SLFP on a progressive journey with people
Wijitha NAKKAWITA
The Sri Lanka Freedom Party celebrates its 58th anniversary today as
one of the major political parties that changed the destinies of the Sri
Lankans in various ways. One should go back to the socio-political and
economic state of the country in 1951 when S.W.R.D.Bandaranaike who was
the Leader of the House and Health and Local Government Minister crossed
over to the Opposition with five of his followers including
D.A.Rajapaksa, father of President Mahinda Rajapaksa, to understand the
rationale and philosophy behind the formation of the SLFP.
Many people especially politicians say that S.W.R.D.Bandaranaike was
originally a UNP member who had quit that party to form the SLFP but
nothing could be further from the truth than that.
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S.W.R.D.Bandaranaike |
Sirimavo
Bandaranaike |
Mahinda
Rajapaksa |
If one were to say that he helped the UNP to come into being that
would be a practical truth as the UNP was formed by merging two
political parties the National Congress led by D.S.Senanayake and the
Sinhala Maha Sabha led by S.W.R.D.
When the 1947 General Election was announced, before regaining
independence in 1948, Senanayake knew he could not bring his National
Congress to an election victory to form a Government. Therefore he
invited the Sinhala Maha Sabha to join the National Congress and after
talks between the two leaders and their committees, the two parties
agreed to merge and form the UNP.
There are also other popular political untruths often repeated by
some politicians that the UNP fought and won independence for the
country. But what actually did take place was we regained independence
due to two major political factors like the other countries ruled by the
then British Empire.
The first was that Britain was exhausted by the Second World War and
could not muster the strength to rule an empire and two, the Labour
Government led by Clement Attlee was a liberal regime that did not want
to rule colonies.
We thus come to the fact that independence was granted to us with
Premier Senanayake who wished to rule it like the departed colonial
masters.
Perhaps the early political leaders of most political parties did not
understand the thinking and aspirations of the common people, the
majority who did not wish to have Brown Sahibs in place of the departed
White Sahibs. Thus in a matter of three years S.W.R.D. Bandaranaike
began to have serious differences of opinion with Premier Senanayake.
The principal disagreement was on the official language policy yet
there was a host of other issues that the first UNP Government had not
addressed that the forces that had rallied round S.W.R.D wished the
Government would address. Finally, the differences became greater than
the agreements and he decided to cross over to the SLFP with his closest
allies.
When the SLFP was formed in 1951, there were several leading figures
that helped to start the party and draw up its policy. One of the
important persons was H.S.Nissanka a lawyer and a man with nationalistic
ideals and creativity. The others were Dr. Badi-ud-din Mahmood, Bernard
Aluvihare, T.B.Illangaratne, A.P.Jayasuriya, T.B.Subasinghe, Jayaweera
Kuruppu and many others who were fascinated with socialist ideas and the
resurgence of indigenous values and culture.
The first meeting of the SLFP held at Town Hall drew an unprecedented
crowd of more than 10,000 people and the party constitution and policy
framework was drawn up by consensus on that occasion. The five great
forces known as Pancha Maha Balavegaya later was the latent force that
supported the SLFP identifying themselves with national resurgence. The
main issue that was before the UNP Government after SWRD crossed over to
the opposition and formed the SLFP was the official language.
The Senanayake Government appointed a commission headed by a retired
Chief Justice Sir Arthur Wijewardena to make recommendations on the
official language.
After sitting for many months the official recommendation was that
Sinhala could not be made official language as it did not contain enough
words to run the affairs of the Government!
That was in fact the last straw. The people began to understand that
elitist UNP would not fulfil their expectations and only the elites
would continue to enjoy the newly gained independence.
The SLFP view was diametrically opposed to the UNP policy. Once it
came to power on a landslide victory during 1956 the official language,
recognition of the indigenous physicians and the rural intelligentsia
among a many other non-elitist measures made it the party of the common
man.
More importantly its middle path policy enunciated by SWRD also was
the forerunner of the policy of non-alignment at that time.
One of the major victories of the SLFP was to empower the
disfranchised rural masses who were up to 1956 deprived of education,
higher education and even any participation in the administration of
their own villages or localities. The SLFP’s role after the
assassination of SWRD under the stewardship of Sirimavo Bandaranaike
took the policy of non-alignment forward and succeeded in forging strong
relationships with newly independent nations of Asia, Africa and Latin
America. These relations helped the country in diverse ways.
The third important period of the SLFP is the leadership of President
Mahinda Rajapaksa who not only defeated the LTTE terrorists but clearly
followed the footsteps of the founder leader SWRD as well as Sirimavo
Bandaranaike in forging strong relations with a large number of
countries who have come to our assistance in war and peace.
His faith in the indigenous methods of development and his common
touch had also made him similar to the founding father of the SLFP that
continues to be the common man’s political party.
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