An inspiring bunch. Photo by Yamuni
I met Karu Jayasuriya once. I was standing next to him at the musty UNP office as they ‘launched’ their website. However, the UNP is so fucking stupid that they didn’t have Internet connection ready. They were trying to launch the website without Internet. Somebody called me with this problem in the morning and I didn’t even believe them, I tried to go back to sleep. In the end I loaded the site on Firefox at home and brought my laptop. Karu asked me ‘what button to push’ to launch the site and I told him to click the Firefox window, which was minimized. That was too hard so I just moved the mouse over the taskbar icon, put his finger on the clicker and told him to ‘push’. And that was the launch. It was one of the stupidest things I’ve ever done, and the UNP is probably the dumbest organization I’ve ever worked with. And I say this with the sincerest affection for what the UNP can be.
Today was the first time I saw any UNP posters since the election, really. And what did I see? Literally, the UNP has got Karu Jayasuriya to cross-over, returning the party to… exactly where it was. Which was in the wilderness. Not even Square 1, like, Square -5. Congratufuckinglations. There’s people dying in the north and hungry all over. We’re sending government lackeys to Paris to inspect Mihin’s new planes. Where were the posters for that?
Indeed, all the ‘lights’ of the UNP have crossed over. Milinda Moragoda, GL Peiris, etc. The last time I heard Moragoda in the news he was telling Parliament that there was no good Chinese food in Colombo. On the same day over 300,000 displaced people in the Wanni still didn’t have access to aid. Which is to say, when the country needed them most, these men failed. Doing the right thing was too hard, and they didn’t have the courage. If I saw them in public I’d throw my shoes.
But I understand. If I saw Ranil I’d throw my socks. When I worked for the UNP it was retarded. All real power was concentrated with Ranil’s old boys, none of whom were especially good at what they do. It was not in any sense a meritocracy, and functionally it was sheer mediocrity. There was no message discipline, there was no delegation of authority to a management class, and the machine simple didn’t win the election. And it can’t. So Ranil has to go. He’s choking the next generation of the UNP.
The only problem is that Karu Jayasuriya is, if possible, even less charismatic than Ranil and much more stupid. And less new. Seriously, it has to be the UNP, but I don’t think the party can reform itself for the next election and I think Mahinda will win again. And the country will continue this path of killing and revenge deeper into suffering, and further from the Buddhist values of non-violence and peace. Even as we have less food to eat with our bloody hands.
But we still have to begin reforming the UNP, to prepare the infrastructure for the inevitable change that will come. And for that the status quo isn’t enough. Ranil has to go, and Karu isn’t change enough. Leader One! Premadasa Two! Rambo 14!
Looks like your past has come back to haunt you. Your whole article shows how stuck in the mud you are because you can only talk about “reforming” a male-dominated Sinhala only party that killed approximately 350,000 people in the so called communist uprisings.
Why not really put your young male Sinhala neck out and go and start your own party with all invited or are you so afraid inspite of your big-mouth that no-one will follow you? Or are you afraid you’ll get a bullet through your doped up brain, the bullets which are quietly exterminating those left in the North and East.
Hypocrite.
Whatever you do – don’t sit around theorising – stop Mahinda or you will live to regret it.
Premadasa will be no different to Mahinda.
The UNP was founded as the ‘united national’ albeit somewhat feudal party. It’s traditionally included Tamil and Muslim parties in its coalitions. In terms of economic and war policy its much more reasonable (and successful), although many members of the UNP don’t even understand the policy. Per the insurrection, at least they were equal opportunity killers, killing both Sinhalese and Tamils. And no I don’t think anyone would follow me and I don’t see any point reinventing the wheel.
The cross over was expected. The problem is that the people who were with the SLFP/PA have no place in the party when it comes to an election. No SLFPer is going to forgo a seat to accommodate a UNP dissident, therefore they need to go back and contest under teh UNP when an election comes up. Once the election is over, if they win a seat they can join the ruling party again.
No change as such, the shuffling that is necessary when an election is due.
Not all of the party members are technologically handicapped, though I think most of the older ones are. I guess it’s ignorance that’s the issue there. The UNP needs someone new. They need a new image – an image of change. Ranil has too many faults as it is and everyone knows about them. His appearance in itself puts off a lot of voters, who turned to Mahinda because he looked more familiar. But these are just tiny factors. They need a strong character coming out of nowhere who cannot be bashed down. Someone who can speak to the youth, who only seem to be familiar with the likes of Mervin Silva. Looking at the recent elections in other countries there’s an obvious trend, and the UNP need to follow it if they want to win. It’s the only way.
Throw out the old; bring in the new.
Indi,
You have wasted your time to write about crap. elkay politics? yeeks.
Keep an eye on the two Saraths: Silva and Fonseka.
Rajiv, bishops on the chessboard eh?
My unlce says the UNP site was up and running even at the time of CBK.. so you better give here the URL of the site you helped launch for the UNP..
They probably did. unp.lk is the new one, and actually not bad. I worked on unpsrilanka.org, the domain of which has long since expired. Can’t find any screenshots but if you Google unpsrilanka some references come up. It kinda sucked.
unp.lk seems to be off line – at least when I clikced on the link in indi’s comment about 6:45pm Colombo time (29th Dec 2008)
hmmm, I was able to view it just now
Strange. Tried IE7, Fire Fox 2, and Safari for PC 3.0.3 – all gave errors about “website cannot be display”. IE 7 on another machine gave the same result. Safari for PC was more enlightening in its error message by saying
DNS Stuff’s FREE domain check on unp.lk brought up “1 FAILURES”
Out of curiosity I guess I could check further but I’m no party person to bother ;). I guess they are running their website similar to how they are doing politics…. Maybe its an extended temporary thing
Breakfast is more interesting.