Is There Any Point In Getting The SLFP Together Again?

By Shyamon Jayasinghe –December 29, 2017

“SLFP has never done any major development projects of catalytic national impact. It is the party that simply shares poverty; turning our nation into a miserable population waiting for government benefits.”

A Political Class Siphoned offthe People

Sri Lanka, paradise, is never short of drama. Unfortunately, the ordinary people and their urgent needs for a better life are being ignoredby these moves and counter moves, conspiracies, rackets, deals and whatnot of the rotten political class that saw its rise to peak under the hopeless regime of Mahinda Rajapaksa, his family, cabal and cohorts. Never before has the island witnessed this phenomenon of a political class so cut off from the people. Would JR Jayewardene have ever known that his constitution was pregnant with this unfolding dreadful reality?

Today, the political class decides and the people, reduced to desperate levels of expectation, have no option but to follow. The political class are never drawn from the grassroots as during general elections prior to the JR Constitution. Those days, intending members of parliamenthave had to first get clearance from the electorates they wish to represent. If fortunate to be elected, they have to keep being accountable to that source electorate. We did have some electorates like Colombo Central with multiple MPs but they were few. Each electorate had an MP who is beholden to his source of power.

It is a question of party officials picking candidates today. Here comes the creepy fellows and those of undesirable quality. We had an MP who once stole necklaces from helpless females who passed by. We had criminals, rapists and public cheats. Presidential pardon had been given for the wife of one MP who was convicted of double murder. We had bottle shop kings. Over 80 per cent had not passed O level. In India, 60 per cent are graduates.

This is the pass we have come today.

Disappointment

The current officially announced intentions of some MPs of the pro-Rajapaksa clan whom President Sirisena unfortunatelyinvited to government have ever since, been playing honkey dory. They are officially in the Unity government but keep criticising at will cabinet colleagues from the other side. Susil Premjayanth – that guy who bears the name of a former film star; John Seneviratne, the Minister of Labour, and the Sports MinisterDayasiri Jayasekera have all recently expressed their “disappointment” of having tried but failed to “bring the SLFP together,” implying the co-optingof former President Mahinda Rajapaksa on board.

One would wonder what these trio had been doing since they took over portfolio from the President. Like to know their records as Ministers under the Unity Government. Nothing that we can think of. Dayasiri has been well and truly messing up Sri Lanka Cricket. Susil has still to answer how he let the Petroleum Corporation create the huge fraud around the hedging experiment during his days spent under Rajapaksa. John Seneviratne appears a simple nitwit unable to make any notable headway in our labour legislation.

Sirisena in Suicide Mission

President Sirisena can easily ask them to get off the back of the government as he would loose nothing by that except the respect of the public for manifesting leadership qualities. Our daily experience is that Maitripala Sirisena has become a national disappointment and that he is showing up badly, having lost all clarity in thinking about his own future. He seems to be in a suicide mission attempting to get the SLFP together and be back cosily with the former dictator who on his once-stated assessment would have sent him six feet underground had he lost the Presidential Elections!

This is the state of the isolatedpolitical class. Nothing of the development has any bearing on the lives of ordinary people. The political class decidesand the people must follow.

Birth of the SLFP-Not Ideological

Let’s take a look at this so-called attempts to put the SLFP together. My honest concern is, even given an honest intention on the part of its protagonists, is it worth the exercise?

The Sri Lanka Freedom Party was born when SWRD was unfairly denied succession to leadership in the UNP in which he was Minister. DS Senanayake wanted to put his son, Dudley, in the play and manoeuvred his way toward that. SWRD smelt it and resigned to form the new party.

It was not an ideological rift. The ideology SWRD developed was an afterthought and it was designed to access power by playing to the base primary emotions and irrationality of the people- their race and language. The strategy worked to full measure and the UNP was vanquished.

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