Ponil W was the UNP Presidential candidate in 1999, it was during this election campaign that an LTTE bomb resulted in Chandrika Bandaranaike losing her right eye but 2 days later she secured 51% of the vote and became President. Ponil was over 700,000 votes short. Ponil lost the October 2000 Parliamentary elections too.
However, every single election the UNP has lost since the assassination of President Premadasa except the general election in which Ponil Wickramasinghe emerged as the 17th Prime Minister in 2001 that too because of a coalition alliance under the United National Front ( 9 Dec 2001 to 6 April 2004). UNF had 109 seats while PA had only 77. The UNF comprised the UNP, Ceylon Workers Congress, Up-Country’s People’s Front, the Democratic People’s Front (Mano Ganeshan) and the Sri Lanka Muslim Congress.
Does the UNP really have to form joint alliances and compromise itself?
With a set vote base why have UNP leaders seen fit to undermine itself for every time parties are aligned does it not mean having to compromise? Moreover, why have UNP allowed people in the other camp and architects of causing division and dissent to steer campaigns wherein the likelihood of the UNP being cut into two is unavoidable. Do we see that not happening because of the current actions by allowing a dictatorial group to run the UNP as they see fit? Was it not too long ago that a UNP supporter actually burnt himself to death pleading with the party leaders not to destroy the UNP but to keep together.
A sound opposition is needed. Not one that foreign backers are able to pay and use as puppets.
Fortune has been with Ponil to maintain his political leadership as leader of the party and leader of the Opposition, a role he obviously relishes over above actually leading a nation of 20million people, which seriously must question whether Ponil is realistically interested in leading Sri Lanka or prefers simply being the Opposition Leader for life!
Whatever Ponil W’s fancies are, for the oldest single political party the question that is obviously overlooked is why the UNP should not be fielding the Common Candidate when in a coalition alliance that Common Candidate can only win with the strength of the UNP votes. The first response is that the foreign decision to bring Maithripala was to win the Sinhala Buddhist vote by dividing the SLFP/PA votes. Why does the UNP remember that the Sinhala Buddhist voters and votes matter only at election time? Why can't the UNP produce a Sinhala Buddhist politician? Does the UNP stand only for Western Liberal Cosmopolitan Christian ideals and is this why Ponil Wickremasinghe is a member of the International Democratic Union and regularly attends these sessions. The IDU has its headquarters in Oslo. The UNP leader is the current Chairman of the Asia Pacific branch of this organization. Other known names are William Hague (Assistant Chairman, IDU), former heads of state Margaret Thatcher, George W. Bush, Helmut Kohl and Jacques Chirac. The IDU is a right-wing club consisting of Conservative and Christian Democrat political parties around the world. How many in the UNP know that the UNP is a full member of the IDU? Therefore, will the Sinhala Buddhists that wish to protect the heritage of the nation entrust the country to a party that is secretly aligned to other ideals? We need to seriously wonder how far of Ponil's visionary plans originate from his thinking or belong to the foreign unions that he is a member of!
Obvioulsy the majority in the UNP are not aware of what exactly the UNP stands for. What is shown to them on paper and what a handful of key UNPers end up agreeing to under secret pacts is never revealed to them. This ignorance however makes them jump to Ponil's defense that the people of Sri Lanka are too dumb to understand the visionary potential of Ponil Wickremasinghe. The answer to that is Ponil W has been PM twice. First in 1993 immediately after President Premadasa was assassinated, then in 2001 and the visionary traits that UNP extoled about Ponil Wickremasinghe came out by secretly signing the 2002 Cease Fire Agreement the officially demarcated sovereign territory as terrorist areas under LTTE control and humiliated the Sri Lankan armed forces subjecting them to not only ridicule but leading to the deaths of intelligence officers having disclosed their names to the LTTE. Therefore, UNP voters must understand that the golden opportunity that Ponil W was given he ruined by his own conduct and for that the people of this nation cannot be blamed for not trusting him again and now even the Eelam lobbyists do not trust him – what an anti-climax!
Where should UNP go from here? Firstly, it is important that the UNP need to remove itself from the mentality of forming alliances simply to come into power. That chemistry is just not working. When CBK and Maithri are holding secret talks with others, when Maithri and other alliance members are holding other secret talks all these secret discussions forget that none of them will have any political future if the UNP voters do not vote for this alliance. More and more it is becoming clear that there is nothing clear about the alliance. Sobitha thero wants to abolish the Presidency, Sarath Fonseka wants to keep while Ponil W wants to tweak it….and Maithri says he’s going to abolish the Presidency I 100 days …..these are all playing to the gallery talks and with no legal and constitutional substance.
