A Leader Like No Other, A Party Like No Other 

UNP Leader Ranil Wickremesinghe

By Narada Seananayake –APRIL 29, 2018 

“An obstinate man does not hold opinions. Opinions hold him” – Alexander Pope. 

The UNP is in crisis. 

The people know it. The party loyalists are tormented by it.  The party leader is not aware of it.  When Lenin wrote his famous tract- ‘what is to be done?’ he began by recognizing the problem. He wrote “Our party is in a state of formation. There is the danger of diversion from the correct path. Ranil is not Lenin. Ranil is a leader like no other leader, leading a party like no other party.  

For the UNP to decide on the way forward, it must first trace the path that brought it to this point, period and phase. This essay is intended to help that process. 

 Resolving the Riddle of Ranil  

Why does Ranil resist reforms in the party?  Because they are not needed stupid!   

Leaders lead. Followers follow. That is the effortless, painless world that Ranil Wickremesinghe the UNP leader inhabits.

 He accepts no other arrangement. As most psychologists would say, man is a creature of habit. His reactions are automatic reflexes from the stimuli of his environment. Which is why Warren Buffet remarked that “Chains of habit are too light to be felt until they are too heavy to be broken”.

All his life, Ranil has lived in an environment of privilege. He has never knocked on doors. Doors have always remained open to him. 

Ranil is convinced that he is the destined successor of J.R. Jayewardene. JRJ made him a cabinet minister in his first term. And that was before he turned thirty. That was destiny. A destiny that he will not share today, with others in his party. 

 Since then his task has been a  battle to match his destiny to the  vagaries of politics. Quite early in his political journey, he wisely concluded that he does not possess that annoying attribute – the common touch, the ability to be ordinary among ordinary people. That was essential to retain his rural base in Biyagama his first constituency, won in the 1977 landslide. Why bother changing habits or renouncing birthrights when more convenient options are available?   

He deftly switched his base to metropolitan Colombo. That is what JR did when he moved from Kelaniya to Colombo South. Adequate funds and machine politics are efficient substitutes for public approval.  

Ranil is not the archetypical grassroots leader. He is the quintessential string puller leader. There is no way he will oblige the UNP backbenchers in their demand to reform the party. Reform means change. The very anatomy of change is determined not by one’s surroundings but by one’s inherent mind set. When change and reform are mooted, his instinct commands him to dig deep and stay put. That is what he has done now.   

The modern information age has no place for leaders such as Ranil Wickremesinghe. In this age, followers don’t follow leaders. Followers have the resources to make or break leaders.

 So, if Ranil thinks that he has won the first round, he is in for not one surprise but plenty.  

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