Maithripala Sirisena desecrated SLFP of SWRD Bandaranaike-It ceased to exist on 16 January,2015.

When Mr. Mahinda Rajapakse the President of Sri Lanka Freedom Party handed over the Presidency of the party to President Maithripala Sirisena  on the  16^th January, 2015, the Sri Lanka Freedom Party founded by late S.W.R.D.Bandaranaike ceased to exist.

Since then the Sri Lanka Freedom Party( SLFP ) of which President Maithripala is the President is altogether different from the political party  late Mr. S.W.R.D.Bandaranaaike founded,  to give to Sri Lanka and its people a different political system, different from the pro-western capitalist political system of the UNP lead by D.S.Senanayake. It can now be called “Maithripala Sirisena Sri Lanka Freedom Party “, nothing to do with the original SLFP.

Maithripala Sirisena in breaking rank to join UNP and the common opposition confiscated his right to his membership in SLFP. Mahinda Rajapakse asking him to take over the Presidency of SLFP does not give him any moral right to have accepted to be the President of the SLFP which was founded by SWRD.

Those members of SLFP Sarath Amunugama,Mahainda Samarasinghe,S.B.Dissanayake , Rajitha Senaratne et al,  left SLFP along with  Maithripala Sirisena when he became the President had also given up their right to the membership of the SLFP founded by  SWRD. The reason is SLFP of SWRD was organised to counter the pro-western  capitalist system of UNP. The SLFP organised by SWRD Bandaranaike is anti UNP in all its aspect, and cannot for any reason  join with the  UNP at any time to form a joint government now or the future.

To understand this fundamental thinking of SWRD that led him to form the SLFP, as a political party symbolising his political thinking, one has to examine the personality of S.W.R.D.Bandranaike and understand the reasons which made him set up SLFP.

SWRD was born to a rich Sinhala family. His family had accepted western values. SWRD was born as  an Anglican Christian. He was tutored at home as it was with  rich English families . But to qualify to enter a University in United Kingdom he had to have attended an English School. Hence he was admitted to St.Thomas’ College for a short while before he left the Island to enter the Oxford University. He completed his studies at the Oxford, distinguishing himself by being the Secretary of the Oxford Union.

He later qualified as a Barrister in England. He was being prepared  to be a politician to shape the destinies of the then British Colony-Ceylon. He was certainly nursing the ideas of what he expected  his native land  to be once it is left on its own as an Independent Sovereign State.

He understood that being born to a rich family rubbing shoulders with the colonial administrators, will not make him a successful politician unless he brings to the surface the cultural values that would identify the future Independent Sovereign State differently from its British Colonial values.

He began disassociating himself from the Ceylon National Congress by forming  the Sinhala Maha Sabha in 1936. However understanding that a broader  political base would be required to break away from the traditional political thinking which wanted to keep within the inculcated colonial values, he supported the UNP in 1946. After Independence,  seeing that UNP was unable to make any positive changes to make Independence more realistic, he led his  Sinhala Maha Sabha out of the UNP and formed the Sri Lanka Freedom Party in 1951.

He was a young  intelligent man with new ideas  for a political resurgence of  his country and to bring back its inane cultural values. For this his interlocutors called him a Nationalist, in order to discredit him.

He saw that Nations are made of  people in a country getting together as one binding them to basic values that are directly connected to symbols that separates the country and the people from hitherto accepted Colonial Western Values .

Hence  he called for the union of five forces of power- sanga, guru, weda, govi, kamakaru. Sri Lanka suffered under its colonisation by the Dutch, the Portuguese and the British. The first victim of colonisation was Buddhism, then the Sinhala language, and finally the Sinhala Buddhists.

The Tamils and the Muslims were not victimised as much as the Sinhala Buddhist by the different colonialists, and the British following their policy of divide and rule, even then wanted to displace the Sinhala from their privileged state of the Majority Community, and pandered to the interests of the  Tamils and Muslims.

It was therefore necessary when Sri Lanka became independent,  to give back to the Sinhala Buddhists what they had lost during more than 400 years of Colonialism.

This was how the young Bandaranayaike wanted to build the new Independent Nation of Sri Lankans.  The Tamils in the UNP Government like the racist G.G.Ponnambalam were jealous of the young “political star” of the time –SWRD Bandaranaike. They called him a Nationalists, but SWRD Bandaranaike wanted Sri Lanka to be an Independent Nation like any other in the world. He wanted one flag, one national Anthem and one language under which to unify all  the people  without discriminating against them for their religion , and their culture as a one Nation.

That was why  SWRD Bandaranaike at the  age of 51 years wanted to break away from the UNP with it western outlook and the capitalist political system to take Sri Lanka towards its  natural development untimely stopped by colonialism.

SWRD’s new political party Sri Lanka Freedom Party was to have a socialist outlook markedly different from the UNP. Buddhism as a philosophy has also a benevolent socialist outlook. There were therefore a large number of Buddhist clergy who supported Mr. SWRD Bandaranaike and his SLFP.

SWRD did not want to look back , and he may not have wanted who ever would later lead the SLFP to look back towards the UNP with its even then decadent political philosophy.

In 1956 Mr.SWRD Bandaranayake took his SLFP to a landslide victory and formed a government with Lanka Sama Samaja Party and the Communist Party of Sri Lanka. Mr.SWRD Banadaranaike was preparing his fondly organised SLFP to following a socialist, non-western political system which profoundly changed the course of Sri Lankan politics.

Hence, it is not now a man ignorant of modern socialist political thinking  from Polonnaruwa (without any disrespect to people in Polonnaruwa),  without any  political vision of an astute politician, lead a party that resulted from the political ideas conceived in the mind of an  Oxonian intellectual  who had learnt of different  political systems; and planned a political system to Sri Lanka a country with a rich cultural background, with a great historical foundation.

Maithripala Sirisena is a complete misfit, a square peg in a round hole,  to lead the Sri Lanka Freedom Party of SWRD Bandaranaike founded in 1951.

Now for all intents and purposes the old SLFP is dead. The only way to revive it would be to take it away from Maithripala Sirisena and give it back to some one who has the will, and the ability to carry forward the vision of late S.W.R.D Bandaranaike.

SWRD’s  daughter Chandrika Kumaratunga had been an utter failure as the President of Sri Lanka , the then President of SLFP. She failed the people who expected her to carry out the policies of SWRD Bandaranaike, after  Sri Lanka’s political set back under R.Premadasa.

The only person representative of SWRD Bandaranaike’s vision  and who successfully carried out  much of SWRD’s political vision was the former President Mahinda Rajapakse. He is now the appropriate person to resurrect the Sri Lanka Freedom Party  which was organised by S.W.R.D.Bandaranaike.

The old SLFP is now dirtied and mutilated with its association with Maithripala Sirisena and the UNP led by an unscrupulous, dishonest man with an inglorious past with shadows of Batalanda Torture Camps falling over him.

Alternative would be to let the dead SLFP lay dead and organise a new party giving credence to visions of SWRD, and make it lead by a man appropriate to incarnate SWRD. There is none in the nearest horizon to come up to that standard except of course Mahinda Rajapakse the former President of Sri Lanka.

We wish all the success for  any political party aligned to  the policies of SWRD’s original SLFP, with what ever name  lead by  an appropriate leader acclaimed by the people  comprising of the Sanga, Guru, veda, govi, kamkaru to replace the present Yahapalanaya, before it could damage further this Great Country-Sri Lanka.