By Vishwamithra –

“Don’t spend time beating on a wall, hoping to transform it into a door” ~ Coco Chanel

Nugegoda meetings have had a short history of success for the country’s political opposition. The first ‘impeachment rally’ organized by the then Democratic United National Front (DUNF) in 1993 was held in Nugegoda. And it was a grand success. President Premadasa was rattled; later, his responses to the subsequent DUNF action were measured and brutal. He did not last more than one year after the meeting. His ultimate demise was greeted by firecrackers all over the island, even though such callous and uncivilized responses to a leader’s killing by a terrorist group cannot be justified under any circumstances. It all began with the now famous ‘Nugegoda meeting’.

Nugegoda Meeting 21 November, 2025

The current Opposition, without its official leader, Sajith Premadasa and his Party Samagi Jana Balavegaya (SJB), held such a ‘rally in Nugegoda yesterday, November 21, 2025. The NPP government has completed one year in power. Anura Kumara Dissanayake, the leader of the NPP was elected President exactly two months before that, September 21, 2024. Tactics, within a convoluted strategy seems to be clever and yet, unless the desired results were achieved, were a waste of time and energy.

One significant commission of error by the so-called leaders of the ‘Opposition’ was its leaders who happened to speak at the rally. Yes, the shelf-life of people’s memory could be short, for their priorities could be elsewhere. The micro economic dynamics might be engaging the average voter away from the rhetoric and diversification tactics employed by the government leaders; daily shopping for groceries and other essentials for each household may be more important than the speeches expounded by the NPP leaders. Yet, the people must be right when they are confronted with the alternatives thrown at them by the national conversation.

Comparison, as an essential element in the process of judgment of national leaders, is an integral component of the decision-making dynamics. Men and women who live their lives in circumstances that were created by the very men and women who ruled them in the past seventy five years are now challenging those who succeeded them at the elections, held just twelve months ago. The pathetic status of the country’s economy that these past leaders  and their political offspring brought about cannot be forgotten in just one year. In their simple minds, the people must have arrived at their own simple verdicts; those verdicts were not very kind to these charlatans of the past leaders. Those past leaders and their henchmen have not offered any apology; they have not asked for the people’s forgiveness. These leaders seem to measure the people’s mindset by the same yardstick that they measured in the past: dull and dead.

The people have moved past that milepost. Trust, the most vital and consequential element by which the people judge each of their leaders, has eroded and that element has been bestowed upon a different, fresh and untested set of leaders; they, at least for the time being, are enjoying a fair and balanced amount of that measure, trust.

In such a clear and stark context, where could the leaders who happened to step on to the Nugegoda platform be placed? Did that context allow any latitude to be enjoyed by these losers who paraded  on the Nugegoda stage? Were the ideas and ideals deliberated by the same men and women lend any room and space for the average Sri Lankan voter to think otherwise? The questions are many and answers few.

Organizing a rally in the greater Colombo area and expecting a sizable crowd to attend it may be an unsophisticated, doable task. The money and man-hours necessary for such an elementary task is no challenge for the Rajapaksas and the absence of the SJB and its leader Sajith Premadasa may not have been even noticed. In the last Parliamentary elections, the NPP swept the Colombo district. All electorates surrounding Nugegoda scored the highest in majorities in each electorate and the percentages were monumental. The Opposition’ s positioning in Nugegoda was exceptionally in an unfriendly arena.

Those who planned this meeting did not have an iota of political acumen; nor did they have a tactical mindset and that was exhibited by the men and women they paraded on stage. Politics, especially in the current conditions, is not an enterprise that should be undertaken by fools.

When the then DUNF organized the ‘Nugegoda Rally’ in 1993 against President Premadasa, those who were present on the platform were themselves giants of the United National Party (UNP)’s government: Gamini Dissanayake, Lalith Athulathmudali and GM Premachandra. All three of them were brilliant speakers; they had a consummate cause for the meeting. R Premadasa, despite some of his people-friendly programs and projects, engaged in treacherous acts like lending arms to the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Elam (LTTE); his modus operandi of governance was extremely unpopular with the middleclass in the country. His callous treatment of his own Cabinet of Ministers was abysmal and employment of street thugs in some of the government ventures became openly-discussed subjects in many a quarter. They knew that a tyrant was on the rise.

The Nugegoda Rally launched by the DUNF was not only tactically sound; given the then prevalent condition in the country, it was a necessary and strategically successful. A countrywide dislike of the ‘Premadasa-saga’ was created and the leaders who were at the forefront of the campaign were highly popular and known over-achievers in the then UNP government. Gamini for meeting his task-oriented goals of the massive Mahaweli Program and gaining of Test-status for Sri Lanka in Cricket; and Lalith’s achievement of transforming the Colombo port from a scratch-work third-world harbor to a modern hub of a port and his tremendously popular Mahapola scholarship program aimed at the lending a helping hand to the needy university entrants were winners from the start.

There is none in the current Opposition who could match these two politically colossal figures, Gamini and Lalith. In such a context, when Namal Rajapaksa uttering words such as ‘we will topple the government at the earliest opportunity’ sounds so hollow and naive. Namal Rajapaksa is an invalid coin today. His past and present seem to be equally unsteady and unpromising. All the others who addressed the rally are not even known in the country except for the few whose political reputations have been wounded beyond healing and cure.

But there are some lessons the NPP government could learn from this failed Rally. The Nugegoda was a failed Rally not because it failed to draw crowds. It did have some sizable segment of men and women. It failed because it did not throw out any new faces; if the coalition of opposition wanted to impress a suspecting audience, it had to show that they had more than the failed leadership of the past. Today’s Opposition failed because it failed to recognize the fundamental cause for change. The NPP and its leadership succeeded because they meant to present a new face and fresher alternative in policies, principles and personalities.

Not meeting this elementary demand of the people is not an unforced error; it’s a basic absence of planning strategy and operational tactic. It indeed was a ‘Pus Wedilla’. When a political entity fails in these fundamental aspects of action, it fails to draw men towards itself. Superlative determination and dogged single-mindedness have helped the NPP to launch itself as an acceptable alternative to the status quo and mainstream and social media have helped them to gain unprecedented popularity. Simpleton minds cannot achieve such goals; it requires much more than ordinariness; it needs a basic change in thinking and mindfulness. The NPP possessed both. But if they lose that, they too will be judged by the people, by the same yardstick.

*The writer can be reached at vishwamithra1984@gmail.com