Ranil, Man For A Crisis Or The Crisis Itself

Ranil Wickremesinghe was not elected as President. When he contested at the last General Elections in 2020, he could not get even one single member elected to Parliament from his Party. The United National Party (UNP), of which he is the leader, suffered the most humiliating defeat at the last General Elections. Not a single. The Rajapaksas achieved what SWRD Bandaranaike could not in 1956. When JR Jayewardene, the so-called brains behind the UNP at that time, was defeated by his nemesis RG Senanayake in the ’56 General Elections, the UNP managing to secure just eight (8) meager seats, everyone thought that the Grand Old Party (GOP) was dead. In fact, RG Senanayake crowed: ‘in the process of trying to extract a tooth, the patient died’. The last nail of the coffin was hammered down, so they thought. 

A brand new sociopolitical reality was coming into being. With the dawn 1956, an era of the ‘common man’ began. An expectant electorate rose from its lazy, apathetic meandering. Life in all aspects of sociocultural context started another lap of a journey of which its tardy arrival was long overdue. In certain aspects of rural life in the country, a new awakening gave rise to new hopes, new realities and new life. 

Medium of instruction in schools and government service was changed to Sinhalese. Thus was created a most deceptive ‘Sinhala-only in 24 hours’ slogan that in turn created an illusory and yet all-enveloping cocoon that engulfed a dangerously misleading stage of a thoroughly forgettable chapter in a nation’s life. Politics became an indispensible aspect that was exploited by its practitioners to the hilt. Politicians who had no business in managing affairs of the State were all of a sudden made integral parts of the average life of the average man and woman and child.