Ranil Wickremesinghe And The Emasculation Of The United National Party

Author Rajiva Wijesinha

Publisher is Neptune publications

Price is Rs 2000

The United National Party did not context the 2024 General Election. It had not put forward a candidate in the four previous Presidential elections. UNP members did contest the Presidential elections of 2019 and 2024, but not through the party.

This was a sad decline for the party that had governed Sri Lanka at independence and had changed the constitution to a Presidential system after winning a massive majority in Parliament in 1977. It stayed in power then for 17 years, but after its defeat at polls in 1994 it declined inexorably.

This book charts that decline, which happened after Ranil Wickremesinghe became leader, following the assassination of Gamini Dissanayake, the last of the visionaries who had contributed seminally to the development of the country after 1977. Wickremesinghe, having lost the party leadership election in August 1994, changed its constitution to make himself leader in perpetuity, a vacancy occurring only if he died or resigned. This last he was incapable of, clinging to the leader position despite losing innumerable elections.

Though he became Prime Minister twice during this period, under two different Presidents, his party failed to win any seats in the election that followed his second period in office. But having taken up the one National List seat it had obtained, he was then elected President by a Parliament dominated by the party of his predecessor who had been compelled to resign.

The price for this included ensuring immunity for prosecution for his new associates. Though he claimed to have remedied the situation which had forced out his predecessor, the country rejected him decisively at the 2024 Presidential election, the first he contested since his defeats in 1999 and 2005.