-By LeN Political Correspondent
(Lanka-e-News -15.May.2025, 11.10 PM) It once adorned the annals of Sri Lanka’s political history as the party of independence, of the first Prime Minister, of liberal economic reform, and of the first Executive President. Today, the United National Party (UNP) is a political relic—reduced to a shell, barely clinging to life in a democracy it helped found.
From the opulent halls of Temple Trees to the dusty corridors of Sirikotha now barely echoing with activity, the UNP’s decline is nothing short of Shakespearean. A party that once commanded parliamentary supermajorities now has not a single elected MP under its own symbol. Its current leader, President Ranil Wickremesinghe, sits not as the people’s choice, but as a constitutional accident—a leader chosen by arithmetic, not affection.
As the 2025 elections loom, whispers have grown louder—among diplomats, donors, party veterans and even the UNP's dwindling grassroots—calling not just for revival but for reinvention. The call is not for another policy paper or another PR campaign. It is for leadership—authentic, approachable, and anchored in the lived experiences of the common Sri Lankan.
To understand the present, one must first revisit the UNP’s gilded past. Formed in 1946 by D.S. Senanayake, the party presided over Sri Lanka’s transition from colony to nation-state. It boasted a deep bench of political talent—John Kotelawala, Dudley Senanayake, J.R. Jayewardene, and R. Premadasa—all men of vastly differing backgrounds, yet united in ambition and competence.
By 1978, under Jayewardene, the party rewrote the constitutional fabric of the nation, introducing the powerful executive presidency. But power, like opium, can be as intoxicating as it is corrosive. The UNP began to centralize, not only in the structure of government but in its internal culture—leaders became less accountable, more insulated, and, crucially, less connected to the people.
This insularity found its most potent expression in Ranil Wickremesinghe’s tenure as party leader. Since taking the reins in 1994, Wickremesinghe built a Byzantine inner circle of technocrats, loyalists, and backroom operators. Charismatic campaigners were sidelined. Trade union leaders were ignored. University student movements, the clergy, the estate workers—all abandoned.
“The rot didn’t happen overnight,” says a retired party stalwart. “It began when the party stopped walking the streets and started only talking in boardrooms.”
The 2020 general elections were a nadir. The UNP secured a single national list seat. Not one electorate returned a UNP candidate. Sirikotha became a tomb. Party branches folded. Donors vanished. Youth wings grew silent. Even the Jathika Sevaka Sangamaya, the UNP’s once-powerful trade union, now barely maintains visibility.
In a tragic twist, Sajith Premadasa, son of the late President Ranasinghe Premadasa, led a mass exodus of the UNP’s rank and file to form the Samagi Jana Balawegaya (SJB) in 2020. It was a moment of historical inversion: the son of the UNP’s most working-class-oriented leader was leaving the party his father had carried to its peak.
And Wickremesinghe? He refused to yield, refused to retire, refused even to admit defeat.
His ascension to the presidency in 2022 after Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s resignation came not by mandate, but by manoeuvre. A lone MP, he became head of state through parliamentary alchemy—hardly a restoration of UNP glory.
“It’s the most surreal political story in Asia,” chuckles a Western diplomat. “A party with no MPs, no base, and no mandate now controls the presidency. It’s democratic, yes, but profoundly undemocratic in spirit.”
The fundamental flaw in Wickremesinghe’s political career is not his intellect—by all accounts, he is one of the sharpest legal minds to emerge from Sri Lanka’s post-independence generation. Nor is it his strategic vision—he is a master of institutional navigation. The problem is far more visceral: he has never been a man of the people.
“Ranil talks at people, never to them,” says a former UNP youth leader. “He’s more comfortable with bankers than bus drivers.”
Wickremesinghe’s leadership model was always premised on containment, not connection. His inner circle remains composed of Colombo elites, corporate sympathizers, and an intelligentsia disconnected from the economic despair outside the city.
His detachment is now costing the UNP not just votes, but identity. Once a centrist party capable of speaking to the urban elite and the rural cultivator, the UNP has become a club—and an exclusive one at that.
Minorities, long loyal to the UNP due to its secular ethos, now drift toward alternatives. Trade unions, frustrated by Wickremesinghe’s IMF-led economic reform agenda, see him as a technocrat dismantling what little social protections remain. Youth, faced with staggering unemployment and economic precarity, see no champion in the party of their grandparents.
And so, the question arises: who after Ranil? Or more pressingly, when will Ranil let go?
For decades, the UNP has functioned like a private company with a non-retiring CEO. Leadership transitions are not facilitated—they are obstructed. Promising leaders—Ravi Karunanayake, Sagala Ratnayake, Navin Dissanayake—were either neutralized or ejected. Others simply left in frustration.
Even today, there is no formal plan for succession. No visible grooming of a new generation. No honest debate on ideological recalibration. And yet, the world is watching.
Foreign diplomats, especially those representing donor countries and multilateral institutions, have expressed concern in private. “A healthy democracy needs a strong opposition,” noted one EU diplomat. “The collapse of the UNP weakens parliamentary democracy, especially at a time when the Rajapaksa legacy remains unresolved.”
The business community, long sympathetic to the UNP’s pro-market outlook, is also growing weary. The party’s inability to attract young, full-time political workers—who can campaign in Sinhala, Tamil, and the idioms of everyday hardship—has created a gaping hole in outreach.
“There’s only so much Harvard talk you can do before you need to visit Hambantota,” quipped a frustrated party donor. “The UNP’s problem isn’t economics. It’s empathy.”
The party’s traditional financial base, built on corporate patronage and Colombo’s mercantile class, is not enough. Politics is no longer about economic theory. It’s about emotional resonance—and the UNP is emotionally vacant.
If the UNP’s loyalists once hoped that Sajith Premadasa might offer a break from Ranil’s elitism, they are now deeply disillusioned. As leader of the SJB, Sajith has proven a master of photo opportunities but a novice in political architecture.
“Sajith is trying to be his father, but without the fire,” a UNP insider remarks. “He’s got the heart, but not the head.”
His strategy, much like Wickremesinghe’s, is focused on holding party leadership rather than building national coalitions. He has failed to carve ideological space beyond a generic opposition platform. Worse, his leadership is increasingly being seen as an extension, not a correction, of the UNP’s problems.
What Sri Lanka desperately needs is not another economic reformer in a suit. It needs a leader who has stood in a queue for fuel. A leader who understands the price of dhal. A leader who can sit with trade unionists in the morning and estate workers in the evening—and speak with credibility.
The UNP’s future lies in breaking its own addiction to hierarchy and elitism. It must democratize internally, encourage primaries, hold leadership elections, and allow regional leaders to rise organically.
“It needs to become a party of bicycles, not BMWs,” as one youthful activist put it.
Names like Harin Fernando and Ruwan Wijewardene surface occasionally, but none carry the cross-regional, cross-class appeal needed. The UNP must take the radical step of either finding a true bridge-builder from within—or reach out to someone from the outside who can embody its historic liberalism with a modern populist touch.
Sri Lanka is not short of problems. From debt restructuring to communal tensions, from climate vulnerability to geopolitical realignment, the island needs robust political alternatives. The UNP, if reborn, can offer such a platform.
But for that, the party must do what it has long avoided: listen. To its old guard. To its youth. To its minorities. To its trade unions. And most of all, to its people.
The question is no longer whether Ranil Wickremesinghe is an effective leader. He has governed long enough to make that judgment self-evident. The question is whether he is capable of letting go, of shepherding a real succession, and of restoring a party to the people who once built it.
Because if he doesn’t, the UNP may go down not with a bang, but with the soft, unheeded sigh of a forgotten gentleman’s party—lost in its own drawing room.
-By LeN Political Correspondent
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by (2025-05-15 18:20:04)
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