Democracy, oligarchy and the UNP

In the Hollywood parable on racial struggle in the USA Remember the Titans, Denzel Washington’s character American Football Coach Boone says: 'This is not a democracy, this is a dictatorship. I am the law'. He was, of course, stressing the need for extreme discipline in a highly competitive sports environment.

Such statements should, of course, have no place in modern politics. Yet one can almost hear the same words coming out of the mouth of Opposition Leader Ranil Wickremasinghe, speaking in the context of the inner struggle within the United National Party (UNP).

The latest stage in the elephantine affray in the Grand Old Party is a court case regarding last month’s selection of office-bearers of the UNP-affiliated National Lawyers’ Association. President’s Counsel Tilak Marapana had been appointed as chairperson and Nissanka Nanayakkara as secretary in place of Upul Jayasooriya and Gunaratne Wanninayake, who were elected at a convention three years ago.

The plaintiff, Association member Mahen Gunasekera submitted a petition to the Colombo District Court that the appointments on July 19 were arbitrary and illegal. District Court Judge Dhammika Ganepola issued an enjoining order preventing the newly appointed Executive Committee from functioning within the Association until August 23, by which date the Opposition Leader was ordered by court to prepare a statement.

Unshakeable colossus

This is the latest unravelling of the formerly well-knit structure of the UNP, which had a place for everybody and everybody in their place - with the Party Leader at the apex, fully in charge. Although the formal organization had been put in place by former leader Junius Richard Jayewardene, the roots of this authoritarian configuration went back to the earliest days of the UNP.

DS Senanayake

Gamini Dissanayake

At the very creation of the party, the then Leader, Don Stephen Senanayake bestrode it like an unshakeable colossus. DS had cobbled the UNP together from various disparate elements within the Ceylon National Congress, which he had quit three years earlier when it called for complete independence from the British Empire.

The new party was basically a collection of notables bringing independent Sinhalese nationalists such as Neel Kamal Hewavitarne, the nephew of Anagarika Dharmapala together with minority politicians like Tuan Burhanuddin Jayah into coalition. The only common denominator was a general dislike for the Left and its allies, especially the Ceylon Indian Congress (later to become the Ceylon Workers’ Congress).

At its core was the strategic combination of the Senanayake and Wijewardena extended families. These families formed an important bloc, which had worked together for a long time, most notably in their schemes against Anagarika Dharmapala and Don Baron Jayatilleka.

The importance of this grouping can be gauged by the fact that the first Cabinet of 14 included four members of the two clans: DS himself, his son Dudley, his nephew John Kotelawala and the Wijewardena scion, J R Jayewardene, all of whom became party leaders in turn - giving rise to the ‘Uncle-Nephew Party’ jibe. Since then, only three leaders of the UNP have not been from this family band: Ranasinghe Premadasa, DB Wijetunge and Gamini Dissanayake.

Leadership structure

The UNP included only one modern political entity, SWRD Bandaranaike’s Sinhala Maha Sabha. NM Perera, the parliamentary leader of the Lanka Sama Samaja Party, invited SWRD to lead a coalition of nationalist and socialist forces, offering him the premiership. However, such was the stature of DS Senanayake that SWRD refused.

When he did break away, four years later, to form the Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP), it was generally thought that it was because he, the most senior member after DS himself, was being shunted aside as heir apparent in favour of Dudley.

However, the roots of the SLFP went deeper: it brought together the populist, the nationalist and non-Marxist socialist elements which opposed the imperialistic policies of the UNP. These forces were exemplified by DA Rajapaksa, CP de Silva and TB Ilangaratne.

The SLFP’s differences with the UNP were revealed during the Great Hartal of 1953, led by the LSSP and the Communists, during which the entire UNP Cabinet took refuge on the Royal Navy cruiser HMS Newfoundland.

The Hartal paved the way for the 1956 defeat of the UNP, the removal of British bases and the achievement of complete sovereignty in 1972.

The autocratic leadership structure continued. It was not until after Dudley’s death that even a member of the oligarchy who was not of the Senanayake extended clan (in the person of JR) could become Leader. Premadasa had to fight to take the reins from JR, and that only when the latter had become overwhelmingly unpopular.

Political mansion

The UNP has not really progressed beyond what it was in 1956, being ‘corrupt and autocratic’, whose ‘leaders were wealthy landowners who were not averse from rigging affairs to suit their own convenience’ (in the words of Britain’s Commonwealth Secretary).

If the UNP is to become a serious modernising force in Sri Lanka, going beyond mere aping of Western political fashion (as well of European sartorial mode), it has to modernise its oligarchic internal structure, to shed its subaltern, pro-colonial compradore attitudes and to democratise its internal administration.

The question remains whether Ranil, a scion of the Wijewardenas, will be up to the task, or whether the party needs to carry out a thorough-going sweeping out of the dusty pachyderm political mansion.