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‘Present Sri Lanka Freedom Party leaders should resign for party to be revived’

01 Sep 2021

  • Former SLFP Chairperson Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga lashes out on party’s 70th anniversary
BY Buddhika Samaraweera Today marks the 70th anniversary of the Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP), which was founded by slain Prime Minister Solomon West Ridgeway Dias (S.W.R.D) Bandaranaike. Although it has now become a minority party representing the current SLFP Alliance, the SLFP, as a party, has been in power in the country for the longest time. In an exclusive interview with The Morning, former President Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga, the daughter of slain Premier Bandaranaike, as well as the third Chairperson of the party, expressed her views on the origin and the present situation of the SLFP. Following are excerpts from the interview. What was the main objective of slain Premier S.W.R.D. Bandaranaike forming the SLFP? The SLFP was formed as a solution to many social, economic, political, and cultural needs that had arisen in society at that time. I would say the SLFP is a party formed by the common man for themselves. Especially during the colonial era, two social strata had been created – the privileged and the non-privileged – and the colonial rule was more concerned only with fulfilling the aspirations of the privileged group. This situation did not change even after gaining independence in 1948, and policies aimed at fulfilling the needs of the ordinary people in particular were not formulated. In such a background, my father formed the SLFP with the aim of fulfilling the needs of ordinary people and re-establishing the local identity. What were the guiding principles of the SLFP and what did it hope to achieve in the long term? There are five basic principles of the SLFP. The SLFP can be described as a political party built on democratic and socialist principles. What it hoped to achieve is to strengthen the Sri Lankan identity, strengthen the local economy, eradicate poverty and provide the benefits of economic development to all citizens, establish honest and efficient governance free from corruption through leadership models, and create a country in which all citizens could live with dignity and equal rights. My parents and I, who led the party for 54 years from 1951 to 2005, had an intention of protecting and strengthening those principles. The SLFP has now become a minority political party, which is secondary to the Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna (SLPP). What are your thoughts as a former SLFP Leader on its current position? It is a very sad situation. The SLFP was the largest party in the country when I left it in 2005, after leading the party for 11 years. By that time, the SLFP had the largest membership; it had the best ground-level organisation, which was started by my mother (late Premier Sirimavo Bandaranaike). Even when compared with the Left parties that normally have a very good organisation, our field-level organisation was the best. We had tens of thousands of party branches in the field and then electoral organisations, district organisations, national organisations, and all that. As of today, in fact, it has not become secondary to the SLPP – it has almost become non-existent. At present, the SLFP only exists in the hearts of its members at the ground level. What are the reasons that have led to the SLFP’s decline and who are the individuals responsible for it? I would say very clearly, incumbent SLFP Chairman Maithripala Sirisena is directly responsible for that. He got into some secret deal with the SLPP to hand over the SLFP votes to the SLPP. The SLFP had sunk to the lowest under Sirisena’s leadership when he was the President. We had never lost an election so badly like the local government elections in 2018. I, now, fearlessly say that the defeat of that election was engineered by Sirisena and some other so-called party leaders. They had a secret pact with the SLPP to defeat the SLFP. Soon after that, Sirisena came to the central committee of the SLFP and got one of his acolytes to propose that the SLFP should join the SLPP, thereby supporting the SLPP’s candidate. At that time, I spoke out against it saying we need not join up with anybody and that we should contest on our own. There I was supported by the majority of the central committee. However, after about three weeks, Sirisena sacked me together with the majority of the central committee, 16 or 17 of us, who came up with the view that the SLFP should stand alone. Sirisena did not even have the courage to sack me from the central committee when I was in the country, and he waited till I left the country on my usual trip to see my children. Then the SLFP started to decline, and today, what I have said publicly many times about what will happen to the SLFP if it joins up with the SLPP has happened, and people like SLFP General Secretary Dayasiri Jayasekara are now going around saying what I have said almost three years ago. The current Government is following a policy of import restrictions and prioritising local production. Isn’t this the same policy that late Premier Sirimavo Bandaranaike followed in the 1970s? Only on the surface. It is not the same policy, because her policy of prioritising local production was at a time when Sri Lanka was extremely poor and the private sector had not come up. At that time, the private sector was not allowed to develop because of the so-called socialist economy. Therefore, the production levels were low, gross domestic product (GDP) was low, income levels were low, salaries were low, and the people were poor. So we did not have much foreign exchange and foreign devices to import things, and my mother, as the Prime Minister, had to call for the people to produce as much as they could. Then the J.R. Jayewardene-led Government opened up the economy, but unfortunately, all its benefits went to their cronies. I called it an open market economy with a human face and opened it up to everybody who had the dynamism and the ability to enter the market economy. We expanded the production base hugely and as a result, the GDP increased by three-and-a-half times. The per capita income increased by three times. Even though the other person who came after me claims that he did it, Central Bank and World Bank figures show that it happened during my Government. However, today we have moved millions of miles forward. We have a free market economy and it does not depend mainly on the state. Today, if the private sector or anybody, even the government, is to continue producing on this expanded production base, we need to import certain things. We can’t produce everything. We are a small country and have a limited land area. We have limited technology and most of our highly qualified people have left the country because of the corruption and inefficiency of various governments and the war. We are still at a primary stage of production. So I think we are completely throwing a spanner into the entire production process of our country by restricting imports of what is really needed and can’t be produced here. Whatever the industries that we have in our country, be it government or private, most of them are actually the rudimental industries that need raw material from abroad. So we can’t tell people to produce everything here. Do you think this current policy of the Government would have been endorsed by the SLFP of old? No. Recently, I was told something about a top-level public servant and I was surprised because he worked under me too. When the first Covid-19 wave came to Sri Lanka last year, some of the government industry leaders went to the Government and pleaded with them because their orders had gone down due to the situation that arose with the pandemic. They only asked for loans that they would start paying back at the end of the year, but the Government has refused. Then they have said that they may have to close down the factories, and this senior public official has said: “Okay, why don’t you close down your factory and go and grow some vegetables in the village.” So, if that is the policy of this Government, I think as much as the way Covid-19 is being handled, this is also very tragic, the way the economy is being handled. That is my thinking of present policies. They do not suit the present economic and social conditions. What is your current involvement with the SLFP? None. The party members keep coming to me and I will always advise them. They trust me more than others in the party, but Sirisena has given clear instructions to party leaders and the party office not to invite me for any events, including the central committee. So, I remain a member but that is all. One day I went to the party office just to amuse myself. There was a meeting that I should have been invited to, but I was not. Everybody else was invited except me, so I walked in and sat there. Sirisena and party General Secretary Dayasiri Jayasekara, who had changed parties many times and then joined the SLFP, were upstairs and I was sitting downstairs where the meeting was supposed to be held. Everybody present there that day started coming and greeting me with their hands together. We waited for about two hours and the General Secretary had then sent one person who had joined the SLFP recently and asked a bit aggressively: “Ah, why have you come?” Then there were posts on social media platforms that I was hooted, but not a single person hooted me and the district organisers and others present there grabbed the person who questioned me by his neck and threw him out of the room. That is all that happened. After some time, they had sent a message saying the meeting was postponed. So I just walked out saying “it is okay if they are that much afraid of me”, and that was the end of that. I can keep continuing to go, but I find them so disgusting and I have better things to do now. I have taken on some projects to help young people to build themselves as leaders of the country. Do you see a resurgence of the SLFP soon? As I always say, a strong institution with such a strong, good, and effective policy base as the SLFP can’t be destroyed like that. The SLFP will rise up soon or hopefully later. During the period from 2015, I was the Chairperson of the party’s reorganisation committee and I was doing it very effectively. However, Sirisena, on three occasions, asked me to stop it and each time I stopped. But I started again and it was going very well. Then the Rajapaksas realised that it was a challenge for them to grab the SLFP votes and they once again worked with Sirisena. Then he stopped me and then SLFP’s and United People’s Freedom Alliance’s (UPFA) Duminda Dissanayake and Mahinda Amaraweera from reorganising the party. That is how it was destroyed. Today, the SLFP Leader does not want it to move forward and he keeps it stuck in one place to help another party. It is tragic. Sirisena has to be responsible and will have to answer to this, together with the Rajapaksas. Also, Sirisena still lies about me to the party people. I am still an SLFP member and they can’t sack me, but there are those who go and plead with him to invite me back to reorganise the party even without my knowledge, and Sirisena keeps lying to such party seniors, district-level party leaders, and party members. He tells all kinds of lies about me like I am into the United National Party (UNP), I did this and that, and so on. Then they laugh at him because he is the person who became the President, which he did not expect even in his wildest dreams. I brought him in and it is with the UNP and some of the SLFP votes that he became the President. He went and hung around the UNP headquarters (Sirikotha), but I never went to the UNP, nor did I bend my knee to the UNP like Sirisena did. He ran there five times and he once said “sir, I am pleading with you to let me call you sir even after I become the President” to UNP Leader Ranil Wickremesinghe. However, I, as an SLFPer, did not do any of that and kept my dignity. I worked with the UNP as I had always worked with many other coalitions and it was in order to defeat a formidable government. Thereafter, I was building up the SLFP. After all, the SLFP has now been destroyed by Sirisena, together with his acolytes, and even then I would say, someday the SLFP will come up. Even when a huge tree is cut, it will grow back if it has roots. Just like that, there were many parties that tried to destroy the SLFP even in the past, but they could’'t. This time too it will rise up again. I am not sure if I will be alive to see it. We shall see. What is your advice with regard to a revival of the party? The present leaders should all resign now. Instead, young, honest, and educated people who have their own income should take over the party. They don’t have to come from rich and aristocratic families. However, they should have their own income, either by doing some business or employment. They should not think that politics is the best way of earning money. We need such people to take over not only the SLFP, but also the country. How do you look back on the time you led the SLFP, and do you think you did justice to the party? Of course. At that time, the SLFP was a party which had been struggling to come back into power for 17 years. In such a background, I risked my life to bring it back to power. I haven’t said this before, but now I am saying that the SLFP came back to power entirely based on my popularity. I was watching some videos at that time and I can remember the way people gathered around and worshipped me. I don’t think it was Chandrika that was that great, but they wanted a young, dynamic, and trustworthy leader. Because of my parents’ background and what they had done for the country, the people knew that I was educated and I would be an honest leader. I also had a little bit of charisma. Finally, I carried it on my shoulders and brought the SLFP back to power. During the period of 13 years that I led the party, two years as the de-facto leader and 11 years as the SLFP Chairperson, there were 13 elections, including the presidential election in which Mahinda Rajapaksa contested. With the help of party leaders and other members, I won all those elections for the party, except one. I would say, even Mahinda Rajapaksa’s victory in 2005 was 75% due to the progressive work my Government had done, under my leadership. The people had trust in me and that is what led to his victory. If I had not governed the country progressively, would the people have voted for him who contested from the SLFP? How would you like the 70th anniversary to be celebrated? No comments. Probably, Sirisena, who destroyed the party, would want to celebrate it along with others who contributed to it.


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