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.

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.