There are all kinds of legacies Ranil Wickremesinghe can leave behind

People have their moments. They have their highs and their lows. They are cheered and sometimes jeered. They win some, lose some. They enjoy themselves at time and are sometimes sad. There is praise and blame. That’s the way of the world, the ata lo dahama, or the eight vicissitudal nodes, so to say. They are all born, they all decay and they all perish, sooner or later.

They are remembered for a while and duly forgotten. Even if history mentions their name, it hardly describes in minute detail nor captures fully the lives chronicled. Not even biographies or autobiographies are devoid of slant, omission and frill. Even memory, in the fullness of youth, recounts only in part. So what is legacy then, one may ask.

Well, the incomplete and frail human being, burdened with memory and ego, like to think well of themselves. The weaker like others to like them, remember them with fondness and appreciation. I am thinking of a particular individual, Ranil Wickremesinghe.

Presidential election

I don’t know him personally, and am hardly competent to pass judgment on how far he has to go in his sansaric sojourn or, if you prefer, what awaits him in a theistic afterlife, hell, heaven or Purgatory. I don’t know if he wants to be remembered and if he does how he would want to be marked by history or at least by contemporary Sri Lankan society or the membership and supporters of the political outfit he leads, the United National Party. I am neither member nor supporter.

Years ago, I offered in jest to lead the United National Party. Considering the track record of that party since, I am convinced that would not have done worse. I doubt anyone else would have done worse either. To be fair to Wickremesinghe, I doubt if anyone could have done better either. Considering all other factors, it is hard to imagine the UNP being anywhere other than in the Opposition from 2004 onwards.

True, there was a slight chance in the Presidential Election of 2005 and perhaps a candidate more appealing to the Sinhala and nationalist electorate may have pipped Mahinda Rajapaksa at the post, but that’s all conjecture.

Politics is not about winning elections alone. It is about retaining and thereafter expanding support base. Political leadership is about holding party together in tough times more than during easy days, taking the inevitable losses, not panicking when battered by storms beyond one’s strength and most importantly grooming a successor or being sufficiently aware of one’s mortality to do the needful, so that one fine or sad day when leaving cannot be avoided there are shoes for someone to walk in and that the particular someone’s feet have grown in a way that they fit just right.

Ranil Wickremesinghe was not born to lead. Even if he was, he became leader of the UNP by default and perhaps (in retrospect) unfortunately before his time.

Charismatic opponent

It was known that his uncle, J.R. Jayewardene was grooming him to take over the party reins at some point. The uncle couldn’t have known that the more senior contenders, especially Lalith Athulathmudali and Gamini Dissanayake, would be assassinated not too long after he died. Perhaps Ranil might have become leader at a point when maturity coincided with seniority had D.B. Wijetunga not thrown in the towel when he did. We don’t know. What we know is that he wasn’t ready. He wasn’t secure. He was left hanging the baby of 17 years of high-handed (mis) rule and so on.

He had to pay for others’ sins and of course ones he had backed or at least supported in silence or by refusing to object. He had to deal with a formidable and for a time charismatic opponent in Chandrika Kumaratunga and a far more astute strategist after her in Mahinda Rajapaksa. He had to hold the party together and to fend off attacks from within. He might have done his best, he might have not, we cannot tell.

It seems quite apparent that Ranil Wickremesinghe will never become President of this country. It seems clear that the UNP will not win a major election under his watch. Does this mean he has to pack his bags and leave? I think not.

Leadership crises

Today, he’s the longest serving Member of Parliament, not having lost his seat since 1977. That’s experience, whatever his track record in policy-making or policy-objecting has been. No party leader in his or her right senses would want him completely out of the scene. He was very young in 1977. There are a few who are older to him in the party, but all things considered he is undoubtedly the senior citizen of the UNP. He has black marks against his name, but then again who does not? There are two options for Ranil Wickremesinghe. He could stand firm, using a parochial and anti-democratic party constitution he has amended to his personal benefit and engender periodic distractions such as leadership crises, entrench mass demoralization and produce further erosion of vote base. He will leave, sooner or later, and would be remembered as the most ineffective Leader of the Opposition this country has known.

He can also leave. He would not be leaving the party, but the position. He would not be leaving at the height of glory, but not at the dull-coloured lowest either, if he makes the correct departure speech. Ranil Wickremesinghe, if he is the democrat he claims to be, can serve the expansion of democratic space in this country that is burdened with the made-to-make-dictators constitution authored by his uncle by uniting the party, boosting the image of the Opposition and indeed making it possible for the Opposition to be the best it can be. Just by stepping aside. He will be cheered by one and all in the United National Party. And by those outside it as well, who want a decent Opposition, not because they have faith in the UNP but out of conviction that a strong Opposition will bring out the best in the government.

I am waiting to cheer Ranil Wickremesinghe. He doesn’t have to indulge me of course. He could however do it for himself if not for the party.

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