-By LeN Political Correspondent
(Lanka-e-News - 22.Sep.2025, 11.00 PM)
It is a peculiar form of political theatre when the host of the party is also its sole surviving guest. At the 79th anniversary of the United National Party (UNP), Ranil Wickremesinghe took to the podium like a priest preaching to an empty pew,in Small in a Hotel in the Colombo, declaring that he was determined to fight for Sri Lanka’s multi-party democracy. The trouble, of course, is that Sri Lanka now has every political party under the sun — except the UNP.
The scene had all the trimmings of a nostalgic reunion. Wreaths were solemnly laid at the feet of the party’s deceased grandees. Rauf Hakeem of the Sri Lanka Muslim Congress arrived dutifully, Mano Ganesan of the upcountry Tamil Congress made an appearance, and even the ever-theatrical Champika Ranawaka joined the ceremony. Rosy Senanayake, former Miss World contender turned UNP Mayor, provided the day’s viral moment: embracing Hakeem in a gesture of solidarity that social media immediately rebranded as scandal. By evening, Ranil’s solemn sermon on democracy was competing for headlines with memes of Hakeem’s mysteriously flushed cheeks.
If the event resembled anything, it was a school reunion where the most unpopular prefect tries to convince everyone he was beloved. Wickremesinghe’s speech was delivered in the clipped tones of a man convinced history had short memory. He denounced “constitutional dictatorship” and swore fealty to the cause of pluralism, as though his party had not spent the better part of the last half-century writing the manual on how to extinguish opposition.
The irony was almost Shakespearean. Ranil’s uncle, J. R. Jayewardene, is remembered not for guarding multi-party politics but for performing open-heart surgery on it without anaesthetic. In 1977, with a parliamentary supermajority in his pocket, J.R. rewrote the constitution, anointed himself as executive president, and turned Sri Lanka into a one-man experiment in strongman liberalism.
Multi-party democracy? Only if the other parties agreed to play doormat. Sirimavo Bandaranaike, the opposition leader, had her civic rights stripped in what can only be described as constitutional thuggery wrapped in legal parchment. This was the UNP’s idea of levelling the playing field: bulldoze it, flatten it, then declare the match won.
The 1978 constitution was hailed by its authors as modernising and efficient. What it actually did was take the quaint parliamentary model inherited from Britain and pump it full of steroids from French Presidency model. The presidency became executive, omnipotent, and largely unaccountable. Parliament was reduced to a clapping gallery. The judiciary was kept politely in its lane. And thus, the very party now warning about “constitutional dictatorship” was the same one that introduced it to the island with fireworks.
By 1982, the UNP had perfected its taste for democratic shortcuts. Rather than hold a general election — risky things, elections — J.R. called a referendum to extend Parliament’s term by six more years. It was democracy by plebiscite: one question, one answer, and plenty of pressure.
The “Yes” campaign had the full backing of state machinery; the “No” campaign had thugs at its doorstep. Opposition parties were split, intimidated, or bribed into silence. The result was predictable. Sri Lanka’s Parliament, already dominated by the UNP, was given an artificial lease of life. In effect, the voters were told: you’ve already elected us, why bother again? It was multiparty democracy only in the same way a monopoly is multiparty capitalism.
This was the high point of the UNP’s “pluralism.” Ranil, then a rising star in the party, absorbed every lesson. He was the quiet understudy in a theatre of constitutional acrobatics, learning that rules were malleable and opposition disposable.
Then came 1983. Black July remains a scar so deep that even four decades later, the words alone summon memories of smoke, machetes, and abandoned homes. Tamil civilians were attacked, killed, burned out of Colombo and other towns. The pogrom ignited a civil war that lasted 26 years.
The UNP’s fingerprints were never fully scrubbed off the crime scene. Some ministers were accused of looking the other way, others of orchestrating mobs. The state, under the UNP’s command, failed catastrophically to protect its citizens. If pluralism is measured by how minorities are treated, then July 1983 was the UNP’s obituary as a democratic party.
Yet, fast forward to 2025, and Ranil wants the world to forget. He declares his party the champion of freedom, as though the charred ruins of July had long since been photoshopped out of the family album.
It was not only the Tamils who learned the hard way. The Sinhala youth of the south also paid in blood. After the Indo-Lanka Accord of 1987, the JVP (Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna) launched its second insurrection. The UNP government responded with ferocity. Entire villages were flattened in counterinsurgency sweeps. Thousands of young men — some guilty, many not — disappeared into the night, never to return.
The government banned not only the JVP but also other leftist movements: the Communists, the Nava Sama Samaja Party. It was a political culling dressed up as counter-terrorism. By the end of the decade, tens of thousands of Sri Lankans lay dead or missing, victims of a state at war with its own citizens.
To hear Ranil now wax lyrical about multi-party democracy is like hearing a taxidermist preach animal rights.
But if there is one thing Ranil Wickremesinghe has mastered, it is survival. Nephew of J.R., he rose within the UNP ranks as a technocrat, a quiet operator, a man who preferred policy papers to fiery rhetoric. He was often praised abroad as urbane, English-speaking, and “reform-minded.” At home, however, he developed a reputation for losing elections with consistency and style, who maserminded the Batalanda torture camp.
His career is littered with near misses and brief comebacks. Prime Minister several times, President once — but never truly elected by the people to the top job. He is the unelected statesman of Sri Lanka, installed more often by circumstance than ballot.
This is the irony: a man who never truly carried the mandate of the people now laments the decline of multi-party democracy.
The 79th anniversary of the UNP was meant to project strength. Instead, it showcased irrelevance. The guest list looked like a museum exhibit of political curiosities. Rauf Hakeem, Mano Ganesan, Daya Gamage, Champika Ranawaka, Jayasir Jayasekara, Nimal Sripala De Silva — all present, all politely laying flowers, all visibly calculating whether this was worth their time.
And then Rosy Senanayake, the ever-glamorous former Mrs World contender turned political stalwart, embraced Hakeem in what would otherwise be a routine gesture. But in today’s Sri Lanka, where politics is consumed as gossip, the photograph lit up social media. The hug was replayed, zoomed in, memed, and dissected with more passion than Ranil’s entire speech. By nightfall, Hakeem’s cheeks were being analysed with the seriousness of a forensic report.
If this was meant to be a solemn commemoration, it ended as comic opera.
Undeterred, Ranil delivered his message: the NPP government had brought Sri Lanka to the brink of a one-party state, and only the UNP could restore pluralism. It was the rhetorical equivalent of a ghost lecturing the living about vitality.
He invoked democracy, human rights, freedom of speech. He warned of dictatorship, of tyranny, of the dangers of populism. He positioned himself as the elder statesman, the last defender of the liberal order.
What he did not mention — and what no one in the audience dared remind him — was that his own party had invented the very tools of constitutional dictatorship he now condemned.
To add a final flourish, Ranil claimed he enjoyed the backing of “the international community.” In his telling, foreign diplomats were quietly plotting to rescue him and the UNP from oblivion, to restore balance against the NPP juggernaut.
The reality? Colombo’s diplomatic circles rolled their eyes. Western envoys, when pressed, politely denied any such intrigue. The Indian High Commission, when asked, laughed off the idea. The Americans have bigger crises; the Europeans have other hobbies. Ranil, once a useful partner for the West, is now seen as a political liability rather than an asset.
His “international support” is a mirage — a figment conjured to reassure his dwindling faithful that he still matters.
And so we come back to the central irony. The UNP, the party that rewrote constitutions, extended parliaments by referendum, banned opposition parties, presided over pogroms, and crushed insurrections, now presents itself as the saviour of pluralism. Ranil, the unelected veteran who has lost more elections than any other major politician in modern Sri Lanka, stands at a podium and warns about dictatorship.
It would be comic if it weren’t tragic. But perhaps Sri Lanka has learned to laugh at tragedy — it is, after all, the only medicine left.
Ranil Wickremesinghe remains what he has always been: the ghost at the banquet, the horse who still believes he is racing while tied to the paddock. The UNP’s 79th anniversary was less a rally than a requiem. A requiem, that is, for a party that once dominated, then destroyed, and now dares to preach the virtues of the democracy it buried.
-By LeN Political Correspondent
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by (2025-09-22 18:17:40)
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