MR’s Breakaway & SLFP’s Family-Rule Mindset

By Vishwamithra1984 –September 7, 2016

“The essence of oligarchical rule is not father-to-son inheritance, but the persistence of a certain world-view and a certain way of life … A ruling group is a ruling group so long as it can nominate its successors … Who wields power is not important, provided that the hierarchical structure remains always the same.” ~ George Orwell

Succession of leadership of political parties is always a subject of controversy. In Sri Lanka, all these political entities which came into being in the early part of the 20th Century, the overall political dynamic has been that they were basically founded on either political ideology or representing a particular social class. Ceylon National Congress, not as a political party, but as the mainstream political entity of the Legislative and State Councils days, was in a sense the source of all political activity at the time. The dominance of the Ceylon National Congress in the political mosaic in Sri Lanka cannot be denied. Its pre-eminent role in shaping and defining the national political discourse and drafting and enacting laws and legislations to suit the individual lines of that mosaic in the period immediately preceding Independence in 1948 has been adequately chronicled.

Yet the baton of leadership of the Ceylon National Congress, inaugurated in 1919, beginning with its founding leader Sir Ponnambalam Arunachalam, passed from one hand to the other without discrimination against any ethnicity, caste or creed. Its nucleus was the Colombo/foreign-educated elite representing all ethnic groups, Sinhalese, Tamil, Muslim and Berger. Its secular stance on almost all national issues was commendable and the sense of camaraderie demonstrated among its members was exemplary, at least in the first few years of its operations. The first cracks in this union of multi-ethnic Congress appeared when Sir Ponnambalam Arunachalam resigned from the Congress in 1921. Delivering the ‘Sir Ponnambalam Arunachalam Memorial Oration’, on January 19, 2009, Dr. Brendon Goonartane, scholar physician, said:

Read More