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UNP suffers another crushing defeat

The crushing defeat the Freedom Alliance dealt the UNP in last Saturday's North Western Provincial Council elections, was a re-run of the April 2nd General Election.

The massive show of confidence in the Freedom Alliance was undoubtedly a protest vote against the atrocious manner in which the UNP won the election to the post of Speaker of Parliament two days earlier.

The overwhelming mandate given the Freedom Alliance by the people of Wayamba was a slap in the face of the UNP which visibly cocky after last Thursday's pyhrric victory in Parliament at the election of a Speaker.

The UNP leadership suffering from acute delirium tremens, like a dying alcoholic on his death bed, was given some life, albeit for ever so short a while, time enough for it to engage in some airy fairy fantasizing that they could even form a Government, although they had been summarily booted out of office and given a resounding kick in their pants by the overwhelming majority of the people of this country only two weeks earlier.

Ranil Wickremesinghe in one of his moments of mental inebriation gave up the hang dog look he has been sporting at the April 2 debacle, as he faced the cameras after the UNP nominee for the post of Speaker won by a sliver after many a reported machination. Machinations are somethings for which the UNP has an unenviable reputation There were many others who slipped into dreamland, like their leader. One of them was the highly imaginative and equally ambitious Mahinda Samarasinghe who had been relegated to the 'UNP second eleven'. Samarasinghe in his state of uninhibited euphoria claimed that the Government would now have to dance to their tunes. Then, there was the lean professori, undoubtedly hungry for a return to power opening the face of his secret ballot and showing it to his leader, like one of his more servile students at an examination telling the invigilator, look Sir, I didn't cheat.

After a short lived trip to cuckooland, the UNP has been brought down to earth with a big bang by the people of Wayamba who have given the Freedom Alliance a massive vote of trust and confidence. In doing so it dispensed with any false notions that the UNP may have had of coming back to power.

As in the case of the General Election, the results of the Wayamba polls were an absolute distortion and did not reflect the magnitude of the UPFA victory or the enormity of the UNP's defeat, this thanks to the horrible Proportional Representation (PR) system introduced by President J.R. Jayewardene.

In Wayamba, too, the UNP won only one electorate or seats as they were known in the first past the post Westminster system. But, 19 of its candidates were elected under the PR. On the other hand, the UPFA won 19 electorates or seats and had only 31 candidates elected as Provincial Councillors, incongruity personified.

The UNP must place country before self and support the Government in its efforts to have a new constitution which will be in keeping with the aspirations of the people, one which while representing the will of the large majority of the people, will also have necessary safeguards and provisions for adequate minority representation. The UNP for a long time professed to wanting a new constitution which included the scrapping of the Executive Presidency.

The Freedom Alliance, too, wants the change and has taken the lead in drafting a new constitution.

But now the UNP seems to have done a volte face. Is it due to their leader's greatest ambition being to be the next Executive President of Sri Lanka, like Uncle Junius whose favourite nephew he was?

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