A Pivotal Moment
Dharisha Bastians
There is an old story in UNP circles about Sajith Premadasa that dates back to May 1993.
His father, President Ranasinghe Premadasa had just been assassinated in a brutal suicide bomb explosion at the United National Party’s May Day rally. The 25-year-old Premadasa had been in pursuit of a Masters Degree at the University of Maryland when he received news of President Premadasa’s death. Upon his arrival in Colombo to attend his father’s funeral, he asked senior UNP members when his mother, Hema Premadasa, would be sworn in as President.
The final days of the Premadasa presidency was when the Premadasa family star was at its zenith. The family aggrandisement had by then reached dizzying heights, making the incumbent Leader an increasingly unpopular figure in urban circles, which never much loved the common man President who had broken all the rules of blue-blooded dynastic politics in Sri Lanka.
Sajith Premadasa could be forgiven for being unable to come to terms immediately with the fact that with his father’s death, his family’s power would wane. He was perhaps too young to understand much about Sri Lanka’s constitutional democracy and that provision was clearly made for the passing of a President while in office in J.R. Jayewardene’s 1978 Constitution.
Entitled
Premadasa entered politics in 1994, still a very young man who had believed only one year ago that the presidential line of succession included the assumption of office of a widowed First Lady. He has had nearly 20 years to correct and alter these perceptions. Yet Sajith Premadasa in 2013, 20 years after his father’s death, remains as far removed from political reality as he was at the tender age of 25, still mired in a complex sense of entitlement that prevents him from standing on his own merits. It is a failing that has left him vulnerable to powerful political handlers whose personal agendas are threatening to derail Premadasa’s political career.
Sajith Premadasa’s enslavement to his backers has never been more apparent than in the aftermath of the 21 September provincial polls in which the main opposition UNP, predictably, suffered another humiliating defeat. He has seen fit to demand things rather than win them, coming across as a petulant politician. His political advisors have placed personal interests and vendettas above political strategy and Premadasa has fallen hopelessly prey to their machinations.
Over the past three weeks Premadasa put himself out there, demanding not only the party leadership but also its presidential nomination in a poll the Opposition strongly believes will be declared some time in 2014. He had staked his claim at a most precarious moment, ensuring that UNP Leader Ranil Wickremesinghe who appeared willing finally to contemplate stepping aside returned to his former intractable position.
