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If the political forces those who\nare dying for the UNP, wants to rekindle it again I think there is only one way\nto do it. That is to drop this illegitimate name UNP, baptized by the colonial\nBritish to ruin this country and the Sinhala Nation, as I have discussed in\ndetail in my previous article, and start with a new name that can first attract\nand mobilize the Sinhala Buddhists populous and whole Sinhala nation including\nthe s\/Catholics and S\/Christians, od cause better than the Pohottuwa. Otherwise,\nmark it, you people have no political future in this\ncountry.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

(Addenda to the article on the above subject posted on December 6th, 2019 Lankaweb) Dr Sudath Gunasekara 7.12. 2019 Further to my previous essay on the above subject published on 6th Dec, I would like to add few more comments on the UNP that would be interesting to my readers.  JR had carefully selected two […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":true,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[46],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-96108","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-dr-sudath-gunasekara"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/96108","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=96108"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/96108\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=96108"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=96108"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=96108"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}